poetry

Setlist Poem 17/09/2015

Tell a god while you are crouching under 

your half of the bunk bed. Your brother

might not come home. You know

a boy who knows Hesporous is the opposite

of an evening star. It’s cloudy and what he said

means nothing to you. Place a hacksaw

twice under your rib. Watch it in the wing mirror

of a car that hasn’t arrived yet. 

Tell an absent fairy you had a wish about today.

It listens by making aeroplane sounds 

for a thousand miles. You’re just talking 

to half a jaw, hand held,

that knows wood-anatomy,

that can’t answer back. Driveway light

cuts out. Wait for Hesperous.

The cerealbox bland-surprise is a sponge

astronaut toy, never shrinking,

not even in hours underwater. 

Find the puffy faced boy of the first prayer

eating from a bowl. 

Don’t tell him you were scared.

Tour Venue Poem

The art house is painted in celebrated
madness,
thread dresses no one owns,
scraps of books made into light.
The asylum collects people celibate
from themselves. The advice that occurs
most to me is stop working, leave the house.
The steamboat will carry on its drift
with everyone aboard.
I can eat lime-rind all I want,
it won’t bleach my smile,
it’s something to believe.
Cartoon physics scare some people.
If you can shift radio to mute,
you’re doing more than sleeping.
I met the thirsty scholar as he drank
a city of its propaganda.
He is going to write a cave of thesis
that learns about the railway inside
of us, how we can be proud of always going.

Set List Poem 20/03/2015

Pushing through the family of orphan-spark
coming out of the fire’s head,
I take time finding Dad on the otherside.
Back at camp, I tear a tent in tantrum.
Silhouettes do the sidewinder
in the forest. No train nearby.
I can hear everything. Dad stays
away until morning, tells me
he had to go looking for lost boys,
they could have been eaten by a Kraken
or leaf demon or scout-leader-gone-wrong.
I love how much of him can be fiction
while he makes a magnet of the world
onto himself. It’s something Christ
gave him, he says. His family
is always inside, all that he sees.

Set List Poem 20/03/2015 – Busking

We have built a museum in the shape of a vinyl player.
It only holds good music, real music.
The song tuning the air at the moment
has one lyric. Fuck the BBC. I agree.
I have a pet here that is obsessed
with where the music comes from,
what spark falls into me when listening
to know. I go with whatever stays,
which is intentional vagueness.
If you put a magnet to the music,
it gets a grizzly-bear affect, like Dad
when I argue that the Blondie drummer
is average. All the visitors to the museum
have invented their own genres.
The person in front of me, shiny
with drugs, calls this acoustica,
but can’t specify why,
which is also the point, but she arches,
her body needs the definition.
The lyrics are now about someone
bathing in a tub of cellophane,
until they can’t breathe,
the casual gift of mock-water stretched
over them and the lover in the song
is lowered into a microwave to test
their faith. A review of the song
is that Houdini was a fetish artist.
After hearing this, a fighter in the room
will start a band called Rubber-Unite.
Their hit will be Rosemary, which discusses
outrageous concepts such as diet
and additions to cannibalistic meat habits.
I will think about my grandma when I listen.
I never knew what music she liked.
Our slogan for the museum is Pray.
People seem to know that before they enter.

Set List Poem 19/03/2015

I can find a time of night
that my body will train a spark,
deliver it to the past-boys
I have died through,
their silhouettes thrashed
off their skin, gathered in a pool,
trembling, a scared-heart size
bulb, the bad idea I placed
in the ground for love
to grow. All its leaves
are magnet-snatched plane parts.
I can find a time of day
that isn’t wreckage,
that is an hour, a minute, a second
spent exploring a tear,
hiding my hand in all that is missing.

Set List Poem 18/03/2015

In the box where we kept love illustrations,
I have put the map of a city
I drove toy cars around
when Houdini taught me the locks
of a space can change
if you think infinity. Like school.
We were small and wrapped
in tear-pages in the library.
The sun is a lightbulb spark.
There is a man in this foldable city
who stays in the same place,
weird from a heart-letter,
navigating time at the speed of my hands.
I have sold him an advert.
It says, That’s not lightning, it’s cocaine, boys!
He gets the jitters, vibrates his own form,
walks to the place a train station will exist
when I can set magnets at either side
of this continent and the metal
will know where to travel between.

The box is a well of handles
to doors that have retired
and abandoned shells we took
from the sea. It’s in here
that I know I never bought roses.
You thought it was a warped present
to get someone, something that dies.

I gather the shells from inside.
I’ll donate them to a vase maker,
they believe in life.
I’ll lock the handles into the air,
see what else I can open.