http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com poetry, prose, fragments, work in progress Tue, 22 Jul 2008 11:45:00 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en i should get out of bed, i should spend the afternoon peeling the stenciled papers and coats of old paint from the walls i could use the extra space, the bricks could use some air then, sticking to the theme, brush my teeth, clean my ears, blow my nose, eyedrops, emetic, enema, diuretic, a good bleeding, a quick beating, four shots ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2008/07/22/i-should-get-out-of-bed/ For those who have never swum past the sharp edge of the coast’s sandy trim, let me tell you, there is no sea floor, it is water all the way down to China Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australia and the Antarctic, the islands in clusters and alone, float like crackers on soup For those who have never dug a hole, the ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2008/07/10/let-me-tell-you/ It is a miserable cup, this damp hollow in an otherwise dry city How did I arrive? Like the standing water I trickled down a hill The water can’t climb, but it escapes I can’t climb either, Sisyphus is the rock, or follow the water into the air I wait with the houses and roads, to crumble and steep, to stain the water like ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2008/07/07/it-is-a-miserable-cup/ today is long gone, longer than you would guess, and reading this, now, now is a memory now is being played out in a lingering farewell between your ashes scattered in the sea, separated by currents now is being played out in empty space now is being played out in a tiny dot made from everything but all that is later, all now is later, and ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2008/03/04/today-is-long-gone/ i watched a man jump out of a plane without a parachute skinny dipping in the sky http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2008/03/03/skinny-dipping/ It has been the summer of the lime. They have been in inexhaustible supply, always a cluster of them waiting in the bottom of a fruit bowl in whosever kitchen we were in. They mostly went into drinks, mostly squeezed into triple sec after the tequila was gone to make Marge, our placid, degenerate Margarita with the crazy ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2007/02/22/it-has-been-the-summer-of-the-lime/ Mannequins, no matter how detailed, are betrayed by their flat, plastic skin. Real skin has thin translucent layers the light shines into, gathers evidence of the shyness you are hiding, and then shines back out again, carrying your rosy blush into plain sight. Milk is the same, as are some stones. Jade, the green stone emperors' favour, is one, ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2007/02/08/skin-and-stones/ the second half of summer is wet with each drop the first sweated out of us all the humidity is ours, and the clouds that crowd the sky, twisting together like they might wring themselves dry – we made them in much the same way also ours - the rain that is coming. the first anticipatory drops fell fat ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2007/01/06/the-second-half-of-summer-is-wet/ a short spiral of your hair, a black spring, clings to my tongue, taken from a knot you waited days to have undone. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/12/27/a-short-spiral-of-your-hair/ come, my love, and help me forget that love helps me forget what clever monkeys we are, that this love is chemistry, and the chemistry is atoms and atoms are made of pieces made of pieces made, perhaps, of pieces. and help me forget that you helped me forget in exactly, exactly, this way an infinite number of times before and we ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/12/20/come-my-love-and-help-me-forget/ I've got the red glow of a stubborn black briquette soaked in petrol, lit and fanned. Soaked with that other petrol, carrying the shrill scent of flowers, and by lit I mean coaxed into flame using a primitive friction method that remains popular. You keep fanning the glow, burning up the fuel, leaving the ash it was packed between. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/12/19/ive-got-the-red-glow/ there is a perfect sin that severs us from the heavens and binds us to the earth, that pushes the stars out of reach and locks us in our skin it is impossible to resist and when we finally surrender we will laugh and dance for everything we thought lost is all smaller than we are and can be held ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/12/15/there-is-a-perfect-sin/ Cicadas have emerged in Elizabeth Bay. I can't remember hearing them last year. I wonder where they are hiding - the trees in front of my building are small, they weren't here seventeen years ago and don't have the roots to feed them. The buzzing is around another corner, maybe they are living above Macleay Street in the ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/11/23/cicadas-have-emerged-in-elizabeth-bay/ the broken roads, crusty gums our yellow stone buildings grow from, have been renewed by council workers pouring fresh bitumen and spreading it like jam to the curbsides the streets are now a perfect black, like space before the stars ignited by this evening bottle glass constellations will be shining in the pitch. This grew out of a deleted fragment from a piece I ended up ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/11/03/the-broken-roads/ when broken by the city, be standing on a kerb, seeing it from a distance. the crashing sensation is real - it's the small glass tower that's been building, like a ship in a bottle swallowed one piece at a time it was never finished, tenants were never found, it never breached the skyline. the remains spill out of the clothes and ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/31/when-broken-by-the-city/ our heart is just a pump, a soft pump for blood and blood is just the soup we bottle to soak our brain, which is the bees our heads hive everything we can contain makes a fine paste or feed so stand proud like the corn and the wheat in their fields and like them, at night, when we think they sleep, scratch a few words into the earth with a toe just to ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/25/our-heart/ phone numbers are the coordinates that make the map that folds itself into a different shape each time. the mountains and the valleys shift and swap elevations, corners and edges cross the interior to escape isolation. sometimes the creases combine to form a flower. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/22/phone-numbers/ Cupid had a foe who was so unpopular his name was not recorded, but we can call him Loathe. Only a single, amputated statue and a fragment of mosaic give clues to his form: he is thin and hunched, his mouth is tight and he bears a shield. As we leave behind the gods of earlier ages, but carry on their ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/20/cupid-had-a-foe/ imagine the sky divided into columns thin as a needle's point and buckling as we skip across them they will hold our weight for as long as it takes to recognise that we are out of place by our heft they know we are what they stand on but we are already gone, moved on, skipping to the next, flying as fast as we can http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/18/imagine-the-sky-divided/ I made a bomb, a tiny bomb, there is no smaller in the world. Its tiny blast makes no noise nor any smoke to see, and when it blows the bits that fly do no harm to me. My tiny bomb's so tiny, even smaller still, my atom bomb - the tiniest bomb i have ever built. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/16/i-made-a-bomb/ when drowning i either wake or in panic inhale the water like air it works in dreams so well when underwater too long my lungs plead: just a small sniff of the seawater - to plump us up. it will be fresher than air. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/12/when-drowning/ 1. the earth is flat around airports plus 2. every plane has to land equals 3. runways conduct arrivals and departures with equanimity http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/11/1-the-earth-is-flat/ aphrodite, bless this goatherd who stinks of his charges. bless him, but try not to maim, or kill him, or turn him to stone, or into a tree or a star. if he must suffer so olympic scales remain in balance then make him suffer thus: perfect his memory. let his honey taste bitter after your mouth, let his skin be numb after your touch, let every woman compare to the beasts he keeps. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/10/04/aphrodite-bless-this-goatherd/ when the sunlight soaks into the pavement and the asphalt the tough roots of the streetlights are there to collect every drop. during the night they use the heat and light to bear a single fruit whose sweet fumes lure the insects to whirl about it until they drop from exhaustion. when it is ripe men in trucks with ladders come and pick the fruit. they cannot be eaten. they are ... http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/09/29/streetlights/ will trade bottles for jars I can fit my hand in. all bottles clean, no chips or cracks. jars must come with lids. all colours - green, brown, clear. prefer jars also clean, labels okay. all must go - easy to empty. two for one trades if mint. take too long to fill. http://www.silver-tongued-devil.com/2006/09/27/will-trade-bottles-for-jars/