City of words 2009
Colin Baxter
Four
blank walls in space
The exhalation of a sigh
answered by
The whir of motion
A
slow electric shock
Of freeze frame jumps
The discrete motions of
A chain of days and turns into
Something rich and strange
Manhattoes rise up
like the smile of a Nazi through a periscope
Down
the ramp in the tunnel
Round and about above the bass
of timeless tunes
Crackles the warmth of blues
Out of body
forgetful to myself
Floating upside down peering
Through liquid crystal
On the dark sheen
Beneath the noise of heat
Perpetual currents in motion
Weave between amnesiac water
that disappears
down to
the dark centre
Cast yourself upon the shore
Entrapped by glare of
the universal roar
The euphoric space in electric
air
Bewildered reflections
of shadowy semblance
Furtive figures up and
down sides of streets
That pass in blind
muffled alternation by:
Roar of mother blood and
Blasts of heat beating
faces
Neon snakes across and up rained
on sienna glaze streets
In luminous licks and erotic streaks
Hisses along the electric nerve's happy surface
Pink bright green violet violent flesh...
Swishes wails and
screeches
Jolt and flow in
synaptic shocks
The scrambled pulses dot
and dart
The fissures of human
nerve shot in strips
Hiss and shot of smoke and steam
The bellowing earth beneath our feet
Inert, implacable selves of
Faces stutter, flicker and blur…
Smell of sewer and
Rotten metal gassy yellow glares...
Wan and drugged watery faces
In white and silent empty streets
Hot wires humming sizzle and crackle
in static emptiness, spike
nerve, blood, flesh and bone...
Syncopated stab then jagged flash
And scream of light..
Raucous clacks and stutters and howls and
Strangled squeals:
Sad black smoke exhaling sighs...
The streaming mass awash with light
Moves in lines infra-red and breathing heat
Long and shrill up avenue and street
Blasts of air and shadow sweeps by
Past sandstone sphinx and slate-grey pyramid
shifting, flickering signs and
phantoms prisoned in panes of glass
Past fractured cube, parabaloid bend and
Sharp oblong sphere
Shapes of phosphor and the ghosts of
Light ablaze in ice
Eternal loops of Love Slaves
Tortured To Blood Dripping Death
In the electrical nerve of message strips
Their debt a string of digits...
The skeletons of giants possess the sky
With bright and shiny ebony bones
Slats of silhouette, sinuous struts
And orange shoulders that swim in late sun:
They glow gold as they smile
Suck in success and exhale their genius
Circuit crawls up steel glass skin
And moves in bars across the sky
Licks of flame letter the tops
That blacken and blaze in sodium lit
magic script that seeming smiles
In a cool spangle of toccata rhyme
Frozen sensations on sticks
Ice cream tops smeared scarlet
Plush and cream
With glaze carbuncle lip tints of
Shriek up their spines and
Slice up the sky
Big, rich rubber red lips
Spurt electric serpents that crack up black night
Blast with light then backwards cackling
Rushing shriek away:
Roaring laughter echoing rings
Upon the gold clouds metropolitan
Ruin of stone in a circle and
The Winged Beast of
Snaking down a grid
That pours itself into sea
Lightning bolts crackle on top
A bubble of air… black space behind
A triangular eye looks bright above
Sunrays drop beam liquid light
On a golden dome and glassy spires
Splash on tips sparkles crackling
Bright powder pink to electric blue.
The beam paints as tints on the surface
A lit up smile of acid light
Warm sanguine welcoming glows
Twitch in phase with pulses
Light shot out of an eye
Fulgurations jasper, sardonyx and topaz:
slick ice.
The rhythmic flux of a circle
A perfect sphere of stone
Longing pulses
pours quenchless streams
That dazzle dark mock the empty air
In magical proportions he
Dreams of self as shining like
The Golden Porches of the Sun:
Bright beams vibrant
With constant flicker flash
Of limb and dance of knives
Static, flat, perfect smooth
The pitchy slick glows cool upon
The surface of each skin
The absolute god of adamant
Absorbs the flux of black
On slabs cosmic beasts scaly armour.
In stupor we descend to glass
A lucid demon opens the door
His tongue swells
Then splits what it speaks
To static burst
And sweet dream smooth verbs
Out of his mouth
play answer
Echo each other
sparkle in sun
In times he turns his tail about
Unwinding sinuous loops
With a crack and tight twist
He snakes back shakes out
As with a rattle
We suddenly face blank space
A beautiful angel impassively
Pulls the door behind
Glass admits the rational sun
To light filled soaring space
The tumble and slap of water
Strange hollow and confused noise
and the clatter of feet
In his corner beside a tired palm
Intersecting speech and whispers
The universal stranger plays O freude
Rhizomatically weaving lines note to note
From the babble above
Empty and still symmetry of steel and glass
Seaming ligatures of joint knitted to
Joint that blacken in strips the
Surreal blue shadow glow
We quarter the world as we cross
Walking up and down the sky
Skins of mirror refract the sun
Shapes swim in light
In this woven space blind and opaque
We work in oneness with the whole
Each the replicant of
the other
In a perfect loop of self reflection
Loud, incessant whisperings
Shot with darkness, air and space
Clacks and chatter and a cavernous boom:
The low buzz and hum below
The dense and empty motions of a monster’s
insides
Silhouettes criss
cross bars of light
And fuzzy dot flash of shadow
As sticks of figures vibrate and flicker
Luminous by negative light.
Red squiggles in thick, black air
Through beam and arch of dry bone
Asphixiated dust and sucked oxygen
A smooth wave and sudden warp of
Catastrophic folds slowly unwinds in
Abstract lines of split level and spiral walk
Streaming hair of light, and spacetime
Slipping by
Supermodels roll erotically in electric waves
Coded in pulses, breathing in bits
The stream of
Sky, brilliant blue bodies
Vibrates with light:
Reflections run across faces
Silent, impassive absorbed
Thought as a glowing organ
Shines from skin
In cool infra-red rays
Transparencies without shadow
They wish to become their surface
The absolute blaze of the sun
Lustrous, hard and brilliant
Bodies that are ablaze stride the firmament
As luminous as glassy fires:
Rippling silk the sweep of air
In lockstep, easy metronomic limbs
Lost in oblivious reflection
They scrawl in lipstick upon the stars
Flashing smiles
From cool and distant space
Light crackles Colour
screams:
The thought of themselves makes them glow
Ecstasy and terror
Accelerate the string of present moments
Every pore excess has penetrated
Swells and fills the infinity of space
Naked spirits
Fiery and fountain-like
Billow and glitter, hum and course
All bodies of a sudden blazing
As streaks of the ruddy sun:
Fiery licks of light
Are fusing with the cosmos
As pure noise they dance among the stars
Throb to the tune of the spheres
Beautiful souls that live in bliss
A black slab and drums of
Human skull and skin
The beating pulse of earth
The beating music of our blood
Wild voices the incessant sound
Around the circle
As flesh slowly glows of gold
Flickers of light dance on faces
Blood poured on earth
Chaos of colour crazed line
And strange bright light
Darkness rent by fiery gold a
Shrill scream and
Rush of power
Veins throb music and
Life quickens limbs
The body remembers its being
A burst of radiance
Blood refreshing the strong sun...
The sun fed by blood has paid our debt
God vast and alive eats us up
The brilliant stream of life
Fumes in a crooked column of
Steaming heart and smoking blood
The saturated sky
Melting in sweat, blood and the
Smell of crackled skin
Everyday smells of immolation
The ashes of history falling on hair
A chill and brilliant bar of sound
The incessant drone of the cosmos
Solar ghosts
basking in fire, heat and light
Drinking blood
in the burning House of the Sun
Dogheads with horn, claw and leprous skin
Faces reflections of fire
Slowly twist in glints of smiles
That drink in delight of men's eyes
In livid light
Red irradiates skin and viscera
Scars shine like glory
Their burning souls sweat joyful blood
They rise and heave in a great swell
Cup clashing cup
Crack of trumpets burst of cannon
Laughing bellies and eyes that eat insides
They stand in the bloody sky
They eat the fleshly bread
They drink the nervous wine
A streak of blood upon the night
Eternity a cold and burning stain
One drop would save us…
The pure expenditure of the sun
Blood for the ghosts
poured without stint
Guttural burst and rapid fire
Shots of light
On walls alive with motion
A beep and scan then
Flash of flame
A volley of light from the beam
Rolls and blasts along a line…
disappears
in a dot of far
away dull and thudding booms
Dark vibrating shapes write
In glare and dazzling black
That sparks and flickers upon my face:
Flicks of sequence the glare
And shadow of chaos
Staccato bits in the binary chatter
Of calculated random repeats
Pound the flesh that passes by:
Slashs of red on sweaty flesh
Dissolve as flakes of fire
Fire sparks in the eyes
Mixing man and beast
Of a fierce, black face
staring out of multiple screens
a bullhead peers from a height
The apparition of his face
The head upon the moving map of Hell
Chaos in bits of sequence
Heats and bathes his face in blood
Hard skin fused in a fleshy mask
Retina tracking red strobes
Sweeps an unblinking eye about
All the errors and labours
of History
Frozen in the aperture of an eye
Red shifts
ceaseless on the screen
As licks of flame glide and flicker
Fixed in the constant motion
Of a blank atomic blaze
Veins throb
To beat and jagged metal jerk
Narcotic pulses of faces
Move in and out of focus
Burn to release their souls
After-effects repeat and blink
Warp spirals wired and humming
Rotating
Spool and shudder in hot confusion
The blanks of endless repeats
Unwinding in a blur…
A flick of light and time and space
Crystallize in a cube
That glows with the perfection of logic
Cold, pure and unperturbed
It exhales the breath of empty spaces
The core the incandescent present
Bright, lifeless sameness of
Matter made of light
The gods having renounced their bodies
Dissolve in the cosmos
Terror scrawling across the stars
A fate of fire and ice
At the frozen and twisted end of time
The moon kisses the numb
Uninflected features of stone
Play of light upon the face
In intricate and beautiful motion
Refracts to infinity
Facets of hard, clear diamond
Irradiating air makes shiver in fissures
A face of
fiery glass reflection
The frozen stare of flux made matter
Hardens and cracks
Splitting and gaping in guilt and desire:
Features now colliding facets
Bleeding colour
Burnt alive along nerve ends
Time thick in the air
Is humming with hot light
The ghost pierced
Split at the very point of the puzzle
Of mind and fleshly self
The forked root sees his self in glass
His sight the lucid horror of raw light
Pain burning in memory
That exceeds sense and mind…
And blanks of eyes shocked
In the fixity of a focused gaze
Pass through glass that bends and in
a spiral down of
Vicious self reflection
Plummets to matter
The fullness of dream now
The energy of illusion…
And the brief abstract of man
Blank points without duration
Shafts of ice in angle shot
The liquid sun on frozen stone
Strobes twitch and play on conscious cheeks
Wet skin, white face and frosted coral lip:
In the glaucous eye of space
A mermaid is sitting on a marble cube
Floor of azure light
And wash of sparkling stone
Lambent gold the walls
Tensile metal rattles in the breeze
Her high soft voice
Toneless chant in cool repeats
Murmurs, whispers and never ceases
A throbbing current and waves of light
Writing in flashes on her skin
That the space answers in echoes:
Glassy ripples ring out
Swash, flicker and blur
The coded features of her face
Synchronous split and sudden glow
Bright sharp to dark and light again
Skin exhales cool air
Her hot wet gold warmly glows
Softens, warps and melts
And in dissonant haze that fuzzily shines
Rapid flash stills snap inside
The glass piece face aglow
Stone agates her eyes she
Twirls a finger in trance to me
Ice sweat out of each pore
Eyes tingle flash and gleam
Pure energy, light and smiles
Catch me in their constant play:
Now a solid she turns and stares
Sickens the mind and saps the will
Beneath flower and fruit, rock and water
Mocked by bones and silent, hollow skulls
a sea-beast I frolic at her feet
Stone and water, marble and mirrors
Sobbing fountains and soothing streams
The Sun in dark reflector mirrors
Ablaze in glassy fire
Radiates his beams in long and bright lines.
A moist ripple
Flexing bounces and dazzles
Then breaks crackling long electric shoots
Threading all the green world
With a ruddy maze, soft sunbursts and slow
Silent shots of light
Flux stopped like a shutter
Splits in shivers
Eternity in an eyeball
Stern, responsible lineaments
Sage and serious faces sheathed
In robes streaming with light
These now are the master souls of time
Brilliant mortals that move
Through vistas and vaulted space
That flicker a pearly haze upon mankind
Silver pale sad reflections
The floating apparitions that drift all day
Skin breathes gold paint
Puppet arms glide at sides
The dark vibrating shapes dazzle
Of frozen souls that shine in matter
Swerve in air. Coded features
In a line and endless changing faces
Sag, crease and fall apart
Lit up lurid suits of skin
Round and bright astral eyes
In powder white paint faces
Glowing dart and search
To jerky smooth jagged beats
That neonstreak across the sward
Nervous fibrillations
Strung on the thread of purpose
In lightning quick contractions
Illuminate the primal land
Bright eye cherry lip blonde crones
Fierce point fillet flesh and stab eyes
Contort, rack, crush and flay
Extract and pull taut each tract of fleshy fibre
To pluck and to play their sweet will
Red rash and bruise pink pores
Sudden sparkling sweat
Skin exhales dank mist
Blinds the eye. The ejaculate
Seethes and steams dripping wet sex
Swelling delicious drops that hotly glow
And vapourize in sad smoke
With a sighing hiss
The maddened animal seduced by
Beauty that bares its breast
Sinks to Mother Earth
And pouring his passion on the sand
Fuses in the fast molecules of molten glass
Flicker of light on ice
Mirrors frosted silver
The sun cannot melt
Wrath, pride and pain
In perfect frozen form
Flicker kinetic light across his eyes
Strobe light the pupils
Click sequential stops that
Refract a million facets
Needles of light, knives of pain.
He suffers electric shock
and sensuous thrill
Trickling a tear down his cheek
Of moonlight and dew
The swelling, tremulous drop
Shatters in slivers the glass smooth skin
Printed by the author
at Chadstone
January 31st, 2009
No copyright
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