ope

when nearly at ‘n’
the noted ope_s

while not fully expressed yet, there are no qualms in this particular breach

which masks a cushy gadget
for manufacturing letters

blubhub

with one thwack from a punch-line
the boss-eyed lover
faithful to the unend
filed for desertion
one of the million cures
welded to the joke
that had plunged the boot in
to the not so sporting yin

hubbub

op

to be dreamt away from the page
what a ruse

against mistakes raised by embossed objection

a blade sawing at the truth
has no quibble with thwart

o

noted: the next confusion
“don’t mix relics

or we-with-us”

was written on
one side, noticed on the other

as rigorously inexact as
to be dreamt of

o

, as a fanatic might dig for essential distinctions
the page tempts fixation

until a twang of perception repairs
fallen notes

open

leaving a notebook full of inaccuracies as though
it would never close,

blunt impressions gradually cornered by taboo
rampage delicacy, as a fanatic might

Mr Roget’s T - 203 Length

Adv. longwise,

at full length, a crocodile heels to toe from the crown of tandem to the sole of single file, the foot longitudinally stern, the head in front and behind, overall one end in perspective.

on the run

in permanent flight
carefully shuffled errors in distance, made random almost orderly

like a far-flung jumble, winched to neatness
declaring off the rails detachment

before counting the-picky differences between us

"n

ovelty prevails towards procedure,”:

bloom triumphed on the road, so grateful that ‘towards’ was not merely a word and 'step this way' could be reversed, leaving for'n'backwards to call a truce in direction.

A break in

With such a high-flown knack for pressing questions between pages, gestures in private-journal-speak, as distinguished from prima-donna-ditty, claim a great deal is happening here, but to top that, I must misquote myself when I say “it is not this that varies my aptitude for tatters” but a nestling diagonal stance, winking at compactness from a miscellaneous setting, grappling whodunit proposals like a hinterland tenant with sore happy valley eyes frosted to pimples from parting company at a break in anaemic clouds.

“Vagary expects regular attendance”:

this extravagant action anticipates habitual turnout:

again and again
routine turns in

another of life’s time sheets,
and yet no habit is as forming or formative as anticipation that topples action from its shelf life and spends thrift, frittering away caution.

Way this step

Vagary expects regular attendance, novelty prevails towards procedure, I hand-in the off-hand wishy-wash improvisation: a sort of a: bubblingly impromptu, sloppy with blended aspirations peculiar to open, gates stand their self-oration, fields imagine growing buts. [productive nor productive neither, is often too strifely to come across meeting] circle in a living suited to best mannerisms, picture a completing of suspiciousness, my cantankerous amateur me. [Step this way]

Butterfingers

To say that inclination is rarely threadbare may be so but when dropping a line crowds to a halt, dribs and then drabs funnel towards sabbatical and the hosting of fickle encores complements nothing more than zilch.

Makeshift

Teeming with occasional tantamount-s [there is, sporadically, a little that is equal to the teem within] it is this that varies my aptitude for tatters [by tatters I really do mean the bits and pieces that write themselves into quick comebacks] before the rush of vain smothers in, and I substitute each step with a sprinkling of dedication [which is not up to it, but makes up for], left in close proximity to earlier astonishments [contagious perhaps] and take up intrepid idleness, inventing evidence with which to probe bemusement [morsel collection] – consider the scale of it – with my finger on resist, confident all can be abandoned in place of missing details, a final version of antidote single-handedly absorbs itself.

Downhill rinser

'I' slaloms to 'S' in the cranky wring of self-procrastination

The allusive 'I am'

In the blur of indirectness I am at once within dexterous reach and without conclusion;

– that is to say: being under the influence of meander, I have some handy doubts;

– that is to say: I am allusive when it comes to haze, but if you touch me I won’t end

11

Is it that “I am” was aroused and depended on you to suspend it, or suspend everything else that could only sigh at blind imitation, sighted half in, half out of untroubled lamp light. Sure, there is a saying that doubling the I doesn’t square off any corners, but even so, a rotund imagination helps, if just to roll away with itself.

Are you talking to me?

Crimes against "I am"

1. Misusing a heady cast of selves, you ambitiously tackle a small-time sprawl of divide. On your right: overindulgent flaws, stalled by emotional chaos so stunning it could blind mirrors.

from first to last: the habits of slide

oscillate in articulation
drafted to interrupt
shifting various grounds unfazed
by the readiness of stalemate
to exchange undercover spurts
for methods that fend-off liberation
…every slippage in tone
prompts an inner chatathlon that worries silence
into an unuttered hurl against false breakers

emails

I have had problems receiving email recently, so if anyone has written to me and not received a response, this may be the reason why, please send again if you feel inclined, thanks.

introducing reality

this paper-thin contradiction, cues hoops for jumping
whether bruising for a pinch, teetering before crux or plucked from a cutting edge cocoon,
all are laced with phase

grasping at a brief indulgence of impulse

panacea cast out, in view of mayhem’s lukewarmity
and we,
steeped in posture
clutching at sprees
rustled up a disguise to exploit


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how far

eked out of movement, motion rivals lull
in the fits and starts that fritter truce away
drowsy with progress made,
a soft touch methodically out of step, counts tint down
still in view, revival
rescues flourish with ambiguity
and the longer way perseveres under glass


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they didn’t appear to be gaining

Sapped of pluck, it was time to set loose a slouch
hot on the trail of a pilgrim to sure-footed novelty

skin thinned

- like over-eager eggshell
outlandish remnants
crack me

leave a message

in the shape of
pent up consolation
a crowd stopping plunge bottles up


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Achillies

in high heeled socks
I spike the week’s hot spot

uncommon ground

whoever survives
a (this) point of view
overhears revival
describe unofficial
freedom as “the to and fro
of lost threads”

stay

when the solid river is
out of your hands
it is
not time
to make enquiries of push

can you say that again

when the point of finding the point
pierces,
it sharpens the ear

gulp

marooned on the banks of likelihood,
an accessory to luck
swallows facts
that fly in the face of

eh

scintillating as dabble is, let’s err on the side of cavortion

the e

as this chapter spills
out of in-
terim, extrication
prowls
the perimeters of epilogue

wardrobe life

old clothes narrate the flotsam of infit
odds and ends of sleeve
reel off their loss
with tubular float

z

when fluster met bamboozle
it was time to ditch the z

ff

by ranting at fluff
I softened this shambles
with the dexterity
of a bombastic incessant

mondya

submerged shaky reinforcements leak aloft doubt:
underwater uncertainties support higher escape

seeping into the air of vagaries

this is no basis to rattle a swamp

with such finality to revelation, thrive originates at the dizzy heights of flood

1

giddy with influx, it takes a flourish of onset to unveil eventually

Adjustments to today

this coloured impulse
retrieves from dynamic stash
severe serial happenings

like a bolt from the black
bound for donation to pastel shades
concern swathes compliment

in authentic source
mined for erraticism -
all in a day unfamiliar to yester

i

scuffle clammy
from resolving aptitude
I turn distraction down
and partition matter from subject

o

writing in lapse
loiters on life support
preserving hand

i

if coincidence participates in aim
flare widens
in the wake of elbowing
all else
worldward

ing fall

was he suffering spiral linger
or ascent of the clung kept?

could heady intoxicants
cue the highs
of his …in weakness…
and escape the dream chase of mid into night

or elsewhere fall
on the cool eve of flight
as disorder dared to corkscrew
the room out of them
before the ings continued to present or awake to wait-read-writ

i

in awkward suspension a
life dangles
out of shape
shrinking the scale
of seize under-flowing
available flair

i

tipped off by affinity
easily dismissed interests
attract your minority
as excuses wind tentacles
around dissimilarity
pencilling an acceptable ‘I’
on any mask
like a pillar
holding up life

In kling

“But why had she spoken to him?” p2 (1)

“…the straight-lined horizon…”
over-simplifies distance
without reproach to lack
or slips of tongue
as silence wets
the appetite of shame
and we down suns, really
knock them back, until water
breaks in half at the ‘t’
and we are left to wear
liberation like a short sleeve
that gathers strength lining
the room with moss
and in forgetting to stand
their fall would be
simplified horizontally

i

when unbound
by diversion, deserted
hopes misplace
the art of embracing emptiness,
as confines fill with accidental snags
in favour of hitch not hint

i

to skirt
around confines
is to internally billow in being
of appeal
to the catching wind that binds vacantly
occupied assurances

Keeping Silent

“… and the signs he made to her.” p.1(&2)

like his questions, continued in silence, but he had said:

“I will go on…”

in the beginning, however brutishly
and yet she never raised his voice
above verse, locking the river
inside his running, where stagnant
questions bank up. He knew ‘how’ in the sonic sense
just as the room was a barrier to him being in it,
because its length continued, as when he
had unendingly danced or paced, how the room’s
emptiness recurred as she ceaselessly
stared at a slanting instant full of dew-point consonants
and library book must: the fermented pages
numbering less than oNe even if counted backwards.

Never/ever/always

"The calm detour of thought, the return from itself to itself in waiting." p 41

"...shrouded in the writing, and carried by it beyond any possible beginning" she returned to waiting for never, with uncertainties rife and rivers creaking under chemistry, she could not quell diversion or bypass restraint, let alone face eels that slip through their own e’s, with a language that yields to catch. She always carried-back to page 1 where oNe glimpse closed over another. Did he remember how “continuance became length” ? when this way escaped that before morning, and yet more rivers burst the banks of tongue.

Airlift report

Rescue aborted - unable to land
due to persuasive weather: drizzle-sway

Telegram Two

Took rash turn between impetuous and impulsive stop need impromptu airlift

Mobile Still

“He walked ahead, marking out for her a path…” p.39

“… together we are separated by a locked room. Where oNe stands, they stand. When alone, doubts translate into certainties (had he meant never for certain?) She had no hesitation in being inconsistent, when you add up all the forgetting she had to do, it was no surprise their pages were numbered differently. And yet they mysteriously followed each other down passages read and unread. Rubbing time together in the weightless waiting room. When Fanshawe began eternally recurring on page 199, a phone had already rung on page 3, and the potency of n turned dialogue inside out. In case he heard in another language she said…

N/A

Handling small details of illusory essence
comes across as compatible with reality -
making believable make believe.

Last Night

After gush
you drove us in profile,
it has been so long since
there was like for like.

"... then,

“He was obliged first to discover the words with which she could then make him hear what she had to say to him.” p.26

“But then…. as soon as he had become waitless their rooms overlapped with shivering italics before running the river dry and re-filling it from memory. She half expected Maurice to hear their Infinite Conversation or at least understand what was hidden between paces or screened by yielding. Leaving traces unfinished, she could return any time and pool the pages, never refusing the tongue a vowel. He was perhaps separated from oNe line for days, but the library in his head confirmed company. Behind every square is a circle longing for corners. Unrolling Yes! down a path that proves liquid has expectations even if just to keep pace with place and make solid discoveries. But then,

Telegram One

Send scales and dictionary stop words weigh down meaning balance anticipated

Pacing

“The characteristic of the room is its emptiness.” p.7

“In the must again of process…even patiently pacing they appeared to be together in the emptiness, if not in the room. Was this a hiding place for the one who was standing? A length of time could yet be restored to short or go-between depth and the stare of an instant. She found it hard to recall the ceaseless less, however long she waited. Had someONE recurred unheard amongst speak again and hear again? He was thinking of More walks that may not have occurred. The room with its grassy carpet existed on the page, there he sat awhile between wheres. And she was here again at a point when “The words wear out in her the memory that they help her express” (p.7). In an unnaturally narrow room, was it possible to continue remembering? Who would forget first, leaving fullness in place of potency by slanted means. She, literally

Awaiting Here

“[for a long time what is awaited has served only to maintain the waiting,]”

“She is here

waiting to step over stop and lap against
his thinking that drinks on less-ness
and runs more past the page than dances
downstream. Each asking, padlocked in lateral limbo.
“Even as a river,--partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances,…”
hemmed in by forgetting
water wakes in the East

Any

To reach go
and not be impeded
by in-place-of
was a timely reminder
of any time, any place, anywhere…

Go

It is time for me to risk precision in piecing together exact lapses in concentration by straddling the hand of a stopwatch.

Here

‘It was a kind of struggle that she was pursuing with him, a silent dispute through which she asked him for and gave him justification.’ p5

“she is there… at intervals taut between false and true
where the point is pointed: do I hear what is said?
or recur to him now as at first, when the page,
ceaselessly blank, forms words out of probability
“operating a donation” neither later nor early
to him, I say…

after after after

‘He understood quite well that she had possibly forgotten everything.’ p4

After all, some approaches hide
their potency out in the open.
Shutting the un-sayable in with
the thinkable is scarcely
walking the ridge of someone.

They Said

He
She

a no-rapport understanding
the depth of no-rapport
of a deeper rapport than
surfaces by itself to a
a rapport by itself which
deeper rapport which only
is only the surface to
understands no at surface
the no-rapport depth of
and depth as

He
She
He

Caught Up

for Celia

When long lost
fords a short cut
to hello
understanding sprawls across time
twiddling its thumbs
while fingers burn.

Awaiting Less

“; he had questioned her in a more urgent manner by his silence,” p.2

by
overlapping questions
silence sounded
answered -
it was a solution
awaiting literal problems

The Last Resort

Out cold with evidence of sketchy signs
unnaturally seeing the sights
as ally in the shallow drive to hush-hush
before firing plans to shake the cartoon off the page.

Collected Thoughts

Instead of writing I pierced some words and mounted them on pins, like butterflies, to admire the species.

Under

Due to bad visibility under the floorboards today, it’s doubtful that any pins dropped.

Position

Long-standing is prone to shifting feet behind someone’s scenes. Seeing sides for the taking, a part fits the place if not the person. Casually balancing this act between who and why.

Improbable kindness
even in dream, where we still trust,
turns predisposition turtle.

Onward

Air; that much needed soaring substance
borrows the h from height
just for fun, you could say
or to boldly split infinite hairs.

Home

The backlash of glee buckled me into a moment
unforeseen yet anticipated
as a matter-of-course, of course.

Stiffening the lip of return
against equilibrium,
brings home being home, again.

Intermittent Intermission

Two weeks
coupled with pause
= back soon.

Subjective

Startled objects
take liberties

by beguiling matter
into being presently tense,

teasing embodiment
to another level.

Into

Having clambered out-of-into, relief lived.
Until a peep, in quarrel with apathy,
won the look.

Combined with distance you’ll find
curiosity lends molehill a telescope.

The Blue

What becomes of blue when sky leaks late
deliveries too posthumous even to resurrect
a meagre shelter.

In opposition to atmosphere we say “out of or into”
as if nothing did come.

When

When there is nothing left to burn but the stake, which is commonly viewed as fairly decent fire wood, you could say that it was time to go electric. Can I suggest the Hendrix heater which, it must be said, has the drawback of only being effectively switched on by an experienced left-handed engineer, who for the duration of the heater’s use has to be employed by you under the terms and conditions laid out in his handbook, which includes such idiosyncrasies as his right to believe the said heater is working when it clearly is not and the possibility of his right hand seeking similar employment at a later date.

All Ears

The hand that sidesteps the bite, feeds itself
on the back of a camel whose leading straw
broke on the road to Rome.

OrEith-or

Either peppered with or
swinging the mill back from forth
to hear between the grind reduces
the sound of sight.

In the dark there is no form
and any resemblance is neither black
nor white, but a wavering of hands
holding air.

After Hours

When irregularity calls, there is no time to pour latency away, down the plug-hole of our.

Hours

If I said two dozen hours
would that split the day for twelve
or scramble morn-noon and after-ing?

Surrounded

by postponement
that rearranges precipice, flattening
the up-hill hours.

V

How useful an untimely lean may be against vertical inclinations, any upright fondness for sheer, prematurely tends.

1 Comments

Asserted within, (a confidence no trick can keep)
since aside manoeuvres by incentive: a need

for something other than, whispered as shout
or left understood, as if beneath occupied appreciation.

Dear Turn,

Was it the last corner that resolved everything?

Or your new head-dress?

It may protect your motives if not moves.

Perhaps that is how straight-forward led me astray.

28'a

An insipid solace (comfy lack) furnishes
a fair-weather risk
with haywire farce (cracked sun in the circus of chance).

After smog subsides
a cosy sprinkle left out of
sweep braves absolution,
the foreman of sorry,

upstaging a greedy diversion (hobby-hunger)
swallowed in translation to preserve pith.

Whisking detachment into silhouette (profile beat)
with a tissue that teases riot
genesis, sluttish yet bland

too graphic
and grim

as suspense hinders chronic charisma.

... restoration.

A return to ahead. Slivers of intoxication cut to the effect of cause, letting slip a hint of round, sharpened on inexpressible edge. The concealed results of hone, brush against high wires strung between art- and –iculate. To walk them is to tread words into the atmosphere.

After Sidoli

Clenched

clenched from afar (an out-of-town squeeze)
unsettles the tonic (of disturbed refreshments)
heading off from the scrub (bushes avert)
matching dilutions surrender (watery reproductions – “we give up”)
nippy strides memorise (learning to walk…………
ideas with no middle ( )
drop more examples
alone

a lone a drops from idea and astride memory nips solution in the bud. Damp and drunk on distress, tightening distance lets near go.

"A...

...solitary instance furthers, falls…”

through thoughts that remember the quick step of quit, thinning out identical undergrowth, leaving pick-me-ups to shake distant fists.

App eal

A single-sided crowd bids for the other

pooling a dip in their undulation

teasing dual fascination apart

Aftertaste

Yesterday, creased along midday, slides off the tongue.

Spurs-of-the-moment

Shoving all limits in the closet, she washed wonder down
with a tolerant brew: part tea, part not;

part thirst-haste, distraction quencher.

Before ground struck the thriving steps
swept under carpet’s enchantment.

10+’s Lover

We are two ones: attaching
a restless power to victory
barely resolving to kick
discontent in the meaning.

Like asking a bombshell to reduce shock
or trim the other cheek.

From one cool scene to a sinking silhouette
a faint ticking
hears background noise
as we line up to launch entertainment
and suspend refuge until humour stops staring.

, smearing the ‘a’ in caution

blurs the abandoned guard, leaving any slip of the anointed one open to manipulation

…a narrow escape, is only a replica

Character transfer, repeat after me: carbon carbon…

Lend me two frauds, a double agent, and a can-con-phony

(quite a quartet to slide the tuba tones)

and I’ll slip you imitation.

Stealing the blush from your sunset

Green and go, in all its departing glory
will face flush again
when level reverts to level
and reading backwards retires.

Do away with the evening of yourself, because if you keep setting, I won’t be able to see you anymore.

TaKinG thE BriM__ TooK thE BrOoM

I’ve been invited over to Taking the Brim – thanks Clifford!

Otoliths

Issue three of Otoliths, edited by Mark Young, is now live. I’m excited to say that I have two poems included.