POETRY |

NEW! ILLUSTRATED LYRIC & POETRY BOOK featuring a selection of song lyrics and poems to accompany recordings by RUBY MUSE (Jools and Malcolm Heyes) – tying together the three modes of their work: poetry, painting and music. Copies £10 (includes UK postage), available on request: contact@rubymuse.co.uk

PLUS! The first in a series of LIMITED EDITION ambient poetry CDs is now available. It can ONLY be ordered as a physical copy: £5 (includes UK postage) available on request: contact@rubymuse.co.uk

‘Moody and magnificent’ Twin Poetry London

THICK WITH BUDS

As trees we are
with branches skied on a dusk-red reach
caught between wing-tethered love
and cloud-sore disillusion
battling with birds in our hair
torn by the elements
worms twisting between our toes
Our seeded-selves, armoured, gut-fleshed
silken-spored and cast to the winds –
gigantic knife-needle fronds
unfettered fly, and I can hardly bear this
silver burgeoning
Spring is shafted, and we’re
hooked on the moon’s bright finger
kicking at the stars
while the womb’s tears flow
thick with buds

GEISHA MOMENT

Yearning for a slow-bright civilization
where time slips free and
being pours itself out in spacious abandon
Where a million sunsets flare
in forests of darkness – and the secret of night
is a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the dawn
As the racing heart
of a stunned bird held in the palm
yields to the stillness of the healing hand
And the moth caught in a spider’s web
becomes freed by small, soft fingers
to the garden air
There is a snow-capped mountain
whose blossoms blow red with fire
yet we have no name for this
As each small word or deed
leaves its indelible trace
on the unseen film of eternity
I hold these thoughts
at a distance from my heart
like thunder
As on the day
I watched you fell
the old, gnarled cherry tree
Stroke by perfect stroke
your strong arms
its shaking bough
Seeds floating down to the edge of my father’s pool…

SUPERNOVA (ALWAYS AND FOREVER)

After ‘Chandra’s Telescope’

These low pitched notes
In full rich scale descending
Break over me like the heart
Of a dying star
They say we could be faultless
The universe’s most perfected entity
In our burgeoning
Non-being
Black sun
Scatter your fire-soaked garland of goodbyes
Forever inward
Across the blue, blue memory of the deep
Breathe out one final holy howl
One last great vast diapason
Into the receiving arms
Of silence
The weight of your absence
Will for aeons
Calibrate the paths of
Younger stars
And as you fold your immensity
Within and within
Great rupturing soul
Know this
The boundless measure of your leaving
Squares exactly
The infinite beauty
Of your always and forever having been

MAGRITTE’S MIDDAY MOON

Small wonder that I bite myself
to gnaw within comes naturally enough

in the break of each strangely sumptuous
mythological morning
Tattered crows claw the necks of the streetlamps
and my garden burgeons with weeds
I can feel them grow
I wonder
if the leylandii we planted
will ever stop
will go on and on
and up and up
like giant Giacometties
in taut parallel
piercing the sky
scratching out the stars
casting gigantic shadows back to earth
Catching
little clouds and aeroplanes
in their sickle branches
and raining them down like confetti
to ruin the neighbours’ neat intentions
And all the while
pavilioned in splendour
our little band plays on
every song
mute as a mystery
under Magritte’s Midday Moon