Issue 10: Beau Hopkins

From SONNETS FROM B TO A

They seemed Others, but are We

                         – TRAHERNE

Can’t See So Well

What I live in: you, us, and ALL TIME. Also

my abandonment to blindness and with that

a new, lush definition. Now watch my mouth

give breath, riding the static

ion-flustered curve that comets from the bed: 

a universe jailed in imagination – 

the fungible nature of my ‘just’ response

REAL, as required. So it’s true: parabolas stroke

our cross-nine equation silkwork to form

co-efficients for you ‘n’ me. But my wish

is for you only: because I know

nothing really & want EVERYTHING

now to be personal, ‘just right’ and touchable

like you in the dirty & lovely morning light.

Wakey Wakey

O SUN. Thy heat is such a nice alarm,

ahem-ing so politely on the skin.

And when it jigs, I feel it dance and burn

deep in the blood, all wavy & alive with a

wild whiteness. Eyes, go back in. I want to feel

when the heartbeats come, barely touching,

her leaf-movements like little, awkward falls

in silence, shaking out the hush of our

bedsit-cum-paradise.

Yeah but God, ignore all that crap.

I used to impress you. Now all my skill

lingers & goes cold, dimming like the ceiling light.

But still I am, even futuring every

thing, present to you, you & in you.

And Then A Trial

Now to be decided: by a judge; PROOF, & pro-

cess of recess seeking (shall we say)

leave before flight? Thank you m’lud. Or otherwise

in principle grounded? Ah but that’s so

ab initio, so grown dim, so ab-

dicated & what the hell is this? I feel no

contact in the touch, no touch

in my nameless, blindly named, naked

HUNGER. Dressed you who did then?

Tell me now, now it is not.

O life. Press & abuse this

button. Pray out: out of never; out of what;

what I am & out of all other

things like love’s seasons as the green year rounds.

Old Draff, New Draff

What I live in: you, us & all time – a cloud

scudding & shoved by time, us the shadow.

Huh. I see the garage door is shut

& the trees have ground to a halt. You could say

all time’s just a matter of time, of course, so stop

rehearse, or do what you like, I’ll never stop

as you creep back to bed from the window

all frigid with your dream. And the sheets,

like the moon you rode in on,

icy & stiff. One more … what? Lip, eye, a burning word?

No. Just buck up again & admire it –

nobody, I mean nobody at all –

night’s odd like that: it comes, like understanding

sudden to the heart & jars us with its stars.

Beau Hopkins is studying for a PhD on late-modernist British poetry at the University of East Anglia.

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