from in thin dreaming

 

by Michael McAloran

 

 

 

 

trace/ unlike-

 

 

head/

      winds of vortices

 

and the lock of the

idle bone

 

heart hollowed

      asking of the speechless hour

 

no not promised all

yet given

 

nothing

      but the cracks in the walls

 

leaking a trace of the eye’s liquid

      unlike tears

 

 

 

 

said yet-

 

 

at the bewitch of it

      said yet

 

locking the breath

            carrion flies upon

 

ask or not/ breaking

 

and the jocular

kick

 

of ash in the peeling eye’s appeal

        redolent of

 

 

 

 

no never-

 

 

feast/ flourish of

 

      (in after-birth

                     of ghetto)

 

and the bitten wind

 

                  ocular distance

 

[murmurs]

 

      without reprieve

 

knocking till stray the surface climbs

to the edge of undone

 

black vault of sung aloud alack aloud

                        unstaying

 

no never having yet

begun

 

 

 

 

as if to-

 

 

cylindrical

              echo(es)

 

bled winds of

        the unspoken

 

spasm lock of the atoned blood

        no not enough

 

paling into

        birthing as if to…

 

 

(ah

 

             spit)

 

 

 

 

unsaid-

 

 

dead yes

      there it carries

 

back till

heart

 

cascade of

      breathless/ the naught of it but once

 

redeem the ask

said along

 

broken

      all said/ redeemed

 

in a pit of the sky’s asking

unsaid

 

not once

 

 

 

 

unto final-

 

 

scattered

 

burnt to touch

      in the closed night’s turning

 

all of the

      redeem of it

 

collected

 

through the shadow of less

and

 

less

 

the heart’s

      discarded settlement

 

dead as

light

 

mockery all

the breath stitched shut till final

 

neck-snap

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Mc Aloran is Belfast born, (1976).  His most recent work has appeared in ditch, Gobbet Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, Ygdrasil, Establishment, Carcinogenic Poetry, Primal Urge, A New Ulster, Slit Your Wrists, The Galway Review and Turbulence Magazine.  A second full length collection, Attributes, was published by Desperanto in 2011.  Lapwing Publications (Ireland) also published a collection of his poems, The Non Herein, in 2012 and Knives, Forks & Spoons Press will release an ekphrastic book of text/art, Machinations, early next year.  He also has two projects forthcoming from Quarter After Press.  He edits Bone Orchard Poetry, a webzine of the bleak/ the dark/ the surreal and the experimental.