Just passed the magic chair in Morley Street today. How come everything I see is a reference to Star Trek?
Category: Brighton
Middle Street
Black Rock
Brighton Dome
On the Toilet Wall
Pebble
Sitting inside
one of the
graffitied wooden
shelters on
Hove seafront
beside the
peeling green
and brown
paint with
the empty
lager can set
against the
precise horizon
of the railings,
approaching rain
visible as
a greyish membrane
connecting clouds
to the sea.
An unanticipated
sense of
love animates
my perception
of the frothy sound
of toing and
froing waves and
the smell of
stale human piss
that pervades
the shelter.
I notice
a seagull
as it
flutters upwards
carrying a pebble
in its bill
and lets the stone
drop back
down onto
the beach.
It has
some reason
for doing this
as it repeats
the action.
August
Augustus, the Divine, the Fortunate One,
Final surviver of the civil wars,
Last body left upright, he did a lot of building,
Created a marble simulacrum of himself.
The squatter, cross-legged, patient,
Behind her table-cloth of amulets,
Counts change from a velvet bag into
The palm of her hand; the ambergris of potions,
Murex and belladonna, washed from the Tyrian
Planisphere; the occult gear-wheels, the pathways through
To the different levels of Kabbalic illumination,
Represented in the symmetries of Tarot cards, the solar signs
Of the hanged man with a halo upside-down,
The tie-dyed circles in the breeze like purple flags;
There is the scent of lavender sprigs, and the raw smell
From bins in alleyways that back up restaurants
And sticky bars. How we wake, drenched in lilac,
Reeking of petrol, turning over a pillow in the night.
Mirror Stage
An Example
For example:
the wind, making its changes
beyond the glass of the window
and a couple of voices in the wind
of people walking up the hill
below my block of flats
and I can hear words being said
but I can’t hear what
those word consist of
as they’re caught up
and jerked into different shapes
in the undivided continuation,
like the shapes sheets make
as they tug against their pegs
from the bending line.
Gull Cry
Gull cry: agent, accessory,
Bearer of obscure code,
Inaccessible punctuations of the sky,
Tonal interjections, hyphens of sound –
Connecting the blind, dumb colour of everything
In the relays of your unreadable sentence.
