First question is why the centre partings? I’m not sure if it adds anything and seems to be imposing shorter lines – with odd line endings – or is it the short lines imposing the centre parting? I just don’t get it, it seems pretentious and adds nothing and takes much away from the very good work here. Try it differently and look at the line ends in particular. Read them out loud to your self.
Hope this helps Martinx
Shrinkwrapped
Caught within
a wire mesh cloud,
skin torn like wool
on a barbed wire fence.
In a field that smells of cinder
and charred fence posts
ashen lily petals crackle
in cellophane puddles.
You stand out like a stare,
the way you caught my eye
then blinked,
heavy lidded,
a swollen tongue,
thick and wet
licked across the sky.
I like this one very much. Some very nice imagery indeed. It contains enough mystery to require rereading and survives that.
Submission
The last thing I said to you
is 'don't leave me here'.
We played
until our knuckles bled
and our hands resembled
branches seared
by lightening.
Invisible, I pace the room,
playing hide and seek
with the cracks in the wood,
poking my fingers through
to touch the wind.
The smell of you lingers,
I strip down, discard
your touch, smear
traces of a song
across the walls.
It continues to rain
long after the
breathing stops.
Yup this is very good. Do we need the first stanza – I can’t decide? It really places the poem – but maybe too firmly. It becomes ambigious without it – a good thing posssibly?
Nude in Studio
Walking just to walk
the ghost town
and lie beneath the sky,
sprawled face down
on tarmac,
naked,
I wait for frost
to lick me
to glass.
You are the juggernaut
that blindly swerves
and smashes my ice not sure about this line-break. perhaops shell can come up.
shell in the road.
I have my doubts about this stanza (above) – it seems a little clumsy like the juggernaut. Not as elegant as the rest of the poem.
You repaint me, guilty,
warm, wet yolk
on your studio floor,
always. Not a fan of single words to end. Portentsous! I wouldn’t even take it up – lose it completely that’s what I
I swallow his words
like small spiders
in my sleep, splendid
awake pinned
by his arms,
spine twisted
in his palms
until I prickle,
thistled. oooo no!
Our children
are glass bottles
we hang
from the ceiling,
untie at night
and roll
across the carpet
like clicking marbles.
If I go and have a shower,
will you still be here
when I get back?
You hover by the door,
pluck threads from the towel
in your hand.
Each time
in your absence
I toy with the idea
of disappearing.
If I buy breakfast,
you won’t leave
while I’m gone?
Your pockets crackle,
you scoop change from a bowl
on the desk.
I could dress quickly,
click my heels
and leave
no note.
If I make some coffee,
don’t go anywhere
will you?
You scatch your stomach
and scan the floor
for trousers.
I was not prepared
for your reaction
when I hid
in the wardrobe.
I like this poem very much – but fnd it chopped up too much. It works in some palces –
don’t go anywhere/will you where there is a natural suspense in the dialogue/narrative. Elsewhere is places too muhc emphasis on some lines that can’t carry it. Also I think it would just sound much better –rather than staccato. Its full of lovely stuff and a nice joke at the end.
I’ve had a little play below – but it would need more.
’Cells’
I swallow his words
like small spiders in my sleep,
awake pinned by his arms,
spine twisted in his palms
until I prickle,
Our children are glass bottles
we hang from the ceiling, untie at night
and roll across the carpet like clicking marbles.
If I go and have a shower, will you still be here
when I get back? You hover by the door,
pluck threads from the towel in your hand.
Each time ,in your absence I toy with the idea
of disappearing.
If I buy breakfast, you won’t leave
while I’m gone? Your pockets crackle,
you scoop change from a bowl on the desk.
I could dress quickly, click my heels
and leave no note. If I make some coffee,
don’t go anywhere will you?
You scatch your stomach and scan the floor
for trousers. I was not prepared for your reaction
when I hid in the wardrobe.
Dolour
Eating green apples
on a grey day
in a white room,
the lamp plays
hopscotch
on parquet wood tiles,
the glass bell
of the water pipe
sighs.
very nice – but I’m sorry I just don’t like this chopped up centre parting. PORTENTEOUS
Outside the window
two men argue
about the price
of flowers,
a tram sails past,
ash sprinkles
the sky.
Yesterday was salmon
and falafel, tonight
will be
an Irish cat,
tomorrow
I will hurl
your guitar
through the glass
and
leave.
Lemon sun leaks
through the reflection
of a window,
you stroke my palm
with green fingers
as she whispers
in four languages
behind my back.
It is still cheating,
you said, Just because
she is a woman.
I am not above
hitting a woman.
I pressed my idiolect fancy word young lady! it sounds clumsy though
between
paper feathers.
The train rushes
ginger not sure about ginger cornfields,
hedgerows dashed
with violet.
On our return, an old
woman sits
by the roadside
holding a cardboard box
full of torn paper tickets
and small, yellow-bird
fortunes.
A chest of haggard dolls
and a beaten roller skate
snap at my fingers.
A cacophony I really like ths poem – cacophony seems a bit obvious compared to the rest of abandoned
string instruments
creak on a shelf,
glass gas lamps tarnish.
I am too afraid to touch
the porcelein or examine
strung up street signs
clanging in the wind.
Caged chairs clamber
across one another,very good discarded
rubber limbs writhe
in a heap on a cart,
scarred clocks leer
at ruby film posters,
flocks of chandeliers loom
over lock-jawed wardrobes
Purple-furred, beside an oven,
she sells postcards of
bear baiting, a frozen lake,
a faded holiday camp.
We guzzled
too-sweet wine
in the sorozo, where fat
men sweat over fruit machines.
I led you through charcoal bad line end
wallpaper to the wrong
side of the looking glass,
road signs shrank
like night butterflies
in paper cups, owls
framed a tiny door.
We are lizards basking
in a decollage of glass,
brick and plastic, crows
pecking at a landmine,
we bend teaspoons
down throats
to steal yawns. splendid
Among a shadow puppet
theatre of the grotesque
silhouetted on gables,
we are butter drenched.
I clutch my brown envelope
like a lunchbox,
and leave.
excellent – but did I mention I don’t like the short lines!
Among the asylum
of thrusting priests
I am nymph skinned,
bleeding freckles
on the silent tiled floor.
You plead martyrdom
as I chew the door handle.
I lose you on 'A Szerelem Szigetén'
in light dust lacing
but I am a sailor heaving
through indigo oils,
through labourers’ folded faces.
I press a fingernail
through waxen fruit,
drain the rivers to sand spines.
Man of Sorrows, fish hook
fingers caught,
I hear your neck crunch
on Salome's pillow.
very good
Etrog
An ink crow
smudges the mist
of the sattelite orchard,
294 television screens,
the transposed bodies
of men flickering.
I am the heart hunter
plunging through the trees,
I prick pregnant
boughs, bursting fruit
flesh with my tongue.
I write my section six
on sliced white bread,
my right to squat
inside you,
but up ten hundred
flights of stairs
where light melts
my shoes, you wrap
yourself tight,
nut skinned.
I settle down
to peel.
very good, but the usual complaint
Photograph
This city is a brittle leaf
Dry skin peels
from buildings,
carcasses of age,
bullet sprayed.
Metal cages clasp
construction sites
that swell the sky.
Streets are missing
teeth, cleanly dug
gaps of earth.
Statues roam
past parliament,
grazing
marble buffallo.
Cyclones tear
our throats out
beneath the pavement,
steel inspectors
pierce my face,
the beggars
dormitories expand
through the subways,
bare mattresses,
fruit box bedside
tables, couples
wrapped
in reading.
I tie parcel tags
to trees, label them as
Turcsi Orr,
Levél Bomba,
Diótöro
I glue wooden
picture frames
to broken windows
and call it
No Sugar,
Leftovers,
Ocean.
Look.
excellent again – but line endings seem almost random in this one
Nest
Discontent
with folding tissue
paper ducks,
you developed a taste
for innards.
The hippopotamus skull
was the beginning.
Like Matryoshka dolls
you scoop out layer do you scoop them oit? very nice image – but is it the right one. I can see what you are tryiong to say, but it s a bit of a stretch.
after layer, hang
them out to dry
like a butcher's
carcass.
You maybe try without obsession I thnk we’ve worked out he’s a bit odd by now
slit my chest open,
ripped my ribcage
like a corset,
filled me.
No matter
that the plaster
bloats the hollows
of my cheeks
like a drown
victim,good
clogs my eyes
with pebble? tears.
Strung up,
skin shredded,
you display my core
like a burst plum
dripping from the sky. There is a bit of confusion here as to who is strung up
A cave of carpet, pitted in the centre like a peach seed?. We sat in coffee stain circles. I ought to kick your head in for wearing that shirt. We all laugh, jade green. Can you explain the meaning of odd, I don’t think I have the translation quite right. Diced bacon, shrink wrapped, tries to speak. I bet they love it, your hair down like that, bouncing on top of them, orange-peel eyes, somewhere across the ocean my mother dries to cardboard. Knee deep in shells, I smoke cheese through a walnut pipe, pinch clay clods into stars. I have a part man to let.
hmmm what have you been smoking out there apart form cheese.
Revolution Day
From the park
to Heroes Square
grandparents hold
their inheritors aloft
like flags, painted faces
blend into charcoal
helmets as beetles good
swarm the streets,
slice the junctions
with guillotine blades, Can you swarm and slice?
an almost unnoticed
handover before coffee
shop windows.
Cyclists dismount,
trams judder, a tin bad line end
voice echoes over
conversations
about the varying
degrees of McDonalds
standardisation is varying and standardisation a contradiction?
across continents,
'But we haven't tried
Hungarian food yet'.
Remove and walk.
Blacked out eyes
of oil coach slugs
unloading ants
onto the pavement. slugs ants seems a bit over written
An old man flutters
against plastic shutters flutter shutters – step away from the heavy rhyme Miss Elliot
in the tunnelled
underground,
resurface into the
eye storm, a bit prog rock
a headlight looms
and fades.
The effigy burns
before Kaisers,
we trickle
through to a muffled
silence
like distant bombs,
the street pricked
with horses hoof prints,
the bridges noosed.
’Apocolypse,’
I whisper
as we meet you
at the escalator.
Sleep
is a net curtain away,
dawn spreads
like a bruise.
Propped on pillows, don’t get raisin at all
we lace our toes
to the rattle
of the box fan,good
hold our breath
against the flush
and downstairs pad
of feet.
A smoked mist which is it – smoke or mist?
clogs the drainpipes,
an engine shakes
the patio,
the French doors throttles?
we never
open. P word!
It is the same grinding
sound like teeth,
twisting the bedpan
the way you fingered
rosary beads before
they were taken, I don’t get the bedpan rosary bead analogy
trapped inside yourself,
best left unsaid
in the bowl
you shit in.
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