John Wilkinson

1.

Merest motion sheds light, then light whose process

              sheds leaves from silhouettes, dissolves.

The teeter path wants a flood

or aftershock to heave its depths, stuffed lying fallow,

                                           an auroch

footfall felt to disturb a here-and-now so dismal

              it might last eternally, bare-branched above.

What lies behind this sector but a deeper grey

mistakable for depth itself,

                        mark me I know,

given the latitude of all participants I dive or float.

How can the chaos catalogue, this mantle reproduce,

mist suffuses my assigned sector…

              a sector without limit, traffic

ceased above and below,

what would stand forth on earth when earth cringes?

An outsize doll in a suitcase moves along the belt

                        Here comes another, all alike

              Which suitcase shall I claim.

In this here, a murderer has wrested his lover’s limbs

In this a clutch of brontosaurus bones for display

In this one, rhino horn and vials of bear bile.

Strip a river bed of quartz for kitchen counter tops.

Now seek a rougher edge to rub against,

you whose quarries sent out sheets smoothly planed,

                        your fault it is to be faultless.

Air seals vents, or flat scars,

gaps close, selves

flutter thinly over gratings. Pulling together

out of given options, this little freak

              could be the first to know,

but look behind,

                        who stop to face a shuttered wood,

fossilised prints have set your course,

frozen prints though sawn from the ice as specimens.

Rouse your shaggy head and shake the underpinning.

To aid you, pain trickles out beyond the periphery,

              frees the lumpish body to collect more tokens.

There a sleeper dreams shuffling and reviewing days,

leans to gather from the further bank

              asphodels,

                        asphodels of fair fields

scythed into silage, to retrieve

              code for the flowers that are fringing

oblivion, back where his compound ghost loiters

in a calendar of blood-drained forms, wrapt in mist,

                        split

in their dissembly waiting on the pull of one image

              spattered with alluvial mud, to reembody.

2.

              With one accord, one breath advance

where entry squalls would prohibit. It comes to look

you have been self-shadowing

              The parallels entangle

                        here as it were here

an image has been thrown, what’s made of you

              makes out a path

piercing through a terrific veneer,

viz. your blood group, your advance directive,

              breaching a cross-section. Your dissemblance

has achieved no more than this, spoor on the surface.

The path resisted is a path the more insists, dragging

through troublous night, onward conveying.

              Shadows paused at every step

stack as a high-resolution image

rigid in its frame waits on its time, time to wake,

you know it’s inevitable,

you went before towards the summit

              lit in full pitiless glare, the temporary cement

makes as to taunt with neat lines, poor

devolved thing that you are, to trust this edifice. 

Could it be present time your footfall had disturbed

                        Time wrenched out of frame.

Dinosaurs pair off to climb the ramp,

                                 stains from slaughtered tribes spoil

marble precincts of the temple.

Out of the multitude a unity gets forced,

                        lopping leafless limbs, plucking

out offending eyes. It is a cyclops

beam that hits a keyed wall, seeing it can see no more

as here and then, incessantly, a knife plunges

in the creature repeatedly restored and sacrificed.

3.

I do not want to hit a brick wall but assuredly I shall,

when tendrils and blossom

              flood the espalier,

when the flowering currant prickles up to the parapet,

runs along the brick horizon as though infinitely

in my eyes.

              Scent pricks my nose, can this incense

blanket out the ground bass of sewage,

              can delight in foaming apple raiment

cover the earth, quarries, rigs, cement works, wells,

abolish death which we bring upon ourselves?

              No personal salvation, no elect, a brick wall.

Let the tiled floor now gape, a specimen cabinet spew

ivory contents, let a line of sabre-tooths

              issue from the core library files,

primed to resume combat –

dead twigs sense once more it’s up to them

to don coronets and ruffles, flounce gorgeously,

                        disordered limbs

fling out new withies, juddering earth

with tense, excited roots,

disperse images shaken apart once stalks are crowned

with foam, cloaking parasites, nurturing worms.

Light falls, it meets no bar; a hypertrophic cell, eagerly

on schedule, goes on its rampage –

those vagaries will never get confirmed fully,

                                 a spot-lit patch identifies

seed dreamily pecked, processed fodder of fantasists

empty-pursed,

              the granary spilt on gleaming shelves,

a cornucopia smattered for a placard,

              lushness but a smear, the bodies gold foil,

harvest baled in instant packs.

O! I would wear the brightness tight against my skin

              but it corrodes.

Detached, the haptic world survives as a vague tingle

Dispersed, the genome bank

              will have sprung resurgent armies

harrowing slow fields with the tines of the actual,

                        dragooning rough stripes.

The actual sticks to its approach, its crop stands

              I too shall be mud-bound.

Commands ricochet, knives whirl, but no living hand

grabs from fruit-laden boughs

              trapped in their dead present:

apples hang, capitulate, for Eve and Newton.

How taut would be the rind, the orchard predictable,

              purple plums clingstone.

4.

Error-trapped packets of commands clash rationally

            What precedent do summer bees follow

Columns take up arms but each seems lacking,

                                                each mere shadow of itself

casts about for what energy it needs –

            if life of a mosquito, adequate blood:

It is shadow’s shadow it drinks from

dancing in collapsed light,

              whining weightless above the sepulchred

petroglyphs skyclad on rocks, there is no prehistory,

only paving stone

                                 Exposed ephemerids forever

whose pollen profile can be read off from their tablets,

            shale plates scratched,

their slippage shuffles dendrites and starfish,

            neural tangles dense as stromatolites.

Shock crystallises thought,

spasms stab but in flat canals

            lay down their gold litany:

each cell will be fertile, each

cell in its laura, solitary but humming in accord,

will be the making of a body’s inordinate assimilation.

This door opens to an opening, irresistible shut door,

              a sleeper leans into this corridor

with unfaltering poise. Panic

runs through this tree, tries every latch;

                                 is it another

real-time updated map guides to a bricked-up portal,

              same adoptive memory

beckoning, rebuffing, a model of self-possession.

                        The call missed

routes to a different branch then a spur where it hangs

                                 Embedded voicemail.

How can this be this, present in history.

                        Encysted loved voice

                                    Pacemaker tablature.

Arriving in the complex

All appears familiar –

Thread into a bower

Of multicoloured glass,

Half-remembered songs

Tizzying and booming,

Chorus then dissolve

Into facets, sunburst.

Pandora of the Islets,

Pantocrator of Particles,

Your tiles will realign,

Incarnate at warp speed,

Glinting as clouds of foil

Confuse my autopilot,

Flocking for a complex

Nowhere to be found.

Nowhere to be found

Builds out of dissonance,

Seeds and knots the glass

For my simple rubicon.