Poetry

Live-birth

The old Gods still move. They step with earthwarm toes.
You remain lost in their memory—
unseen—unspoken
—equal and free.

I
They mingle with a halfremembered childhood and draw
swift lines through cold assembly halls.
They beguile flickering light bulbs and eke out the last
drops of candle wax. Hot
breathless promises above
stolen stories catch the eye and blink
away in a moment.
Their bodies remain in unwritten words; naked characters without the spill
of blood or ink.
They are the movement of things:
the shift of echoed breath
scattered across streets stained with battle
cries rattling in engines.
This is the line that killed them.

II
Clouds that promised the end
have borne children already
too old to be sacrificed. You
stand unremarkable: lilting lips thick with an unbranded bathroom cleaning product
Skin pocked with kisses and bites
flinches at its the echo
of a dry hand on their pickedbone pew,
too polite to sing or pray.
Known to all and expected
like rain; your skull
scattered on the pavement
with horror and rendition.

III
Palm like a blighted field, outstretched
fingers twitch with a question, answered
with hard teeth; a prayer, canine shaped,
calls for cleaner hospitals, calls for whiter walls, calls for warmer summers, better shower lotion,

double glazed duvet
wardrobe assembly instructions
revenge-porn light switch
that new carpet smell
a doggerland-dance
£4 wine
clogged nose
softly breathing in a quiet office
the feeling of Sunday on the skin
celery veins
a stranger’s smile
grab her by the—

and the answer rings in cool ears.
Paper clings to your face, soiled with halfdone sums.
The clock flicks its tongue in time to your pulse.

IV
You rest, buried in a nest that never starts and never
stops. The endless sweeping plane
bound with glossed pulp,
still clings to the mouth’s red corners.
Lyrics catch
in the throat as dumb lumps.
Fat eggs that elude life like stones
slipping across ice.
A warm body
nourishes cold
lines curled into themselves;
Eyelids flicker against the sun.
A fat egg slips down the throat.

V

You became lost in crushed rock and unwritten books, to return every month with vague ideas of what might be good. I checked the pan had boiled with my hand thrust into it: an unlocked rage through clenched jaws. Eyes like keys, polished but old and pushing just wide of the mark.

A limp map unravels into a page of human schematics. Vague lines dilate through blurred lips.

I stand
an empty vessel
and slip beneath
the ocean of you.

John Darley