Poem 376

I can’t see a stained cup without thinking of this poem … by murder I’m really meaning death,  death as the under note in everything (et in arcadia ego again) … I watched an interview recently with dead and gone Jackie Leven in which he said people fixate on the meaning of the words in poetry and song lyrics but the most important thing is cadence … this poem is one of those that’s a rush of images (or the beach on which waves of images break), it’s pulled not from the conscious mind and is all the more right and surefooted for that opening up and letting the pictures come … everything here makes sense in a different way and the commonality, the glue that holds it all together, is me as the tuning fork that struck and drew each resonating image from the ether … there’s echoes here of Jim Morrison’s stream of consciousness and rhythms, the cadence of which entered me early …

… I like all the images here, and the way the energy moves from exhausted stale and freighted with ennui through to something more active and enlivened, death as decay through to death as force, the poem comes alive as it rises to its feet and chants an invocation and celebration …

( I recognise the caterpillars up the ranchsliders from a childhood holiday when hundreds emerged from the lupins in the space of an hour … )

Old Coffee Cups

Where's murder?
                                    sleeping along the windowsill
deaf among plants bandaging light
across ceilings
                               murder caught in the x-ray sunbeams
curling magazines the fridge and freezer
purring touching cold white sides together
           in chill vibrations
murder here in the endless radio stations circling
bands of sound tuned through brown inners
of old coffee cups
                                    skin squeaking
on tired cushions murder curled
inside a vase water squeezing out slow bubbles
of oxygen streaking greenly up stems
murder in the repeated pattern of wallpaper
sickly flip-flopping on forever
the sound of pots shifting in cupboards
as the earth cools
                                     impressions of horses
in the shadows long heads tasting of dust
     here murder in the smothering blue sky
epileptic greenness slow blind poling wave
of caterpillars up the ranchsliders
murder rusting the trees
infusing blood to the rooster's eye
murder reciting names touching books
with illiterate charred fingers of praise
worshipping the intimate construction of corn
murder down between the feet of summer the hot soil
where spiders run
                                      murder prays
and the enclosed blood of every ear
hears its prayer