Thursday 5 January 2017

7+ year cough, for Amos

I like to imagine mice in the corners of my house. Creaks or the minute thrumming of electrical chords secrete feet and tiny nails and a damp pink nose. Tails accidentally paint whole invisible sagas in traces across the walls. Baseboard tapestries. They listen to my CD's while I'm asleep. The CD's are the easiest for them to carry, with a small nose hole and the fact they can balance nicely across their backs. But they team up to put on my records, or sometimes one will wrestle a cassette out of its box and hang from the top of the stereo to kick the tape deck shut. They build things while the music plays. They build tiny cities and they organize DVD cases by favourite colour and they tower into living sculptures to reach a box on a shelf or a curled-up spire warming itself on the lava lamp. They cook. Snacks and cakes like you wouldn't believe and a scale brewery where the hops come only from a cruelty-free farm in the left wall of the living room. (You'd be surprised what goes on in most hops cultivation sites.) They hide a morsel in the curtains or under the sofa for when a sunbeam moves slightly in the afternoon to cloak its rescue.

As I sleep, the orchestra of the sounds that might be, now definitely are, crackling and waltzing and playing in every familiar or tiny or useless or un-thought-of space in the house, lulls me. Words spring from silences that leak between them from another universe, from a planet or a galaxy without any transparency of mice. Poems grow and spread into waking breaths.

Take a few.

Take dozens.

They may haunt and prosper. They will appear in new dents in the toaster or wear marks on the door or a static in loose wire, when you forget. They will massage your diaphragm to lure it into deep, even breaths. You needn't remember them. But, if you do, when you do, they will proliferate unseen, distant constellations into your dreams.

Monday 2 January 2017

List wrangling, for [emoticon]

This is a big animal, yo. It is hairy and furry and it makes long, lowing sounds, especially in the afternoon. It likes to tap dance. Here, listen:.         _/-) ---=--) --:"
--7
))) _))) _))):"""":)) _==)=_)" ,)\\\<\\\]]\)))//]]]>>>¤

And meanwhile, the earth begins to turn so audibly. Whirring and shifting and shouting and compressing and silent. It comes over and serves you tea. Herbal, lemon, green, earl grey, Irish breakfast, all laid out for you. Good afternoon. And this time of year, the sun is nearly at the trees and this time Igansis does a different dance. Similar, but it tremulates its jaw to tune to each so I nd of sunfall. The bird flapping to skatter upawards, against the light; the sticks and logs bending into the land. Igansis does all of this and then, well after you've fixed dinner, it hums and whispers. It bolsters imagery and colour and scent. It speaks from the TV or radio or just from the pipes and it sends sparks through your molars as you dream.

Sunday 1 January 2017

System Twinging; Milo, for Nathan

This one is skinny, but it has sharp teeth. Loads of sharp teeth. It rolls over under stones in the garden or spikes gently over cracks in windows. It didn't ask for your name, and we are not sure if it can talk. In our deep sleep, it transmits gifts for you. We are broke and we don't know how accurate this list is anyway, but we thought you should know. It likes vertebrae. It will push a tongue, out of phase, through your spine until you feel a weight or a sticking point or a sludge dripping in vague trails. It's name is Milo. Milo arches, lifting up your feet like you imagine a fish that swims only in moonlight, without atmospheres, might do. It challenged the bridge of your nose to a dance contest, it waits for you to hum yourself to sleep. Milo likes to make toast and find movies to rent. Static and static and static and static and static and static and a faint melody wiring itself into identification as melodic waveform. And Milo, unsteady and curious, watches the flashpoint writ(h)ing of synapses from millions of miles away.