November 11

(By Gub)

I have passed the middle of my life

bathed in light,

midway between the rising

and setting suns.

Your body, my clock, each hour 'glass'

Shins

(By Gub)

Articulate
We bend least
Where we need a joint
The sensitive shin
Being a case in point
But mastery of the universe
Man cannot reappoint
The 'shins of the father'
Neither reanoint!

Shinbone

(HBC)

I palmed the torch
Cocked my head up to the stars
Sheep moved
Shuffling avalanche
Across a field
A black dog
Dissolved and reformed
As twinset bouncing dots of light
The universe hung over me
Detached
An oversized bell-jar
Inside,
The acute impact with life
A kick in the shinbone
As I was learning to play

Rituals and Road-kill

(HBC)

Mornings stretch at the threshold
With slug-like stoicism
My vertebrae cling
To the memory of sleep
The ritual of waking
Cannot be observed backwards.
From dreams, to open eyes
To unfurled limbs
To layers, to crumbs -
The arresting picture of
A child in ill-fitting armour
Quickly emerges,
Idly put together
Like a six-piece jigsaw puzzle.
We ride towards the sun
A squashed toad stretches
Next to a squashed newt
As if a child had abandoned
Am impromptu dissection
In the middle of the road
Living beasts
Zoom across the road
I believe in the tail-flashing rabbits,
But the moss-skinned deer
Seem ghostly,
Unreliable apparitions.
Nature has painted
The spectacle of the dead
And the near-dead in
Vivid greens and reds
Colour-blind,
Death gently exhales
Under the car tyres

With Wood

(the 3rd of August, HBC)

Not every day
I slow down enough
To notice my heart
Confused
By a clock ticking too fast
Against a lazy jazz beat
I rest my cheek on the table
If could be pinned down like this

Locked into the warm contact
With wood
And my arms, the colour
Of unseasoned pine
Could grow out into planks -
Better - into ships,
I’d dream of fantastical figureheads
Swallowed by wild waters
I’d wake up – wood grain
Tattooed into my skin -
Into the same evening prayer:
Please don’t stop
Please don’t stop
Please don’t stop

Home is only...

(By Gub, July 27th, 2012, HBC)

Home is only this

an abundance of definitions

Character references

both good and bad

History

and the marks on the wall

of height

regarded...

Of siblings and children

If you look carefully you can see

that life passes

A silent force

The jugular of this essence

in transit

is where we dwell

Where our memories are spun

We are molluscs and our shells

are more than houses

They are an outer skin

shedding them is painful

The loss of weight in outer orbit makes us spin

Sideways

Into the next galaxy....

Walls

(London, the 15th of July, 2012)

A day will come
A day of walls
Voices will echo - empty glasses
And sound will carry back
Some insect-like feeling that wants
To burrow under my skin

Home is
Waiting outside a locked gate
With the last of the dinner ladies
Kicking dust in the early hours
At the bus stop

Home is
A priest’s mantle
Kittens in bags
Couches on concrete
The railway line

Home is
The extraction
An empty wall inside
Where a heart should be.