Sunday 20 December 2009

John Tucker - Two Poems

Blackbird Fly


Shot 1: garden fence post.
Enter flying blackbird, lands
on post, sings octave of C, ascending:
‘don’t rape mi for so li-ttle dough’.
Flies off.

Shot 2: different garden, brick wall.
Enter flying blackbird. Lands on wall.
Sings octave of C, ascending:
‘don’t rape mi for so li-ttle dough.’
Flies off.

Shot 3: different garden. Bird-table.
Enter flying blackbird. Lands
on table. Sings octave of C, ascending
‘don’t rape mi for so li-ttle dough -
and when you do make sure it’s slow;
and now begins the Fractured Know’.
Flies off.

Shot 4: empty road. Enter hopping
blackbird, dishevelled, dragging
a sack of cash, unable to fly.
Shuffling down the road, black bird
has lost voice, sold song and soul.
Only sound now, prison chain-gang
drag of loot
in bag
on concrete pavements.



Diet Theory


Language speaks mankind. It’s full of fossils,
coins, corruptions, ossifications; dead metaphors
that the brain is built of; ghost-vowels, consonantal

masses; kaleidoscopes of colour; word-shades,
word-frequencies. It’s worth billions of pounds.
Words like soul, truth, consciousness, love,

infinity, they were sacrosanct to the Romantics;
but are they simply differences in sound
combined with homogenised differences in idea?

Words like taste, intelligence, class, time, take
them off the menu too, for vowels are our souls,
for language speaks mankind.

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