#388 - catbook

 

20. i.21

388

2.22

catbook

 

found myself from here to a blog

where… (may I confide?)

the herding of cats is a tragical matter

 

they land on someone else’s feet

invariable rule (I mean always)

like the lives…

as many clouds as heavens up

so that they could be time lords

(your Cleopatra’s were Mehitabel)

queenly as

have you seen them breathless, bumbling?

proof there could be heart

 

to always sphinx and riddle

(pub haunted)

 

for I will consider their madness mine

 

how many rooms will the one cat swing?

it is the political animal

they worship a ball of fur

they choke down cheese for a mouse

 

cats are allergic to community

only breed by lust

or laxly

as in habit on heat

then this many milking

 

soundlessly they crawl over the keys

pounce, picture their dinner too

on catbook

(fearful a certain kind of remark)

 

scatter of scat to show

they are wonders

evolution proof

we have made them litter

and bestow the bowl

 

dinosaurs never knew

how precious the tribe of tiger

 

smaller and slink you’d think

but no, the cats are evermore

 

we herd them like the stars above

in that their trappings all ermine far

 

play with prey

 

wrap round the legs

you’ll get a shock

 

cats are static

too lazy to growl

 

the wild is not enough for them

they will get the tongue got

 

are all maw for sport

 

damage they do to possum world

and bird

just a chase of kitten twine!

elegant at kill!

and kid ourselves at bidding

come when called

 

have their own channel now

o cute o cute

though they look all the same undressed

and some cannot retract, resile

 

consider your cat companion

where?

and how Dick was outwhitted

 

it’s a cat does

haughty proud

who doesn’t love that devil may care?

whose familiar?

 

cat and moon

get mousey

 

we bring dinner down to their level

 

their yoga is only to mock us

may look at a king and just laugh 

#387 - tianwen tu

20. i.21

387

2.21

tianwen tu

ekphrastic for a Song Dynasty star map

 

I consider them cities of light

the point made wide

and many as tongues to tell

 

cross, scratch

a turn of mansions

instruments

some picnic, this the rug

 

perfect the uses of things as they seem

 

edged arrows, the spider come

 

there must have been a tiny tear

 

not joining the dots

to kingdom past river

 

flit insects smaller than we see

elliptic eliptricks

can’t show this whizz

 

clouds of star

and star obscuring

 

moonlit to a tide returned

and see the daylight creatures

bolted to the dark of time

 

they know the circles bent

truths of how we came

 

monsters of imagining

 

utensils, flinted bone

mud thrown

mainly ladders

 

all tighter to the centre

 

dragons!

of the deep and flown

 

respective eternities

boy girl across the river

 

we live in a far crease folded

worn to light

is how we know

 

as the caged bird

under the blanket frays

to glimpse a moted planetstream

 

all perfect because stone

 

and if the singing stops

all of this sky falls down

 

then the blinding

of a day begins

and we will name the star

our own

#386 - lost

20. i.20

386

2.20

lost

(little ode to)

 

devotion

can’t think of where I’d rather

but

lost in my own clothes and moment

in among until

hello

you tell me

at last longing

lost various parts of the day

 

many were gone in a dress or suit

and some just in their undies

or

in this one skin and swim

 

for in the words for instance

 

lost at last in the map…

that’s arrived!

 

lost dots and lines

and counting

in mirth

and smirk

 

in own thoughts

and in those of others

eyes up in the overstory

 

lost in love

for a song no less

in a fridge of too much choice

 

fair beckoning we brought to be

lost in the printed circuit

 

among tigers

down the hatch

in my own midst

 

lost in the very boots of a kick

lost in the laces

in fair weather

and the zoo of if

 

below decks

so at sea

 

with without you

for a prayer where we’re gone

 

comedically and come to the punch

 

to the lines

 

lost where you’ll find me

all swing and ponder

in the day consisting

and lost, at home

in the hammock of lull

or lol

just where I am

#385 - capsule

 

19.i.21

385

2.19

capsule

 

we see them where they were

because each to own now

flicker out and back in

 

most natural thing in the world we are

and ask the year, the date, the why

 

we can deliver warnings

stay somewhere safe when the war will be

not London in the blitz or my time  

I can’t explain, you won’t be there

 

in the parlour children playing

never see us strangers

or notice the coming going

we wait for the radio in those days

a future from the air or none

 

there are two kinds of characters

here and

those who know, won’t

memory

 

nothing I tell must change a thing

but this is the butterfly’s tilt

 

everyone is distracted by time

and most of all themselves

fascination of shoes for instance

but I’m guessing there

 

if my father, then a ghost

fails to return

so a mother’s grief

each to own now

 

bakelite and the magic eye

 

we twiddle

 

to travel

we take the pillow road

heads stuffed with our own day

 

who’ll remember the visitings

when ones to be come to us

as they must have

 

one forgets to mark the question

 

it’s where we were sunlit

so saw only blinding

truth - no need of saying it

here now

and flickering gone

 

most natural thing in the world  

#384 - before the garden

 

18.i.21

384

2.18

before the garden

for ataraxia

 

all fours we

when no weed grew

 

riff of the up with wings

and strew

such random attentions

 

antennae, paws, claws, beak

no hands! no feet!

a drift along in

 

days of goanna

snake its own religion then

 

I had not been discovered

 

the garden!

 

I mean time

which is always a place before

was baby smooth, no inkling

 

clouds learning sky then

 

everyone was a refugee

no names changed yet to be safe

but that didn’t mean there was no pretending

or hide n seek

deep in bole or branches

 

think afternoons fawn

avant le pique-nique

or take the conference of the ants

 

who knew what weaving?

hats to invent

and insurrect

          eyes up

by creek or in sea edgings

all before

 

if love were just a flower

no one yet said spring

                                                      

because was yet to come

roar was wave or storm

and still

 

a tractor in imagining

all sang, none spoke

in the seed would

shell burst

 

everyone fit fighting

drought and in the running

pollen on a whiff

 

came to the conquest in arrows

 

most well camouflaged back in the day

 

you can say dream or forest

none had ever thought so far

still all on the way

 

delicious enemy!

 

blew in

soft hours of the often mist

tricks unnumbered

 

must have been waiting for what?

 

there was no gate

and no forget

yet swung the hinge to creak

 

flew

and much tunneling

crept

 

may I describe who grew till the garden?

that catalogue’s long lost

 

shelter lost won’t know where                         

but blow it off

 

nor was a holy silence

but every wish at once

 

death known by smell alone

 

trick of a naked thing

conversation

fickle winded

jungle to the law

 

you couldn’t pay to be

and still until

play possum

 

none yet lost in the adventure

unnamed days came went

and at the end of each

animal deciding

 

all whimsy in the light to trip

everyone was home

everyone was there