Compacted

(By Sil, the 25th of June, London)

Growing into love
I had to learn from trees
Who confine
An infinite thirst for light
Inside small, delicate panes of leaf
And as I see the source
Of my contentment
Compacted down
To one man’s form
His fingers play to quell
This startled heart’s
Un-restful pulse
His whispered plea:

"Hush, now, my love.
Time is the master ghost
Who redeems all broken souls."

Strange Attractor

(By Sil, Hanging Bank Cottage, the18th of June, 2011)

I sit with you
In the terror
Of your precision

Words become
Little toy-cars
I cannot kick-start
The wiring and the track
Seem intact
But the flow is not the circuitry
Puzzled, I silently sulk

I have but a map of your world
Etched in my mind
A mute story of fear and dread
Of turning away
Of Protest’s
Hardened bread

I make a mistake
And then another
There’s no other way to communicate
That I wear the coat of your language
Second hand
That like you I swim
In turbulent waters
Not walk on solid middle-ground
I know all too well the taming powers
Of correction
Delivered with a heavy hand.

With every swipe you take
With every tiny speck
Of imprecision removed
There’s less and less of us

Communication is
A Strange Attractor
Forever gravitating
Around an empty space
Once you remove all error
There’s nothing left but
The silent perfection
Of a white page

A Seeing-Through

(By Sil, the 5th of June, 2011, London)


The merchant of silks
Sized me up
And declared:
“You’re one who escaped and explored”.

Yes – I dug my claws into the mortar
I cried from the ancient rooftops:
I’ll never be trapped behind walls.

Only in dreams I tread
The grand old mansion
Grounds
Where ladybirds
Cusped by inquisitive hands
Were lost on epic journeys

Only in dreams I still wonder
At the hollow
Jet-less fountain
And wallow
In the scent of
Ripe elderflower

I was tired
Lied on your bed
Strange unhomely pod
Buried deep into
The pad flesh
I could still feel the pea.

Birthday Girl

(By Sil, the 15th of May, 2011, London)

“But I didn’t choose to be”
A refrain to my mother
Carolled spitefully
By a whinging, raging child:
“So why did you have me?”

A mistake
Still counts as a choice
It’s a bird deaf
To the effect
Of its own trilling voice

Side-by-side
In matching holiday skirts
She said: “You’re part of me”.
Later,
Her skirt left on the beach
Flailing in the wind
Like the parachute crown
Of a born-again dandelion

The insistent,
Unbearable itch
In my chest
Grasping that she could feel whole
Without me
For attempting a climb
Would the hiker leave something
As vital as a limb behind?

Left to the comfort of thumbs:
One rubbing the velvety bottom
Of Tom-Tom
The other - a fool’s breast
To suckle on with a sore gum

Five, eighteen, twenty-five
Thirty-one
Every birthday marks
The growing jaw of separation
Between that mother and this child

And a contradiction:
I didn’t choose to be
Yet I don’t stop counting.

Heraldry

(By Sil, the 5th of May, London)

On my shield
I drew a peacock feather
A butterfly and
Woodbine leaves

When fear
Obliterates the nest of memory
When adornment
Can no longer conceal
The true state of me

I place power and knowledge
In beauty
I forgive Psyche
Her brittle wings
Pray that
My love will not injure
Those to whom it clings.

Swallow
The putrid apple of shame
But never
Become a hate recruit.

After all,
Don’t butterflies too
Feed on rotten fruit?

Until the End of the World

(By Sil, the 15th of March, London)

We’re here to build
Castles in the sand
To bestow wings on angels
To dabble in the puzzle
Of reality
Tugging hard
At the fraying seam of
Human certainty

Absorbed by wonders
Encoded in divine slang
Our brief existence
Is the window
Through which
A mourning Universe
Catches reflections of
Its lost symmetry
Before the Bang.

We’re starspit.
Unholy because
Nothing holds
This world;
A rubber-band jerked skip
Between too hot
And too cold.

In the galactic
Delayed backstory
We saw our future.

A true prophecy:
When the warped Alchemist
Is done transforming
Gold into Lead
When the stellar fire is out
Then
The End will come
Chilled unhingement from
Quantum attraction
Welcome respite
A licence to surrender
The rock of
Perpetual reaction.

Last Night I knew...

(By Gub, the 13th of March, Toronto)

Last night I knew what faith was.
It’s a dream you never wake from.
I saw an x-ray of a human shoulder-blade, taken of a young boy.
The blade had the distinct ossification of a wing bone.
It was so clear to see.
In that moment I knew I was looking at the x-ray of an angel.
A manifestation of divine purpose.

In my dream I felt the ecstasy of absolute knowledge –
It was total and blinding.