Leslie Philibert
Morendo on Sundaya basin of white chipped enamel
tips the wash over the pale streets; lights appear in the random order of secret intent, confused stars in an untidy sky light the northern stone: hours slip behind a rook’s shadow; a rain curtain falls, we sigh with routine: we are waiting for a small, clean death, trapped between the sun and the moon. A Night in Tenerifethe sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach, a ruined church, the coastal lights a string of lesser ways; we are as empty as a dropped shell pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt. and as the night gets deeper a dragon breathes like the tide: no mistake, the dark needs its hours. After Reading The Bell Jarcurl up like black paper,
burning like a moth; a glove turned inside out, trapped too under a house, a circle hidden and musty; fragile under steps, let us escape the carrying, legions of white coats; corridors as long as life. Tree Childrest among the gentians
like an exhausted lover, the road has thrown you out of track and youth, a line of rescue wakes the rooks in the cold trees there is a nest not far away waiting to fall, a pause before the first call, a damp leaf. RungholtWhirls of wicker and calico
of turf and salt, of cats and fish. The eyes of those surprised by sudden depths are bitter and open. They drink sea under the glass of a cracked tide, in dark tunnels of waves. The water children flail under a sea moon. The sea drags across the dark silt : hear the bell, hear the bells IncidentAnywhere. Evening rain.
Snakes cross the road, that is no longer an obvious place, it cracks like old toffee. Lost souls in nightgowns and slippers foam behind wire. A dark tide bids, then waits for a gallery of small heads, blue eyes devoid of doubt. A world of small signs A Mowed, AfterAnklecut but running;
cornchildren at break, dust and more dust. Flight the cutting of a lost sanctuary, legless with shock at life turned upside. Stubble the blunt cut, the wait of the expectant loam, under the farrow. Girl
Crouching as many curves
in a bronze spring a road full of curves Tugging your kness into the apples of your chest hair seaweed over rocks Hidden the face between a bone tunnel a circle perfect in itself Background ActorFor a few seconds in Columbo; scratching like a cat
at the door of recognition, selling hotdogs as a star drifts by. Motel curtains that smell of coffee; a bed full of bottles, dust between his fingers. Cut. A noble fall! - we never knew him; a minor hero stamped on celluloid; lost on the cutting-room floor. AutopoiesisYou are climbing out of the seat of my body;
rising as a small loaf, a scrap of wonder. Stamped in wax with my ugly mug and running. Surprised you are broken glass, a bit of face or a toast-dropper of a fear. You are weighed with a ton of my own past, packaged and disguised, the torn tape of a reel-to-reel, endless and twisted. No shit Sherlock, children are from their parents; But they don`t know that. Forgive me. At My Own Funeral
Bells. Cold air. Damp earth.
Carrying my own coffin as if divided and watching myself from outside. Throw masks into an empty grave. I have been caught leaving a shop with a bag of stolen apples. Surrounded by dropped faces and lost tones. The air cold. Earth damp. Bells. What Night Not Is
Not a cabin banged together with dark wood and nails of stars;
not the ballast in cold ship full of shouts. Trees are not sewage; ice is not to be loved, not the darkness nor the cold blanket thrown over dead lovers nor the black cloth over the head of a to-be-shot. Not the curve of light over an airport, not a motorway lifting nor the dry cancer of a widow. Not a parcel of sons nor a gift of frost. Not many things: not even the helpless space between two reduced lightings. Der Turmfalke
The weight inside a dive; muscles work against the wind.
Motionless ignore the reduced; a quilt of cornfields, bleached boxes of barns; holes full of gravel, a mess of houses and lanes. So when the heat rises and the earth scatters: heed the hunter`s eyes, the blue irises, the terrible beauty of the last seconds, sinking. (the end)
a river full of dead pigs
a burning moon a child squatting in mud was that it then, just that ? no trace of birth a cold tuber that might seek helplessly your hands wet with drops from a rusty tap fingernails dark and underlined that follow the trace of a fleeing star an escape into the big black over the wall, over the wall. ♢ |
The Slaughter of Treessearching for the perfect word on virginal paper
leads to the cut, to oaken tears, to a sorrow of yews; then the unbalance; rowdy tracks of leaves and branches: the pushing down against green bursts, the mud and ways, as if we could find more truth than the idle wind on a summer`s night, more than just a hush, more than just a whisper, more than this Night Spinningthe night is the black down of a yearling
this sky a taunt of trailed stars, let me spin in a frosty lane, head back, too fast to count and throw the dark to ground Fallingthe wind turns my apple tree
into a victim, a lover banging on a closed door of gnarled wood ; a dance makes this ringing evening singular, the leaves agree to fall and turn in the dull faith of air, they tell us about birth and departure, about leaving together, stories of ending as the sun arcs and protests The Sea at Nighta move of broken glass
black as polished leather, burnt wood, the big shifter that trembles steel under us, the horizon hides, above a curtain made of holes with stars around as the lost language of wind, howls of salt, tide of night Seagulls Over Antrim
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