CUCKOO
I'll find you one day raiding a brighter silence
or hugging the darker place you left for dead
- 'Containment', Peter Dent
Each morning the ship leaves harbour;
the past is here again.
In sunshine the village seems different:
acorns and oyster shells after the rain,
wet gardens and windblown leaves,
mudflats and mudlarks,
charred pumpkins and abandoned brooms,
smell of fireworks in the air.
I am on the isle of the dead,
a ghost among the living.
Friends moving too
share worries and wonders,
scars of recent removal.
I really don't want to go,
have lived here as long
as almost anywhere else.
Thank you for sending the image,
it looks like a still from a film.
Cuckoos in my nest delight.
Light ripples on the creek.
MAGPIE
random sample jukebox alarm
foregrounded word acquisition
born into language remembering
songs only the male birds sing
lightning flash destabilizing text
tone ghosting all the things we are
carnival folklore below the branches
when the going gets dark light the star
other true self multiple variations
we speak in each other's words
animating lists: the hat, the chair,
the smoke, the bones, the fact
a twilight coalition of the unwilling
story without end until the sun dies
a few incidents in the stillhouse
gold resonator night wearing feathers
ANGEL TRAP
Honey trap, word trap, angel trap,
baited with diagrams and glyphs:
pictures to seduce the æther,
glue language to the page.
Standing still in a sea of words
I sense a pleasant corrosion.
Confusion is rusting away, I
am drowning in possibility.
The sheer strength of the interface
disrupts the link. Each gesture is
deliberate, designed to assassinate
meaning, keep the magic working.
Everything is rumour, everything
is up for grabs. The blank sheet
of paper glows white, appears
to be illuminated from within.
I told no-one about the candles
or the light in the glass of milk.
The body remembers even when
the mind forgets. Which in my case
is quite often. Words have a history,
they come to us from former words,
other worlds. The only way to effect
a rescue is personal participation.
All connections have been severed.
NEO-SHAMAN
inherited gesture
possible hesitation
surface appearance
question of degree
obligation
stumbling block
pause or hesitation
painting the painting
half the story
The launch of Shadowtrain books is also the launch of Ex Catalogue, the most recent book by Rupert Loydell. To find out more, follow the link: http://www.shadowtrain.com/id100.html
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