Poem – Communication (By David Russell)

Communication

 

He handled his language as he fried his eggs:

There was tension between the respective softnesses

Of his egg and the cooking fat –

Dependent on extreme alternation of heat and cold,

Confinement in shell melting out of shape

 

Solid outside the skin flesh, fluid only within,

Only under the flame

Pricks the shape in itself, the shape in the pan

 

To carry the pan, he had a woven cloth,

His twisted eyebeams were the thread

To weave, to sew – ring for a rod

 

Spear-thing threading

From one side of the eye to the other;

Two siphon-chambers, walled with woven sponges,

Every pit a square eyebath –

Heatproof for dinner – a film in between,

Secure until the knot cut in the lines

 

Filled, to empty round the other, poor fishes –

Too fat for the umbilical between –

So, back to the same; always the same difference.

 

A repeated missed grasp, eager hand

Banging down to dust and skin –

Scrape, at the numbers implied in the buckling

Of the Irregular

The magnitude accumulator,

Amputated square roots, divided by themselves,

Every pipe its own softening cleanser

 

With a rhythmic sponge-squeeze of amputating end,

Hollowing the end to make a route of withdrawal;

 

Ash fertiliser – making straggling inroads

Into the cleaning fibres –

Salivated for greasing the gullet –

Thin sparks for lighting the gas oven,

To make a pretty ring – for an unshelled egg

With its own ring-cock –

The untortured black pudding.

 

Play with the rag under that old gramophone egg

With lustrous rim-swell –

Turn the egg-pan into a baby’s hammock

Curled up by the blue fat-fumes.

 

Incisions like gyres of odour

Up the black-downward nostrils

Of our friend the reversed loud-speaker.

 

Hailing the new all-life boats

Between the deathly tyre-waters.

 

When the mirror’s woof and warp is scorched

To the extent of a falling water-sheet

 

This man’s oven was like a revolving stage, scorching

Between the slices of air-release –

 

Flick down to cardboard cartoon-umbra

On the transit-slat – All-all.

 

Author Bio:

David Russell was born in 1940. Resident in the UK. Writer of poetry, literary criticism, speculative fiction and romance. Main poetry collection Prickling Counterpoints (1998); poems published in online International Times. Main speculative works High Wired On (2002); Rock Bottom (2005). Translation of Spanish epic La Araucana, Amazon 2013. Romances: Self’s Blossom; Explorations; Further Explorations; Therapy Rapture; Darlene, An Ecstatic Rendezvous (all pub Extasy (Devine Destinies). Singer-songwriter/guitarist. Main CD albums Bacteria Shrapnel and Kaleidoscope Concentrate. Many tracks on You Tube.



This poem is part of the complete collection; Speculum: Collected Poetry and Prose, by David Russell.

View or Download the complete collection here in PDF format.

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