DIETING ON SILENCE

This is an incremental city, gives up secrets on a drip.
Lives on the skeletons of old cities, feeds off
the stories of old cities, accretes

a calcite deposition of old cities,
potential cities, personal cities,
subjective cities, impersonal and bravura cities.

A manuscript pile. Inactivity.
Rustling textbooks.
Apparent light and surprises.

Massive and sudden geometries.
There is an absence, it is duly noted.
There are angles but not too many.

There is a shift in the emphasis of light
between one end of a road and the other,
there is nothing but planes and refraction.

There is silence, more than silence.
There is only insularity.
Beyond lie the docks, you're welcome to them.





THE BIRDS IN MY GARDEN DISAGREE WITH YOU

slights can accrete and you
god knows, have had a bad year
to the extent that
a simple half turn
accident or no
is a single to the midlands with no hotel

(i'd like
to have phrased that better
i'm sorry
you need help, I know)

it's been a lot to take in, and you
deserve better but then
everybody does

a system
of tiny disasters has
developed
there is a lattice of cracks
there's an
archipelago of mould
but other systems
hedges and shrubs
have also and as it's near dawn
and you sit on my swing chair
in the depths of my garden
you say it's a cold, cruel
and terrible world
and the birds
en masse
disagree with you





THE RAIN IS THE RAIN IS THE RAIN

The rain becomes everything and everything
becomes the rain it's a pact the
light agrees to sledge and stagger
the sky agrees to shrink the rain agrees

in and of itself it's been auditioning
practicising its reach doing its
stretches its careful warm-downs
tuning its skin
calling in favours

the rain is the rain quantifiable
though you may not believe
we measure our evening in inches
and in the fluctuating depth of field





SOLIDS

this will not stand
the house is impossible
gravity a sham
a hustle three cards

this cannot be
the silence is utter
outlines are drip-fed
louring and absolute

this is a joke
a laugh of a vista
a skin-flick of fields
an imperfect unit

these are the problems
ego made concrete
a fossilized simper
thousands of pounds

supplemental colours
extraneous angles
guttered appendices
withered landscaping

these are the answers
fill in the lake
brick up the windows
devolve from the mezzanine

refuse the refraction
quiet the guns
diet on systems
hold the rooves tight





ARGOT

noise a crowded room
gleam of engines
vectors of influence
arsenal of language
weight of ladders

slung slang across a space
with ease with only
slight emphasis as though
born to speak
someone else's language
someone else's cant


© Matt Fallaize 2008