stephen emmerson

2 poems from chimera

uncomfortable silence in a churchyard

Linguistic spills between black and white lines - Rorschach test tree’s blush into Stained glass slums - your hands twitch against mine, begging for speech, our eyes tell knowing impossibles - we are tired of our tongues -they are distant enough - our lips are old photo’s of dogs - Autumn is louder than us - the yellow leaves are Yes the brown ones No - surrendering totally to the ruin of insight - the graves green with moss - names and dates under-erased - raven on the toolshed shocked with worm - darkness comes with a voice of flies - we go on pretending

nightspeaking

Oblique minor chords deconstruct each other along telephone wires - the voices make a collage of old newspaper headlines - a glue of subornation - proposing first light as a question of being - analysing the instabilities of intercontextual image - antithesis - a draining away of sleep - the straight edges and multi layered false antiquity where roads only lead to more roads - moon dribbles - frost gleams out the pin cushion blue - your eye tickles my cheek - milk float ridiculi - clitter clatter of empty glass - expressive light leaks out a pulse of rain - the air clear - the music ripe

1998 - 2008