J.M.PENGELLY
this poet likes to explore many paths and directions since her inspirations come from many angles - everything from electrical forces to the portals of death to how chancy love can be to the world-wide journey of breath and how it knows no boundaries... and she entirely enjoys these journeys of discovery. she hopes you will too.
in the arms of morpheus
from sleep to sleep i passed
no breath between dreamings that
pressed a memory
softer than wings
into uterus
into mud
Head-to-Head
Fine. Let's do this then.
Let's hurl some verbage onto page,
its lines a martyrdom -- a silent suffrage
shackled;
beaten to accede to my requests,
accommodate, mid-wive the inky blue instead
of shouldering a burgeoning
of imagery, in all its hues, at my behest -
accomplice to those thoughts that needs be
thrown and coddled,
modelled into something grand,
unplanned
until its moment of inception, yet
quite wonderful when spinning on the
verge of something special...
The muse leads on, and
teases with a flourish -
the sour nipple offered fails to nourish
and i'm conned for my temerity -
for how i have assaulted her - effrontery!
what nerve!
Seems that when i go head to head with verve
(with diving boots of lead on two left feet)
she turns her gaze aside till i'm bereft -
her justice mete.
and all the words just zombie-shuffle
line to line, with nothing said;
no spark of living lights the walking dead.
published in the Panhandler Quarterly winter 2006 edition
crossover
assume nothing.
depleted of oxygen, I raise
visions
nurture
for the purpose of sacrifice
an innocence of calf-eyed, lamb-tongued
spasmodically gambolling bunkum (bunkum?)
I am
the collective consciousness of nanoseconds
I am
the cumulative mass of memories
I am
floating intellectually
watching the world shrink...
the edges darken;
the fade to black.
assume nothing -
I'm coming back.
published in 'cold eeels' 2005
The Waiting
tender bones
responsive to the pressure of columns of air
tuned-in to their nuances
bend a little
wetly pliant
bound by pale cartilage
fillets of muscle
slender-armed willow
bends to listen to the earth’s voice
while whispering air pushes against leaves
that offer no resistance
silver sage silver
flicking ears lively as unruffled felines
full-stretch in the long grass
testing the air
but on those days
when the air seems still
when the weight of atmospheres press
like tired seas
down onto bones
onto limp and breathless leaves
and there’s no listening to the voice of the earth
for silence has bound the soil
the willows
tempered bones
cats in the grass
all endure
panting silently
waiting
for tidal shifts
to breathe again
pending publication in The Mithril Lode 2006
revelations
remember
those bare wires?
they're the ones
dangling idiot fashion
teasing me
"all ya gotta do is
reach out"
get yourself a little bolt from the blue
do
a Saul
get a little closer
to understanding Tesla
burn baby, burn
dance on St.Vitus toes
"let the power fill you!"
bible-belt commands from the heights of a ceiling
"all ya gotta do is
reach out"
viper's tongue of
copper ends exposed in innocence
but i know,
resist tempatation
still my mouth fills with spit the taste of old iron
as imagination suspends me
X-ray fashion
eyes burning with revelations
Incomparable world
... must be moving pretty fast,
things are slowing down considerably.
like holding one's breath underwater
things become focused upon the finite:
perfect babies' perfect skulls
and cartoon physics - boom!
no rules
like sailing, this is best done at night,
man's rites of passage - to sail beyond the Bosphorus
tomatoes
proliferate their seeds of truth
within plump, flushed pulp,
clued into the benefits of
trade over war.
how is it sometimes
the mind works so very fast
but this damned flesh holds us back,
claws at our thoughts
afraid to let us loose?
we remain
for the most part
confined
time furls its fist about us,
jealous of eternity
and undeniable
so
chafe at the bit
neck muscles bulging,
strain against your bonds
because cartoons are bad for you
as are too many colours
- they burn you when you're not looking.
conditioned to hear
the ticks of a clock,
we forget to listen
for the sounds of living
so steal a kiss
between the ticks
before time marches drunkenly on
towards an unknown future.
to grasp originality
with both hands
and all pistons firing
is to glimpse the divine
don't get angry,
it's all so incredibly wonderful!
published in 'cold eels' 2005
mothwings
libido - strange day/night creature feature
dysfunctional frantic beater on
a window of a body out of sorts
court
dimensional sensation, desport the id
one minute raging impulse
the next deep-froze or tepid
flaccid, sluggish as ditchwater
thick beneath a stagnant rug of
sleeping weeds and rotting, stalking thoughts
crack the chrysalis! insist upon revealing
crumpled wishful bits of
that and this
freed to course through fire-thickened blood
to burn, to crash and thud yet
rise again triumphantly
- an apiary of mothwings in my head
silent running - for Brulé Billy
silent running
shadow-slipping
ghost breath
on frost-air
lips veiling moon-glim teeth
fluently voiceless
working closer
to the crimson
hot belly-stone of hunger
sliding through the night
on wolven thoughts
appears as an introductory dedication to Bil Luther
in the collection Dust and Drums, 2002
blind
fingers stutter
a muttering confusion of keys
bricks to chafe dry flesh
as it tells
each syllable
each moment
each movement a searching
for crevices in mortar-thoughts
seeking
some escape from
the fear that
crawls
in a bead of wine
slipping wrongside down the glass
the prescience in the guttering wick
the failing flame
the pen that runs dry
and in the blindness that engulfs
when all bricks are blank to my touch
all strangely
from storm-swept heights an ill-light spills
a pooling murk that, slouching, slips
and slithers into dip and quiet hollow.
it settles yet still sinuously stirs
unspooling lazy, lissom coils that
feel and flow as loose as thought itself.
it steals the breath from small burrow,
it sucks reflection down; no light escapes
from torvid depths; all muffled, sound.
halfways betwixt liquidity and gas,
its source unguessed, it lays a noose
around the neck of this - the sleeping land.
a stifled dawn creeps slow upon the
field of the standing stone: a sentinel
in this brambled place, all overgrown.
no creature moves, for only death
where this denaturing fell breath has fouled...
but vanished now. all strangely as it came, 'tis fled.
San Francisco - 1906
high on a hill
picnickers watch flames approach
smoked chicken and champagne
and you and you and you
too soon, too soon, the eagle flew
while you were busy drawing down
the moon into your icy hands,
chasing one-eyed wisdom
to crowd your poppied mind,
until you could no longer stand
but gently tumbled tousled thoughts
to fall asleep in twilight lands
- asleep in the laps of legends.
and as you dreamt, a river of woe
washed over you and carried you down
to those blasted banks, where the rocking stone
could be toppled by the gentlest touch;
you stroked the smooth-skinned serpent's egg
and though asleep you cried real tears
for emotions that somehow eluded you,
and for the names of the faces you seemed to remember
with a distant and palsied anxiety.
and you dreamt you wrote a mystic piece
where vague and shuffling demons danced;
where Odin cast aside his mask
and settled on your shoulders round
a mammoth task...
a burden irredeemable - a lance.
a lance to bear in diamond jousts,
advancing through the teeth of fear
to seize that chance to win the soured prize.
Methusulah, with his long grey beard,
whispered in your sleeping ear of
fools and wise men, sons and daughters;
of the Devil's love for holy water;
of a single, human footprint in the sand;
of the perils of duplicity,
the rigours of respectibility,
of such passions as can tear apart a man.
and on the sharp infliction of
such sorrows' textured wounds, you woke
with knotted hair and eyes still chasing phantoms...
and even though the darkstream coursed
still dully in your veins, you spoke
of fields of blood and lonely death's cold tantrums;
and lifelong cravings threatening to choke -
to strain and break the slenderest of throats.
with that distempered mind you reached
for lightless needles littering the floor
and as a stray dog to its vomit, warm,
to poisoned dreams did you return, once more.
published in Epiphanies and Other Absurdities 2005
riven
- of you,
they look at me
like i no longer belong.
i've become an oddity
in their world of must
and sureties.
i
no longer know how to behave,
my point of reference missing,
my compass bearing lost:
now my needle idly spins,
bereft of direction.
the somewhere-other looking boy
with filthy hair and mis-matched shoes
eyes soft-focus dreaming blues
this boy is somewhere-other looking
in the wherever he might be
I wonder what those same eyes see
- and if he ever makes connection
with the mind of a child
and the body of a man
he only knows pleasure
in the palm of his hand
he walks like a sleeper
a smile coasts his lips
and he's treading on water
- a silence in his fingertips
intersection of perspectives
bare winter boughs
gently cradle a moon
illusory within a barren womb
cold dreaming of such roundness
published in 'cold eels' 2005
a hole in my
there's a hole in my head
where the light spills through
a hole i my belly
to poke dreams through
there are
holes in my hands
they focus on pain
and
holes in my feet
that let in the rain
there's another one here
and two over there
i'm hollow with holes...
i wear about my person
a sort of
perforated air
holes are not wounds
rather wormholes - of sorts
watch me stream with the light
of a million thoughts
that flow as they grow
like a river that runs
as i stand and i spin round
in front of the sun
curst
beneath the hill, the hill of blood;
below the wood, the withered wood;
three arches span the river, dark,
that sluggish crawls its way down to
the mouth of the ford of curses.
there stands no chapel in that wood
beneath the hill, the hill of blood;
no holy stone, no lark, no stag,
no farm nor mill, no sloe-tree stead -
just a field of crows, all cursing.
no footsteps mark those arches, three,
that span the sluggish river, dark;
none would that way hie willingly -
where once was bright, now all is stark.
the bllight of a cold place, cursed.
dull bracken on dark shoulder lies,
dark shoulder of that tarnished hill;
no scent, no light of candid flower
can shine beyond benighted still
when only creeping here are curst things.
beneath the spans, whose arches kept
the crooked banks where lilacs grew,
long-fled the fish, the fish that leapt;
now only, stark, the lightning tree,
thick-waterd pool - stagnant, cursed.
a poisoned air, a morbid gas
that heavy clings, a mordant mass,
it sticky clings to rock, grass, tree
till nothing wholesome here survives -
just the crows black-flap, all cursing.
two
i:
parcel my moods
in shades of coriander and cumin
tamarind and ginger -
but somehow i know
i'll keep dreaming of kumquats
ii:
i think you wrote a speech one day
i felt it on lips cracked with kissing
did it feel as fake that day when you wrote it
as it did that day in my mouth?
exposed
now I understand the phrase
"ignorance is bliss"
and you've no idea just how much I'd give
to return to that sublime state.
like being thrown out of
the Garden of Eden,
a little knowledge can be a
dangerous thing
- it stirs the mind,
leaves it reaching for
more
and that knowledge breeds awareness,
a dawning of the universal understanding
a point of no-return breached
with the first bite.
God damn Eve!
Why couldn't she have just eaten a pear?
published in 'cold eels' 2005
after last night's hot words
a cold front's settled in
- there's ice underfoot this morning
Observer
i gaze upon this world with sorrowing eye
that sees the snarling dogs of fear
snap and drool a hot death down
on prey all blinded by the lights
and hot winds blow till all is dust
and glazed with gore
i've looked down through timeless corridors
and seen the final gasps of dying suns
the heaving throes of universal birth
the dusted cosmic colours clouding space
and the burning trails stars leave behind
an after-image of their lonely travels
seen everything and more than i
could wish yet cannot close my eye to seeing
all the pain and all the beauty
all the uncried tears of aeons
all the weight of all the knowledge
i have no power to intervene
- mine to bear
- mine alone
for i am lonelier than Creation
Detroit SuperBowl
after the latest terrorist threats
sixty seven thousand fans --
one eye on the ball
the other on the skies
little grey hill
insignificant child of great Mother Mountain,
grey hillock tucked close by the folds of her feet,
what see you?
i see above, below and beyond me:
from the ever-changing skies down to
the little arm of the sea;
from lizard peak, past stranger's point,
full-flow the dusky streams
that feed the talking waters where the wetly otter swims.
i see sorrel and the bright, bright gorse;
the secret ferny place;
the honey pastures, reedy pool
and the many flowers
loosely strewn
across the fields of saints.
i see the saffron valley stretching
and the long, straight roman road
that leads through the wood of the murmuring noise
to the place of the men of woad.
abounding in towers - white priory mound,
where cherry trees fruit and the sound of all birds
as they call on the wing fills the air...
the welling of the seven springs;
the gap in the wind and the
age-rounded barrows;
the flagstones that float, and the little moored boats,
white-the-ridge, holly slopes and the narrows.
i see stars roost at night on the tallest trees' branches;
see kings and their queens and their warriors fail;
the rise and the swell of the floodwater rivers
as they shiver like glass 'cross the moonlit terrain;
i see snows that can cover the hills in an hour,
freeze sheep where they stand and the breath in their throats;
the acorn that falls and then sprouts in the thaw-time,
the firse that sweep through the stands of great oaks.
i see life, i see death, i see everything here;
i see near, i see far, without hope, joy or fear.
i cannot but help view the world in this way,
just a little grey hill...
*
wash cycle
dirty in
spotless out
ahh - blossom fresh
*
the rest is silence
imagine
the penitent thief
wearing the face of languid hunger
doomed to wander the sleeping maze
soft-spoken delphic utterances
lingering in his ear
imagine
pimps and doleful prophets
cradling their harps and petting
captive, fatted calves
imagine
Dymphna dancing sadly
'neath a weeping copper beech
fortitude in madness
exiled from the human race
imagine
bright-buttoned boys
all-fallen down
wild flowers soft-embracing
endless banks of lamentation...
imagine
falling apart
the auto-erotic precision of flight
a shabby percussion to the music of spheres
imagine
salient inkslingers, demanding as ulcers,
offering cold-comfort as you
strive to remain silent under provocation
- smiling litigation
inviting you to dance
imagine
Diogene's cup o'erflowing with spite
salt where sweet required
stale where fresh desired
imagine
an empress of some unknown land
entombed within the symbol of infinity
- immaculate and inscrutable and
retaining her untrammeled modesty
under the hammer
imagine
this world with all her cares and woes
the clockspring unwound
moon-struck saplings and desperate enterprises
weak-kneed key players and questionable loyalty
shrines and magnificent distances
collaboration with the enemy as
fertile minds invest in covenants of salt and
drowned rats no longer troubled by churchyard coughs
rainbow-chasers and greasy sycophants
weaving leaves of black mulberry
and soi-disant idols devoured by mice
dissymetry in the revelling of detested broods
while alliances slump and yeast blooms
simultaneous keys and nests of white orders
supreme carrion...
the rest is silence.
published in Subtle Tea e-zine May 2005
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