Ode on the Poetical Character

As when in sleep her eyes and beauty opened

flowering or the tightrope

dance my saying I deploy

falling as merriment

A defamiliarised location (are those ceilings levitating)

all as when in the time it took

telephone number on palm of her hand

scribbled to call

Maybe I’ll imagine what it’s like to have been imagined

making me unknowable to my imagined life

into a car and drove us where graffito mutating

her eyes winged away from the pillow as far away as could be

“It’s not like I often do but I’ll take a cigarette thanks

what’s your coat made of it’s pretty there’s not much to see around here

only the latest in being surveilled and the tightrope

dancing I know a name what’s yours

But your coat is very pretty and it looks warm which is important now that winter

and others like us I suppose you could say displaced displacement

yes the cigarette is making me light

headed oh you in your warm pretty coat”

Opened her eyes in wakefulness this

time me stood on the window sill flapping my arms “an art in

unending catastrophe” I said

but she smiled and laughed

he unlaced his shoes for clouds were massing / clenching their fists and the horizon looked like it had bruised itself / he opened his notebook and checked he had listed 10 phrases useful in the event of extreme events / then rechecked for the rain was now pouring, freezing cold, on all outside in the freezing cold / and rapidly he put away his notebook to keep it from being ruined / she stepped into an underground station / her warm coat deep red as the deepest red butterfly could not keep her from shivering / the darkness rattled beside her, a drunk slept legs now rag dolled on the carriage floor / the doors slid open and she hurried out into the rain soaking her coat / and later washing her hair and drying it while drinking a mug of tea

arms fair

ethical drone attack

conference facilities

ethical plunder

universal peace

i could eat a ghost

i’m being eaten by ghosts but at least they’ve laid the table with a clean linen tablecloth

be grateful for little mercy

he acknowledged the failure of his calculation

relacing shoes he reached the hilltop to see slivers of silver void cutting through rain and the path he’d followed become a streamlet

he lay on the ground and sang 10 songs and it was then she realised she’d bruised her left arm hurrying onto the train

with her right hand she gently applied a salve

she lay down on the ground upon a different hilltop and began to repeat 10 phrases in the event of extreme events