chlorine poems
Written for a poetry reading in Brighton in November 2009, these poèmes d’occasion explore themes of effacement and purity.
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1.
How the clinic stings, the pale green of the walls
Was once a headache that dripped, and a patient
Suffered on the floor as a wounded ox.
The steel thrills electrically, an abacus wire fence
Has flecks of white cotton, and where the red resin
Stuck on the concrete, they use chlorine
To scrub it off. It’s in the out-houses
That the terror hangs, its dog breath
Lashing at the flies, and when the lights snap on:
It swallows. Outside, in earth, lies an engine,
A metal heart clogged with worms, which pounds
Every century or so, causing the planet to slip
Off its beam like a drugged animal.
The stars then do their sadistic dance,
Each point will pierce the methylated skin,
They file into the syringe, a ballistic shower
Of mercury, sprung for release into the vein.
No wonder these are lunatics, that the organ
For absorbing mercy was cut from them at birth
And incinerated. See the chimneys pointing
Up at God, and speaking only smoke,
The frilly billows black, they make a roof of clouds.
2.
Come unto the gallery, the white blaze
And blurring faces. The house-sized cube
Of ice gets lowered, and the figurines
Try not to melt in the kiln, they plead
For gold, their feelings hammered out
In traceries drawn with fiery plasma.
In the centre stands an object, mapped
On the chlorinated floor where supplicants
Will sniff and pleat their veils. What’s ugly
Blasts through the air-con, not the black
Stack of carbon rods, the sceptre, cross
And scaffold. No, the edges of the art
Get disinfected; let it hang inside
A mortuary. When the sun then gilds
The four white walls, it becomes a mass,
Celebration quick set into form. Rising
Bleach will wash the eyes, and angels
Plug the top right corner where divine
Afflatus shoots in brown and blue.
Some people weep for love that’s so displaced
It wanders from itself; some hold hands and freeze.
3.
Spread the chest, accordion-like, and comb
Out the strings of hardened glue that once
Were lyrics, the glassy beads were moments
Of aphasia. Try bowing it for the archive air
Still trapped. With time the glass discandies
But no thanks to nature: forgiveness-chlorine
Worked beneath the rug of memory.
Where all face-up was figure, devices
From the eternal garden - buntings in the
Almond groves, choristers of saffron, sandalwood
And cloves - here the frame was sweetly
Rotting with a fine astringent leaving
The petals to their roses. Caustic, yes,
It strips the heart like acid, but what it
Leaves is love, that is, annihilation.
For when the air vibrates, and it is heard
As beauty, it’s the subsidence inwards,
The deaf self-cancelling that counts,
Where the worms feed on the corpus,
Each increasing loss makes matter rich.
And so float on your back as on a piano,
You rot with rapture, while the music must withdraw.
4.
A street cloud soaked with red like a dressing,
Clients in a staircase saga. Through a lens
It’s merely traffic, incessant circulation
Round the blood-wire circuit, pausing
Just to let the chlorine dry - then step
Darkly on the threshold. Up close
The face splits and from it memories leak
Their blue yolk that sticks to all
Who touch. It streams into the gutter, glittering.
Come, pull up the shirt, this poppy helps forget.
No, into the brain-folds drops a cigarette
That on contact hisses; the mouth averted
Like a wound that pulls the face-sheet
Into pleats. Stars rattle, and the earth
Gets squeezed until the thicker drops
Come through and form translucent crests
Or crusts. The light beneath the slowing cars
Is boxed. When it’s done, they speed away
To confirm their absence from a scene now swollen
And reloading every smeary cartridge. The rack
A row of rifles, fireflies catch among the blonder hairs.
5.
Saltwater cups the eye, bacteria in packets
Start to fizz and jostle, combining readily. Edges
Aren’t quite white, a yellow-brown pollutes the liquid,
The salt a sweet infection. Yet there is no thanking
Worshipful enough for this chemistry,
Each cell a crimson canvas in the bud, where
Microscopic eggs mash into a purple paste
And bleed with grace into the fibres. On the surface
Emerald rings of chlorophyll appear as on a shroud,
And a see-through golden wing of wasp
Like sugar burned, shivers in the first winds ever known,
The originals. Before, the sun and air were as pictures.
Then the great tear in the book out of which
The weather fell. And all the while,
The germ-cube ice-tray buzzing, a honeycomb
Of eyes with wrappers unremoved,
An effervescent milk coursing through the tubes.
And we look back as if we were not made of it,
As if the love of origins excused us from our
Derivation in them, as if between that time and now
Were sheets of runway pavement, all sparkling with chlorine.