Senior 6th Form

 

 

 

Would I, in beamy black, frame daintiest lustre mix't of shades and light?

 

I am a seismograph

registering our heartbeats

black and white still, preserves

negatives of life in colour

I can't write in fresh, flushed blood

It dries to black, here

emblazoned charred marks of what were

detonations.

 

They are prints, then, leading to

a scanty plot of ashes

on a smooth, white pillow

where once you burned, asleep.

At least, again, I can hold you between the covers.

 

La défence de la grisaille

 

Les limites de ma langue

sont les limites de ma pensée

Comment puis-j'écrire

sur l'amour heureux

quand j'écrire dans une langue

qui roule lourdement,

au lieu de voletant?

Comment puis-j'y penser

quand je pense dans cette langue?

Peut-être le monde devrait parler

dans la langage des oiseaux.

Mais rien ne serait fait.

D'ailleurs, la pierre et le feu

sont souvent plus belles

que la plumage coloré.

 

They exist, but are identical, and so is filth

 

Your eyes are pagan

nocturnal concentric tree-rings

tumbling into vortices

empty but smouldering

tugging fixing assailing

but blossoming sometimes in

morning-fresh, head-over-heels innocence

and slight soft sadness

remarkably steady and

remarkably quiet like

leaf-fall.

 

Shuddering beneath

burning sweat and quick breath

scratching with nails.

Our friction-sparks fall into fade

they cannot light our way, or fuel us

but they look so aaaah

when they pop like Catherine wheels

under our hands

 

Keats was right about the urn, frozen

dancers, perfectly symetrical

running roundandroundandround in a frieze infinitely still

but their eyes don't return your looks

so there is more ye need to know.

 

Your beauty lies.

 

 

For Him & For Her

 

I am trying to get a sense of you

But my image keeps popping

 into racing-heart fragments

 

I know you are of scattered rose-petals

On a shattered-mirror pond

But what about this sense of

“form” and

“structure” and

“symetry” and

 

“adorable”. N’aww. It is, sometimes,

The silliest things which are hardest to grasp

Anyone can say “I love you”

But I don’t feel the need to mention love

 

Just to paint a sky of stars and signs for us to see

And to hear you breathe, quietly

Like a petal, shimmering

On the surface of who I am.

 

Saxophonism, or On Hearing the Girl Across the Road Practise the Saxophone

 

twists of silken lust hang

in the air outside, trembling

like reeds tongued under supple lips.

intricate fingers on elegant keys

conveying narcotised tranquility

over darkling hum-thrum tarmac.

 

Your art is truly pure;

a song-caress which dissolves

even

as

it

exists.

 

I want to be air like your deathless song

that ceases to be and thus never was

I want to be your song

kissing you through the mouthpiece