Canaries in a Coal Mine

Gran Canary, 2011

I sit on a boulder that harbours a pregnant explosion;
unpredictable and total in its perennial extinctive catharsis;
and listen for a seismic whisper in this calm basaltine night.

I lie on a volcanic sheath;
separating me from the magmatic plumage of mantle convection;
and wonder if the grasses of the world will tonight forever conceal their blades.

I look up at a billion burning suns;
here, squinting specks of sugar in the obsidian void;
and ask the void my conflagrant questions about our inexorable tectonic fate.

Fire above me.
Fire below me.
Cold in the wind's midnight breath.

ETERNITY

struggling against entropy
struggling against the end
the salience of death
a surge in surgery
you can't fight decay
new generations tell ancient tales of elixirs and snake oil
superhero prisoners

let the snow queen in
everything south of horizon screams the end of days
opaque with lack of sustainability
carrier bag tummbleweeds skirt across reticent tarmac
coal and concrete frame and fuel all we have become
we close the walls in on ourselves
like a child
hide in the shade, cower from mutagenic light
lest reality be seen

eat your silicon wafers
lifeless buds whisper in your ear
the little plastic voices in your head
the little shards in all our hearts
surrounded by mirrors
that make even the loveliest landscapes look like boiled spinach
as we sing our self conscious dirge
the devil chases us with his magnifying glass
hold it high, high
high as heaven
so that god herself may recoil


whereeesa? that's weird. thought i lost the "original" draft of this on the computer, immediately tried to re-write it with what was still in my head, but just now weeks later, i must have dragged the original into a different folder (pet peeve! why not have a pop-up reminder when doing that under a particular transition rate). anyway, interesting to compare the two


snow queen

in this expanse, where every object south of
the horizon screams the coming end,
degenerate in its lack of sustainability,
the opaque decadence is clear as mud.

post-modern tumbleweeds, skating across reticent tarmac.

a surge in surgery, struggling against entropy,
struggling against mortality, against the salience of death.

a new generation tells an old tale of elixirs and snake oil,
renewing immortal fables.
we bring the walls in on us.
the endless plugs and the little plastic voices in our heads
lifeless buds and parasitic wires.

the life of shade and surrounding black mirrors,
that make even the loveliest landscapes look like boiled spinach
in our hearts the microscopic shards
estranged silicon wafers through which we act
for shame, for shame
as we sing our self-conscious dirge
an ambient throbbing moan, devoid of words
the devil chases us with his looking glass
hold it high, high
until even god recoils

folding bags

choking on smoke and airborn grease
carbon monoxide clinging to my cluttered oesophagus
spine of rope
ribs like a spring
i am an accordion
a book of wafers
wood and diseased glue
dead fabric unweaving
flakes of unplanned origami
the slow scrunch
the yellow sheets
wrinkle
a brief moment of pleasure as i open a tin of beer
anticipating the characteristic metalic squelch
the reassuring inevitability of seals being broken
if you look hard you can watch the pulse
dissapear
minor chords on wire fibres
i conduct my orchestra of coat hangers
the loose grip rippling strings
the croak made by rubbing against ribbed metal
shells from beaches as fingertips
getting smaller
sandpaper smooth