Deadly Pollen | Page 2

Stephen Oliver
Orders intercepted,?encrypted to the house style.?The litterateur tracked back through?his ISBN to no man's land -?the robotic verb activated, sent?in under barbed metaphor strung out?where trees once stood as?camouflage. The voices from his?hill-bunker a wind turbine. Accusations?tumbled in the night. For months he?heard soft hammering, mimicry;?they failed. Could not beat back the?weather on his chosen ground.
*
Time passes - that pressure in?space again - return of the unoriginals?tinkering with the power-box -?such fine work - setting traps out?for darkness. Time passes -?talons curve and hook - how the?mouth chokes with ash. Feet drag?muffled under dungeons. Time passes -?that pressure in space again - a?new proclamation from Semiotic City -?this custom built dome and?aquarium light, pulsing: henceforth,?no corners to hide around - no zone?permitted for surprise to leap.
*
Hugely, our indifference squats -?unleavened as fear, blood is contained?within news footage. Archaeologists?stop digging deserts because of?landmines. Camels wait for sand dunes?to drift into ridges - blue flags flutter?back at Fort Apache on brave?white trucks (what gets through?is the scent of coffee). A footless boy?hobbles past, bargain hunting,?a life at odds & ends - smoke drifts?over Manhattan, out across the Hudson?river as from a Bedouin campfire.
*
Circuit; right hand wise,?homage to the sun - as did ancient?Celts, Scythians, too - host to?the Milesians on their last leg to?Ireland as the first Celts castaway -?whose home precinct the Black Sea,?the right hand to the centre;?memoried in standing stone circles.?Yet homage to a sun as walking?pillar of fire, with hell for a coronet??The world's breath and mystery?end here, earth's innards engorged -?sprawled redly coast to coast.
*
If streets had cobblestones?blood would flow in tatters - torn?flags to a revolution lost. Streets?smoothly ease to drains. The cut deep,?and blood wakes from its blackness,?crushed as berries in the runnels?of a wagon, oozes its oil from?the body's casket - til flesh becomes?porcelain, perfect surface for moon,?ice, the glass-edged sky to play upon;?in silences deep as birch in the?bayoneting dark - and leaves finally?resemble paper money piled up?under the turbined lamplight.
*
A Public Works draughtsman?spent thirty years designing the City?Sewerage Reticulation System?he eventually hoped to escape through -?a masterpiece! A prairie dog would?have been proud of it. Complex of?accented runs, angles, drops, sluices,?pumps, ditches, endless unbowed?archways, treatment ponds breaking into?sunlight - the architects of Athens?would have been proud of it.?Only on paper - not one trowel lifted!?miles and miles and miles of it.
*
Pyrrha, your dewy hair,?yellow, scented, doubly wreathed?in Jasmine, fresh from the trellis?this morning - your new lover yet to?arrive, breathless. Your tantrums?are as sea-storms, heart-wrecking?for that unsuspecting voyager - maybe?as survivor, I might warn him?against your squally lust, he won't?find safe haven in your arms! This note?is record enough - that I set down?against your lubricous hold.
See: Horace's 'Pyrrha' ode. I,v.
*
The flames above the wall,?private show for the Gods, the city?burned three days, at night, smoke?warmed the stars. Border forest?shifted with shields - scritch-owl,?a horse's impatient breath - the hawk?wheeled under a pennant moon.?In the grey dawn men turned North.?The druid notched these events?onto trunks that lead to deeper wood -?envisioned - silence, incantation;?the God found within the stone.
*
Once cradle of civilization -?now crucible, a sandstorm of tanks,?a battery of rocket-launchers?each one bright as a guiding star?slams home to its birth place, sand sprites?leap dervishly, limbs gad about,?horses buckle back upon themselves -?empty out like exhausted bellows.?A beggar (in nameless rags) calls?out in either prayer or curse to?the desert night first refuge for saints;?Cross and Crescent belch fire.
*
Forty thousand tons. Space?dust, diamond and sapphire, snips?of light, collect on earth yearly.?Dust breaks bread on our too dusty?planet; on our twice dusty planet;?on our overly dusty planet made?available to wind; dust breaks?down glaciers. Broken deserts from?sand storms deliver dinosaur dust,?highways loosen tyre dust, your?home a time capsule - our earth bent?dustward forsworn to decay.
*
A giallo antico moon framed?within cratered ruins. Country turned?up at the edges like a dirty postcard.?Poplars, broken spars of pine,?cypress. Dusty plane trees rubbed raw?by abrading tanks in the market?square. Two ambulances shoved aside.?Kabul. The Republic of Georgia's?snowy mountains [backdrop to some?desolate soccer field]. A few lean?men shouldering grenade launchers pass?by and grin, heading for the glacire.
*
'The Breaking of Nations'?a horse cough, as history laments?its own passing. What ghosts?urge these riots? Memory is dead,?flags and banners dissolve back?into thoroughfares. The East?is reliquary; bone splinter and shrapnel?mixed in daily. What ghosts urge?these riots? Barbarism looms in?the triumph of immediacy, a final exit?from the Garden of Eden, bombs?bristling moments ago at cockcrow.
*
'A line is taking a full-stop?for a walk,' said Klee. A straight?line is the supreme act of cruelty;?is intent without reprieve, ambush?and final judgement; Alpha?and Omega, the beginning and end,?(bullet-to-victim); the scroll of?credits, a squadron of lines;?the banding of speech, a geology?of sound; the blade tilt of horizon?that bloodies a sun; is gravity?compressed and a disk flung wide,?is flatness departing life to nothing -?spear cast on a plain at sunset.
*
Buildings off the
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