Nanopowrimo2021

At Camhanaich Because it is the slight hour, between night, what it becomes; we lose a little of ourselves, are grayed and faded, gilded in whichever way. This is the creep of feral creatures, the knock of nameless demigods who slip and shush into the conversation, are wired and loose limbed, liminal We are sleepy with the vague Sun, being born,dying each day, haunt blue in hope of fire as today crawls for tomorrow, as the day drags round its hours, as nervous as a grey bride dressed in a gown of maybe, the blurdom of the borders, belonging to all or no thing, when the one seeps to the other - dusk morning or dawn evening, thin ghosts of these half times.

 Nepenthe tenax Is not common Does not crowd our streets with its dustbin lid mouth Does not celebrate its ubiquity Does not get much in the way of an article on Wikipedia Does not spare the lip Does not care for the sun when it has a monkish belly full of fly prayers Does not care for winters Is not anything like your great aunt on your mother's side Is not the object of desire for raindrops grown fat and lazy in the canopy Is unaware of the instrument of itself, the mixture of the phallus and the womb, the aquaplane of vase,the veins of bulb. Its ancestors did not hide, exactly but lipsticked and erected themselves in rows in night glasshouses Is not poplar or popular Is not your mother's beauty Is not your father's suit though it contains multitudes by classification Is not your mournful trombone, is a cornucopic song Is not exactly like your fear but is, the sun soaking at the point most delicate Is no rose, but stranger Is not new, but so old it forgets Is not a sky p...

Avec conviction et avec une tristesse rigoureuse This song is to be played with a rigorous sadness The song is to be played with a light melancholy Though you can't hear my music, it plays in my film Piano creeps in the movie with a rigorous sadness My movie is building the sense of my character Shadows move around me with a rigorous sadness With muted laughter, the bit parts, the extras mime my lines with a rigorous sadness. I drink my coffee in the movie of me In the cafe where the worlds collide, the lives of others in many songs. The rain is a scene in the movie of me, on the actors' faces a rigorous sadness.

 Day 26..obscure emotion Fernweh...homesickness for somewhere you have never been Fernweh...homesickness for somewhere you have never been What is home, you ask? And I’m silent, though I want to say, it's what we are . The words you make say one thing when you mean another - a hiss like insects in the August language. The future is 10 hours drive and drift to an island where absolutely everybody wears your name, every profession is your namesake, and every friend you make will look like you. You say you'll go there when you're older- the path along the sticky tongue of land, speaking water's name, then, easy as a lizard sheds its tail, you'll be stone's throw across the sound, with boats built to carry only you and your own kin, shoring up those lullabies, beaching you for winter. Looks like a good spot to sit out the end of the world- an acre or so, a small croft on the ocean side where the land remembers, is borne upon its own back. Perhaps you’ll get that ho...

 Day 25, dreaded sestina. Confession.. I got the line scheme wrong,realised I had only 5 lines per stanza, ran out of time and gave up!  Kill dead your car on the hard shoulder,  open up your door, get out and look,  step through the gold fields  and keep on walking; soon you seem to float  - this this is how you vanish.   It doesn't take an accident to vanish-  careful, check the world over your shoulder,  open your eyes, wide blue and look.  The far fields dream their dreams, and keep  no notice of your progress - you can float.   If you have promises to keep,  forget them, darling, simply float  in the sky that blazes everywhere you look,  like drift and pollen, see they seed and vanish;  your mother waves one last time, turns her shoulder.   I know you want to be here, still you vanish,  can never stick the roots down, up and float.  It's cold, you shrug the new day over...

 Monster No I.. I the momster monster who would only pen words about myself. My horns are not outer but the other way My foxbrush curled for chance appearances Whether you see my claws or not depends on lunar cycles. Often, a monster squats on her own work Or she flounders-splashes, see the muddy waters Her ungraceful but oddly smallish footmarks stomp all over the vellum of the page She says she'll try to keep herself out of the present poem, but here We are- you can almost feel her breath as she fawns over the object and the subject opens her mouth, then devours them. She bursts through the door, through the paper of a drum, dressed in red and boredom. She devastates the queendom of 'not all about you'.

    Yes, we roost, birds on music on John Carpenter street- this is, has always been in the great city of London - we’re slickly honoured to find work here in crowlike sight, 75 metres long. She has the Unique Reference Number 8100298 in the Apocrypha Gazetteer. 7.27 metres above sea level, 23.6 miles North East of Woking, God knows how far from the centre of the earth   We speak Norse, we hiss the runes in flames, we scorch and strip. We have the curve and unconscience of snakes, we rear and reticulate, we viper and rail opinions. We layer and unlayer, beggar Shakespeare, plague pit, hyper roman, Celt. Maybe its because we’re Londoners, we sleuth through history, we are both ourselves and symbols, speak serpentine with knowledge - worms that call the apple England                

 To me, you are full peal, the tintinnabulation. You are the bell, my bell You tilt and pour out sound You knock the sides at funerals You call them to account You are the canons, and the crown, the neck and dome, the cold, curved shoulder The thickness of the waist, the etiquette of sound bow, the lip, the mouth, the tongue clapper You yoke in echoes You vibrate and resonate You send out sounds in waves There are times when they will come with rag and fur and silence to mute the sound of you Ignore those campanologists, their pulling of the rope, the gatherings of eight, ringing the changes One day, you'll call again, metal on metal, the strike and shush, all ritual, rung magic

The lexi gustatoric takes words tastes words, crams them in its gob and feels the flavour not just paper- meat and juice and sugar Church is dust and mice droppings gilded with dry lemon cake, could be devoured in two bites, but the lady prefers to savour it There are 2 kinds of people The binger and the  gourmet; it depends on your need for gratification I know a man who once delayed the taste of sherbert glass exploding on his tongue by half reading the love poetry of Cavafi Another stuffed a day old copy of the Sun in fist sized reads, each mouthful kebabish, grease and chemical, an aftertaste of jingoism like deepfat frying when he'd done, belching as he consumed such junk This is a comfort- I'm assured that Love, though nothing special does taste of cherries, distantly ...... The artist's husband felt the colours that he watched her through the aftenoons of painting in the sun bleached skeleton  of room He did not arrange them into rainbows, closed his eyes, dipped his...

Iodide Days Some say sowing silver into clouds won't work,  seeding the mist with doubts, all hail.   This experiment won't help sun shine,  but has a consequence, it threatens rain   You have never flown the aircraft over England,  (reserve and the modest mountains),  scattering the dry ice for each storm,  machine gunning the fields of so ish peace  But such birds growl   in the bright, sharp ozone of wild desert,  or when strange cumulonimbus is found,  lone and crystal as a hope forlorn,  morphing and drifting, the wide blue map of possibility

The fencers past year, an animal got in- candy bodies blood upon goat herd, jills- resegregate can't understand past year, an animal got in - cannot do the grass have to kick the hotheads under the mean bridges, row fences like a put up job past year, an animal got in - so gravely rabbit-tail - just slap corollary blood to gravelling clouds Willi, the hot, Jonas the other- husbanding past year, an animal got in - this year in words straying skins of us ate leaves, were chatting clouds like rabbit tails past year, an animal got in - anonymous, full tangled, eyes moved, not looking, honey smoky, the stakes want stranger shadows last year, an animal got in- they planted woods, a sunny day risen blood ring clouds, Folks ate candy This year, an animal got in - the children were delighted, a concrete winter poem. Now, we have proud fences, yes...

Caveat- I do like cheese...but less so in recent years..   When you decided my favourite food was cheese,  the wheel was set in motion.   I' d said it as a joke, now it's requirement.   You feed me for breakfast, fat curds with berries,  thickening in my stomach,  almost sour , the milkmaid skin  At night,yellow wedges of time,  waxy as candle light, sharp and old-   I pare the slices, thin as paper   The blue, peppered with mould,  a portrait with mildew of my grandmother,  complex on the delicate tongue- not for children  You say you'll buy a goat, white as halloumi,  keep her in the backyard, feed her sunny grass.  We'll call her Beyaz, coddle her dear milk  in a blue glass bowl, brided grey in muslin.   You'll nurse it under father's bed at night-   each morning, you can   feed me the sieved dreams

   Walker   I  Four hundred walks-  so glad of fresh air,  so tired of getting nowhere   Walk with me, along with me.   Flowers, please, that's all, flowers   Ii   Night walker- no one's   sure what you're escaping from,  moving towards   The Moon, the path- walk as if  your fairytale depends on it

 Penned    Magic of kind, a skill or commentary- how to draw the  animals of the world. Dancing archangels in quantum  ranks. The arcana of tiny beasts, the menagerie of  god. Faces of men on cats, important horses,   iconography of kings,a pack of fine killing hounds.  Names of particular saints,a shift in the perspective,   arielised birds' view of the weaveweft tiny fields, stole  land and the peasants caught in time, eternal harvest in the autumn book of gold.  I keep the blue for heaven,  and believe, hand trembling, in the margins, holy terror.

 Using an acrostic generator..no excuses..I was tired! I do like oddness of these automated things though  Talk much to say nothing,  happiness is love, nothing,  electronics say nothing,  sap the sauce, taste nothing  Man finds his enjoyment in eating,  under your feet a hawk wing,  good at destroying,  god has given women crying  Later soft groups passing,  every ignorant small thing  revolution for the smiling  shilling into morning.

Love Write a poem, telling her all the things you loved about her and find extraordinary in her. Tell her that she was your sun, your moon and your stars and that without her, the light has all but gone. Tell her that she is your tree of strength, your moonbeam of beauty and your rock of all ages. Ask that she reconsider leaving you and return to be by your side. Then pluck up the courage to send it to her or go and read it to her in person. Write a point, tempest her all the think-tanks you loved about her and find extraordinary in her. Tell her that she was your sundae, your mooring and your starters and that without her, the lightship has all but gone. Tell her that she is your tremor of stride, your moorland of bedbug and your rodent of all aggregates. Ask that she reconsider leaving you and return to be by your sideline. Then plume up the courtesan to send it to her or go and read it to her in perspective. Write a poisoner, temptation her all the thoraxes you loved about...

 Love Love shifted cases on the keyboard, l o v e From the silly marvellous it turned into the ordinarily miraculous, and was none the worst for that, shook itself and curled like a cat we didn't have. I love you in each strand of hair on your head, each 5 times replaced cell I love you in the minutiae of minutes seconds, in the second house of a quiet sun, in the wonder of the quotidian useful as household magic, giving and taking like slow, heavy weapons, deliriously ok

 Fear There was a thing I was scared of, absolutely, a thing that made the world stop around it, shudder to a halt. On the smash pavement, a still bird was a dead bird,was a bird whose wings froze time. What I was scared of, what shuddered me inside, what made me vibrate, was it might come to life, send the air and everything in it shivering and jolting, frankenstein's creature. Who would have guessed, the small thrush's stopped heart set us ticking? Who would have guessed, a museum of this- lamb and threadbare lion, strange dull birds, misshaped birds, encephalitic snow hare, tiny purse of mice, pulled skin of specied weasel, haunt of phantom chimpanzee, misremembered dogs? The child I was, the teacher dared the class to spend the night among the specimens and part of me was crying- bird dead, monkey dead, tiger dead, butterflies pinned, dead. Nothing would make it better, no electrification of the sawdust,of the joints , of the scooped spoon brain , rewired. Everything was ...

The 12 step guide to happiness It was April then, a mean cold snap - I listened to my wife, her voice birdsong in Germany- this happiness of yours will wreck your life; you know a man your age ought to be restless. I told her I was awed by things I saw: the everyday of sun yolk on raw skyshell, the brilliance of us shining in our heads. We met at the Church Hall, evangelist no frills, sat with our cold coffee, plastic cups One laughing man among us stacked them high, an architect of makeshift, such an optimist Said, I was once a happy fool like you, bluebirds wherever, rainbows, bleeding hearts- I 'll help you make a start at being unhappy Close your ears to music, plug with wax, Shut your eyes to beauty, awful, lovely. Don't get used to comfort, hug yourself, never close your eyes, consider vastness, your happy smallness in it You are an island , fine black ash for sand, You are a bad worst enemy, try hating Set an end date, meet it prompt by working all the hours you ha...

  Ohm machine to prove Ohm's law Flow gives to flow, measure in colombs and jewels (sic), doves and stones, the capacitor and the resistance. I is R and E is I , R formula- Ohm is proving ohm again Storage jar for chaste-tree seeds I keep them in the dark room, in a cool jar- the seeds stay pure -  no friction, split,  no suddening green shoot. The chaste tree stands alone, is blossom for itself. Make tea if you are thirsty, boil desires to essence, sip them slow. Remember, I am just apothecary- Kill or cure, what do I know? On the worrying amount of surgical implements Speculum rust, silver dilator, ebony trephine, Speculum for the illuminated spirit (aural), Speculum steel large, reticulator small. Sheffield forceps, canulae 1,2,3, widening their necks, Clamp for the flow, retractor for the narrow cage, Heavy drill for jawjaw, a great god vascular gauge. Pair of beaked bone cutters, probe and guillotine, Kit of nested instruments, screw and knife, syringe, One slender...

 Not sonnets, but 14 lines each My favourite superhero Is bruised, bruises. We are in a dark room, tending our wounds. We are often in the dark.It's important we feel this, important that you see we're human. We punch as we learned, straight arm and fist, no haymaker.Shouldn't bleed, but does, from tiny cuts in superskin.What we do best is exist, are human. Can you imagine what power is, burning in the veins, neon blood, or quiet as the salt in oceans, or being made of starstuff, or understanding others' minds? We're born with a mutation of ourselves- not scared, we have abilities- move seconds at a time into the future, see clearly to the past, a push and pull, atomic And we have created words And we have created worlds My favourite Saint You buy the red votive candle, put it by your bed, the wax melts, carmine, white, into a rapture. I don't tell you that secretly, I stole the right tibia of St Anonymous the Kind from its golden capsule in St Marks in the cryp...

  "Once I dreamt of a form of poetry created by the sound of feet walking in the grass."-    Cecilia Vicuna 1. ..by the sound of feet on grass, if I could find it, my feet on paving, sound of ground and breath . Yes, I can find my feet, I can hear my tread - imagine grass beneath and when I reach it, shed my city shoes, careless, the electric happens- nerve and blade and fuse connect alive and make a beaten track, wild through the woods back home. Yes, green grass and sound and I know music 2 . This is how we walk now, the seeds of grass are buried eight feet deep under the concrete- cracks appear. My bones ache ancient from all this hobbled walking- heel toe heel toe heel, so I and my chiropodist collide, we disagree on methods: why do you walk like you're dancing? She asks, now she's a choreographer, Feuillet marks on Hobart paving, glass teeth means en pointe; it ends up crippling. Ancestors ghost my muscles,  like relics of old saints, and we step side to ...

13 deaths of 8th April 944  –  Wang Yanxi , Chinese emperor Far too many brothers and a wife he could not refuse. At night,  he felt alone and vast, an Empire 967  –  Mu'izz al-Dawla , Buyid emir On the last day, as he drowned, he was aware that he was watched by the forgotten Ibis God 1492  –  Lorenzo de' Medici , Italian nobleman Beetlesque in his red porphyry shell, turned upside down by omens. See the lightning, ghosts, the fighting of the Palace lions 1608 -  Magdalen_Dacre  , noblewoman How, by means of keeping quiet and mum, of wearing linen coarse beneath the velvet, the lady's maid can keep her head 1861  –  Elisha Otis , inventor of the elevator Invention is the cable keeping us from falling. Still we travel from the penthouse to the basement 1950  –  Vaslav Nijinsky , dancer and choreographer Inevitable and graceless gravity, death of a dancer in Virginia Water.  Oh terrible,outrageous 20th centur...

My brother feels the cold. When we  walk back from school, he  shows his hands, tips of his fingers blue. He  laughs, because they're numb. We  laugh because he's numb. He  says it hurts though, this froze  weather- when the feeling's back, he  swears it aches like ghosts.

 Fib Day 7... feeling uninspired, but using, from Napowrimo site, the 'Fib' form: 1/1/2/3/5/8, inspired by the Fibonacci sequence, apparently.  We   lie  because  each sleeper   wants to conjure up   unreal, protective magic   pinned with ribbons like a war map,   a cat's cradle song:   these limits   cannot   show   us,   raw,   just what  we've cooked up-  like the trick with gold-  just keep it there, under your tongue   till  you're ready for invention   metaphysical-   swallowing   words dry,  like  pills

Some imagine that the Gods see things like us: vague overlook, big macro, long-sighted to a fault- surface dwellers, so everything looks smooth when nothing is.  I imagine the inverse- they are microcosmonauts, slowed to an inaction by dwelling on the details,a variegation of mundanity- each bloom and whorl of skin cells, teem of matter, the ziggurats of salt grains,  the lattices of nylon- everything mad-busy, intricate, so that real attention  would be too much to bear- just like the Dutch opticians with those spectacles,  howling down the 17th century streets, preaching and awestruck, unable to communicate the details , all this detail

  5th #PoetryPrompt was to go to Google Image Search and type in "dream imagery". Pick a picture. I did, then went off at a tangent - reading the article the picture came from...and thinking about when I suffered from sleep paralysis “When we fall asleep, where do we go?”    asks Billie #2,  asks Billie Eyelash (children’s nickname) Billie of the sleep Billie quoted in the dream enquiry or   I could show you, garish, clichéweird, the art of someone else’s dream  or   I could tell you of phosphorescence, the city in the sea that had no side and bled rooms over cliffs and here we lived recurring, and it wasn’t bad, even with the birds  or   I can tell you where I like to go, out of myself but standing to the left, slight phase jump echoes, leaves a jellyfish or traces, smidge of me atomic across blur, across the hours while, I the dreamer, aren’t there but here in my dream job, in my dream house the more ...

Cryptozoologica Not gryphon phoenix fakecorn wolpertinge- I speak to you about another creature, small of brow and weak of arm. I speak to you of the skinny shiver monkey. I speak to you of the godimal, the clever beast who's not as clever as it thinks has never learned not to spoil where it sleeps, has never learned moderation- how not to gorge itself to stillness. We in the department watch and learn- the creatures too, ape themselves in glass, laugh and cry, freeze and acrobat I write notes in my cramped hand, not used to their small instruments. I paint them- great, red and terrible of shadow- not how they seem, pacing in a cage, skin squared with wires, but how they really are, the haunters of our future selves; neighbours in a mutual captivity 

 Easter -small town passion play:   Tuesday, back to work-   Mary to her Iceland shift.  Guess what Jesus did?   Was a carpenter-  saw him at a party once,   fixing the decking   Remember he brought  all that wine and beer for free,  fed us hungry guests?   Saw him at the pool-   He was in the deep end,  waved as he tread water

 Weathermen  If you taste the weather, beware of reading on- If you think you know real blue, don't read on. There's a secret to all things , a knack you never knew, a billion versions of the universe. Everyone you love feels too, everyone sings the colour blue their own way The sky Too

Sleepy Spring airport-  no flocks of flight attendants call and flutter I travel now  to see people, not places,  faces,not landscape,   read maps of the heart.  I write postcards in red ink  wishing you were here

Every little burden bird acts as a minimum, mnemonic. Pew pew pew They fly so aggressive Pew pew pew Even though they're playing from one wall to another Pew pew pew Hit me like St Francis, every little bird Staying alive is difficult Pew pew pew Some weapons have feathers, even though it's playing The feathers stuck with feathers Pew pew pew Staying alive is difficult, tree holds its arms out Hit me like St Francis  Pew pew pew

 Everyone's learning, everyone can learn. Everyone's choosing different things, there's a thousand pathways. It's like you drew the brain. Flowers for synapses. Your brother lived in Roman Britain, Your mother, the early feminism of the Brontes, Your neighbour, the formation of effective management teams, You, esoterica of music. It's like a neighbourhood- you haven't lived there long, but you belong. You skip through orientation videos, tongue and chew new words, tasting that new vocabulary, glossary blood like inky sugar Did you know about echolalia going in? Did you feel your brain, bones clicking like the animal it is? All creatures of the Mooc

There is nothing natural in nature- this not a fault.  I love that the lemon is chimera,  the child of orange and sour lime; that women in the shade of the shoulders of mountains dreamed of this when they thought to tie the trees together in a blending or a marriage Not for the job of eating, but for the idea,  for the use of taste, for flavour, preservation as they did with words, millenia ago,  both bold and sharp, setting the teeth on edge , fire and a little sweetness, chemistry as alchemy Because of them, I see in my mind's eye, in my own mythology, this is how it is, the colour yellow