Drew Milne

from ILL AT THESE NUMBERS

                But maths too can rot.
                    - John Wilkinson
 
 

The call is dirty news
so feathered barking
to curve from shaggy
then savagery bland

again sweet stricture

bold as bright rains
done for bludgeoning
and all is quite through

the fang still showing

how sliver-tip proofs
take each gut or lyre
on quatsch or starch

for a speeding rubble

come formalist loves
then rip from a heart
a frond and its spleen
 
 

Spent face and calamity
quite bit to sullen pence
ent price and vaunt dice

vowel to decree nought

what price obsolescence
who would but bone up

and deep soul soft soap

for concept provenance
were the the to actual

so sweeps the plastic

palm spar or rapt carpet
as a bark sped to bronze
 
 

So much of duration
to laugh answering
revolutions of spur
flame thrown once

on its tire the usual

periods thing or big
fruit so likewise by
single or slow tread

poring into the field

hardly lush to endure
but neat braced skein
for burning diagrams

elbow to finger grime

uh-huh my crunchers
wrinkling leather dash
under the masked raw
 
 

Hey fiddle the count
or the burnt creative
all the way to a rose
or budding metaphor

stripped of hedging

till the raw calculus
says hand over fist
in brief nasty brutish

and short arrays sing

dog the curt entrepôt
stay with me stay the
buttoned toothy bulk
 
 

Turbulent to pitched gloat
or half way to accounting
where rugs like diagrams
double in evening charms

the repeat take arabesque

at face value and argues
for the two state solution
each strip of taken earth

spelt out along trig points

while sorry opens more
square brackets than death
as though the sheer weight

makes a critique of resolve

and the state shadowed by
lost amends in the blaming
as though origins mattered
 
 

Territory fired
out of the hides
and parchment
still to scrolling

but even alight

is no single file
nor even temper
but a spending

and then a face

scarred in lines
saying nothing
nor even entreats

only a quick fix

the still in view
varnished and lit
by satellite states
 
 
 


((((((((( The Alterran Poetry Assemblage ))))))))) 

<^>