Friday, March 28, 2014

poem || Lawrence Upton

Final solutions



          (1)


into a darkness, empty;
one chance to wish,

to be glad, as if on sugar, to know
what happened, looking back,

everything? same to everyone
identical decorated information

a conversation below the hairline
barrier at the top of an engine

excluding the unauthorised from hesitation,
hands clutching, finger intermediaries,
helpless, miserable, swollen to fragile whining

the rustle of wind of a body
strangled on its beam, cracking
its head joke-like against serial vacancy


          (2)


turning up her stance, in
her demeanour, a lasting nervous
look, and it is light, emerging
clockwise from behind a top

of a face, wriggling eloquently,
dazzling micturation of propaganda,
trembling laughter, mechanism fully extended;
circuits break - open up; she’s home –

music playing from inside the memory,
cold condensing under the door,
possibility of another stringency,

to make love, to make money, an emergency
arrangement, running away in a corridor
of explanations we’ve heard echoed before

          (3)


still, sitting, with slanted line - landscape
allegories – how stupid may one get? anonymous
allegations? institutionalised
recognisability; and every where

magnified silence in this unwelcome day,
which went on, in the dry edge of his mouth
a determination towards criminality,
he was always respectful of the dead,

small eyes, non-committal, and a cruel neck,
searchlights the creatrix of astonishment
in his back; his muscular passivity

constructing artificial inspiration,
fumes ballooning in lungs of glad victims
falling gracelessly beneath his given word

          (4)


his arms I might strengthen
                                                a voice within
a very good girl murdered
                                                gradually
occurs to you
                             glossy colour pictures
quietly moving round their meaning
                                                                   vanishing
in terminii
                             heads being broken seals

she glanced with intensity
                                                          eating
rapidly
                   swallowing much half-chewed
                                                                             jaws clenched
absorbing and absorbed by absorption

he and she together in a set
                                                          a gaunt
serving of moment and nowhere
                                                          brushing
a suggestion
                             no more
                                                          it is enough
they are burned
                                      they are welded
                                                                             cold forged
such violence one finds admirable
face tilted towards a camera
                                                          wanting

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