Working Title
The world too bizarre to calibrate Except by bots, scabbling through genomes Until the issue of Homo sapiens Is resolved, our features A mug shot of extinction … My AI already obsolete, before Its programmes even sync to My dysfunction, my repayment Plan exposing default psychoses Resistant to upgrades … In the mirror, is it you Or is it me—the dead stare, eyes Red-rimmed against grey flesh, a mouth Speaking to itself in whispers Asking what can possibly be done … Who dies first, or who dies Last an absurd distinction, except For property rights and hymns Selected at the funeral—the sly Correlative, who dies now, then next … Deep Time yoga—dinosaurs In alluvial repose, the date stamp of all There is, or was, the twisted bone stumps Like cars abandoned on the runway In Kabul … Prehistoric landscapes sieved For ancient seas, shark-tooth stones In situ, what passed as normal In places of predators the size Of buses—perhaps something you recall … Flowers, bright buttons sprigged With origami offcuts, evolution Thirty million centuries From slime-lipped tropicals—dainty Now for hives on sweet-tooth flights … Ginkgo leaves, the butter-yellow fans Ice Age souvenirs, poised like geishas In The Mikado—nodding acquaintances That steal the scene, beauty Soon slave to autumn winds … A preference for reminiscence And root-finding, a nostalgia For astonishment that will solve The past—papyrus folded Dry as snakeskin on a stony path … An old calendar in sequences Of celebration and regret—rendezvous With people long dead, children Born and they now with children Of their own, a question mark, circled … Is the skylight dirty Or is it the sky, rain predicted Against the odds of window cleaners Lazy or alert—a standard met, or Otherwise owlish with the Racing Post … The wind howls like a lost dog Across brickfield demolitions, sturdy Runt remains of high rise lives Now elsewhere—pawnshop futures black As the soot they fed their kids … Clock face roulette, the minutes Sutured round the rim, a stitch In time, each to each—still, something Else, other than this, and you, between Heartbeats the predator silence … Families trawling archive Registers, births and deaths in towns Without memories, or the secret Discovered in Port-au-Prince—lives lost And found, the world related to itself … Locust capitalists harvesting the moon The stars, the dust that settled In a mummy’s mouth a match With alien DNA—bull market options For screwball isotopes … Victorians in trenches, then Bolshevik blood scent breeding Stiff salutes in beer halls—reprised later By rednecks at the place Lincoln pledged Oath of Office … Tired chromatics of flags Half-mast over graves of scared boys Who stood their ground Against other scared boys—endgame At twitch-trigger borders … Democracy a long shot against Tub-thumping fascists, too many Promises nailed to coffin lids To fact-check and live—journalists In alleys, face down in the dark … At the windows of the Palace Thin faces of citizens eating With their eyes—the President smiling To playbacks of his speeches, between Mouthfuls of blood and bullion … Cursive fighter contrails, some Distant parameter inviting vacuum Blast waves through stubborn Bunkers—freeze-frame shadows, graffiti Mid-sentence on the walls … A shrine in humid half shade With jewel-eyed lizards underfoot, the idol Looming——threads of incense lacing Gold hammerwork, a bell somewhere Sounding, people bowing … Prayer flags in the high cold invite Ancestor spirits to share Buttery gruel—the path rising To sky burials, a puzzle of corpses Deciphered by vultures, whom demons fear … Upanishad repetitions of rain Decide the key, looping bars winding Each along the other in ceremonial Brocades, city lights Splintering through the pane … On the green, a magpie Flamboyant as a guardsman on parade Invites our talisman salute For luck: Good morning, Captain, my Compliments to your Lady Wife … An unkindness of ravens, a murder Of crows, a charm of finches But nothing noted of these quantum Archipelagos—acrobat Migrations quick as light … The death of John Keats Incidental to pigeons, below the room On the Spanish Steps their mastery Of sunny perpendiculars Unchallenged by passing shades … Risky, high voltage metres defining Both the arc of hammocks slung Between banyans, and co-ordinates To casualties in a Himalayan Chasm—adagio and impasse … Tiresome even at twenty, in Later years her memoir Of dead poets reinvented Paris In her image—her toxic letters Edited to indemnify the muse … The spoken line remains unread Except for Boswell shadowing Dr. Johnson—on the street Today, people passing, AirPods Speaking to everyone and no one … Illustrations from a book Of Persian poems—flowers framing The lovers, a cup of wine emptied In the starry stream, in the distance A snowy mountain … A fatigue like cold oceans Draining through the bones, knees Like wet cardboard, if only Similes proved as reliable as the pain We set our clocks by … The illness a stealthy probation Of the blood, cadenzas soaring Across the screen in ingenious dovetails Of data—the image in the mirror No longer fiction … The names of coastal stations Memorised, the buoys a blade-strop Against dementia—Forties, Thames Irish Sea and others, a compass spin From the weather of forgetting … A space in the mind Where the world was, a phone Ringing out, in the well a stone Falling soundless, in the quiet room Someone who once knew your name … A life in little rooms spent Looking out the window, confidante To rainy days bookending Silence, even the self A stranger here—polite, watchful … No ward beds spare, patients Hours on trolleys in corridors, some With sheets pulled over now—old Men and women, cured Of time … Long sickness beyond The door, the family impatient Through slow shifts of trays And medicines—later, the priest Addressing old ghosts, frail fealties … In seraphim suites the fates Of beneficiaries revealed, kin Imagining rosaries of cash And gated greens—instead, the codicil Naming the loyal nurse, the ring … Litigious ghosts waiting hours In courts, or what they remember Of the hours, the days and weeks Or thousand years of stalled judgments And clammy provisions to the plea … An oven at a thousand C Simplifies the dead, their preference For landscape art or the beaches At Aida Napa no matter—bone ash The punch line to theology … The sea at Venice rises, engineers Mapping tide marks to those In Canaletto paintings—the pumps Engaged, for tourists and sewage Washing through basilicas … Border security, food security, drought In places famous for waterfalls And local wines, the vines now A bitter crop—shrunken Disclaimers of failed resolve … All the outback camels Culled, the decision taken to Counteract their tendency To graze, exposing thin soils To Lucifer extremes … Laws proposed to cull wild Horses forcing snap elections, camels One thing, but bloodstock a red line For voters, who weighed the odds Their truant kids were next … Temperatures rising, ice caps On volcanoes morphed to runny Sherbet, magma chambers shifting Where the glaciers steamed, lava Rivers fiery through dead towns … In the Congo village, latrines And graves, both to the same depth Through lava cooled To stone——the man digging remarking It is hard work, to trick the cholera … Weather rotates, high-pressure cells Or anticyclones a grab bag of rain And knuckle-down winds—sunscreen A crackle-glaze imperative Of forecast hyphenations … Dry river beds, crazy paving Patterns people paid good money for As patio designs, now less than Chic—no rain two years Defining different patterns … Flood followed flood until Newborns sprouted gills—nothing Else to report, apart from Pearl-diver lungs now the species Benchmark, arks instead of cities … Noose of air, thumbscrew millibars Racking cloudburst—people Scattered, flip-rib umbrellas clawing Static from the rainbow imperium Sudden through the mist
Estil Pollock | Cartouche
Contents | Mudlark No. 80 (2024)