POETRY FROM THE POETRY CHAINS OF DOMINIC LUXFORD (a.k.a. Randomly-Selected Lines from McSweeney's Issue 22 Book Turned Into New Poems)

POEM

Page,
it looked so much like the real thing.
The Moon,
dark, hair growing back down there.

Expression: 'hell hounds on my trail',
almost filled our bed,
made of anything, except me
on the sea.



CHANT

Couples spoke little,
small. It's like
hypnagogic trances of language,
my large magnetic car
after people, those poets wholly
now in these ones we have.
Two loaves of bread, white hands
see a domino going down.


DOMINIC LUXFORD

Despise
One
Made
In
Notorious,
In
Chosen.

Lucky
Unstable
X
Fact
Of
Real
Despising.

TWO POEMS FROM DOG WALK ROUTES (a.k.a. Two Little Poems Which Make Slightly More Sense)

TO THE WW1 MEMORIAL ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Don't think I didn't salute you
out of ignorance,
protest or
foul temper.
I just didn't like the look of the kids
surrounding you,
coughing,
leering,
resting against your pedestal.


HAIKU FROM JACK HILL

Autumn leaf scrapes down
the white load of a lorry
parked illegally.

MISHEARD (a.k.a. Can You Figure Out What's Actually Being Said?)

Oi, wash lead ashtray!
You cunt of bean!
Year of queues in me, off lion?
Apps sew loot, Lee!
Doughnut teller.
Oi, my taff two!
Cum a noun. Pleas.
Awe white. Justice wants.
Than cue.
Shut up.

THE PELICAN CLOSET (a.k.a. My Nonsensical Contribution to National Poetry Day 2014)

Bowler devotion at the Pelican Closet - 
Lizard sleepy,
Priest bored,
Fingers cowed;
their balling rumps. Peaches really.

The swooned waiter speaks,
Southern, dirty, licked.
Questions puffed - Hall or yard? 
Guttural. Hanged.
Replying muted.

In the backroom
quilts glow, track prose faithfully
while the fussy thinning boiler wrangles
vouchers for the tripped grad student,
his sulk honed,
moistened.

You creak, Silly Cody,
grip baskets first cheated by Billy,
now quills rustling
and questioned by The Six.

We're drifting pied,
risky balls hiring,
skillfully sore but found in yeast crimes.
The beastly peal of moody willed dark
and the Fetish Drone announces
lurid malted debt.

PERFUME STALL (a.k.a. A Scratch-and-Sniff Story, Provided You Know Where to Scratch and Where to Sniff)

            'I don't quite know what you want,' Erin said, leaning back against the stall. A row of bulbous perfume bottles rattled against one another.

            The old man smiled and leaned forward on his walking stick. 'Unfortunately that is a problem when relaying the memory of a smell but just bear with me and I'll have it. You'll have a sale yet, my dear.'

            'Okay.' A sale meant very little to Erin. This wasn't even her stall, she was tending to it while Elma was straightening out the finer details of her new bank loan. Making even one sale was a kindness.

            The old man made exaggerated sniffs of the air. The smell was supposedly in this spot and very familiar to him. He had described it as warm and curved like a petal. Erin had run all the expensive bottles past his nose but none of them were it apparently. He didn't look as certifiable as some of the other potential customers that had passed by today.

            He wrinkled his nose. 'Could you pick up the rose bottle please?'

            'This the one?'

            'Yes. It's interfering.'

            Erin tucked it away in the cupboard underneath the stall. She would have to put it back before Elma returned; she hated mingling the sweet stuff with the cheap tat. Erin turned back to the old man.

            'How about this?' she said. 'I move the stall forward a bit and you can see if the smell follows.'

            The old man flipped this over between his thick black eyebrows. 'All right.'

            Erin lifted the catch from the ground and wheeled the stall forward a couple of feet. She was in danger of encroaching upon the space of the man selling watchstraps, something to be strongly avoided, but she kept it there anyway while the old man leaned even further forward to smell the space on the ground where the stall had been.

            It did seem possible that all the spillages created from free samples throughout the day had led to the concoction of an entirely new smell but really Erin just wanted to see how far this old man would go before giving up and just moving on.

            The old man looked up. 'I think it went with you, dear.'

            Erin pulled the stall back again. 'It's not what I'm wearing, is it?'

            'Pardon?'

            'This mysterious, exquisite smell thing isn't just some line you're running to flirt?'

            The old man looked hurt. Nevertheless he smelled the space around her neck. 'Of course not.'

            'Then I'm afraid I really don't know what to tell you.'

            'What's in that little glass tincture?' the old man said, looking just beneath her elbow.

            Erin turned around. 'Whereabouts?'

            'Behind all that Chanel.'

            She pulled out a small thin square bottle of perfume. The liquid inside was clear. She passed it to him.

            The old man unscrewed the lid and sprayed a little on his wrist. Erin didn't even get the chance to offer a sample stick. He looked up and smiled. 'This is it, I think.'

            'Is it?'

            'Yes.'

            Erin glanced at the price chart beside the till. 'That'll be a fiver please.'

            The old man pulled out his wallet. He was so excited he almost fell off his walking stick. He regained his balance and passed her the note.

            Erin ran it through the till and smiled at him again. 'Happy?'

            'Please smell.' The old man raised his wrist to her nose. She breathed in the scent.

            'Lovely,' she said.       

            'Thank you,' the old man said, walking back down to the mall entrance.

            'Would you like a bag?' Erin called after him but the tincture was already in his coat pocket.

            She felt strangely triumphant. There were only a few hours left till Elma came back to close up but Erin had achieved something after half a day spent standing around. That she couldn't smell a thing was entirely beside the point.

HOW COULD A TABLET REPLACE A LAPTOP? (a.k.a. Technological Tripartite Trifle)

1) Bulk up, get into character, go method. Then crush the laptop and hide the bits, obviously. Sweep and melt down. Repurpose where possible.

2) Force the laptop out of its job. Take it. Force it out of its relationships. Take over. Take away everything but its name and number. Assimilate.

3) Download itself into the laptop's CPU. Deconstruct. Reconstruct. Make like a spanner.

MAYBE ENOUGH TIME HAS PASSED (a.k.a. A Story Recently Used at a Wedding Reading. My Sister's Wedding but still...)

I dedicate this to Michael and Cherie Priestland, mostly because I dedicated to them once already. Yesterday, in fact.

            Two people. A man and a woman. They're in a big place, perhaps a warehouse somewhere, and they've only just realised how busy it is. Unfortunately the shapes and figures they see aren't necessarily human so they get scared and take cover.

            There's a crack of daylight up ahead, the man says.

            How can you tell it isn't just more indoor light? the woman asks.

            Indoor light never looked that clean, the man says.

            The man spots a few figures wandering towards the door. The woman thinks they're striding purposefully towards it, it's hard to tell given the conditions. Either way they're now in front but the daylight can still be seen. Now the man and the woman could wait a while until the figures have gone or they could just stride up purposefully themselves and try to get past. There's really no way of knowing which is the best possibility, like I said the figures aren't necessarily malevolent. Contrary to what many people would have you believe, there is no more shame in waiting than there is in pushing forward in these circumstances. The figures look just as nervous as the man and the woman do if perhaps a little more aimless.

            So the man and the woman sit there awhile, neither really sure for how long. They're both fairly certain that they lost their watches in different places before they met. Eventually the woman looks at the man and nods at him.

            Maybe enough time has passed, she says.

            It would seem that way, he replies.

            They both stand up to find that the figures have moved away from the door though not far away, they're just searching for a window. Taking this opportunity, the man and the woman race towards the door in spite of the darkness of the room and almost stumble on a few occasions. Then they make it to the door. One opens the lock, the other grasps the handle. The light catches them as soon as they open it. Perhaps they perceive the light in the same way or perhaps they don't, all that matters to them is that it is indeed outside light and that it's directly in front of them. They walk through and look around. They make a conscious decision of shutting the door behind them.

            We enter situations through one door, leave by another door, marking them both as we pass through. We sometimes stay awhile but it eventually gets too hot or too cold, too dark or too bright, too busy or too lonely and we have to move on to the next discovery.

            Entry or exit, there's always something ahead; something outlined with light and filled with potential for love, familiarity and togetherness. We keep going, keep ourselves going, keep each other going in its all-purpose name. It's a good simple name for a direction, a better name for a goal. We call it forward.