EYELID MOVIES, 3 FRAGPOPS

1.

wire-frame monsters
& greyscale faces
crowd the overfill
of night-closed eyes

2.

sandstorm orange  

&

translucent pink

like summer

in the womb

3.

it is a rioting haze

it is a 

pulsing 

rorschach 

demonstration

in throbbing overdrive

FRIDAY POPS

ART IN LEATHER BOOTS

monsters rule the earth

science goes underground

we are superseding the insects
our brains blocked with plaque

and our dreams and hopes are embarrassed now
in
the 
loaming
fields
of 
stone

art pulls on its boots
and walks on down the hall

looking for the library
and the weapons there


BOMBS

what was there
is not there now

thus spake bombs


SCREENBURN GHOSTS

whenever i close my eyes
you ghosts drift curious
into the doorway

youre ghosts of my memory
not ghosts of the grave
tho
you
mingle
with 
the grandparents 
and 
the assassinated miscellany 

you are the shadow of all our youth
on my eyelids

a soft screenburn haunting
wondering where i am now
and
friendly


CANDLE

candle burning
at both ends

till there is no wax left

and soon no wick

then briefly
i am

entirely

only

an orphan fire


STRANGE DAYS

so one strange day i woke
a member of the

  world of adults

tho i knew i was once a child
and why some things make more sense now

its
nothing
i
had
questions
about
back when i was small

a plastic mouse 
in my 
school trouser pocket

pic from bluemaize.net

COLD BABY DREAMS

       i dreamed 
   of a new years eve 
in a deep indigo forest

 me  ridgwell  a whole bunch of us writingslobs 

  unsettled and itching
  riding warm air updrafts 
into a rich 
        blue 
         cloudless night 

 drifting up almost close enough to the stars 
          to know 
      if theyre the worn holes in black velvet
  where the light 
      of a kind of lost heaven 
 filters thru 
  like a tease

we all have soft palm pod screens 
they roll open like vine leaves
     we share 
     haikus around 
     like wine

  or something similar to haikus - they were experimental 

          of course

           and 
  heavy on accurate punctuation

i struggled to finish mine
unable to find the right last line
     about the planets 
  being the dead used fossils 
    of the old gone gods

we found a baby up there

  a sky boy 

   he is 
like a magic boy we said
   he is 
like a superman boy we said

we all wrote it all down in our vine leaves
   heavy on accurate punctuation
   and we took turns 
  to keep him warm 
    inside our coats 
      as we flew him down 
        to get a foil blanket
          from 
          the 
  st johns ambulance team
     parked 
     by 
     the 
   tea and scone tent

in the clearing is a wedding
crowded and cramped and crazy
in the deep indigo forest night

someone has done something bad there
we felt the friction of it singe the air

 and all the trees outside the arguments
  are gold like cake decorations
 and the mad seagreen monsters
     with kind donkey eyes 
        are 
 lined up on wooden benches
    patiently waiting a turn
    at something
  we cant yet see

and us writingslobs are sky bound again
aiming for the sky holes again

     vainglorious 
   like a race in myth

pic from bolgernow.com

ALIENS

  monsters 
  are 
  coming

the text said

was a power outage
as far as i could see

street was black velvet shapes

candles dull orange 
in silent windows

  the
  text 
  didnt 
  help

MOVIE POPS

1.

  sane hindsight 
  comes
  slow as winter sun
and
calls
the 
monsters of our minds
rampaging
clumsy
and
disjointed - daftly destructive
like 
b movie beasts
  
  built of dim fantasy and ancient nightmares
  they
  need
  no provocation 
      to
  let madly rip red fog


2.


movies create worlds

  alternate 
  ant hills
    of almost friends

  inside
  a
demographics narrow appeal
twisting sense
  and
forcing reason
into
a
neat coda
for
simple shutdown hours

    OR
    they
    cut
    thru
    the
  crap and crust
    and
expose our naked lunches

 

from stevebenedict.ie (Misery)

BATSHIT DREAM

Everything is sludge green.  The terrain is de-forested jungle. Thick mud and deep roots slick from rain.  There is a group of us.  Half a dozen.  We carry bulky bags and heavy equipment.  I recognise one as an actor from the sitcom Community.

The going is difficult.  Visibility is bad.  We pick up the pace and call out to each other in half heard voices.  I have tunnel vision and a desperate sense of doom.

Things like tumbleweeds wound with christmas lights and filled with motherboards overtake us.  The light in the low sky changes often.  Green lightening and electric thunder.  The murky soup of mist and diffuse murmur of faux dawn.  Or dusk.

We find the dam.  Olive slime clings to the dull concrete and monsters appear in the distance.  Huge shadows in low cloud or silhouettes before the dim sun.

We work, our mumbles muffled and useless.  The quicker we work, doing i don't know what with whatever any of this stuff is, the closer the beasts come.  More tumbleweeds shoot past.  There is a palpable sense of escalation.

Our tasks dissolved into chaos.  Our hands are all thumbs and we start to run and stumble across sludge green fields giving into panic.

There is a large building just like the Richmond Holiday Inn.  I go in the revolving doors.  The receptionist is familiar in that dream way and tells me i have been doing it all wrong.  

'Do LESS', she says, 'and the alternate realities won't catch you up.'  
'You been doing TOO MUCH', she says 'there is no need for the monsters.'

We head out and slowly we wade across a river of white topped khaki.   

'Thats one thing done', she says, 'so lets wait a while.'  

We wait then wade thru deep mud that sucks our shoes and reaching the edge of a busy dual carriageway.  Again we're waiting.

Things are seeming safer but its all very tense.

'Cross the road', she says, 'and get the box in the ditch but remember do one thing at a time, do it SLOWLY.'

The road is no longer a dual carriageway, its Lampits Hill near my house and i'm standing by the farm where we used to buy potatoes by the sack when i was small.

I cross the road between traffic.  In the ditch i wait, a small box is down in the weeds.

Everything stays as it is.  The sky is uniform grey-green.  I pick up the box and i wait again.  Then i climb the verge and stand by the side of the road in the bushes and wait for a space in the hatchbacks.

There is no path here and the overgrown verge shrubs block the view up the road.  Opposite are old brown flowers on a lamppost. A tribute to the victim of a fatal accident.

I notice a pedestrian crossing right by my feet that wasn't there a second ago.  

I step out on it assuming the traffic will stop . . .