towards dawn

(blackout poetry)

 

 

(source: Nature’s Home, RSPB Magazine, Summer 2014)

pulses of sound

(blackout poetry)

 

 

(source: Nature’s Home, The RSPB Magazine, Summer 2014)

despair, sparkling pure

trust descending, I wriggle
behind the radiation
beneath a star intersected
by the earth

truth will disfigure the walls,
wipe out dishonour
with atomic hypotheses
from their eyes

through the labyrinth
despair, sparkling pure,
clutching vapours
delights my blood

don’t name the day
of my autumn anxiety –
their pleasant world
remained unchanged

*

Source Texts:
‘Victory Unintentional’ by Isaac Asimov (in The Complete Robot)
‘Things Behind the Sun’ by Nick Drake (from the album Pink Moon)
‘The Burrow’ by Franz Kafka (in Metamorphosis and Other Stories)

wounded in the woods

you know the symbols
worshipped in intimate
moments
& these wilds
inhabited by the green
man, fallen into discard.

later, myth makers activated
your experimental spirit –
eliminate all
but the model
outlaw, who fled to the witch’s
house, wounded in the woods.

*

Source Texts:
‘True Love’ by Isaac Asimov, in The Complete Robot
‘Robin of Loxley’ in Strange South Yorkshire by David Clarke

To leave the cradle

I ran away and joined a group of gypsies
pawned silver beneath apple hung branches
safe from respectable society, and wrapped
forged letters in half a Romany scarf. I had
a lover of uncertain temper, no greater rogue –

he rubbed gunpowder into his wounds,
twisted, like a shipwrecked smallpox victim.
His sins caused this plague. Our rickety
dwelling sold, his throat cut. I was taken
by wandering monks from the tangled woodland.

I cheated the hangman’s noose
not once but three times –
between stone-remembered messages
my ghost haunts many places: open moor,
wild heathland, ancient passages,
a patch of light in a house called maudlin.

*

Source texts:
The Bridge by Iain Banks
Strange Stories from Devon by Rosemary Ann Lauder & Michael Williams
Cornwall: Land of Legend by Joy Wilson
*
This was originally posted as part of the final Found Poetry Collaboration on ArtiPeeps.

cacophony

The humble dreamer, wounded unto death
by elves of a malicious disposition, knew
there was wizardry in it, but did not fear.

She came in through a knot-hole in the wall
in the small village where I was born, sunbeams
bursting through the gloom of the forest

like the songs of Bohemia – I have heard
them singing their fairy songs. Go, and beware:
dance into the next country, the train will soon

be leaving. Memory-fragments cling to me
like a madman, this dizziness resulting in nausea,
thrown off the rails. Don’t try to understand.

*
Source texts:
Modern Man in Search of a Soul (Chapter I: Dream-Analysis in its Practical Application) by CG Jung
The Forest in Folklore and Mythology (Chapter V: Mythical Denizens) by Alexander Porteous

knight of cups

this knight
is a troubadour
brings madness
of emotion
with the grace
of a fish.

this star
is an experience:
self-contained
dread of error
questioning the path
of the heart.

this sorrow
is laughable
your waking life
a lower order –
warmhearted mischance
of physical love.

*
Source texts:
Strange News from Another Star by Hermann Hesse
Power Tarot (‘Knight of Cups’) by Trish MacGregor and Phyllis Vega

*
This poem originally appeared in the third post of the Found Poetry Collaboration at ArtiPeeps.

transmitters

unusual knowledge
overpowered me
in darkness –

receptive to evil
i can’t tell
the difference.

sun/shadow
good/bad
alternating forever

in a cage
with a wire screen
hallucinate effigies

to starve your beauty.
beware the first
principle of anti-choice:

bland words, no life,
accepting torn sex
as your birthright.

*
Source texts:
Solitude by Anthony Storr
‘PCP’ by Manic Street Preachers
‘No Love Lost’ by Joy Division

*

This piece originally appeared in the second post of the Found Poetry Collaboration at ArtiPeeps.