A COSMIC RAY/A MAGIC THOUGHT

Here's a poem that I have tried on more than one occasion to make work.
I was too close to see that I was attempting to do too many things in the one long poem. The mixed messages confused and cluttered.
This is the latest attempt:


He is hovering the architectural model,
in cramped space, stooped,
the vacuum on his back
a sleek black jet pack.
There's me with new eyes,
seeing this for the first time,
wanting to be in that building,
looking down as the nozzle
sucks dust from the green baize grass.
I'd think the Kraken has woken
to steal the globe from us.


Then I'd wander through those gardens
in the strange settled silence
of a world swept clean.

I thought I saw an old friends face in a glass door the other day. It was only magical thinking. It led me to write this:


a cosmic ray
a magic thought


in the glass
a face is caught


double take
my mistake


their uniqueness reasserts


It isn't anything special but I believe we must keep our poetry chops in order by writing. In a way it doesn't matter what you are writing - write then sift through it, search for the leads, the potential gems among the dreck.

Here's another example. I lent a friend a Brian Patten collection, Armada, the other day. As he opened it an old photograph so discoloured it resembled a negative fell out.
I have no idea who the people are. It was amongst my grandmother's possessions and my sister cannot identify the men in the photograph, I am destined never to know.
Reflecting on the event I wrote this.


it slips from the book
cellulose acetate
a blackening ghost
this paper negative
cut loose from all context
dimly shows two men in sailor suits
who smile and pose


I am left with questions
for people who are dead

Here's Brooke Sharkey. She was wondrous last Friday night. You can get her new album here.
Next post is a review of it.