stephen emmerson

3 poems from diamond scratches on glass (poems 1998 - 2001)

eye mail moments

sometimes from her eyes i did receive fair speechless messages

(Merchant of Venice Act I Scene III)

I look at you sometimes

And you look back at me

But we’re not looking at each other

We’re looking at something between us

Its shape is subtle

Its feeling clumsy

Its form is useless

Because we cannot manipulate it

There are too many other things

around it

For us to see it properly

And as you look out of the window

At the rain adding to a puddle

In the white floodlight

I see it clearly

And it runs away

forever

I listen to you sometimes

And your voice tapers off

Like a pen running out of ink in mid flow

Its because you catch me

Staring with my ears

Because you catch me pealing away

The layers of tone

And performing vivisection on your sound waves

I look at you sometimes

And I can have conversations with your eyes

Even when your looking away

I can leave voice mail on your retinas

And teach your pupils a thing or two

I can tap into the answering service

Of your corneas

And get you to blink me back

in a semaphore of secrecy

But our eyes want more

Than the moment can master

And our tongues

Are useless

my religion

My religion Is the old man at the garage
Across the road
Who let me off 10 pence
When I didn’t have enough

My religion
Is cool water made warm in the sun
And the requiem for an afterthought
That spins out of a head
Like a fly spinning on a broken wing

My religion
Is a shockwave
An ecstatic rush
From the borrowed edges of death
Set free by the 7 legged huntsman
On the wall

My religion
Is a freak of nature
And hot sticky cuddles
In bed with my girl

My religion
Is a cluster of box jelly fish
Nudging the shoreline
Of the pacific ocean
Against the consequence of action
And the absolute freedom of you voice

My religion
Is a hermit crab
Punching your hand
As you grab at shells in the surf
With your blue dress
Tucked inside your bathers
On a Sunday afternoon.

the dance of a silent film

So the night stays still

Or that trees might remain trees
I sneak into your warmth
Beside you and beside your heat
And when mornings
Are childish red winters
We are at our best

Now I am astonished
Laid in oceans of blanket
In a dying dirty dish house
On a road where no post comes
Where the alcoholic sky strobes
To the dance of a silent film
Where countless Harold Lloyds
Fall and nearly fall
From countless clock towers
Or countless trains
Where handkerchiefed Benny Hills
Run saxophones around each other
In a flick book of circles

And it was in this vein
Of twitching moustaches
And sleight of hand
That I found myself awake
In a seat above the stalls
Being asked to leave
Through a picture house
Projection of a door

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