Embedded Files
Look Up
from Trethewey, West PenwithLook Up
Spread of one colouring, texture giving
advantage to another texture, colouring it
and so losing the advantage...
What colours! Edges fly against edges,
buckling and breaking themselves fragmenting
and they collide and combine, much as new,
much as the new waves overhaul retreating waves
at the fluttering frontier of beach and collapsing sea;
splashes and smears variegate the sky;
and, in the middle, battered by strong wind,
a swirl of an insubstantial centre
which might well seem to control the whole space,
a hole in it of ruin and emptiness
which does seem filled by powerful elements
ready to recombine, not subject to
external and considerable control
surrounding a settled area of grey on grey;
a little person who is chemically high
right in the midst of a crowd pretending calm;
a city on fire, blinding, a glitter of lights,
the collapse of a tenuous system working
which will soon malfunction, shunning command,
the consequence of ideology
ignoring political dialogue. Noise.
Look Up
from Norwood JunctionLook Up
as in a thick sea mist
the middle of the floor
exploding
and nobody
and nobody but this figure disappearing to one side
one imagines him speaking defiantly
if you want your –
your – the sentence doesn’t finish
we do not release each other, he says
inside the white, drifting, unseeable detail
unsealed and usable
he’d –
he was.
he was – the sentence is the life
it can be shaped
and he can’t be
he says: don’t ever
he says: can’t be with that
he says: take my many
he is beginning to glint godlike
as one might imagine that
many times he has it
exactly right
suffering and pink
sections of remembering
he says: how you – we – talked about –
how you happen to – you love
you went, to you, for you, when you
because you…
and then he says: take your many
and then it all dissipates
Look Up
Look Up
from Crugkern #2
a boar breaks out of a granite boulder
a fish with a clown's mask pushes through a block of ice cream
the ice cream drives down the back of the fish’s head and slithers
and swims upstream
a swan throws itself into the air, all water specks and arse
five bread rolls on a surface
a head turning
and turning more
degrees than
circular, each
facing timber
hands throw out of a tree not linking
a mouse splits into constituent parts
bubble packed for ever
*
two words
reefs in shallow water
one word is long and flat
the other approaches cubic
which stands well out of waves
and yet, now, it's gone, both gone
one above the other
below or above another
beside one beside t'other
and each part unlike each other
a knife moves towards a brain
the brain divides into a complex of 2 & 3 & 1
becoming scissors.
blades which
separate &
show themselves
the body of a sheep
defending young
eyes of insects
that's one word
another's shattering
that is a third
but it is a white, horse-head dragon
roaring conflagration
these three
form a triangle
*
a chimney, as it takes flight, forms a bird's head
to threaten words with beak scythe
words are all froth
even the sea is breaking
words in a tide, a gain,
words in a tide
mumbled words
heads and necks of cautious seals
one word above another word
beside two words beside each other
all underlined
something with eyebrows as big as its jaws,
so full they partly cover its mandible,
leaps, biting the air, towards a cartoon pig
there is fire and smoke – perhaps dry ice – the pig recoils
a navy helicopter buzzes the logan stone
the monster disappears into backwoods
the flying machine moves on
all’s quiet
Look Up
Look Up
from A tram from West Croydon to New Addington
Sheet metal stretched across a hemisphere
which turns through something like a rectangle
so that we head beneath dark cover.
It is quiet in the human fields today.
Individuals wander here chewing.
Some wait in pens, others by gates, obeying.
Little fights do start, but soon end. Few die.
Time passes, counted in standard increments
by those who care; and products are sold on.
In the unprotected parkland, theories
are developed, which explain and comfort,
ensuring no one does anything sensible.
Slowly we disappear into darkness,
filmed on cctv for safety tics.
Lawrence Upton is a poet and graphic & sound artist Some commentaries on Bob Cobbing (2013). He co-edited Word Score Utterance Choreography in Verbal and Visual Poetry (1998) with Bob Cobbing, with whom he also made Domestic Ambient Noise, spanning 300 pamphlets totalling more than 1800 pages and taking over 6 years to complete (1994-2000).
20 + text-sound compositions with John Levack Drever.
Second solo exhibition (“from recent projects”) September 2012, London. Made photo, synthesis (for solo viola) on commission to Benedict Taylor (2013) (Subverten CD).
Convenes Writers Forum Workshop (since Cobbing’s death in 2002). Academic member Athens Institute for Education and Research. Email: uptonlawrence@gmail.com
Report abuse