getting over the moon

Scenarios II

2012-01-20T11:01:00.001-08:00

Water Lens.

Man with soft wet legs is coming at me, dripping into the frame. I am all hydrogen, just sitting there and refracting him. There isn't even a suggestion in his mind of how I am making him look. I have two atoms of breathing fuel and if I could, I'd sigh deeply with it. The sloppy man looks so poetic, just flowing, as if his life were an unbounded stream. He is coming at me, his edges thicken. My environment blinks a while, my smooth dome is shielded then uncovered. The mass of the man melts towards the foreground, he's all calm and dream like a fish in the ocean. He's coming at me and pink shape becomes hand, anonymous blob stretches out into finger. Cavernous deep expands into mouth. Carbondioxides and waste are projected all over me. I'm gone, I'm assimilated. He has perfect edges. I envy him the clarity of his shape.

.

Finger Exercises

2012-01-16T05:14:00.000-08:00

Spots.

Facing a clear wall the anomalies are more apparent. When the view is busy, the dots sink into view. I am chasing them, they are chasing me. They are more inside my eyes than I am. They are more at one with me than me. Staring at a white wall, I can make them dance all over it. Black dots translated over one shade then another, always in sync, the same distance apart from one another, like a definitive scattergram of the precise points I will never see. I can sometimes see fine hair-like lines between the dots, only semi-opaque. I look up, I chase them, I follow them down. They appear the same colours as oil spills, with that rainbowesque finish - guiltily beautiful. They look like bacterias and other details. My eye is a microscope. They are shaped like The Plough now, now Pisces, and then lost. I look through them, I zoom out, I concentrate on the world, I get on with things. They look like spinning jennies late in the evenings, I am living behind a damp film.

Unstabilised.

The small head is turned, in retrospect the movement seems long and hardy. The child has grown, the parent shrunk. One second and the posture of the child becomes taller, more agile, an obelisk rising from meek jelly. One sharp impulse to check, and to both learn and bear the truth, and the child is no longer shielded beneath a heavy armpit. With the sun on its back and the terrifying wind behind its wheels, the child is on and on and up and out and neither puddle nor corner could muffle this sound. It is the sound of the speed of light, and the child grows quickly into this new body of motion. The child is leaving the skin of the earth, is off and away, as the stratosphere is but a rotation or two from here, and the parent waves, and the child does not notice the look of consternation on the old human's face, and the world is below - then above, then below - and the child flew through galaxies but now it is bleeding with its small hopeful head in the snow.

.

haikus

2012-01-16T04:47:00.001-08:00

OIL

Plankton and faeces,
inside your Polo, driving
you to work and back.

COPERNICUS

"It is us that moves
around a stationary sun!";
he said, and fainted.

.

Feel Little But Terrible - published in Solecisms magazine.

2012-01-16T01:07:00.000-08:00

Another story published, hooray:

http://www.solecisms.net/cdn/issue/01/01/Solecisms.pdf

.

Story in Mud Luscious Press - Issue 18.

2012-01-02T15:58:00.000-08:00

http://mudlusciouspress.com/online/

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Steve Oliver

2011-12-28T13:29:00.000-08:00

He did this with my photos:

http://pathstraighttothevan.tumblr.com/post/14626301027/r-i-g-h-t-l-e-g-l-e-f-t-l-e-g-d-o-o-r

Good guy.

.

Maverick Magazine Summer 2010

2011-12-02T12:35:00.000-08:00

Turns out I was being published all the while...

http://www.whisperingcoyote.net/maverick/mavericksummer2010.pdf

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Manifesto for a life of writing

2011-12-01T12:45:00.001-08:00

1.Forget who you are in the physical sense; what you look like, the sound of your voice, how specific people view specific traits.
2.Do not consider the future.
3.Do not consider the critic.
4.Do not consider the abstract reader, nor the known, nor the family, nor the friend, nor the foe.
5.Do not read through what you have written in the voices and from the perspective of each of these specific individuals!
6.If it is feeling good, stick it in there (you can destroy it later).
7.Do not compare oneself to Nobel prize winning poet laureates, film directors, people from long lines of well-to-do and successful ancestors.
8.Do not think about money or time (except metaphorically).
9.Read text back periodically for editing and self-improvement.
10.Do not fantasise about posterity, interviews, early retirement, book signings, philosophical conversations with peer groups who really 'understand' you, etc.
11.Do not attempt to defend yourself.
12.Be honest, be quick, be stern, be funny.
13.Apply to anything and everything available with anything you have to hand.
14.Do not count rejections.
15.Do not remember details.
16.Keep hammering that nail.
17.Kafka.
18.This is only play.

.

Pending...

2011-12-01T11:38:00.001-08:00

"Where have I gone?", she says.

.

More on Splice Today...

2011-03-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

This seems to be as regular as I'm able to make it, so here's a link to the author's page which will get updated automatically as and when I write:

http://www.splicetoday.com/author/Lydia%20Unsworth

.

Splice Today

2011-01-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/life-of-an-artist-2-0

http://www.splicetoday.com/pop-culture/leap-into-the-void

.

another story

2010-12-21T11:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.pankmagazine.com/?p=2606

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some more things placed in various places

2010-07-21T04:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2010/07/20/double-yellow-lines

http://www.foreveryyear.eu/2010/07/1563-co-lydia-unsworth.html

http://www.otherother.org/2010/07/getting-back-with-the-motherland/

The Middleman

2010-06-08T22:57:00.001-07:00

Story I wrote up at Kill Author:

http://killauthor.com/issueseven/lydia-unsworth/

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Other things

2010-05-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

.
.
http://www.otherother.org/2010/05/travelling-and-some-finer-points/
.
.
http://www.otherother.org/2010/05/on-why-i-am-here/
.
.

There is a small section of double-yellow lines along Oxford Road, just in front of where the Mathematics building used to be, where some leaves...

2010-05-07T13:47:00.000-07:00

There is a small section of double-yellow lines along Oxford Road, just in front of where the Mathematics building used to be, where some leaves were trapped between road and roller while the paint was being applied.

And it's beautiful.

And it's that kind of knowledge that tells me what home should feel like.

When I have guests and they ask me what there is to see in Manchester I take them there.

We will be approaching the place and I'm all 'Here it comes' and 'Get ready!' and they are looking about them for a sign, for a flashing light, for a pointing arrow, for something larger than anything.

And then I point to the ground.

I'm jumping about now, reeling off stories about how I once did a double-take while riding my bicycle. About how I stopped and got off, lifted my bike up and onto the pavement. About how I came back and turned around and knelt down with my camera. About how I walked the length of these imprints of leaves, photographing each one in turn.

I point out my favourite.

I ask what they think, if they have ever seen anything as perfect as these.

And some of them do enjoy it, although some of them look at me strangely and ask the way to the museum.

I think that's how I know who my friends are. Or who they will be. I like the kind of people who appreciate the coincidental timing of the double-yellow lines being repainted and the falling of leaves.

...

look constantly

2010-05-07T13:05:00.000-07:00

It is too easy to begin a text with the word 'I'. It is too easy to be looking constantly and killing minutes as if they meant nothing. It is too easy to be breaking life into smaller and smaller percentages until you are left with time in its most useless form; abstract pieces that are too soon over, that are too soon replaced by the next. It is too easy to land yourself with no reason. It is too easy to forget, to distract, to obsess. It is too easy to launch yourself into that charming future, with all its promise and possibility, with all its unending size and unexplored space. It is too easy to launch yourself into a dimension in which you hold no weight. It is too easy to run with your head three paces ahead of your frail shape (it is impossible). It is too easy to live one-hundred and seventy three centimetres above the ground (we are impossible), with a face in low clouds, advancing toward the future, breaking off (like time), breaking up (like people), becoming small and useless like human bodies when they start to shrink.

...

The Solar System

2010-04-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

I could only ever like the night that was made of city lights
- that isn't pollution,
it's safety -
it's all the romance of twilight
for eight hours a day,
shattered across a thousand windows.

It's two degrees warmer when you're in the middle
of all that breathing, and the shadows
are smooth, inoffensive shapes.

It's one blanket less
per lamppost, per annum
as the light tends away from
madness
toward a fine white sheet.

It's bringing the sun
that little bit closer,
so you don't have to sleep
so hard,
or so tightly,

or at all,
ever

again.

(i am trying to rest at a busy junction. eight lamps look at me lying there, like eight planets so close to the earth and all wanting the same thing)

April 2010

Intimacy

2010-04-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

The only intimacy i ever felt
that came from me without impurities
was in crowded places. Trains,
nightclubs, the backs of taxis; that's the kind
of reciprocation i'm after. The one
that simply is what it is: a warm hand, a clammy palm
accidently resting on my thigh,
my fingers. I don't move
them,
it,
because i rarely get touched like this;
where neither one of us wants anything
(but i want everything,
i'm dreaming of this)
where neither one of us wants anything
and we're so blasé about our bodies
that we don't even notice we are
touching.

April 2010

Whole People

2010-04-23T15:34:00.000-07:00

I wonder when it was that I began to have real thoughts. The kind of thoughts that men are made of. I wonder when it was that I began to think myself worthy of abstract contemplation. Because every time I look back I see a half-formed person convinced of wholeness,

trying to tell herself she is right about something. Trying to say to herself that one topic at least is completed, that she is definitely done with that one thought. Every time I look back I see an awkward child smacking around in some sand pit with a fistful of empty words;

words which by comparison make even the sand seem countable. I see a child profoundly howling. And she doesn't understand why her throat hurts. She's shouting across oceans, but sometimes she forgets to check which way the wind blows, and her words come back at her

fiercely. To remind her of those thoughts she thought she'd left behind. Thoughts she'd forgotten, and ones still being spouted. And she isn't sure which is worse. To believe in change, or to believe in one's convictions strongly enough to continue to say the same thing,

just more heavily edited. Controlled, like life. This is the house you show the visitors. But really, I'm still writing about how I haven't changed my socks in days. Or how I sleep in my clothes sometimes because nobody is looking anyway,

and even if they were I would persist. Because otherwise life would be too mundane. I only know how to escape in childish ways. To the backseat of recurring dreams. Where everything is discreet and vague, and I can pretend it doesn't mean anything. I pretend I don't remember

what I used to be like. It's easier if you don't connect the pieces, because each piece is the same shape. And you need only admire the colours. Like photographs. Where everyone is smiling and keeping their thoughts in place. Like real completed people. I don't know

when it happens. I am constantly waking up. Into what I think to be the real thing. I keep watching and the contrast of the past grows thinner. It becomes harder to see. It turns into a dream again. Of a person who isn't yet old enough for real thoughts.

Starboard Home

2010-04-22T23:16:00.000-07:00

I'll run a mile when that boat gets here,

and we'll both be so sorry
we didn't stop to take photos
of the port.

April 2010.

Stationary Holes.

2010-04-17T10:38:00.001-07:00

the long edge of the door,
the four corners of a rectangle -
sat by myself in the corner,
in the corner of one’s eye.

a chair in the garden,
a hole in the clouds.
Fixed in position;
a stationary sound.

a tall man in an overcoat,
a strange floating in her eyes,
a novel that moves slowly
throughout my million years.

a pair of hollow structures,
a crowding of indifferents:
my boots, my accomplishments
cover them with trees.

a bit more rest, a little
excited, an infection of the hand.
The tearing is a memory,
a memory of sounds.

i imagine motorway traffic,
i long for unmoving wholes -
a sudden light that made me
blink, a memory of sounds.

an overcoat that followed,
a noise twisting from the rooftops:
sat by myself in the corner,
not able to be moved.

the streaky pink marble,
the event that took place…
fold in the egg whites
fold in the egg whites.

(April 2006)

Manchester: Falling in and out of love with asphalt.

2010-04-11T07:15:00.002-07:00

There isn't another city of two million people that could feel so much like a village to me. There isn't another city that I want to apologise to so thoroughly for my absence.

There isn't another city whose air bowls me over - there is something in the water - I can feel the scent of Manchester in the rain; in the time just after, when the paving slabs shimmy with the noise of tiny stars; reflected from lampposts, passing cars, offices, derelict cinemas.

There isn't another city where I can gauge the angle of every road from every given location, where I can see how one part connects to another, where I can slot right into place with such ease.

There isn't another city where I can simultaneously stumble across three ex-boyfriends. There isn't another city where I can simultaneously so much want to stay and so much want to leave.

There isn't another city where I know my way from one end of a hospital to the other, where I have seen so many lines appear on faces and so many hairs fall out of heads. There isn't another city that has aged me, that I love and that I sometimes dread.

There isn't another city where I have an opinion about each new building, where every alteration of the skyline seems like a personal affront.

There isn't another city where every corner is soaked in memories, where somewhere beneath the rain and the piss I can be sure to find the trace of one or another of my life's momentous occasions. There isn't another city where every postcode is stamped into my genetic make-up, where every street sign rings alarm bells, where anonymity feels like such a stranger.

There isn't another city that I am able to remember in stages; where I can long for past buildings, old fields; where I can linger regretfully before bricked-up windows and remember where the glass used to be. There isn't another city so able to bulldoze the years, so easily able to flush out events I thought were imprinted. There isn't another city so quick to refresh, to annul, to alter my dreams.

There isn't another city that has made lies of so many photographs, that has redesigned itself in my eyes with such speed that is has me walking into walls, grabbing at absent railings, exerting such force onto revolving doors that have ceased to be. There isn't another city that has me lost in so many of its buildings; expecting chairs, finding fruit machines; expecting solidarity, finding movement.

There isn't another city that so often abandons me, denies my history. There isn't another city so content to be without me, so happy to carry on. There isn't another city I would so love to fling my arms around, to embed myself in its rotundas, to submit to its double yellow lines being pasted all over me.

There isn't another city where my feet feel so comfortable, where the tarmac becomes me, where the trees line my outfits. There isn't another city where I can wait in the dark and, wrong though it is, feel as though somehow these roads will protect me; where I can feel as though somehow the time I have spent here grants me immunity (my own city could not kill me).

And wrong though it is, I feel safety. I feel the strong beams of streetlights like warm blankets around me. I feel puddles. I hear sirens. I touch walls. Look at houses. I hear late night brawls and raising voices. I walk on and the city street curves beneath my paces. Nothing can touch me because I am in love with this city. I keep my eyes to the ground and my feet know exactly where to go.

There is no other city that so much resembles the shape of a human heart.

Koszalin

2010-03-23T07:05:00.001-07:00

I have spent six months now in this city and have watched its seasons change. I have watched the skies fade from blue to grey and the ground from green to white. I have watched the people wrapping themselves up, layer on top of layer. Throughout the winter I have watched coats and hats envelope freezing faces, and now I begin to see them fall away, faces thaw, eyes spreading out.

I have spent six months now in this city and I begin to know it. I begin to choose my favourite roads, my favourite walls, my favourite times of day. I settle into a different pace of life, into a distant routine; a routine built from a job and a street I call home and a small bag of things I brought from England. I write the story of my days here, and my habits are all chosen.

I have spent four months sheltering in an attic watching the cold Koszalin winter. I have an enormous window that greets me with light each morning, sometimes bright, sometimes dark with low clouds telling me that there is nothing for me out there today, better to stay where I am with hot drinks under six blankets. But I always look. I have never seen a winter so vibrant, so true to its name.

Every morning I walk to my temporary window, I see the panorama of the city's edge sweep before me. I see low houses with red sloping roofs, perfect flat walls and deeply embedded windows. I see tubes of smoke racing out of low-lying chimneys. I see strong seagulls and stronger trees.

I see resilience and time and endurance. Never have I been so aware of temperature or of the changing months. I step outside and I know it is four degrees, I can feel it is October. I set my alarm early to watch the sunrise, to see the brightness of early mornings before the cloud comes in. I have never felt the seasons pass so strictly. I never witnessed a such a definitive Autumn.

Perhaps I am outside all this, perhaps I feel it because it is not mine, perhaps Manchester winters are just as magical, perhaps it is the temporariness of being here which fascinates me, perhaps it is beautiful to me because I do not know the meaning. I learn words, I read signs, I speak and I speak to people. I piece Koszalin together. I piece Poland together. I understand so little but gradually sentences come to me, small fragments of history are explained. Koszalin opens up, it expands before my eyes. Steadily, the days get longer.

And as the world gets smaller, as we connect and connect, as we all join hands and compare Tescos, I cling to my long journeys on Polish trains through the flatness of fields and the silence of nights. I am rocked to sleep by the sound of the train's slow mechanical motion; my journeys across Poland always end too quickly. I am at home in those carriages, seperated from each other by thin layers of snow, and though it may be cold and drafty I always preferred the warmth of people to that of a centralised heating system.

In England people don't say goodbye when they arrive at their stations anymore and not enough people dress up elegantly for the theatre.

Home isn't everything.

2009-11-24T04:45:00.000-08:00

Home is where you stagnate
inside barrels of old water.
Home is replaying
the
same
song
until that same song
becomes only a noise you don't hear.
Home is watching over others,
nodding attentively,
and pressing down on the tops
of bursting suitcases
as they leave.
Home is watching the world
from a pale balcony,
with linked arms
through the neighbour's,
whose always was there.
Home is breathing
to the beat of alarm clocks,
no longer looking
at the tops of buildings.
Home is when you can't tell
one season from another,
or when you can't remember
the last time
it felt so cold.
Home is boxes
of obligatory birthday cards
and wishes that mean well
once every year.
Home is in things
we're afraid to be rid of
lest we find nothing
and no-one
to fill empty arms.
Home is pulled muscles
and the tug of routine.
Home is set-up
like a well-laid out table;
with knives and forks
of stainless steel.

Nov 2009.

Between Orion and Lidl.

2009-11-24T03:08:00.000-08:00

There is freedom in mist
and early mornings.

There is freedom
in sobriety
late at night

rolling
across decades.

There is a freedom
that shakes me
to the bone

and moves me
all over

an earth
I am not
falling off
or out of
love with.

There is freedom
inside
an extra coat
when the temperature
drops
even slightly.

Nov 2009.

Wszystko gra (?)

2009-11-21T10:48:00.001-08:00

You looked overwrought,
I thought.

I understood about twenty percent of the words you said,
the rest went
over my...
and I nodded my...

head.

My wife asked me to take her home
so, I did.

You're telling me you can finish quicker than this?

Mother. Do you hear voices when I telephone?

How old were you? Nineteen?
Nonsense. I was there when you dived in.

Father, father, are these ties we are wearing?

'You're lucky',
you said,
'because no-one has trounced on your dreams.'

That's because I don't write them down anymore,
not since the spell-check.

What do you mean I have no daughter yet?
I overslept.

I got a job fitting fables
to distant points in history.

I got a job asking questions
of computer screens.

I turned the lights off because I read
that was the best way to feel empty,
but I just felt full
of the feeling that I could not see.

How can you be taller
if you're not older than me?

I've
been
reaching
since
nineteen
eighty
two.

Nov 2009.

The Trouble with View-finders

2009-11-21T09:53:00.000-08:00

The past is in front of me and I am filtering it through into narrow boxes.
No: 'he'.

The past is in front of him and he is filtering it through into tiny boxes;
as features gain density
he files them away with a growing intensity.
No: 'I'.

I am over -
bearing.
The world is wider
than I
but it does not fit to the shape of my view-finder
and my long-searching
eye
only ever composes itself before the same long-found landscapes.
No: 'he'.

He has an idea of a beach
and somewhere within is held the thing he is lacking,
the core of that he is striving towards;
somewhere inside his head's poorly written romantic novel are the
hills and moon
and a face he does not see,
obscured by the shade of too many wine bottles,
a high tide
and cheap cigars.
No: 'I'.

I squint into the recesses of imagination
lying
deep in crevices
beneath the elegant necks
of muted glass bottles.
I curl my eyes up
and proffer my nail-pestered labels
to an empty box I drew
round my heart
with a HB pencil I found
in the pit of someone else's handbag.
No: 'he'.

He is filling the empty face he is hounding
with the mannerisms and mistakes
of every Tom
and dick
he'd like to marry.
He is trying to write an epic
on one page.
Beyond paper-mache,
plastic dolls and vodka; he has grown stronger,
his bones are made from filing cabinets.
No: 'I'.

I am trying to empty my folders.
I am trying not to rely on face recognition.
I am trying to keep my gaze at my feet,
or, at the very furthest, the end of the week.
I am trying not to travel in my sleep.
No: 'he'.

He is trying not to make his mark on everything.
He is trying not to live on the beach.

Nov 2009.

All the Digits

2009-11-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

My fingers are dark and empty;
lacking adjectives they wind their torsos,
wriggle their keratin heads into replicas of crudely-cut paths
streaking themselves into the sides of long-standing mountains.

My fingers are cursing me
and I cannot look. Better
a hand in my mouth than a foot;
better a nail round my teeth than a tongue
in my cheek.

My fingers are writing a story about me;
they are touching the characters
in all the right places;
Freudian-slipping
down the sweat of thick necks;
clogging up nostrils
that attempt to breathe love
all over.

My fingers are closing and opening
like curtains.
They are keeping you out.
They are letting you in.

My fingers are picking sleep out of the corners of eyes
and scooping lint from novelty belly-buttons.

My unwashed fingers
are twisting the intricacies of my name
into the back hairs of strangers.

My fingers are refreshing
and refreshing
and refreshing
this page.

Nov 2009.

Introductions

2009-11-18T13:53:00.000-08:00

My skin is soft, but moves far from its point of origin.
I have my father's eyes.
My smile is unstoppable
because I have learnt that nothing touches me.
Dying cells float from me, describing spirals to the ground.

My hands are unfathomable,
I do not understand how they hold things;
how this skin that is losing form is keeping grip.

I think I am beginning, I will not write the main body of this text,
I do not want anything to mean anything,
and yet I dream of permanent things.

I want everything I lack,
but not yet.

I sit awake at night skimming stones over pages,
I sit awake at night propping up shelves.

And while your family dies and your friends get older,
while your interest doubles and your ISA makes you wiser,
while you pine over the scent of old love letters
and fight dust and build utility rooms and buy kettles;
I pretend nothing is changing;

singing loudly over the thrash of hot water,
working up a lather into dyed hair and plucked eyebrows,
I do not notice what I am missing
and my body falls hastily to the ground.

Nov 2009

Well Aligned

2009-11-03T05:05:00.001-08:00

A series of facial expressions
caught in the crossfire of passing days.
When this all falls to dust
your eyelids, teeth, tongue, grimace
will be the things to remain;
the only way back into an old name.

The crossfire of passing days,
long-sought and linear:
a firing squad cut-out for pin-up calendars;
the only ring of bullets we would wish for our fingers.

When this all falls to dust and I to some forgotten side-dish,
an entree to a future of lessening,
to the gluttony of youth and clocks;
when this all falls, and the bottom is both closer
and harder than we thought,
we will find our final inklings
concerned only with the consistency of endings,
with the density of tarmac,
and in our being all wrapped up,
(once and for all)
without guilt,
in bits and pieces of ourselves.

Your eyelids, your teeth and your fingernails;
how I describe you.
I have forgotten how you called me, why I came.

The thing to remain is already without me;
I am a face in a picture, that I now look upon as child.

There is no way back into my old name.

Only serious facial expressions remain.

On surnames

2009-10-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

Let it be an ode to distance,
to lightness,
to a surface of bravery.

Let us vehemently shake hands,
introducing but one face
and one name to each party,

and deem ourselves efficient.

For it takes just such a flimsy of information
and artifical, if enthused, contact
to encourage our muscles to soar up
to the sides of our faces.

We smile uncontrollably, glued
to the necessity for companionship,

and no amount of speculation could seperate us
from this basic human need:
not the heaviest hard-back nor
the weightiest argument.

We are in it only to get inside it,
inside each other - however you may take that -
anyway, it means we take up less room.

Merrily we roll along,
forcing ourselves in and out
of each other's lives,
wiping away any residue
to save ourselves
from the undignified vulnerabilty of forever
wiping eyes.

Beneath pleasantries, tucked away inside silken breast pockets, folded over and stored in the credit-card compartments of over-used wallets, hearts
are
still beating
mechanically - if not manically -
along their little green lines in the dark.

So let us toast to budget airlines,
for easing up the drag of stale lifelines,
and for allowing us this freedom,
without consequence, of belonging
nowhere
and to no-one
at all.

on breathing out

2009-10-26T05:12:00.000-07:00

like hitting a tennis ball with a heavy racket,
like walking backwards,
like wanting to hold someone
just because they don't want to hold you anymore;

like the lost elasticity of skin,
and speeding trains pulling
breaths out; lost airs
idling at stations,
where everything is
not quite there;

like putting miles and miles between yourself
and everything -
taking cities like aspirins;
like running and running,
diminutive sobbing,
like turning your other cheek
forcefully toward a plethora of open mouths;

like a wind-forced smile,
like morning stretches,
like talking in one's sleep,
like dreaming in answers;

like finding a pit,
a small hollow that will collect your weepings,
knitting blankets from the anagrams of your tears;

like a dead end you are happy to die in,
like the mouth of a river closing around yours,
like the one hole you can feel whole inside of;

like the driest night,
with arid eyes,
like turning to pupa in another's pupils
and sliding on into that receding black hole
you have been avoiding for all of your life.

Seventy-five and counting

2009-07-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

We didn't question her about the minor complaints,
we didn't trouble ourselves with her grieveances
or with whomever over she was grieving;
we didn't ask about those years that tumbled past before we did.
Years that didn't exist -
being composed of impossible numbers;
myths that only served to sell history books;
history books that were only stories written for us,
to keep us entertained,
that we wouldn't have to ask any real questions:

she was always this age,
she was always this grandmother,
she didn't understand computers;
we patted her on the head
with pots of tea and told her not to worry:
it was difficult to learn new technologies,
it was difficult to live through wars,
to live in poverty,
to watch one's relatives die,
and to lower the body of the only man she ever loved into the ground;
into a ground she had been slave to
for the best part of a century,
a century that never existed,
a century covered in tarmac
and soft veils of litter
with use-by dates stretching further and further into an ever patronising future.

She buried her tears into a ground that still listened,
into the only feature still recognisable
or that still understood;
and the lines of ploughed fields were the lines of her brow
or her brow was the furrowed fields,
was her timeline;
and as the fields were turned over to make way for new high rises
so she rolled over into a ready-made grave
of which we had the sheets off ready,
the pillows plumped up:
we wanted to make this as easy for her as possible
and write about our loss on the internet.

A Safe Distance

2009-07-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Let me brim with mediocrity,
let me stand in the middle of crowds,
posturing my average height,
and flying the 80 gsm, A5 flag that exclaims
in lower-case
the enormity of my anonymity,

let me graze every 2-3 hours on lite snacks
of 200grams with little flavour and
let me relish
in that blandness,

let me burst with muffled feelings,
let reams of watered-down pain and vague memories
of anguish come pouring out from me
into inoffensive river beds,

let my joy never out-climb my torso
and let all that is rational
place it's steady cloak upon me,

let me remain silent in dying rooms and
let birth fling me no surprises,

let me speak only in unstressed syllables,
carefully annunciated,

let my life consist not of verbs but as
a simple stream of conjoined conjunctives,
the line-spacing of which will slowly diminish,
the letters finding themselves closer
and closer together
until I exist only as the word 'then' printed
and reprinted on the same spot of paper,

let me die in such a way that
even my own mother couldn't notice
and please
don't let my last words
be a metaphor for your name.

July 2009

After One's Own Heart

2009-07-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

up and down
like some grand old duke

who never quite hit home
or heads of nails,

who never quite got over
the fence he was lying
on,

who couldn't quite stomach the broth

he was spoiling,
the broth

he was beating too hard;

who couldn't help recoiling
'neath the whims of loose limbs
long
-ing
in vain
for a change

of the heart
I refer to,
of the heart.

I prefer to
look the other way

as he slips down from out of my sleeve
and marches himself up
and over the hill,
pumping away
for another ten thousand days,

before his one final flutter
and his lonely column
of marching back down again.

July 2009

Rainy City

2009-07-08T04:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.rainycitystories.com/2009/07/06/moss-lane-east

June 2009

An Age of Carting Cartilage

2009-07-06T13:17:00.000-07:00

Our bodies were not built for this much living -
see the stretch-marks on our stretchers -
yet another imperfection
as we drag around our wretched temples:
pillars of
salt of the earth.

Each man is an island;
long-abandoned. Stubborn
clumps of dirt and nails clinging on
to life-

lines getting thicker.
Useless threads
caught in rhetorical sewing machines,
our damage is elaborate -
we are being delicately destroyed -
our blood is set in rubies, our death
throes weaved by hand
and laid out neatly
across three-piece suites
because this is what we've come to believe in,

this is what we've come to live in
and I only ever saw the grass on tv.

I line my bedroom walls with diagrams of leaves
while rocking back and forth to imitate the breeze.

I have been smashing glass bottles
because I can't find the beach,
I have been shelling out hundreds on life-insurance
in case I'm ever swept away
or off my feet.

Yet I can feel the wind on my ankles,
my muscles ache:
I am doing something right at least.

July 2009

mouthing

2009-07-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

i am scared of lips i cannot connect with

below your eyes
is not blinking in time,
when eyes are closing
lips open;
this does not add up

and i cannot kiss a s
-love-nly sum

it is two parallel lines i will stick my tongue between
not this arrowhead, point
less,
whose two arms increasing
-ly assure me
that the rest of the world is greater
than
us.

although we speak in unison
the intonation is not quite the same,
while my lips are swinging
yours exhort morse

and i cannot get my head around
a mouth that shape

there are tonsils i could never chew
teeth i would never tell my secrets to

i am waiting for the day when none of this matters anymore,
when it is time to settle down

your arms will be around me then
and we will not touch mouths

July 2009

The finding of a namesake

2009-07-02T11:17:00.000-07:00

Trains of Thought:
A Word Game 19/11/07

My hands are wringing,
are forming rings
like the underside of eyelids, or impatient fingers
tracing tabletops with their things

The chair took a beating
as I sat down too hard,
I was down
I was beaten
by my brethren
and their heavy even breathing

I was beneath the weather,
beneath the ether,
n/either here or there
n/or someplace nearer

Getting over the moon
was the hardest to do;
running in celestial circles,
I was heavy with heaven,
I was wishing
in my own milky way
of lying down with my boy in a spoon

Under the thunder
and beside the lightning,
I took to it all like a flash in the pan
I stretched my arms to the atmos,
pushed my thighs to the sky,
I was trying my utmost
not to sink into things
with my clumsy unthinking upended appendages
and this forceful unflinching flinging of limbs

My eyes clouded over,
the fault line not with me,
the mortar ‘round me crumbled
as did my own
too soon flown
-ality.

The ringing in my years
soon stopped;
I outgrew my sun-spot

the rain was dying off,
we were drying off and
it was the mind that I heard winding down
as at last the moon went down
on me.

July 2007.

82 words per minute

2009-07-01T11:25:00.000-07:00

I have forgotten how to make fire
and how to write by hand

I cannot hold a pen any more
for fear of carving outlines of failed bison into woodchip

I spread sheets instead of wings.

I bury my biros' unwanted heads in sand and
turn the plastic casing into legs of tables for new computers

I have forgotten how to throw a stick
I have forgotten how to use my feet
I have forgotten how to bask in sunlight
but my fingers are remarkable.

June 2009

the last time I was anywhere

2009-07-01T06:38:00.001-07:00

The last time I was anywhere I wanted to take the ground
up in my arms,
to feel more than I was able
I wanted hues to stream out of centres -
from dark innards marches blinding light
- I wanted my retinas to retain that
imprint
I wanted to hold hands
and squeeze until the colours bled
until we all ran into one
another
and turned to mud

The last time I was anywhere
you pointed your trigger-finger and I danced accordingly,
pretending
that behind the blushes I was not screaming
to be recorded;
meanwhile
my organs are expanding
I am slapping my plumage on the table
de-contorting my only posture
and this,
this is how it really happened!
this is the immortality of my lungs

The last time I was anywhere it reminded me of something,
you see,
I am always in the past or in the future
and like time, I do not stop
I am the second hand running past idle hours
I am the pendulum swinging between the green-grassed walls
of grandfather clocks
I am standing by the sundial again
with an assemblage of lamps and mirrors
I am parading through time-zones,
writing in abbreviations,
giving the days each two decimal places.

The last time I was anywhere I took you to one side
and spent the evening explaining how I longed

to be
there

more completely.

June 2009

semi-precious

2009-06-22T03:27:00.001-07:00

I want to be a stone. Cold
and sober.
Stoic
between his rock and
her
hard place.

There is no piety
at parties. Words
winding out of the dark; between
drumbeats,
restless bodies
and warm cider spilt on skirts again.

I take an inch off my privacy
every time
I clean. Forty degrees
is hotter than it used to be.

I want to be a stone. Cold
and sober.
Cracking off
freeze-thaw mood swings: hot
and cold diet of subtraction
softening edges.

Sun-kissed
by eventide. I
wake up sticking
to stories of sea-labotomies.

June 2009.

Home is...

2009-06-21T11:43:00.000-07:00

it isn't where I lay my head
it isn't where the heart is
it isn't pouring another drink
or admiring works of art
it isn't climbing in and out of train windows
it isn't losing itself in the landscape
it isn't where I left it
it isn't under the bed
it isn't in my retraced steps
it isn't collecting dust
on the shelves of lost property offices
at central stations
it isn't traversing this muddy terrain
it isn't hiding in the shade
it isn't in this song
it isn't in this crowd
it isn't locked in this sweaty embrace
it isn't in the guidebook
it isn't off the beaten track
it isn't anywhere I have ever dreamed of
I haven't found it at last

June 2009.

Lighthouses

2009-06-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

We are all cast
on rocks
strewn out across an open sea.

We stand, wide-
bleary-eyed, blinded by our neighbour's headlights
at the tip of some horizon
that is not the end of the world,
just the end of the only world that we can see.

We glare with one determined ray of light along each-other's lines of latitude:
note how the waves are weathering all our feet.

We erode elegantly,
two chins to the wind;
we try to wipe the lichen from our knees.

I would stick my fingers around any old equator if I could
stop turning,
if my eyes were not bigger than this steady beam.

Curse this bulb,
filthy filament,
shining farther than I could ever hope to reach;
as it dims the world is shrinking. Everything
will get smaller and come to me.

I want your photons touching mine.

The same ships are passing every night.

June 2009.

ten-second delay

2009-06-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

I know vertigo by definition alone
only
we emote remotely

my webcam points at stars
...gifs of gulls
...tinny sounds like waves crashing

(we pray the tears rolling down our cheeks don't break our keyboards tonight)

I am talking with my hands in my sleep

I wanted to write about you in your absence
but all I can see is my face reflected in computer screens
and fingerprints on glass, marking
the number of times
I have tried to touch it

I wanted to tell you
nothing
ever gets completely removed
and that
when I search for your name
your font still remembers me
and our history folder looks beautiful
in print

I wanted to tell you to come home
but i typed homepage.
and was disconnected.

June 2009

No-one's Ark

2009-06-17T08:18:00.001-07:00

the early bird, bearing the brunt of too much leisure time, is sleeping in later and later; the hyena doesn't laugh anymore, not since the fuel crisis; tree frogs are looking for something a little more centrally located; elephants' trunks are too heavy for passenger flights; the grey squirrel has forgotten what he is fighting for; the camel, sick of commuting, has eloped with some young dromedary; krill would kill for anything other than phytoplankton; the honey bee guide is charging different rates for tourists; even the hermit crab sublets... cuckoos offload their eggs onto unchecked foster parents; Nessie is ghostwriting his fourth autobiography; the golden eagle is accused of being antiquated and unnecessarily flamboyant; Russian dwarf hamsters are lowering their suspensions; bats complain of light pollution and push passively agressive notes under the doors of noisy neighbours; the hawk is hawking feather dusters by the side of the road...

we are clamping tired horses
we keep molluscs in cages

only the uninteresting barnacle, shell getting thicker, is free

to slowly slide down the faces of rocks,
nucleus humming folksongs,

"I suck therefore I am..."

and only the slug still remembers how to dance patterns into a moonlit night.

June 2009.

Grounds for Applause

2009-06-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

Two hands open and close
in undecided prayer.
Two palms
reciting short, sharp psalms
into empty air.
Two arms, at decreasing intervals, together and part

but never quite reach
zero.
There is always an On then an Off.

Two lips push desperate praises onto open ears,
fling desperate phrases
at half-cut saviours
and tremble at the slightest thing.

Ten fingers stretch skywards
grasping at silver linings,
shaking the shit out of satellites
demanding a pinch of god.

Two mouths touch each other
and make silence: tongues swim and they swim and they swim

June 2009.

When you get down into the middle of anything there are only pixels

2009-06-09T17:23:00.000-07:00

This is the left side,
this is the right.

Memories are not six by four

inches
of truth.

This is the paper.
Face down

inside warm ducts like armpits;

inching
toward you.

This is the pigment,
truthfully fading

in damp boxes in corners of rooms, only

inches
from view.

This is the composition;
these, the right-angles

of light to capture you within

an inch
of your life.

This is the back. Over
-leaf;

this is the only side I can look at,

this is the narrow margin
that separates me from you.

June 2009.

on the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of the eve of my birthday

2009-06-06T04:33:00.000-07:00

you are lying in bed
you are sitting with eyes open
you are fingering the extremities of duvets
you are wasting your own time
and mine

you think that you are relaxing.
you are not relaxing.

you think that you are making plans
for the future.
you are not making plans.

you are trying to hide from your future
you move an arm under pillows
you turn a head toward walls
you dream of adventurous things
and conjure ambition
nightly

you kill time so as not to
...
yourself.

you do not have enough time
to do anything more productive
you have no time to unwind
you are surprised you make it to work each day
when there is no time to eat or lock doors or get dressed or make phone calls

you do not understand how people have children
or clean houses
or buy houses
or get haircuts
or bake cakes
or tend gardens
or drive cars
or play chess
or read books about history

you do not even have enough time to list these things.

June 2009.

The world is vast and similar.

2009-06-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

My father does not shake my hand any more,
he says he does not pass me on the street
he says
no, we did not meet.

I wonder then,
who have I been talking to
as if they had known me my whole life?

just who is this I am tipping hats at
as if they bathed me into this world,
and why do they not tell me
that this is inappropriate behaviour
for two so unwell acquainted?

and who is this I am pooring my misery onto?
and who is this one I invite to my wedding?
and who is this person clutching a list of my ailments?
and whose is this hand that is cupping my breast?

I am pursuing strangers.
I know.

I am stopping and starting at holes in the road,
at holes where we used to go

I have remembered too much in this city,
every corner has its story

it takes too long to walk this plot
(of ground)
so many times over

it takes too long to recognise so much
in what should be unfamiliar.

why am I pinning you down?

why am I pressing my knees in your shoulders
demanding to know why you look like my father?

why do you look like my father?

In this city one thing resembles another thing
and all things resemble my nostalgia.

June 2009.

Lydia Unsworth Just Found Herself

2009-06-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

THERE ISN'T A PROFESSION THAT LEAVES A LASTING IMPRESSION

I tried hard to forge the words that would keep death away,
only to learn that
even a composer
decomposes.

At which point;

I vowed not to work for the rest of my days,
only to learn that
even a passenger
passes away.

I DREAM OF MOTORWAY TRAFFIC

i see myself looking both ways at the side of a motorway
all else running across my sight
in either one or the other direction.

i grow downward
my feet stick to the soil
my toes creep throughout the earth's minus numbers
my knees bend like old wood
my elbows crutch the hands that clamp that neck
these hands that point this face toward that road
and then my gaze
hoisted atop my two hard shoulders
switching from left to right.

from a left to a right that it will never squint to reach

neither direction will sway me
neither direction can compel me meet its chevrons
i am a feast in the grass
i am brother to these files of streetlights

and so between this bulb’s modest efforts and the blaze of that sun
i find i am constantly illuminated.

i am standing there still
and i know
that either destination would suffice.

2007 or 2008

An Old One

2009-06-05T04:03:00.000-07:00

the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end

the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feelings eventually end
the knowledge that all feeling eventually ends

Undated.

Poor heart didn't know what was coming

2009-06-05T03:42:00.000-07:00

Poor heart is pounding unabated;
persistent dog forever mouthing lousy stick.

Back and forth it drums lament into the stuff of rib-cages,
cajoling limbs and lips, 'charge forth!'
astride steady backwash of rash commands.

From East to West poor heart assails steady chest;
from North to South poor heart strums chords through open mouth;
from top to bottom poor heart wails, lest she end forgotten;
and resounding on and off the walls of nearby organs
poor heart heads a noisy chorus.

Never a muscle who could cry harder,
never did tissue need so many tissues,
never was a beating thing so beaten
or so willing.

Two eyes looking out of train windows
see the same leaves again and again
at two-second intervals:
they never cease to be remarkable.

All is for you,
my beautiful wandering metronome.

June 2009.

Wednesday Was Either Yesterday or Today.

2009-06-05T03:40:00.000-07:00

The letter was in the box. The letter was in the envelope. The letter was out of my hands. I retracted my fingers from where they stood in regard to each other. I pushed those prolific papers into the first of a chain of events that would escort them across the right-hand side of this country and it's adjacent sea. I sent words in my tongue to a tongue that I longed. I began the day's second retraction; that of my legs back down the post-box's prolific street.

I walked along the very edge of the pavement in the hope that the necessary attention to balance might give me something to think about. I remembered, for a second, last night's dream but by the next footfall it had vanished again.

10:58. There was nothing to be done. A world on every side of me and nothing to be done. Time didn't always elapse in this way. The day was surely nearly over and yet it had scarcely begun.

The dream again. More this time; a shop, a walk home (to my childhood home), walking home from school perhaps but as an adult (or thereabouts) and in the dark, a bicycle but slowly slowly, some sweets, an event approaching, people I recognised one after another but out of context out of chronology, small greetings, mostly cheerful, something to be afraid of, dusk definitely dusk. And gone. That's all.

10:59. So much has passed and only 10:59! This city was too small. I had seen every brick. I was familiar with certain cracks in the pavements. Still, at least I could cling to a sense of ownership, at least running my fingers across railings felt a little like something like home. I felt something like attachment to the litter crowding around bus-stops, to the missing letters of shop-front signs, to the roads in need of resurfacing. I avoided the lumps and bumps by instinct now. On the road. And in my life.

I counted the steps. I walked straight. Good posture. Fine. It's fine. The world is a fine place. This is a fine city. It is 11:02. I have posted a letter to which there will be no reply. There is to be no further correspondence. Or there will be a fairytale in a week or a year or more and I will die in warm arms by the sand.

I have seen the waves heading towards the edge of that beach and seen how, in the correct angle of light, it (the beach) gladly sparkles. I have watched how easily things fit together in a kaleidoscope of imagined futures. It doesn't stop. I don't stop imagining one because I chose another. I am still the active ingredient, even if the bread isn't rising. Even if my heart is sinking. Even if I am sinking into imaginary sand.

Three more steps. Five. I should have put on my yellow tights today. I am stifled in these clothes. In this city. In this hour that stretches out before me like a yard of dirt like bags of sand.

I will return to my room and change my clothes and start again. I will turn left before the post box and buy eggs from somewhere. Eggs are why I left the house this morning. Will it still be morning? It will always be morning. I am sure this day will never end.

And once I have bought the eggs? Will I make an omelette? Eat it? Wash the plate, the pan? Then what? Tea? A cup, a bag, a spoon, some sugar? I'll drink it slowly. Savour it. For want of a better way to savour time. And still, there will be a whole afternoon stretching before me, a lazy sun carousing gigantic sky. I will become restless, start thinking, find a pen, some paper....

I'll write a letter.

I can post it tomorrow, in the morning, when I wake up dress myself, when I put on coat or hat and otherwise accessorise; it will be better if I am dressed properly, if I give myself a function, if I utilise this or that part of my body, if I concentrate, if I tip my hat, zip my coat, flex my arms and stretch my gloves, flatten out my skirt, brush my teeth. I'll take myself to the post box and slip that letter right in. I'll send it on it's way with a merry smile and blow a kiss to the reciprocant's country as it flies out of my arms and into my dreams.

Into the past I am making. Away.

I'll return tomorrow to change my tights and stare at the clock and do the same again.

March 2009.