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

1
She wants a bay’bee
He wasn’t much more
Tomato face
still squidgy
in places
If I dared touch

She says I gotta get her
a ticket

2
A woman with supersize
buggy
Two hoodies
slouch towards
One eyes its weight
the two kids
leg-locked
Feels where a scout badge was
Wants to help

Doesn’t know how to
And his mate
is already up
spitting grins

3
Barely sat
and shes troffing
through
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 flopped on her
half-off shoe

4
Then she looks up
Looks direct at
my hungry pen
Part-mended sadness
reproach maybe
girdles a loose face
Hair that hasn’t felt
fingers open its
lustre in a long while

5
All eyes are a species
of interference

Bear down
Bear down, bear down
Breathe

Like those on these two planes
death dealers
once
Here
laid in rooms
loftier than houses
Bounded by
eyes

Craving darkness?

Bear down
Bear down, bear down
Bear down
Breathe

6
I quietly pull
the thorn out
again
The lion
pads away


kj13oct10




6.7” tall

Did I dream it?
Union by 1 per cent
Disagree to disagree

It could have been a nightmare
Uncommonly speaking

Like an inheritance
One life only

Four-square behind him
All corners dissolved
Like tablets

Or blame.
Rude birds flap
Silently into view

What if they are ravens?
They must be hallucinations.
How many hallucinations
can one bowl hold?

All HTML will be escaped

kj26sept

Using a lens flattened by his heel,
Mercator imagined the world
after Giotto’s eye-trick for round and deep,
back to front. Grolier, Hammond and Oxford
drew, by extending his lines, their guess at Troy,
their tabulations of tea, rubies and gin.
I pass my hand over sketchy borders,
treaties and pacts, incursions of painted faces.
 
A red line hashed by blue dotted labels,
crosses over pools of ink to the rims of country,
domain, even realms under reign, highlighting tallies
of skeletons with arrows of GDP.
I’m getting crumbs in the margin. That’s a 2
in millions of Vietnamese who died
from the convolutions of rescue.
 
Underlined dollars graph their score since 1946,
a carousel of color spinning off the title page.
Little notes of previous wars conspire
for jurisdiction, wag little truces, splay
bright arrows of gold, tin, B52s.
Little parachutes sewn into sails
luff from the masts of liberated isles.
 
Such art, such flamboyance, He is giddy
over a wedge lifted notably, an appropriate
slice, larger than others,
balanced, pertly, on his shoulder. 

The custodian looks
as if he will fall dead tomorrow,
as his methamphetic body
pushes garbage
floor to floor.

This is the frail heaving man
as he leans to the sideways stumble,
half aware gander
through the longest halls
of his life.
I wonder as he passes
those who gawk

misunderstood

if he doesn't wonder
about the mores of custodial arts,
like the fine dexterity
in waxing previously
puked on floors,
or the recognition 
in something that
never gets dirty.

Does he clean 
around thoughts of sole order
or is there some hidden, shrunken, 
wrinkled reason,
for his peaceful radiance?

A boy leapt for a ball.  He

read its satisfactions, the cheers

cupped, back slaps coalesce

to some kind of truth.

He stiffens them to a board,

a place to pin his butterfly schemes.

Girls tried and fell apart, work

tried, like the smell

 of city streets,  his aunt

feera’s pine cones, fugitives

of another summer.   No

hesitation, he reached the ball,

curved a bomb.  Lifted the sea

clean from the land

to cloud in eyes spilling another funeral.

kj15feb10

Revision -

A boy leapt for a ball.  He

read its satisfactions, the cheers

cupped, back slaps coalesce

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. 



This is the Collatz conjecture:
pick a number, one dear to you,
one you might allow to brew the coffee
in the morning.  If this number is even–
smooth like a sprung dance floor, even as the lake
at twilight when the wind has died–
divide it by two.  Nothing so straightforward
stays whole forever.  If the number is odd –
like his brother, the one who winks
and runs his hand along your shoulder –
multiply it by three (though that’s a party best avoided)
and add one, your sister-in-law perhaps,
with her raspberry-scented hair
and interesting eye shadow.  Apply these rules
over and over.  When you get to one, stop.
Theory says you will always be reduced to this,
the only number you can rely on.