SILVERBIRCH ON CANALSIDE
             (off Fazeley St)

For company, a Flanders poppy
and a brooding pair
of breeding swans. This sidebranch's
blocked off. Your torso's cracked
like old plaster. On your bending flesh
cling barnacles of wart
as on a greywhale unzipped
from the hiding sea. The all else
is breathless, a too fast
running past. Your roots swim down
into slow currents, diving
into the world's skin. You are the guardian
of your own image, unknowing,
on a scummed and lily-padded channel,
where an oiled city (gerra move on)
slides and wheezes by.




FRAGMENTS OF A CHINESE DIARY

                  i

Each night I paw at The Book of Odes

like a sad-eyed creature stumbled out
of an endless forest

looking at a camp-site clearing
uncomprehendingly.

                 ii

I dreamt I had made perfect
my rough technique
on the bamboo flute.

That my mind's web quivered
to the pauses between raindrops
or the air's troubled turns.

To the heartbeat of stars.

               iii

A woman is shouting at her own locked door.
I have counted the khaki on the Great North Road.
A quartet crashes
through the silence of my wall.
There are shirts they are struggling
as the wind brawls.

Bow low, kowtow, you caution, the Emperor's men 're marching.


FOR MY FATHER

Flemish bond, English bond, slap the trowel, plumb the line.
Six o'clock, on the dot, up and out, work's about:
It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note.
Billycan, in the hand, white outside, black within.
Morning come, frozen bone; night and home, frozen bone.
It's seven quid a week and a ten bob note.
Dawn and dusk: English bond: seven pound: frozen bound.



NOTES ON THE CAPTURE OF FORM AND CHAOS

With the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings
on my last late noon of love in the fortress of Wendsbry
she confronted the professor with: rustic songs

on my last afternoon of love with a world of wrongs
as a storm broke through a mind collapsed in Ledbry
to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings

a storm broke a mind with its senseless things
a narrative sank in a subjective mire: 's hisstry
she confronted her professor with it: rustic songs

a narrative drowns while drunk Muses sing
I cry for the end of it a creature like me
with the phlap, phlap, phlap of a butterfly's wings

I cried for the end of it the living broken things
for a burden of being on backstreets of Wendsbry
she confronted a collector with her rustic songs

for a burden of being the telephone rings
with a message fron no-one a desperate plea....
to the flap, flap, flap of a butterfly's wings
she confronted her professor with it: rustic song



THE MADNESS OF KING DAVID

The servants no longer purred but barked.
The Queen Consort was plotting with France.

Slowly he picked the feathers from his skin.
That was for Wednesdays. Other days,

unlike the people in the lifts, he stayed
all the time awake, knowing that by his consciousness

the world might hold together. Not fall
apart. Not fall ....

until Thursdays, for instance, which were a particular kind of problem,
as the skies were never the right colour

nor the noises outside his palace
(for they had the hue of small burrowing mammals)

(And his puzzlement was presented with certain shots of Kim Novak
in The Great Bank Robbery, wriggling her bum

with a rather conspicuous tail-flounce perched on her dress
reminiscent of Great Ape females on heat. Disturbingly. See zoo. See cinema.)

Nor the verse forms which came to hand
for their exoticism bethought him of trade wars.

But there were other days again, not named on the calendar,
when he revisited his telescope

(the world's first, many times since upgraded and restored)
a gift, the Chancellor told him, of Johannes Kepler,

where, in his own perspective, the firmament hung
studded with the running signatures

of those he thought of as friends.





STILL LIFE

It was the ending of sound
and the light closed
with a black door's heaviness.
History faded
on the eye's wide lens.
The long ages of ice
came back
to the lowlands of flesh.
Only a feeling

a vague smoke
like a detached ghost
turned on the tuneless air
twisted by gravity
grey on black
like a question-mark's curl
or beckoning finger.





WI(TH)IN

a print a mud trace (a hundred and eighty
(ahead back there (and into the mirror I sidled:
(tell me I mouthed tell (the higher animals came
(touch, touch, the guide implored (and I saw the stars
in their clouded nurseries (rah-too, the bird called,
rah-teh (then the stones began to fable (could
I but tell (how there when where not there
at the first molecule twitch (Broca's patch (see icy
I sea a seed) broken down) like unlabelled cans
on grocery shelves) how where when there not when)
could I but) one by one one)
then smokily it faded from sight) and a wind-
ruffled corner where a bus never came) and vanished,
that's history) two by two by two by) and
found myself my questioner) ah, hello, echo, hello, ha)
where there began) degrees turning) the steps of breath



WORKING THEOLOGY

When Hawa looked up from the last call
and asked David,
can you answer me a personal
question?, and smiled,
I said, Go on,
and she
hesitated on the cross she'd seen
hanging from a gold loop
piercing my ear.
Are you a Christian?, Hawa ended.
I scratched my ear.
No, I told her, nodding.
Which means yes.




DISCURSE ALPHA LYRAE REMOLD


The man of the lyreways,
Orpheus, after-being
torn apart by a song
and a woman's hands,
was at a loose end
and discoalescent, an almost
converstation in a not quite
clowd and occasions,
disparts, a happenings
to me. I mean biography, write.
I mean ice. I mean a dark mater.
I mean cosmocrator loiter.

            He had a loud
visions in the mud reeds, flesh,
old stills on star-plates,
life to remind him of his skin,
aways from here, the rite strain caught,
almost late, mirrors
that nuzzled
like warm pronouns

to look in from the veerside
of yes he remembered his head.

                    But, like
parachute jumps off the day's brink
(that is a passport
backwards to the Shire)
               the things stayed metaphor
almosts, quoits

                         until
no more. No more
than that he was that, met her
more each selving
wrapped now

on a pressure hold of light
a gravity beat song print
an inplose whirl'd
a waltz to a starberth

a Glowball warming
a quickfire slow



THE COLLECTED POEMS OF JOSHUA NENE (1955-99)

    (i)
Walk Dead Still

You modulate a Court, with all its summoned.
Who's in, who's out, who has the King's ear.
Who the judgement. Behindbacks, snipes,
En attendant Gagool. Good Laud, I refuse

your forensic, your sting-pull,
your herd-manage talk.

  (ii)
Constable

Every so often I go mad, and climb a tree with squirrels.
It is an English tree. Its fruit pucker from the skin
like gargoyles on a Goth. Look, there's a Blake face,
or here a Smart. Clare? It is a moral tree:

in a breeze it shakes so, its periwig its peruke, dusty,
as if an insect judgement woke. Once
we thought it a Liberty tree, sang of it, too.
Still, it gives me fresh perspective. Arrested,

still. See?


   (iii)
The Possibilities of Rhyme

Ashbery has 'Orpheus, a bluish cloud
with white contours'. A voice
from the speaking crowd, too,
a noise among the heard. I saw

a man once in a rhetoric cloud,
punneling his escape. He went
anon and anon until
he disappeared in the daze.

Optional Ending Extra

Ys. Aitch.




MICHELANGELO'S DAVID

Violence is a cold word and marble.
              And Michelangelo.
Princes must needs status, statutes,
              Forms for their laws.
Born, I drew a statue's name David.

Michelangelo is marble, and a man's
              Hand on the cold
Stone turned to the curve of warm.
              I touch the bow
Of the huge pectorals, draw down
                      Slow

Thorax, abdomen, navel, then find
               Submission below.
As did Michelangelo. To touch our
                Prince at tender,
What price? To hold a man's strength,
                    Bow low,

                       David,
               Let your hands flow.
The body being it, its beast this burden:
                 Violence frozen.



CATACOMB MARKSPIEL

Not pow her plaice this
     nor no loiter art to pleas is
my own fisc in howse mee
     (fixion of convenience - locate, this gust)
bee push metaphor
           bee touch about
be ware of them frighten hers thaim

outsize messuage restore rent in
     (there is a grebe flake
      I can touch in the sky
a chest-feather a warm playse
      a beating art re
cover am bush to high'd two
      a pen too write
Chinese 'tattoo')

'ttoo' - who being onlie kate
      only who while this night when
said 'tomorrow take body cover'
            'ta-too'
did hold mee mammal quiet
       on heart rhythm
             art point
sumwhile for still against
        the bad thing the life ~
two be warm fur

"there is no more desperate tender
        place of mammal secure
than in those wordless
        moments of another
arms when we fore
        figure final inevitable
moment of together
        art before
death tear us apart"


WANTS HAPPEN AMULET

The moon is heavy with the full. Broken cloud,
copper, smoky, aches across it. A smell
of burnt powder, waste, and the loosening stones
of an ancient pile, grey, its pale turretwork
of embattlements, stand inviolate bar
the crackle of a leaf turning, air's yearning,
the remote invisible sentry's tramp
and about, and a concentration
amounting to a mind. That is to say the air's
mind, the not-yet, the nuclear constellations
being born behind the eyes. The time,
delicate as a girl's waist, or a boy's,
sidles by the watch like a breath walking,
in this almost apotheosis of the dark.
An owl hatched out of a storybook
hoots at identity, fur scent blood, and a yew
creaks as if a thought's mass alighted.
Something's about, turns, and a black imprint,
a negative, a prince of all shadows, forms,
all behind scenes, childers to be seen,
of a crowd's heads, a gaggle agog a heard
of eyes. It is time to descend, prince,
you have risen to come down, speak, ghost,
from your high abstracted precipice,
your speech-plinth. Focus, prince, grasp.
While the black feathers of the raven ruffle,
ready to ply inly, and the night-tree
winces at your weight, your firstwords landing:



GHOST MACHINE SELF-ASSEMBLY KIT

                                           INSTRUCTIONS
                                                       I
                                         FUEL RECIPE
Take three quarts of paradox from your nearest pint-pot. Add essence of
dementia. Stir briskly and pepper with molecules. Allow to stand and wait
for imagination to rise. Knead two gross of nebulae into a malleable
pastry. Add one poppet of whatever-it-is, a broad sauce of parody and a
prime choice cut of indignant indigence. Stand well back and light fuse.
Never look directly at the sun.

                                                     II
                                    CHASSIS ASSEMBLY
Retrieve bones from elephants graveyards. Collect rusting girders from
derelict factories. Connect elephant bones (A) to girders (B) using risible
appliance (enclosed). Next mount with the best available 'saurian fossil
(Triceratops recommended) and decorate with leaves torn from The World's
Classics. Test for balance and dynamics with an improbalometer (not
enclosed). Remember, you must not take it out onto the streets or to social
functions until you have obtained a proper licence.

                                                   III
                                        POWERING UP
Once cooled, remove fuel from centre of crater. Apologize to your neighbours
for demolition of their homes. (Hope they renewed their insurance!) Next,
taking just a sufficient amount, in exactly the right place, never
elsewhere, pour in a quantity of fuel. When the red indicator flashes on,
scram. Beware of ephemera and stolid, wooden objects for the first five
minutes. If elephants persist, consult your local dealer.

                                                   IV
                               DRIVING YOUR MACHINE
Avoid right turns. Be considerate to other users, particularly the elderly
and bicyclists. Take care at junctions, there may be an unexpected
development. At all times be humane, remember, machines have feelings too.
Watch out for time-hoppers and avoid being caught in their slip- stream.
Regularly check your appearance in a mirror - in case of sudden change
immediately turn off your Ghost Machine. Do not run engine while standing
still as a personal morass might appear, particularly in the vicinity of a
carpet.





Alison Croggon

Home page
http://users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/