Iain Britton
fluorescence
a wrecking ball pendulum | oscillates | children go to bed | dripping
in the sun’s midnight oil | cherubic wonders | dream of bright colours
for people who live in condemned honeymoon houses | demolition
squads close in on hotels which float | which seldom break up | beach
impressions run wild | & waves scoop fissures amongst sunbathers | the
sky appears ready to explode | Sunday historians dig up birthmarks
shed by centuries of peeling | the moon squats on my mantelpiece | doesn’t
deviate from its journey | a shadow plays hopscotch on the scuffed footprints
of my floor | the rooms are separated by oriental partitions | i walk between
painted hills & the deep blue sea | between the glazed abstractions of night
& day | i experience the visceral wish of tripping eastwards | through a clear-
eyed lens | i pluck summer’s fruit | a solitary traveller who ticks off
new territories | tops up his juice count | & plunders Babylon’s orchards |
i switch on my night lights | where lanterns burn in their bulbs of paper | i
conjure up an instant fluorescence | in another world | my son would curl up
inside his mother | be eel-like in his devotion | would leave life’s coordinates
to the turtles | i sometimes go to the outdoor altar of a green mausoleum
to interpret the sign language of the grass | sometimes i leave white poppies |
feel the physicality of mythologies | pacing to and fro | to be reincarnated |
the sky should look as if it’s going to explode into something different again
keyhole ablutions
you stand on a landfill of statues | sledged into ruin | an entanglement
of bones shiver in the neon night life | you dream up a mother figure
alive through a keyhole | lying amongst the sand dunes | belly flat
in the marram grass | you ask about personal favours | responsibilities
like who’s the mouthpiece of this woman | do you sit beside her | speak
on her behalf | people jump to her gestures | watch her wash | shave
her legs | armpits | put on clothes | adjust her behaviour for the
benefit of an audience | you ask why she rolls on her back | feels through
a keyhole for the moon | she lies deep in flowers | hands smooth | legs
smooth | the woman walks home on thin illuminations of stained glass |
statistics aren’t part of the package | you size up mountains | valleys | a
giant sleeping | what’s it like squatting | gills pulsing | washing yourself
in a magician’s soapy fluid | shags scoop the lake for inanga | a
protracted note of welcome splits the tranquillity & massive edges
of boneware get up & wrap themselves in fog | a pin-cushion jungle
of mutilated statements waits for some rejuvenation | birthdays slip
headfirst on a calendar of distant hopes | for you | paradise is best
with its boots walking in clouds & the whole reptilian quandary
slithers briefly into a rage against waking | chunks of ocean against
calving new islands | you imagine landfall | first steps | in stone
processional
the river’s inertia | reflects hands washing in the blue eye of a pool | a
woman slips quietly into a green auditorium of dangling wooden heads
tribal markings tell of boundaries | known trees | houses | fingers
at windows | faces with their sound turned off | the river stretches
its backbone | cliffs crumple their coats | i feel the clamp of nightfall
observe the hung moment of cemented canopies | a neon palace
offers distractions | delicacies | opiates in capsules | i bathe in the bright
petals of an electric pod | the woman whispers | clicks beads | ingests
secrets | performs early morning love bites | & the horizon cracks | fidgets
in its waking | streetlights shift their silhouettes | a fossilised ammonite
feeds noisily on rocks | the puffed muscle of a cactus cuts off thorns |
lovers melt in the dark | kiss where kisses can’t be heard | where breaths
are rolled into words | early risers wallow up to their necks in estuarial
water | mangroves | like sun umbrellas | close in | this dirt we live on |
bought for the price of an axe | a blanket | a keg of whisky | a proverbial song
slip-slides into my mouth | i chew on it | suck off its gritty flesh & pile up
images of streets | buildings for disposal | fitting myself into your open spaces |
helps to remind me of where i belong | meditating on the complexities
of a flower | on the millimetres between our lips | on the exhalations of orchids
ceremoniously picked | on the white undulations of your body | our language
rubs daylight in all the right places | the streets walk on coloured silk |
at the table | i pass fruit & cereal | talk of Pablo Picasso | the blue woman
with ancient eyes | no one understands why the moon is green this morning |
why it has rolled down from the hills | charcoaled the gullies | burnt out
the scarecrows which lie where they’ve fallen | two young people
emerge from the river | pointing fingers at one another
unwanted premonitions
gold anatomies collapse | like broken temples | comma-shaped glands
ooze salt water | old men with deformed Midas claws know the gates | they
unlock prayers & walk through sacred sites | they grab at the sea coming in | they
paddle the foam | squelch eels in their hands | they stare at the city | snatch
at hills | uplifting the horizon | at cliffs scoured by daily abuses | the caretaker
has gone for now | erased his outline | his hours logged off | hired out his guns
to boys who shoot pigeons | the old men crush their silences between tight lips |
their code of unity is unshakeable | a young woman | huffs from a plastic bag |
greets me with her eyebrows | sniffs the ogres she has inherited | defies old
masks from the family cupboard | huffs once more & stumbles into a large shop
her body melting in a triptych of mirrors | the old men study her as if she were
dropped foliage | skidding between buildings | they sweep up the day’s gold dust |
it glitters | & sticks to their sweat | to the corrugations of a living geography |
the caretaker lifts the lids off rubbish bins | checks for unwanted premonitions
schoolchildren walk the paths for companionship | summer leaps pinnacles
plants stretch their necks for slices of daylight | each morning the caretaker
designs new flowers with his eyes | he sticks them on every new branch
then watches them calypso in the sun | & like the old men he continues to
accumulate nomadic experiences | he makes them his own | & like the old men
he passes through their sacred sites frequently
Copyright © Iain Britton 2017
Since 2008, Iain Britton has had five collections of poems published, mainly in the UK. Recently, poems have been published or are forthcoming in Landfall, Brief, StylusLit, foam.e, Cordite, Harvard Review, Mantis, Poetry, Stand, Agenda, Clinic, The Literateur, The Black Market Re-View, The Fortnightly Review, Long Poem Magazine, Poetry Wales, The High Window and in Molly Bloom 8. A new collection, The Intaglio Poems, has just been published by Hesterglock Press (2017).