BATHYSPHERE
The years are stacked in thermoclines,
this tour perforce one way
As winch is surely not divine,
tug not at lagging chain
Once Paris briefly rained baguettes
but then a Baltic state:
dim, chill; meals of mingy glitter
fallen from an upstairs plate
Scant mercy when your hull succumbs,
becomes gelatinous
With exposed heart a muggers’ crew,
tip love's shadow vertical—
Closet nightmares all invert
for monsters here festooned
as bioluminescent goons:
ferris spokes revolve a maw
Stare down or up, cold light or none,
plain or sky: abyssal
The cratered moon a green globe sponge,
stars innumerate yet brittle
HERR KEPLER'S NOTEBOOK
Time is the bully anchor of the opposing tug-rope team.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
-------------------------------------
"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
Oh!
ReplyDeletestars innumerate yet brittle
Oh, I love that. And I love the hide-and-seek of the rhyme in this!
Should that not be O, fair sir? And here I thought you my comrade in that debate!
ReplyDeleteThis one needs major work, I'm afraid. Line/rhythm/rhyme all kept unspooling; you tagged the only decent phrase. Back it goes into the mire of the abyss (or the lovely Greek, abyssos), to be reshaped by detritus drizzle.