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Cape Farewell

the borders of our beings

when the quiet eyed boy who spends class scribbling soft words onto paper meant for diagrams and equations who creates worlds out of pencil and freedom from the gentle movement of his fingers and wrist asks “would you like to see my notebook?” say yes when the sparkling girl whose laugh is so loud it […]

Cartography

You needn’t go far To notice the difference. The ground is the same The trees are still there But the air feels wrong. There are no skulls, no bodies No cheap horror film cliches. If it wasn’t so stifling, you could almost enjoy it. But it’s always so stifling. It used to be a pilgrimage […]

The Waiting Room

Just give it time A cyan sky will merge with the purple ocean The horizon will turn orange at dusk Just wait for a bit The evergreen hills rolling on and on (they roll like dice on a thunderclap) will bloom, revive beech trees from dust Give it time The brown clouds above you Borrowed […]

Bell Tower

My dad shovels the snow from our driveway Like a monk cleaning his monastery. I watch him from the bedroom window, Back bent into old age, The cupped hands of his tool raising The snow’s soft animal And putting it down again amongst its kind. Like a prayer, the thousand doves of winter Fly up […]

Your Story

tell me what it is about you that flies, kite-like, through crimson skies and seas of algae and marble turquoise frosted over with footprints and floating sand tell me what it is about you that fights, a sharpened scythe hanging at the very edge of a pale crescent moon a furnace-fired armour tell me what […]

Fire Fights Itself

Trust not a word I say, not one lick or spit of hot-hit-whisper. Don’t let me beguile you, peacock feather dance, melt the air above my head: this is no magic, just a rotten science. Resist the urge for compliance: pat me down, put me out, smother me with your rags. Clothe me in black […]

Barrier Breaker

So often we see the ocean tinkering neatly in its own space. Bouncing the wet bodies of swimmers like grandchildren on its knee, sucking the loose tooth of the shore and brushing clean backsides of jetties. How fascinating to see the waves break rock for once and shower over the small children on their stomachs, […]

a riveting gift

you are moved by the earth, you are moved by the earth hold it in the rage of the river something’s come loose this is water jumping off a cliff without wearing its bathing suit the audience sits on the bank are looking which here means nearly crying are all saying all in all your […]

Instinctive Thinking

My instinct tells me the wind is cooler I prepare for the torrent of birds Growing nervous, the bitter air is engulfing me Raw snow drifts lazily to the rocky floor A group of geese pass by To Africa! I cry, I fly Over the mountainous terrain and winding streams Never looking back. A new […]

Moon

It begins a comedy, a pocket-sized calamity, as eye and lens turn to sky, and there, fuzzed and haloed, sallow and pale, the moon shrinks in its socket. Slowly, slyly each night, it wisps to cobwebs, fizzes to ash, no longer the prize opal, but a synapse in the empty sheath of stars. And the […]

how to disappear in the city in the rain

wait as the water beats on your face like the perfectly flat skin of a drum and as it fits your smile like an oyster let memories of everything you’ve touched roll from your pockets like pennies somehow licked away by the cool water leaving just sticky rust left on your fingertips watch breathlessly as […]

Tapestry

You danced, you sung You smiled at the sun You coughed and the joy became undone That’s when the first thread vanished You laughed, you played You giggled and cried You doubled over and the happiness died That’s when the fifth thread vanished You lay, you read You retched and screamed You contorted with pain […]

Lines of Memory

Music by David Julyan. Years ago we were in France. One day we took the car to Spain, over the Pyrenees. The border was high in the mountains. We stopped to look at the scene, and memorials up there in the mountains to those who died in the civil war. On the road was the […]

How We Left

Music by David Julyan. We left in a hurry; our lives hastily packed in the two carrier bags: a toothpaste, some snapshots from the last Christmas (we’ve already forgotten aunt Mary was alive back then, her lipstick smudged around the edges) and our birth certificates to keep safe for the afterlife, when we’re not here, […]

Tigerless

Images: Experimental go-pro video @ Marieke Helmus (shot at Ameland, Holland), 2014   In between hunts, when I lie in the grasses And practise the stillness of death, I have been thinking hard. And I believe, Father, that what is gone is certitude. We learnt the loss of you in between licks, When we asked […]

Ember Man

Music by David Julyan. Images @ Simon Barraclough 2014 We could sit here for hours Telling funny stories and Laughing through damaged lungs. The ember man and I Have plenty in common. He shows me all the faces That hide inside of him. And all his favourite places Sun baked and ready to fry. He […]

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