Clark, Christopher

Christopher Clark

The Train

distracted with the burden of guys,
sideburns caught up in cornered eyes
of girls who sometimes play guitar
their rucksacks stuffed side by
side, across carriages where
feet spread wide, angled exactly
perpendicular. this is where I asked how many lies
you could tell over potential courses, like sixty seconds
in the potent manner of the most heavy
of your forlorn lovers. You smiled, in reply -
you only counted the backs that bled
where scratched flaws fell like songs
in heavy rafters, waiting to tiptoe out
from covers, at some time
like six in the morning.

Dichotomy Dolls

Barefoot, I walked the surface of
Earth’s sunset, right there in the iris

  The moon, a one-horsed eye, filament
Soaked in fire, balance blurred out.    

We’d kept meticulously adept. Multiple
Pieces cut together, snagged by distance    

Features naked in artifice, undressed and
Contrived, bare upon realness. The flecks of    

Dirty water on skin, perhaps one version, or
Another perspective, strained through a filter;    

Rehashed convergence, it nips the measure
Of your scuffed breasts, our faces dissecting.

Tentative Texts

Empty silence followed your retraction
A simple affair lost by over-attention
Now waiting for tones of phones
With undervalued one-word answers

                                    These are our tentative texts
                                    Like the kind we started out with
                                    No X or XX or XXX
                                    Simple, punctuated

But still we dig out from one another
From the stale ground and buried bodies
To figure out points of shapes
How far along the lines each we have made.

Christopher Clark's profile

Something about my father

His favourite chair sat idle in the corner.
A puffy and exaggerated cream
Marked itself with arrogant claim
To possessions that milled around it.

Mahogany plastic bled through
Red-black swirling carpet, aging decades
On youngest fibre. Exactly positioned
Between record players and televisions,
An equal distance of convenience.

Dust collected on springs, clinging
Its leverage in plastic wrapping,
Untouched by wandering soles that passed.
And as the light switched from side to side
Shadows loomed like the pinpricks of eyes

Sat there, darting. Final movements
Of wasting upholstery, impressing upon the rest
Sageful remarks built with parts of faulty pride
Bellowed and drowned out with cries at needle point turning.

Home

I couldn’t save you that day
when you fell from the sky.

Amongst aerial strings, you tore
between teeth lining and ephemera

like when we played as small children.
And all I asked for back was one second

of still to remain instead of strung
skin and wilting flowers tearing away

at happiness like thirty seconds of conversation
and twelve hours flying through slow-moving

flares, drawing away years, until all that
lagged behind was burning inside you,

a body worn like a solitary costume
left behind in a dress up box, somehow

forgotten about, sprung out suddenly
and shattering careful considerations

placed down by the foundations,
under ground and beside one another.

Blast

It hit us, short-sleeved and slightly burnt. In our pockets, the instantaneous vibrations brought us luck, smiling and lifted up. Fingers flexed, keys hitting: of summer’s sweat and groan, heat seeking us like a drone. These months were seconds of silence and wind, preceding violence before it ruptured right through. Struck down in the mist of numbers, on a single foot prime and backward, where integrity fell through.

Memories crackled.

Have you ever watched a statue crumble to the ground? It falls one part at a time, inside out, imploding. Resisting gravity like a whale skimming the ground. I hear the cries now and wonder if they’re still waiting there, grieving. Floating past their giant mouths opening, ready to swallow me whole.