a skeleton, pointing

                                               in Poe

the lust for what lies underground:

dog digging: dream of the bone-burial,

paw-scrape on earth, & always, for us,

the love of gold lifted, reawakened

by light to glow again.

                

                                               how one tale nests

in another: islands hatching, story bred

from story; before birth we wait in warmth,

encircled by unbroken waters, careless

of a future of coasts, their limits, yet

each bound book rests within the walls

of telling.

                   what warns is the dead sailor:

hands raised above his head like a diver;

taking the bearing from his rigid

fingers, he points to a rifled grave –

two guineas left to glint in the ground.

     & now what wealth is to be found

before the penny pieces, lids lacking

lustre, are placed proud over the eyes?

hidden in a cave are shadows of treasure:

clouded mirroring of the concealed prize.

the double voice of Captain Flint haunts the island

cloud-coloured woods   gaunt pines

hot mist-tissue from the marsh

set against silence:    the sea’s

rip, its white-scar roar

    blasting

                  reverb drum

on rock

                   issuing spray

parrot squawk –

       & clipped, the sound’s

debased     its re-play

numbs, re-echoing eights

         *

grave-man talk –

  & an old song

  stunning from the trees:

   tremor

       in the

             notes

   ravings on death –& rum

no spirit with an echo

            *

           from larger night’s

speckled flow

   a dying star –

crucible of silver

      last gift of the supernova

            *

in the lesser dark of the bone’s homeland the bar silver & the arms still

lie … where Flint buried them/ always the absence of what’s not raised

from earth/ resting place of unlit treasure/ soiled & under/assets over

silver, escaping

the art of the exit –

to slip from the ship

& away to land; the maroon

rowed; Silver, no fool,

his craft that of knowing

how to kill, when to flee,

the plunder stowed plinking

within his sack, waiting

for forenoon to furbish

the glint on coinage,

a new life incognito

implicit in its weight

& gleam; yet his mulatto

wife – & the bird, jingling

its phrase from a pocket-

beak, remain

          now freed from the page

John re-forms, speaking of/

for/from silver on the screen.

forever the i-con of the island

chouses: the greed-hexed

cross noting the spot

arouses the desire for gain:

to dig down through the plot,

the strata under the ground,

& find the stark skeleton

of the text, bones of desire,

flesh-stripped, & two pieces

left to be found.

                                stay for

the credits: names rolling up

into the dark; first, there was

the word – the splendour

of lexis & lux; soon the last reel:

the days about to be rewound

onto the spool, end-stopped.

what lies behind the backdrop–

the riddle marked with an X?

Arcanum, supposedly

secret: yet he claimed,

confirming the Kabbalah,

they are us & all gone souls

translated to heaven:

stars & tarry darkness

shaped as The Grand Man,

fluid in manifestation:

what was first, the unknown

force, no longer occulted,

presenting a visible image,

multiplying from the source

& now they are killing

angels-in-waiting, shredding

the lineaments of god in them:

the starved, beheaded dead;

the shrapnel-rent, cluster-bombed

raped & killed, howitzer-hit dead;

the air to surface, surface to air,

&, it’s said, the anti-oxygenated

(fully vacuumed), finessed further

than flame fougasse, the every bit

of thermo-barbaric-blasted dead:

fuel percentage perfected,

heat & pressure – fireball to murder-wave,

the vampirizing of air, the ruptures:

end game of broken lungs

Note: For more on the nature of angels and the theology behind the doctrine of Homo Maximus or the Grand Man see the work of the eighteenth-century mystic and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg. While it is hard to credit this cosmology in a more secular age, the author believes that such notions retain their interest and suggestive resonance.

the trees tall & sun-caught in green baskets

                   of air, an intricate

leaf weave, rewickering with the breeze’s

                   touch; above the broad

walk, an overhang, the arches, supple

                  to summer’s falling

gold, filled with willow talk, its wind-swishes:

                  don’t hang your flowers

on my branch for fear that you’ll drown;   at dusk.

                you will hear my roots

whispering when I raise myself from earth,

                murmuring what words

as I follow you all of your way home

             here light leaks sallow

sap, essence of the yearly rings, record

             of green time, & then

out from the ferns the boys walk: please see

            our silvester dance,

they say; their moves delicate & wild: small

            creatures’ shinny-paw

on the ground, yet the unison of feet

            is human, though there’s

no song, no sound as with heads down they hear

            the chords from below,

playing the soil’s stones & rock notated

          on the strata’s score,

& loyal to the deep conductor’s beat.

hat hanging on a peg
in a dark hall forgets
its wearer, who dined
years ago & dashed
out the hour rain halted no one watching
as he drove over
the bare hill, heading
for unsure sunlight
*
the key to a door
found in the dust
of a deep drawer
catches a dull light
& opens nothing long demolished
house, a memory
of a stairwell, no
steps locked in air
*
the hour picks a young
man off the street:
a placard has his
words now protesting
in time without him how marching mothers
wave their sons’ faces
in the harsh daylight,
hold them to history
*
a plane vanishing,
plucked from an arc
over earth - imagine
its tail plumed for wa-
ter, a nose-down death six hundred eyes
staring up at a dark
screen: the vertigo
of no arrivals