Three Poems
by Alan Halsey
Five Short Songs of Thomas Carlyle
1.
under the
under
of Nature
under
out-conjured
pro-
proudliest
Logic-mortar
ever-bodies’
offspring
boundless
combine
2.
by chicane
and machine
they stand
dismembered
quantum of
superior Opinion
quantum of
perfect Police
3.
clothes
chaos
conquest
cloud
to lodge
in blankest
bibs
and blankets
laws of
chink-small Memory
laws of
lava meadows
4.
to scramble
and be trampled
clutch-hustled
Task-garden
Star-rolls
Space clock
said and saved
say and spring
5.
to other griefs
the sorest
companion self-
cancelling zero
Monday Night in Southport or Madrid
Nobody knows whose griffin graffito
because ‘so much of his work
was overhead speech’. Conscience
can never be consistent and how could
he decide which decade to decode?
‘The government, of all people’
poor logoclast dwelling on a comma.
‘Was he, then, alone in the possession
of a memory?’ Whatever can be touched
can be vouched for
and furthermore or as we’d
better now say ‘therm furore’
the revenge is average. Have
the cleaners taken whoever
decided ‘rely’ is an adverb
the same who stole the licence to steal
to the chimeras? ‘He’s reading
the poem we were going to sing.’
Notes from the Scriptorium
¶ Never arbitrate with alphabets or easily attribute.
If the chimp could only write she could talk.
¶ As well spawn danger as destroy known script
remarked Aeneas. May all your phoenicians be
phonemesand your photoglyphs have faces you can name.
His Troy as was but read ‘wars’ and what will be.
¶ Anagram spectre as amalgam scripture.
If the alphabet could talk. What odd bull to begin with
but often it has charms to represent.
¶ As for empire the fanatical claimed status
but financial formed states. Some mutes made semi-
vows.Things are such that invisible ink isn’t needed.
¶ Devil point his voice trap stop. In one alphabet
the vowels had been replaced by windows
tourists could look through and hear it sing.
Did you see the giant dragonfly in there
and the minuscule horse? The golem?
And that snake of an acrostic? How easy
to forget that the singing is a slave-song.
¶ Hacks and cuts of business hands.
I too wonder if I’d read better backwards.
It’s not because the chimp can’t write
that she’s violent as we are.
¶ One idea descended like a desolate rune
depicts further fissures
continuing from and expanding.
Proper reports of proper sounds.
If you can make an anagram of Cosmos I’ll kiss you.
Twist & Exist are such constant weary words.
¶ Exhausted numbers as atoms in a net.
This emptyhead’s ideas are in his mouth
quipping quibbles about natural forms
and irresistible shapes of some meaning
as if there were a god of names
still busy deciding names of gods.
¶ And so they hiss. They say
origin’s our prop. Our common comic.
I say to you and your double
others destroy one without use.
copyright © 2008 Alan Halsey
Born in London in 1949, Alan Halsey has lived in Devon, Hay-on-Wye (where he ran The Poetry Bookshop 1979-96) and now Sheffield. His books include The Text of Shelley's Death (West House reprint 2001), Marginalien (a collection of poetry, prose & graphics 1988-2004, Five Seasons 2005) and a selected poems, Not Everything Remotely (Salt 2006). Quaoar (2006) records in poetry & graphics his journey to the twelfth planet with Ralph Hawkins & Kelvin Corcoran; The Last Hunting of the Lizopard (with David Annwn, 2007) is his most recent contribution to the urodelic literature. His collaboration with Steve McCaffery, Paradigm of the Tinctures, was published in a limited edition by Granary Books in 2007.
