Poem – Discourse (By David Russell)

Discourse

He was the foam on the backwash of conversation,

Repelled by the safety-pier;

Seeming to crave a knife to answer

The upward wave-choppings,

He felt as if there were an invisible plastic partition

Segmenting the round, globular flatness

Of all within his view –

A tank, cramping and inflexible

To cramp that perfect essence.

 

Blocks and straight lines

Came recently

Primordially, only old wind and moon-chop

Potters’-wheeled old clay round to a crate;

Man needed to do no more.

 

The wave-chop was a gesture of resistance to

The declining curve,

As was the invisible partition

 

Papier-maché, salted, to model the pier

The element distilled for an abundance

Of boiling water

To pour into the great distributive tea-urn;

 

Punctuated pouring of water into myriad cups

For questing customers –

Each with its milk-dollop put in beforehand,

Facing tentacle lips    pens swaying on strings

 

Waters of cardboard that he would have to drink,

Downward flow of ink, forward flow of light

From the projector-cavern – an airy iceberg.

 

Borehole where the wrecked ship

Had its only portal for the entry of

Of hindsight and sanity –

 

Converse of the upward stretch

of the ascending droplets

from the urn-pourer’s carelessness

 

So making moon-petals,

Cutting through the sheets of ink

In that particular abattoir

 

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