Art

Naming the colours;
It’s a question of tall men
And attitudes they strike,
Or deep valleys
With an absence of greed.
There is a wine glass
Half full of cochineal
Atop a basalt boulder,
There is a bicycle
With one pedal
And a flat tyre.
Moorland is interminable,
Grass countless.
Who can know why some folk
Speak secretly to bridges,
More openly
To supermarket trolleys?
Branch reaching out,
Road to infinity
Merging
In the second third,
Pixels
Making suggestions
Like shards
Of shattering photons,
Like
A scatter of jelly beans.
There are shades
Expectantly beneath easels,
Pencils
Not drawing attention to themselves,
Wax crayons
Relieved not to be tallow
And oils
Too refined for workshops.
Last night,
In bed, on the floor,
An inspired solitude,
A celibate
Exploration of flesh,
Of contours,
Of endless waves on endless oceans.
Canvas is not blank,
A palimpsest
Of dreams and patronage
Only 3D specs
Might reveal.
Sauvignon blanc
In a schooner
Set
On a Victorian schoolmaster’s desk
With an umbrella,
With a urinal
And
A sewing machine.

Cryo

There is an iceberg in the oven,
The hob has frozen hard,
Wine bottles filled with decanted sighs,
Tears buried in the yard.

Trees shedding all their leaves in springtime,
A statue on the lawn
Is weeping sand precisely because
The moon will rise at dawn.

A moon that shines on separate sheets,
A moon to bind the dead,
A moon estimating absences,
The anger and the dread.

Strum the old guitar with a scalpel,
Incise lyrics on glass,
A choir of lawyers sing the anthem,
The tune is from a mass.

Once nakedness becomes meaningless
And eye to eye being blind,
There is only silence and shadows,
Only the loss to find.

The saxophone has laryngitis,
Even the devil sleeps,
So, when no one meets at the crossroads
A wraith quietly creeps.

Tongues, having been salted with ashes,
Cannot recant their vows,
Ears stopped by indifference ring with
Songs of unspoken rows.

There’s a glacier in the hallway,
Avalanche on the stairs,
Icicle becomes a stiletto,
The assassin despairs.

Absolution

Fresh faced visions
Lie abandoned in sock drawers
While wings
Meticulously unpicked
From backs of angels
Hang flaccidly
Behind the bedroom door
One hook along
From the red suit
Worn by the hobgoblin
That once stalked Europe.

Dave Alton