Take My Heart For Example
Chosen techniques: drawing with the licked-tip of a pencil until it breaks, at least the novel scratch is almost palpable and makes you think of course of hearts and how you have this strange ability to take mine in your hand and as if it were made of jelly squeeze it and squeeze so that the sugary red is an aspirant artwork all of its own, a short moment in the breathing sigh of me perhaps eventually removed as you know it is possible to break me I am more fragile than your weighty mind with its neutral detachment can consider.
how your strange licked drawings can scratch a possible break of sugary red, is something of course to do with fragility and moment squeezed into moment, so that the novel is a technique of filling blank pages and has nothing at all to do with aspiring authors or the ability to take my hand and make it palpable, break my mind and scribble into the guts of me, all the well-read chosen ones can get so weighed down with the jelly intangible dreams.
don't try to be crazy you shall fail miserably
I have fallen - crashbang no light fall either
it's wrecked all that was silly and lightheaded
cracking with unease,
the world oscillates gently tipping
the balance of ying and yang is a wonky drawing
a gang of high spectres innocent enough
soul-dress of days spent wanting, wishing, if only, if only
but all those lonely ghosts still loveless
wailing in stoppered bottles of self-loathing
I think, I think too much:
don't try
you shall fail
everything is worse than before not better how did that happen? why did I do that? why did I undo things when they were ok and why the sweet pink shell, mattered and needing a whisper from the firewalkers, how do they do it so fearless and tangy with honey, so set on fire with their own dreams, ripping their own moments until the weather changes and a tryst of hopes make the tears dry working along the horizon of the self, boundless, energy like a pulse of angelic glints and craziness
and the problem
is
I think
transaction
Every other weekend, the journey made, slow drive motorway climbing the gentle mountain, his first-born wrapped as a present all shiny and clean, ready to give to the gods, the shell mother, echo echo. This is no offering, a necessary loan if you like - see now the glow of the child's smile melting the windscreen, imagining rain inside the car, the slow markers of a familiar hell-road as so many birds follow the grey trail, getting there, as promised and then the clean sweep of this transaction, just want it over with, to come home and breathe, the quiet, the lack of daddy daddy this or that until it is time to fetch him home, small hero, the mirror-child, prince of smiles. Quick child, come home now, you are the sweet air of gods and butterflies.
a photograph - still life
a photograph is a mechanical glimpse
see my stuff
see how I set the shot so you can see
pictures within pictures
this scene against that
cutaway
the dress of my life unfolding, seams pulled
see my parents and their smiles like embers
and all the pretty things
set out
the space
our bed waiting
a moment
a scene cutaway
in a moment of pretty smiles
unfold me, picture the mechanical love
I wait in a moment of bed and seams
the photography against my ancestor worship
gets out
the nonsense of ruffled feathers
Sadness in Saturn
The sun is on the back of her neck as she tries to read the intricate book on owls, as solemn as biblical angels, the feathery fiends have themselves tangled in ellipses and the psychology of space. A thousand men divide in a killing spree of desire and stones in shoes and cities are wavering on the edge of sleep, always, critical and longing like weary women who wear cologne in bed and eat creamy desserts at 4am, one nation has split into many petals of revolving sadness, congratulating the sign of Saturn not understanding a single lisp of sound until the last murmur, your last breath, calculated, premeditated, held back like a smile.
In a thousand petals the cologne of understanding lisps and curls, intricately make their solemn revolving understandings, tangling in necks and books of feathery kills. Reman here, longing for women and just desserts, premediating the sun's back at 4am, critically wavering for all the desire of smiles divide men and like stones in water they spree and eat their shoes, making psychology the lonely journey toward a God that ellipses and backs the owls, sadness is Saturn in neutral always trying to untangle you.
nightcap
dreams are slippery
some stroke my palm and fall like tears
others are trembling on my fingertips
a sitting book of echoes and messages
ghost-knocks
the lark of it
just for the hell of image flicker
open the clasp
the bold green nightcap
velvety as a cat
lit up with fears
or trembling you are still
wild and dark, a fish without water
our dreamworld songs
all the salt of tears in bold green bottles
taken little sips nightly
prayer
I sometimes dream of seeing you again, and again - we're on that flight out of here to nowhere but the plane is diving so slowly will we ever land? Can I make it to the edge of you, that icy moment that quickens itself as a pray may handle the wrong breath or devotion. I give you devotion, the giving time, all my crystals blurred with the truth that I cannot break free from the grip of your hand as you breathe, getting deeper now, slowly, relaxing, your feet are no longer, your hand extends into the next door woodland and gets itself tangled in the dark green of layers, time is like that, it layers itself thickly only to make the old horse weep.
I am the edge, weeping as a layer of you relaxes into icy moments, pray and handle the horse of nowhere, for this plant is a breath of wrong time, again, we're sometimes slow to make the dark green relax, but the door to the woods is breaking and the crystals are giving a pray, handle me gently, don't moment for moment fly to dive or nowhere, I cannot free my heart, he has me, it is wrong, for you, for me, I am tangled and wretched as a land with no tide, as a stone that turns into a moth and slips into the slow death of earth, always slipping you see, handle that.
insect bites
I was admitted to the shadows, all wrapped in leaves, like an unfurling, my sacrament of lustful neglect all shimmery and pale as white wine, I loved you, I needed you, your blood on my lips, swarming, feast of my need, I tear and shriek, I have a book of evidence you can read it in the dark as the words glow like alien insects.
leaves make evidence, feast me, read the dark of dreams, shimmery as words upon a spine that glow and leave, unfurl yourself in a pale need of shadows, for me I am nothing, just scraps of hope, you see the insect bites get so tearing into themselves, and I shriek in my admitted pale moods, so that I could taste your wine, your blood, oh holy love.
high-heeled song
dip-dive the magpie
or the brushing butterfly
as you sleep after lunch
the enjoyment of your mouth pulsating
against the open wound
of a nevering
reverence of birds
her high-heels get stuck in the dry grass
get under your skin
your skin under nails
licking myself clean
sitting astride
the midsummer moon
forever in a beehive pattern
of lisped promises
or choosing the luck
of a luckless bird
the bird has a high-heeled song
of moons and luck,
the midsummer nevering
like a pulsating wound
your sleep is astride
the dry nails of butterflies
dipping under the stuck reverence,
or butterflies that choose themselves
instead of licking and a promise
bee stings
being very high and exposed to his dapper ways, the flick-knife wit of him, all polished sexuality with a guilt-trip powdered complexion, the ceremony was performed as unlike a needle he fell softly and made the honey a sleeping bee of dreams, well until the next time, all those labour pains for this dumb love, you ridden until sleeping, the nectar from flowers carried away slippery in stinging hands, oh love you assemble your own dreams if you wish.
a ceremony of needle and honey, hands in sexual guilt dreams, well exposed all a very high time, the knife of a slipped in joke is pain and love and dapper polished sleep, all the bee can do is wish and sting her way into a polished flicker of sun, very complex handling of dreams riddles the wishes and makes a performance of pleasures, for this nectar is the carried flower of quiet chaos, unlike any soft despair or murmur of flowery labour.
the dream is a wish of pleasure into a knife of flickering sting and sun, the chaos of honey ripples the bee's slipped pain and love, polished jokes and love are needled in time, for this perfomance is the nectar of murmured sex and sleep.
love is a dream and bees can sting. that is all you need to know in this flickering chaos, honey. rip me a murmur of high pain, for dumb and perfomed slippages are handled with pleasure, oh well the knife is a perfomance of despair, and flowers are a stinging love, sweet wit of ceremony, I illicit the exposed and soft sleep of you, ride time, fall or sleep, or wish-nectar it until the next time.
auricula project - submissions invited
my heart is like a singing bird - anthology of writing and photography
to be published in artist book form - autumn 2006
WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS are invited to submit works responding to the above title phrase*. All works must be original and unpublished.
Writing: fiction, non-fiction and poetry considered -
submit up to 300 words OR a poem of no longer than 14 lines.
Photography: submit up to 4 images sized 800x600 px
All submissions and enquiries to be sent via email to the editors by July 31st. Please include a brief biography with submissions.
All contributors will receive one copy of book.
contact editors: ccullis at g mail dot com
storm in a teacup
let me feed you honey cakes
don't be the ghost
a storm
in a teacup
damaged flowerheads,
the visions of pollen drifting
across an open sky
the clenched-teeth music
building heroes again
they are given a honeycomb
oh if possible stay
let the teeth of a flower
build a sky of ghosts
and if possible feed your doubts
with visions of honeycomb heroes
open the possible drift of music
in a storm of honey unclenching
oh you
again we make tea and dance
the slow dancer
music like damage to come
Deuteronomy
If I had another son I would call him Deuteronomy, and he would have clouded eyes of silver-blue, and play the saxaphone standing on tables in smoky late-night clubs, so that I may cry and pray for him, all the words of my heart compressed into a simple riff of notes that zoom and spread themselves across the dark night, knifed and withering sounds, my son the stranger smiling into the wrecked city with the windows down and his yellow hair tussled as silk gets forever serving the gods, that small fear sold to make delicate and tender promises come true. My son Deuteronomy, all the air and space and stars, lift and dissolve him into a white space a chest cavity with no heart, the space thumping into itself or pushed into the wilderness; he gets himself hooked on something pleasing and deadly, but lives to pisseth against the wall.
Deuteronomy dissolves into my chest, knifed dark night that I am, forever compressed into a saxaphone song, smoky-eyed and wild, starred and ripped, crying for all the delicate hooked words to tumble and play silver-blue, over and over, the fear selling out, falling notes of spread promises, serving small tables of zooming pleasure, my son, sounds yellow, comes true as I lay awake deep into the night dreaming of the city and the garden, hushed up by barbed wire, crying prayers of lilies and shit, the best true love wilder than a hooked melody, crying on and on, his deadly hair like a tendril of dreams.
prayer
the nameless purple flowers are tripping with delight, in the sun burning little habits, the beautiful ones, all slender and will they not listen to me, for I like to protect the endangered heart, it is beating in my hand, see the gristle of it, slipping like a fat fish, my darling chap all slithered and bloody, my darling heart you are the purple and the alive one, the ghosts are breezing ahead of time they all clap hands and make their petals shudder. let us pray, let us reveal the end is coming in a slow shudder of pollen and deep woodland darkness, let the leaf shadows cascade until you sleep.
you sleep in a slithered cascade of tripping delight, the purple gristle of your heart is softened by ghosts, oh so soft they make a breeze of flowery hours, beating the flower of your heart, slender dreams all of them in a bloody darling kind of way, listen, the nameless slipping of time is deep and delightful, just know the shudder is breezing ahead of itself, like a petal flowing in the blood of sleep, or the sun becoming slender, praying, let us hand this pray of pollen.
