Without

For across the way is a child
file under A for alone
half the size of a half-sized mongoose.
Red sand and fingers and flies

rake tomorrow’s ribs.
Eyes upturn rich as the milk cows
once knew how to make.
The skies never end.




kj 24 sept 10

drawn out, drawn back

Ice that books say shouldn’t be
    in the fridge at all
curiously takes to itself properties
    of food around about.

I’d swear the last piece I fished out
was a sliver of salmon
    glamorous, sparkling
in its last moments
till it returned to the water
    that flourished it.

Is that how it was for you
    in those final moments;
Breath, or something shaped
    like breath,
drawn out, drawn back
    to Aonach Mor?

kj26sept10

Composing city

1
She wants a bay’bee.
Him not much more.
Tomato face
still squidgy
in places.
If I dared touch.

She says I gotta get her
a ticket.

2
A woman’s supersize buggy,
two hoodies
slouch towards.
One eyes its weight,
the two kids
leg-locked.
Feels a scout badge prick.
Wants to help,

doesn’t know how to
and his mate’s already up,
spitting grins.

3
Barely sat
and she’s troffing
down
a bag layered
with books and cakes.
A monster bakewell tart
meets its mincer;

I wonder if the books
go the same way.

Were train tables
see through
her legs would be
whorled round each other,
her left foot
plinthed on
its shoe.

4
When she looks up.
Looks direct at
my hungry pen.
Part-mended sadness,
reproach maybe,
girdles a loose face.

5
All eyes are a species
of interference.

Bear down.
Bear down, bear down.
Breathe.

Like those two planes,
death dealers
once,
they’ve laid here
in halls
loftier than houses.
Stuffed with
eyes

craving darkness?

Bear down.
Bear down, bear down,
bear down.
Breathe.

A struggle
this time to pull
the thorn out.
 
The lion
pads away.


kj22nov10

Going west

I rather imagined I’d see you again.
With your ripe mouth and startled-up hair.

I liked your spikes, you see.
Strolled them down Oxford Street,
arm like a scarf draped to your shoulder.
Catwalk carrier bags, smart phones, over-priced bananas
licked our steps of spun sugar,
lipped strawberries from our gourmet cup.

I rather imagined there’d be more.
The angle of your hips was more than hint,

your creases curled a finger, once, twice.
My pulse came running.

We flowed like a brush-stroke of crème-de-menthe
down the Champs Elysee.
Eagle-beaked hotels, cameras, fur coat defiance,
some with two legs, some four,

licked the honey off our busy breath,
dipped bread in our coffee-cream wake.

I rather imagined your eyes, like almonds
I want to say, knew the way over that bridge
rusted by dew,
bind weed, dandruff.

Turned to watch your back slip spineless into Bond Street,
I was quite wrong.



kj13june10

As birds

Branches received the largest first.
Gave to the touch
measured his short stay.
Flicked him away.

The second, no bigger than a thumb
though spangly (like a cheap souvenir from Lymington)
slanted in slower.
Slacked to a lower branch

held there content
its berry-bold hues
adding colour
like a grace note moves a blues song.

Then was gone.
A smell of blown-out candles
marking its place.

kj17may10

Mr tick tock

Every thread-fine screwdriver had a home
and a story.  That french ormolu 7 day
knew them all,  hoarded them
with its tainted gold. Mum told me

they called him
Mr tick tock when she was a kid.
Even then his face seemed
as old as those swelling his shelves.

Barren shelves now, playgrounds
for spiders.  His hands worked the tiny tools
within the ormolu’s heart
with lover’s obstinacy.  He didn’t look up,
even when his own stopped.



kj2apr10

mrs entropy

she has this kettle

smart purchase

combines water filter

and heating.

german precision

she’s had for ages.

it waits.

snaps awake.

boils furiously

and leaks.

so she keeps a sponge handy.

Kj9dec09



Measure of spirits

Where voices chink and rattle,

tales grow tall.

There used to be dominos

clacking like clichés of northern washerwomen

sour over fences.

Harry Bailey, Chesterson, Winsty, ole John

hunched to their spots.

Shillings did the rounds.

Dry coughs like phantom snare drums.

She’d allow the piano once a week, never more.

Beams rose again at the Old Bull and Bush.

The Fisherman’s Rest stretched its pike six more inches.

The George parried harder with its pens. And

somewhere down Gin Lane,

Miranda’s memory still accused.

 

 

 

Kj28feb10

The waiting room

This place. Pills in cardboard cups.

A socket of garden

sealed behind a window.

Past shrivelled to vulgar

fractions. 

.

Like the birds that all at once

feast eyes till sky pulls,

doubts of melody startle by,

seek shelter,

lose hold in my flutterings.

 

Someone tells me she cares.

Someone else cares too.

His face squares a frame

that found the wall opposite

my bed and perched.

 

Hard to believe

he cares.  His eyes shun,

like a bird’s.

 

This place waits.

 

Strangers pop the door

I’ve never gone through.

Monitor faces bring busy hands,

noisy shoes. Like birds,

they remind of fat birds.

Slow.  Circling.

 

A bird sparks the window.

Lingers.  Linnet.

Carduelis cannabina.  Sings

 

me across to that picture.

In crashes a nurse. Fusses. Leaves.

 

Steadiness again,

tightened by hands in blank

sheets till my eyes lock,

and shock sheer into his eyes.  A figure there,

 

stretched out with the grasses

on a river’s bank.

A river radiant in song.

 

This place waits for me.

kj8feb10 

Billy's map

There’s a map on your bedroom wall,
one that pins Europe to its centre,
shyly plasticized, it glow-worms your
desk lamp which you’ve not noticed.
you were 8 when you liberated your
mum’s magnifying glass, the waxy,
eggy one frowned at by crosswords,
you axed it at a tree at 14. giant cat,
car-sized plants later (pity you never
read Day of the Triffids, triffid shimmies
so much sweeter than “car-sized plants”),
you found vertical, hovered it at Greenland,
how it sucked that rock out of the map,
you could almost touch it, certainly
tongue its salt, exactly then, you could
have been anything, exactly then, you
could’ve done anything, all was there,
one leap of phosphorous to bounce
you across stars. the USS Enterprise
pendulums over your son’s desk.
the map’s wallpaper.  you prospect
distraction by keyboard, flat-fingering
amusement till it’s time to go to sleep.

Kj23jan10

Heart the size of a poppy seed

Bees’ business
pushes flowers around
like a harpist’s fingers

gush wire.
This overdose of swallows
might be spring

or a sailor’s boast.
Scrappy clouds attempt words.
An I puffs up, an L, a D,

Ich Liebe Dich.
Love sounds such melody
in distaff notes.

Here, here it’s better
to shove the bed to the wall.
The tinnitus throb

dulls with only one side.



kj19jan10

no easy math

how many for-evers in tomorrow?

three'd be good

one more than the woman

in room 7 got

‘cept it wouldn’t

make a blind mote of difference

what’s right’s always what just left

ever feel the track you’re on

took the wrong direction

right out the barrel?

so even nine more for-evers

ain’t gonna get these bones home

kj19jan10



what a trip!

the log

not brought

to suckle

whitening embers

the hand

not gifted

to wended figures

what else lies latent in dna

with the would-be

of kindness?

green eyes

colorectal cancer

simian tails

angel wings

dominant

recessive

the simplex

of eternity

some acid trip

kj16dec09



relationship of strangers

with closed eyes she watches

cones of light fingers of light

bear figures

without mystery or story.

walls sag exposing windows

barcode windows

tinted with undreamed moon

moon without seas

kj29nov2009

season ticket

A woman in the seat in front hummed.
With the train's tune sometimes,
sometimes in opposition,
always there though.
If words like muted are permitted on
commuter trains then that's how she hummed.
Through the tempting slit in the seats
her hands held each other,
rarely moved, seemed neither at ease nor uneasy,
just glad to have a  hold.
The window didn't figure, its offered fields,
hills, houses, city contours,
nor its refractions, cctv snatches of parallel libidos.
I found myself wondering when I'd last been kissed.

kj29apr10



as it is

A boy leapt for a ball.  He

read its satisfactions, the cheers
cupped, back slaps cohere

to some kind of truth.
He stiffens them to a board,

a place to pin his butterfly schemes.
Girls, work, city, a fretwork of

distances.   No

hesitation, he reached the ball,
curved a bomb.  Lifted the sea

clean from the land
to cloud in eyes spilling another funeral.

kj15feb10



Didn't know what to do by Kevin Jackson (thrucrit)

Naming things is what she did.

Watery vittles, country broth.

Hymns in church, crumbs of comfort.

A shoe with its leather worn thin, home.

Yells and smells and jostlings, children.

Loved it all she did, in her words, joyed in it.

Every day confusion took her company

glee welcomed her back.

What if she’d run out of numbers?

Children counted just as much,

and however many there were

every one of them had two eyes

bright enough to start a blaze.

How the sparks flitted about.

A crowd went up, she feared for a fire.

Shoe’s burn quick as any will avow.

She fell to Holy Writ

(or counting comforts as she named it)

and fixed this precept:

Blessed are the meek for their’s shall be

the Kingdom of Heaven.

Chuckles rolled about the room

as she leant on Heaven, saw clear the space

there’d be there, with vittles

and hymns to spare.  Still laughing

she took grip of candle and knife.

Kissed each good night.

Kj13nov09

Update on February 24, 2010 at 9:32AM by Shari-Lyn McArthur

Naming things is what she did.

Watery vittles, country broth.

Hymns in church, crumbs of comfort.

A shoe with its leather worn thin, home.

Yells and smells and jostlings, children.

 

Loved it all she did, in her words, joyed in it.

Every day confusion took her company

glee welcomed her back.

What if she’d run out of numbers?

Children counted just as much,

and however many there were

every one of them had two eyes

bright enough to start a blaze.

 

How the sparks flitted about.

A crowd went up, she feared for a fire.

Shoe’s burn quick as any will avow.

She fell to Holy Writ

(or counting comforts as she named it)

and fixed this precept:

Blessed are the meek for their’s shall be

the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

Chuckles rolled about the room

as she leant on Heaven, saw clear the space

there’d be there, with vittles

and hymns to spare.  Still laughing

she took grip of candle and knife.

Kissed each good night.

Kj13nov09

malo, mala by Kevin Jackson

surrender twists

but cannot avoid

this thing

not possession

nor repugnance

juiced from

boyhood

not wild swan

nor doe

an inside clench

like a kick

a last lick

of innocence

kj7nov09

coma by Kevin Jackson (thrucrit)

to water

held

between is

and was

looker

and looked

recombine

kj6nov09

Solid State by Kevin Jackson (thrucrit)

Solid: stable, not fluid, substantial, not hollow

We stand shoulder to

shoulder, in solid-

arity with our friends in

(insert country name – verify

pronunciation): their fight

 is our fight

and their losses

our losses.

Blah.  Blah.

Blah.

Next!

kj29oct09