Animations by Adam Cornford

Author:Adam Cornford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-21T16:00:00+00:00

Breaking up anyway,

Staggering emptied like a drunk, vapor flesh withering

As the sunscald impersonally strips you down

To a few stray ribs arching away over the mountains —

Damn you! Such waste is not what I want.

Instead I imagine your rage with its ears open:

You jam secret transmissions reach down long fingers of arc to squash blockhouse antennae You grab a planeful of generals a tiny crucifix yanked from the evening’s fat neck You strum the right cables to snap the right breakers open bring shutdowns on company time blackouts on shopping streets next to the hungriest barrios You split an executive boardroom a fig of ripe leather and crystal to spill out scarlet and pink

All this, though, is only a way of speaking;

At best, an encoded signal waiting for its hour

Along with the others —

Hour when the punch-clock finally takes one on the glass jaw,

When the keystroke counter gets its rosary unstrung for good, when

All the launch sequences trail off into magnetic silence, Et cetera, et cetera.

An hour that’s taking its time,

You spit. I can’t deny it.

Besides, at this hour

You are still hanging around overhead:

Wet smoke-blanket,

You slap at passers-by with interminable sodden fringes, Shadow medusa,

You trail thin fingers of ice across their skins,

Grey upside-downland,

You sprout huge groves of translucent shuddering Bamboo to spear them with.

You don’t let up.

You don’t let up. The house-gables

Drip misery like children’s noses; your sinewy

Runoff sweeps over concrete driveways,

Muscles in on basements with a carbine clatter.

Coughs ricochet from mildewed plaster walls,

Pain jabbers its pointless alert

Through old women’s knees and knuckles. I hear

The baby-tantrum squall and thump of a fenderbender

Instantly bronzed for a souvenir by passing headlights

In the spuming afternoon murk;

And, on the freeway, a high-speed collision Is twisting steel webs, windowscales, black skid-wings And the scrolled flame of blood Into an intricate long dragon scream...

Then, over this nonstop damage report, under your swishing

Blitz of interference I start to notice what else

You’re up to: in crewcut borders, in tangled homeless lots,

Bean-embryos unfurl their feathery antennae, Couchgrass and wheatgrass wriggle out of their pinhead shells

And sway up, dancers joining a company;

On the slick staves of pavement

Snails have composed their shining illegible scores,

Littered cans begin to harmonize with clay

In a low oxide hum;

Root zodiacs edge outward through black topsoil firmament, foretelling The crowded future of leaves

And the entire air is rinsed off like an old man’s memory- gleam

Where he waits under a dense chestnut by the bus stop: Himself barelegged, running across a wet playground Into the sudden brilliant smile at the skyline —

Your smile. Your laughter gusts down across my face. In this lull, you whisper chuckling

That I wasn’t listening either; then, with a crack Look, you boom, Look what I’m making,

I’m a puppeteer, puppeteer, whole town’s my little theater.

Glad, shamed, I watch from my perch on the houseflank.

I watch the ants, engineers in dark armor, scurry and die To save their earthworks under the cracked patio.

I watch the slicker-hood bobbing by like a ripe lemon, The small nappy head under it, who smiles As multiplication opens its imaginary mirror doors to him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.