IAN DAVIDSON

The shape I'm in

Ova of mercurial smoothness
portals into determined oblongs
in the still air heavy water base

particles begin to splinter
current beating against the hull
something rushing into the present.

The same word twice in the
same place the shockingly new,
the beautifully familiar.

Doctor I can take it no more
my patient fragmenting like
clouds opening up before sunshine.




Ground rules like glass inside the beating heart
a series of tremors around the world from which all life spreading out
a quantity backed up against the stone pier its impeccable smoothness
a meniscus of incalculable force unknown and seldom gathered
it could be the moon it could be a temperature difference at slack water
the fishes which come to feed hooked in the ebb of pressure.
                              Within different time zones a moment in
which he grew in stature as others shrank away from him his arm describing an arc between
the outer air and the surface of the glass, plain and simple
Addressed he rustled the newspaper before apologising finishing off the tails to each letter
and closing the loops

Scratched with small metal instruments the
past came up in layers, taken as dust and
settling its forms shifting gradually
revealed the saints those
traders in the futures market there is no single
process but a variety of turns made in concert each set of
joints ball and socket hip and twist and casting into the still
breathing still breathing each turn of trowel a breath stroke


The old worlds rolled around a
bits of yesterday stuck between two teeth
tongue lashing from side to side
it wasn't how it used to sound how I
meant it to sound
each word running away with itself
as a second language or an amalgam
filtered through hairs the smell
of each syllable each sound

                               pendant (flag)
                               pendant (during)
                               pendant (definite)


all the endings (hanging
in the world




1.
Aeroplanes beat a path to my door and around the outcrops of yellow gorse and under the gorse
smooth bare patches where the sheep sleep a helicopter circled overhead a man's legs dangling
from the open door and waving over and over one hand against the disused mine the generator
beating in the open shed a lifetime pulsing inside the aorta air rushed out and then in again.

2.
The sea surrounded the island in places as smooth as a millpond or rushing between narrow
banks and the unwary. Tinkling glass burying accustomed boundaries out of place out of. A few
old soldiers an out of date annual. The sequence of re-telling intold, folded into and then the
corners turned down.

3.
It comes in bits - triangles of grass and the fork in the road leading. An authority of time ironing
out the wrinkles or the grown over roads. Bars between the cigarettes the dogs and the gun.

the given position

between the devil and the deep blue sea
agricophobia
just one of those words
the free land was grid locked
humanity can be extended
beyond good or bad laws
as the animal search for fodder
strong and brutal
bodies slowly rejecting all organs
puffs of liver lungs and gill
from an I to an O

but I was taking you beyond the pale
through a spray of flowers
hanging low in the sea
nought but a set of connections
separated by series of dug holes
severing the roots if
only trees could walk
or in the imagination they self consciously
drop their leaves and shamed
the genealogy of gardens
can be traced accordingly

it's a minefield one
false step one hop then
sitting down and
admiring the stumps
this is risk gardening tending
things better left alone until
within the flourish that a single gesture
like the outstretched arm of an ancestor
towards the arch of a gateway

wiping the furrows from his brow
encountering unforeseen obstacles
an inelegance
as actuaries of the blood line
this is the space I have bought and through
further purchasing of biological nick nacks
and their rearrangement am constructing
as a matter of fit


The shape within

And so to B & Q
gathering material
to manipulate
within an open hand
between significant fingers
the manipulated word
all possible references
squeezed out a spreading
pool of fact in which

pulled apart
against the grain the
iron wedge of impulse
of its own steam
vanishing points O
intersections many

What keeps that tautness
between the boundaries
feeds its steady stream
it's current and flow
parabola and tangent
within the hours of darkness
the disturbed shuffling of DIY
his time justified
as future behaviour or
light as a feather float
through the hot air
disappearing from view


Faith

When all the borders are finally breached
Back into the arms of others
The cheap bindings split
Grain sucked across the furrowed brow of the hill
Awaiting a room key
Each interior falling apart

The referential compass
spins
words spread out across the table
questions raised with the quality of souffle
fire sucking air from the room and
into the thin grey air
a series of saw backed mountains
valleys pulling the roads through as taught as wire or lain like a slack rope in curves around
                the contours

and where the roads go people will follow
gathering their ingredients
spilling excess

it's the shape that waves make
plotting out the sequences against
their genealogies
and the shape of the fields and the tractor driving down them
and the seagulls flocking the turned earth
I have ploughed, harrowed, sown and reaped
I have tended animals and bathed in streams
I have sucked pebbles on a hot day to keep the saliva running
the sun is a demon
the shapes of dreams slipping out of articulation
the need to enforce coherence a distant nightmare
formed like a curled baby feeling into the giant mole hills
falling off the edge of the inner circle
entering the parts where poor Rosie poor
excluded by illness I cannot work today
her head on the pillow his feet seeking the
cool of the metal frame the colon curling around


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