Month: August 2017

Song Of The Dung Beetle

 

Begin the curve of the world

you become

 

Stretch and roll out the land

into a little continual womb

on which to dance

and discover

 

a laughing elasticity

to circumference.

 

Upside down balance

backwards

 

Legs translate the muttering

of stars effortless touch

 

Synchronise solar sighs

into straight paths

 

Do not ask, there is no code

but course, the disembodied voice

of cosmos

 

Organism sing whole

the scatterings of continent

 

Dew settle restless into

collective sediment

 

and let setting sweat

remembrance

 

∞

 

One must mix gravel and grit

in the round gut of a drum

mortal must help shape

the colour brown,

 

Rib the night with wind

whipped stick, the mixture

will soon sit quick – smooth

the roof over our cool dark pit,

plaster the dome walls and still the heat –

a gourd – this hut of skin, flesh and/organ

will wrinkle and crack in umbels of light,

 

peaking its head like a worm

does the splits, we drift

and move along as morning, learn

the soft turbulence of soil, become

the tuberous fold of the world’s home

 

Rolling and tumbling

tumbling and rolling

loosen like surf

 

Journey man – Journey bug – Nomad

and astronomer, carry what you cannot

and unravel unstable as song

the remainders of the longest beyond

 

Rolling and tumbling

 

tumbling and rolling

 

travel like surf

 

You passage of earth

 

∞

 

Termites furrow and tunnel

blindly woven webs, networks

branch underground

 

The mound becomes

a mountain

and rain returns us

back to the ground

 

 

Go around,

 

Disturb the Ant lion

and fall into its curse

collapse curvature

and wall in

on itself

 

let the circle

get caught – open

 

∞

 

Sun sunk and gone

sun sunk and gone a’

runnin n a’ jumpin – archin’

like a blue striped marlin

 

parts water to come back –

 

a boomerang ping-ponging

in action.

 

Shit son,

sun don’t know how to act

 

It’s a scab, a shell

a flesh-

less cuttlefish. Washed

up urchin orb

drawing into the shore

 

The law of tomorrow

 

crawl out. Glance

 

Have no choice

but to leave your body there

 

and start the dance again

 

The turning tide will bring

away the incessance

of daylight

Towards A Metaphysician’s Paradise

 

O atomless ancestor, unending

gesture of genesis

you action

that descends doubtless

upon the highest heaven

 

you chance

of enlightenment

and silence – all-at-once-

plunge of nothingness

 

you rest in loudest tempest

and acrobat of expansion, dwell-

er of becoming

 

lay your way in waves

your wake is a snake

laid in layers of waking

 

disentangle and form, you

figureless symbol, unhinge,

blind opening of angle,

 

you alchemical throw that turns

the skimming stone into an archipelago,

drums and lips, spills and distinguishes

this pellucid metamorphosis

 

yes you, residuum of creation

must be heard in imagination

the blossoming frond

and the tendril that curls,

 

the purr of wave and waterfall,

the dreamtime you arise behind

 

you astronaut of the ocean

and submarine of sky,

you sea of sun and mountain

of clustered vapour,

 

you alembic angel, condensing

sensation of dispersal, essential

ineffable

 

resolve, you shy – interjecting phenomenon

 

lonely listener in the midday anemone

of moon, interloper, here welcome

to answer the needless ticking

of speech and indecision

 

oh, you ongoing project-

ion of the poem, motion after which I

fumble for – the onward roll

of afternoon

downwards

toward possible

 

and the getting there

of nightfall coming

together a-

part—

 

The answer

 

always forming

Footholds and Soles

 

                 We walk in footsteps we have never owned

dance in gestures of the animal who awakens us

 

amorphous – within the stone we hold

 

We were born old

in the knowhow of the baobab

 

We saw the mangroves

as their shadows wore holes

in our body

 

Aunty ocean told us

this was soul

 

before it came to be

sewn-

 

it poured us in petrichor-

the smell of once was

 

whose nearness still

lingers here – there

 

restless familiar

as dust and chance

wake the absurd

 

 

∞

 

 

There was a colobus, long

lost but passed before us – outstretched

in the palm of the afterwards

 

we asked her about otherness

and she burst outwards in

arcs of laughter

 

is that enough for you, if not, where to?

 

∞

 

Marabous stalk somnambulant, beyond

the where-from of the oncoming

horizon, a chorus of slurred consonants

thrum-throng and call to us

swarmed within the wind, sweeping

up our tonsils, we hear a tickle

creep through – out inside

 

the opening O of vocal

spontaneous   call-of-the-owl

pulses life into the gulf

of our tired vowels

 

 

∞

 

The elephant’s little cousin

shrieks a little louder

than you could believe

 

crescendoing and

slowing pure in-

tensity

 

spirit reaching full

for pitch

 

tearing to construct

and surpass its own

echo –

 

let go

 

little Pimbi, grow.

 

∞

 

The Octopus knows

the color of before,

head of water

like yours was air

 

He spoke of a chameleon, who

blinked in his inward blink,

 

a wisdom older than thinking

 

a riddle to leave us there

nowhere but aware:

 

 

                  pierce your skin as it wrinkles 

                  in a rhythm of ghosts, those 

                 animate willings – touch and listens 

                  are vision,

 

                  see, you stubborn goat

 

                  you are

                  the hum the

                                      sum humming sun-

                                                                      bird,

                                                                                   the answer to the conundrum

                                                                                   the hum-anima/l

                                                                                            

                                                                                                        

 

                  the world is a walkabout, if but                           

                  an oyster          an odd choice 

                  of your words 

 

                 language is but land, sand and and 

 

The trail of voice

tailing inseparable

from yours

 

To listen to the earth

is at once the comfort

of being –

 

 

heard

Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone

 

 

If you skim a stone over the rolling ocean

and watch it pour long into the horizon

it will smooth onto your palm

the tropic Capricorn

 

If you skip a seed along the ever same ocean

to watch it grow in another land, a home

for the birds and bees, pollinators

of your memories

 

Will you still keep throwing

seed after stone, stone after seed

until fluidity leaps from its lips

 

and it, itself, flickers in speech

 

begins beginning its own riddle of rhythm

blissfully waking ripples

with the nimble feet of a flying fish

skilfully dipping and teasing the surface,

freeing the ceiling, singing with

the wind over the reef –

nothing is ever complete

 

Laughter, laughter, further and further

everywhere the expanse expanded bouncing

bounded outward and un-encompassed

from its birth-pod of cloud

and ocean the cosmos

of sound and gas

 

Until the laughter did burst the rupture

reverberating all around, soft and loud

 

and mirth emerged in one lasting dance

 

And you, reaching all distance

kept this feeling kindled

inside of a miniature heartbeat

 

 

 

 

 

I shed a stone that iterated infinitesimal,

a note skidding headlong into another kingdom

where every door lay ajar, and every path

 

fed the avalanche of sun

 

An iridescent pebble that grew to song

before it knew I was gone

to sky to dream

a loophole in the dream

 

The largest part of small

becoming a hum

 

like I became the stone