Lobscouse

Fire and Water

2010-10-05T23:11:00.000+01:00

I remember the crow's foot
guiding a rivulet of tears

And further down your cheek
there was a Dee or a Don

I knew the river
I launched boats on the river
I sailed on boats down the river
out onto an open ocean

I sailed to dry lands
scaled the sand dunes
built my house on the sun
and ate my daily bread.

When they found me
I was in love with your leaves
my skeleton hung from your branches
and chimed in the breeze
I imagined a drop of blood landing on the grass
near to where you stood in the wind
blowing at a hundred kisses an hour

One day when we can't get any older
we'll build a rainbow
and at the end of it a garden
as still as a houseful of children sleeping
and dreaming and whispering
light and water are what I eat best
light and water are what I eat best.

Milkbottle

2009-12-20T13:33:00.007Z

Her child is crying.

Out on the avenue
the syrupy window glow
from a night bus passing lights up the hall. Open door.

There's a whole darkness to wander in.
And out of it
lying in bed are day owls
cranking out dreams
brittle to the touch.

The child is not a baby.

There's milk in the fridge for you when you can't sleep.
Open door lights up the hall.
There's a whole darkness to wander in.
A frost but no stars. The butter is hard.

Someone will invent a device
that will record the tinkle tinkle of little stars.

The child wants comfort.

Milk is a start but it needs warming.
There's a whole darkness to wander in.
A whole avenue to walk down.
Headphones. The moon.
A cosmic theme tune.

Where stars are miming
her baby is crying.

Echo

2009-10-11T11:51:00.006+01:00

Wind whistles, the green leaves dance

August

Wind whistles, the leaves dance

September

Wind whistles, leaves dance

October

Wind whistles

Orange, red, yellow, gold

Blow
Wind
Blow

Dissolve the dark line of long nights and waiting

The green minnow - by Robert Lax

2009-10-11T11:45:00.002+01:00

the green minnow

bears a white &

black mark

at his tail

by which we

understand

what fish

he’ll be

(& all things

bear a mark

for the under-

standing)

your voice

in dark

is no

less, then,

your voice;

mine, from

behind you,

’s mine

as from

before

(whatever is

is mark’d first

as itself;

later, if ev-

er, as gener-

ic being.)

This poem was first published in the Robert Lax special issue of Voyages, vol. 2 no. 1 & 2, 1968

A Little Tooth - by Thomas Lux

2009-09-26T11:43:00.000+01:00

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It's all

over: she'll learn some words, she'll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It's dusk. Your daughter's tall.

The Observatory

2009-09-18T09:02:00.005+01:00

Day sheds it’s skin
no moon rises
nor stars shine

The sun that creeps
over my shoulder
is a cheat

I have waited
and waited
for leaves to fall

for earth’s appetite for light to stall
yet I am in autumn
you stranded in summer.

Above the observatory
geese are journeying
to the edge of the old night.

The Philosophical Tasseographer ..

2009-09-16T09:59:00.004+01:00

.. questions his own game

in a bedroom at the Eastern Hotel

after the inaugural meeting of the Golden Triangle Magickal

Arts Society when he asks,

"Time is the strainer

that passes through me

Am I the tea leaves

or am I the tea?"

Bonsai Quartet

2009-09-11T09:07:00.004+01:00

Bagpipes

When at work,
in the rain
or in the distance

if I hear the pipes
I always stop to listen

like a dog passing a lamp post

Big Questions

Always in and out of bars
we were young
trying at the limits
of beauty

What did we all talk about exactly?

Wrong Number

When my dream rings
you answer it
after a few seconds

Why did it take you so long to wake up?

Smirr

I saw you smiling in
the wind-shade sheltering
from the plainsong
of precipitation

Virtualisation

2009-08-26T13:25:00.004+01:00

At first light
I hear domestic barking
bird song

Every night in electronica
I choose which dawn chorus
will awake me

No one will see me wash
before eating or prayer

No one will see the wired glove
and the borrowed bird
carried down to the street to sing

When Mechanical Failure Orphans Us

2009-08-21T13:12:00.016+01:00

(a work in progress)

Under earth or on it

stone, deep in thought

turns over memories

there were eclipses

spores of blood and yeast

the smell of ice

wind and prayers

for cheerless ransoms paid to progress

A Polaroid close-up of millennia and a butterfly’s mouth

caught in a safety net of zeros

above the republic of greed

where everyone is wanting

but time scents victory

with patience a lost heirloom

and mechanical failure

will make orphans of us all

Bonfire of tears

2009-05-15T11:51:00.004+01:00

In the light of day
the ceiling of the spare-ribbed room
is wallpapered soft pink
I think, with a warm bodrhan beating
this bond knows no bounds but
when the sun set on paradise
when I was thrown out of paradise
someb’dy skelpit ma erse

Roses

2009-02-12T20:23:00.003Z

I took my first sip of water
from an umbilical cup

like air and your perfume
it keeps me from wilting.

When dreams run dry, the sureness of stars,
the legacy of your touch will be company

eyes, snowflakes and fingerprints
will measure the grains of whatever is true

about loving. Till then
I'll settle for water, air

the scent of your hair, lavender
fresh linen, even a rose garden.

Smirr

2009-02-12T20:20:00.002Z

I saw you smiling in
the wind-shade sheltering
from the plainsong
of precipitation

Logarithm

2008-03-14T11:05:00.006Z

It is midnight now

and now

tomorrow

it is starting

to leak out of today

a mitotic bubble of posterity

made up of logarithms of ice

under a sun

too hot for time

Seven lifetimes of peat

2008-03-14T11:01:00.001Z

Beyond the unused pier

Old Sea was wave lite

on a rocking chair listening to the radio of the sky.

The islander stood on worn stone

with a saucerful of his silence,

spilling not a drop.

Drifting spells were broken by a whee-wail-whining sea bird.

Herring Gull.

Has the smell of rain about it, he says of the night,

a night as pitiless as a hearse full of dominoes

pacing towards the cureless collision with sunlight.

There's six peat hags on the back hill

decayed like old ewes’ teeth,

seven lifetimes of peat lie in their tobacco wombs.

Two summers ago I heaved the unsmoked earth

with needled shoulders, dwindling arms

for the last time,

today creels are brittling by the back door

beside knives blunted by tea-strained rain.

I still hear the songs of the cutting squad.

But the undried loam will wait,

wait for soft hands and savages

to enkindle the sky with oranges and reds.

Mood Music

2008-03-14T10:58:00.001Z

Going up to an idea of north*

to house-sit, seeking reclusion

surrounded by mountains and clear water.

The camera is loaded with big

bullets of light. I’ll use the ice

(I hope there’s a frost), bracken,

the brimming dish as target practice.

Packed and ready, cigars and books.

Have remembered my eagle magnet,

said a prayer to the patron saint

of cloudlessness and stolen moments.

Though if there is any

robbing to be done

it will be by me

daylight of it’s easiness,

the wind of open sails,

wings. Comets and ghosts

of the dark, airwaves

from radios and space

Let me lie in a seven-day grave

stashed in harmony with the soil,

its limbless motion

roots, boots, fallen apples

as the family of silences next door

lip-read the candlelight, pull the curtains

and at the third stroke mute the speaking clock.

* stolen from the first instalment of Glenn Gould’s Solitude Trilogy

2007-12-07T14:12:00.000Z

Unfinished Poem

2007-12-07T11:31:00.000Z

Whilst I was away across the briny

(I)

A love letter

sits mat happy

ocean flat

caught like a falling sea star

miles from dry eyes

(II)

Preying paper kisses

shoal along

the sea-bedded hall

praying like lonely hunters

miles from star light

(III)

A note of bleeding hearts

flutters from

hands across shining seas

drifting star ward

miles from daylight's anchor

(IV)

One tender lyric

rests upon

salt sea piles

glowing brighter

miles from time and tide.

The Hour House

2007-12-05T21:33:00.001Z

The Hour House

Inside the Hour House
the temperature is about average
for the time of year

the sun is in the cellar
it's spring in the kitchen
and love is in the air.

In the upstairs bedroom
the stars are out to play,
comets race our pulses but lose.

The clock strikes autumn
in the blue sky tower
gulls flap on the tenth floor

beneath the skein of geese,
their prow an imprint of landmarks,
smoke horizontally from the chimney

Three white horsetails in the twilight sky
resemble mentholated breaths
photographed by frosty eyes.

But the sun's ten minutes
fast in going down
the wind is up, fast blowing

curtains tight, forcing light
inwards and onto
the burrow of wintered sleepers.

A store of nuts
and an ice cream cone,
pots of soup and paddling pools

and an ant in the attic
with an atom of gold
it cannot spend,

others with tiny weathers
balanced like feathers
on the red and dripping nose of the air.

Postscript

From the bedroom
the fog is clearing,
we fall asleep on the hay
made when the sun
and our eyes were shining

Mull of Nowhere

2007-12-02T18:04:00.002Z

The Mull of Nowhere

I’ll pour a black coffee

Seated with cramps
I trace the engram of an Easter holiday
discernable by it’s amber inclusions, carbolic Malts
peat bogs and Harris tweed sheds…

the bloating will start after an hour

Above the B&B
cauliflower clouds clamp
round a razor of sunlight
cutting through the butter of my reverie

followed by a quaint lingering nausea

I’m neither here nor there, glad
to be stuck in the machair
where fulmar, chough, eagles do or dare
and treadmills go nowhere

I start by sniffing the bag of roast ground coffee

from a vantage rock
cypress black cormorants
glide like magnets over iron flat water.

but relinquish and prepare the stovetop pot

Adrift on the swelling moor
I recollect my hipflask for
dorsal ventral central heating…

and sup the distillate

I cannot vouch for my eyes but
beyond their limitations

it is the same with red wine and dairy products

I smell the salt
from the vacant sea

the doctor says don’t do it

brought closer by the buying
and selling transactions of an Atlantic breeze.

hospital tests indicate stones

Automated lighthouse, a Velasquez grey
strangled by an ivy of mist

trapped in the warm dark coves and islets

stands on a black volcanic ledge
in the middle of nowhere

of the Mull of Nowhere

This is Lobscouse

2007-12-01T17:42:00.004Z

Lobscouse intends to nurture brainchildren. A forum for discussing digressions and mispopular culture. Rake in its bin for cake and calm, phlegm and flames. So when there’s no where else to go but winter leave a deposit of sorts. All good things come to those that Lobscouse.