E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG BY TODD SWIFT

I have been having terrible dreams of late; woke up last night at 5 am, and wrote this... it is a rougher draft (fourth this morning) but wanted to share it with you...

The Language Of The Fan
Twirled one way, or pushed to the lips, It means am engaged or a flirt. Frail coloured ribbed expanding toys Feel good in the hand as they grow Or close across the face, to cool, Convey, so one’s status displays By the fluttered discipline of a wrist; Otherwise, a dauphin might stoop to kiss A lady-in-waiting not a baroness; Mother-of-pearl; tusk; celluloid: The sticks upon which paper furls Are precious, even flammable – The whole fan might go up in one’s face – How you tap your cheek spreads disgrace.

new poem by Todd Swift July 2012

Whereabouts for JulietPoyntz (1886-1937)
You deliver envelopes you must under no circumstances open to men whose names you never ask in hotel lobbies in Baltimore, Copenhagen, Shanghai… No one you know has seen you in three years. On a New York street
you happen upon an old friend, you used to like to disagree with – those big opinioned, diner nights you can’t quite forget – talk over your new found disgust: the white-walled cells into which you’ve seen people you call ‘comrade’ one by one vanish to be kept awake all night and confess under extreme electric light. Over coffee you are full of the book you’re planning to write.
Already evening. Earlier today, at a chateaux in central France, Edward married Mrs Simpson.   You leave your room at 353 West 57th Street to buy The New York Times or some Lucky Strike cigarettes. No luggage nor extra clothes. Behind you, everything you own. A solitary candle still burning.
Buried in the upstate woods or smuggled aboard a tanker bound for Archangel, Leningrad, V…

Childs Hill
Six months later out of the womb for eight hours and you're gone. I'm sorry I was late at Gatwick but I couldn't hit eject ... (our Starman days, they're gone, correct?) and stop the jet's petrol-blasting taxi nor advance in the queue for a taxi with sincere words—"Please, my nephew is dead". They don't believe me; after all, they've just read in flight about who fucked who and whether Rooney's bicycle kick came off his shin or "he done laced it!" This isn't London any more but a mobile with a tether to every other sputtering machine. . . The casket was painfully light at Golders Green.
London, May 2012
poem by Umit Singh Dhuga, Classics scholar with a PhD from Columbia.  He is the founder, publisher, and managing editor of The Battersea Review.  Ben Mazer is co-editor.

Upon Waking with an Editorial Hangover
Some think that meter's had its bloody turn,
and that it should be buried in Keats' urn.
They feel that the experiments of Shelley
do nothing to assault the nerves to jelly.
They'd gladly give up struggling through Lord Byron,
prefer by far the simple prose of Styron.
Milton stops their blood and turns it cold,
while Wordsworth on his mountaintops seems old.
Even when it's roughened as in Ransom,
it is the New York Times that sets them dancin'.
While there are those who read the avant-garde,
excited that its formlessness is hard
for nearly everyone to understand;
like hungry wolves they travel in a band
and howl with vital passion at the moon,
finding in chaos beauty and a tune.
While I am neither for it or against it,
and call on language only as I've sensed it.
It seems I take my language as I find it;
mine is the more progressive form of blinded.
I am reborn -- unmetered -- lacking form;
I'll find my inspiration in a storm.


…

The Ailment
What got there, got there Then it stayed.  Like glue A doctor implied.  Like prayer Argued another clad like a father Black as grease.  It stung And stuck inside.  A thorn
She cried; a hornet having died The priest complained – unsin Thy side!  It was presented In a finding so I had to decide: Pull out the fervid pin or wasp Away to little else besides lather
On a shaved boy’s chin.  Its clasp Was like wax on a ski or an LP’s skin. It slid about, it grooved, it played The length and lines of me, a musicness Unto breath.  A tiny ceaseless death The dentist opined then wanted cash.
It felt like wine-slosh in my brainpan. All night I travelled in my bed, a train. Each carriage disgorged an ailment But this main thing only grew in size. It happened finally to emit a claim On my own name.  It wanted out
But as me.  I feigned indifference To my external self, retained some Dignity.  Soon though, unguents came And took the resourceful fluid for a stroll. It shook off the air and walked upright, so Everyone wh…

Conor Clooney (pictured) is one of Kingston University's Poetry Now students.  Here is a recent sonnet of his, written for my class. I find it very moving, and adept.


My Father’s Tattoos
I remember looking at your tattoos.
When I was a child I’d stare for hours
Hoping that one day I’d be just like you;
Smelling of ciggys and whisky sours.
You’d come home late with swallows on your hands
And women on your arms. My name branded
On your bicep. I cannot understand
Why it is there and you’re not here. Stranded
In the flat, I wait for you to come home
And kiss me and play with me in the dark,
But you don’t and now you’ll never know
That I wanted you tattooed on my heart.
So now I see that like you they lose their colour
And I should’ve tried to be more like my mother.
Poem by Conor Clooney

Bug                                  
When I ask him to tell me about love he channels his mother and screams
until the bath water is so cold my skin feels like a work of fiction.
After dark I ask, ‘Why is there a camera in our bedroom?’ 
and he says, ‘It’s so the sleep doctors can monitor my night terrors.’
Then he smiles in such an odd way that his mouth, his runaway mouth
reminds me of a horizontal line drawn by shell-shocked hand. 

Bobby Parker is a British poet.

Eyewear returns to its tradition of offering poems by the American poet Ben Mazer on certain Sundays.



Untitled
Their floors and floors of unknown lives conspire
to neon, darkness, fog and rain and fire.

* * *

All lay in bed, and toss in negligees
or monogrammed pajamas, have their ways
of trimming their hair or doctoring their water.
One stares in blankness at the jewels he bought her,
goes to the window, braced to see the fog.
One fingers old certificates of stock,
and ties his tie. Although they all will die,
each one looks fabulous in evening dress,
and sloughs off the incipient duress.
The city is reflected in the sky,
has its own taxis, bars, Empire State
building. Theirs is a common fate.
The monstrous outgrowth of a humble start
crushes the spirit, suffocates the heart.

poem by Ben Mazer; published with permission of the author

Eyewear is glad to feature a new poem by Ben Parker today.  Parker studied creative writing at UEA and now lives and works in Oxford.

Darwin’s Beetle


The Cam climbs out from under mist. The heads
of tulips show. In galleries of oak
the blackbirds cough dissent, the pigeons wake.
Across the river’s surface golden blades

of Darter’s flash. And by the bank he stands:
the naturalist in muddied shoes and cloak,
at rest against a still-mossed hazel stick
which now he nudges up against a fold

of bark and deftly turns it back. Beneath,
two beetles crouch. He bends to shut their shells
inside his palms. And then the earth reveals
a third, too rare to lose. Right hand to mouth

he stores one prize, but then recoils and spills
all three: the sting of acid, and an oath.

poem by Ben Parker; published with permission of the author.

August 1982, Lac Bridgen
Last how memory won’t come, Late how the trick doesn’t snap. No click of it, some snag at back, Come on doll, whistle again later.
There’s fur on the feathers, Suntan on petals, rust in our soup And a ladder by this window. No one withers at the ledge
And a sedge shivers.Quit smoking Or dig up the rubbish for a shortie. It was hampering rain on the tin Or ten ton hammering up the foil.
All the oil on the lake from engines And loons honking out of season; Not able to look that one up mother. Boxes of Penguins; murder mostly
Wearing a girl’s clothes silently. Shade-lust.Not to admit mice But there they were, hopping Beam to beam mad as veins.
Stone stabs the water with its white. A black grave when the sun went off. A lake is like a lid; it hides what it sees. Not there anymore.Is thy cabin shut?
Can’t locate lyricism in this head. The cure has killed off this impatient If her patient was verse.What’s left When form has declined to form?
You have to remember to create. You have to create to …

A CHESS BOARD EXPERIENCES BAD WEATHER
On the labour strikes against foreign workers in the UK, February 2009.
Rain drives down, a perfect tilt diagonal, forty-five degrees. Snow heaves itself across, a spirit-level’s eerie grasp of fluids and forces on the horizontal.
Rain and snow in simulcast, refusing to mix until impact shatters their self-belief, the illusion of selfhood, the repressed bigotry latent beneath histrionic claims of nationality.
Outside Sellafield the rain and snow still fall separately. Workers strike, refuse the right of other men to work along with them. A working man will stop another working,
throw his pottery chip into the urn alongside his countrymen, any and all countrymen as though he has more in common with his boss who is English, than with his colleagues who aren’t.
How many pawns bedeck a standard chess board and how many kings? How many pawns are tricked into laying themselves down, numbly creating paths with their coats for queens to walk upon?
Fight your war, shoot each o…

Eyewear is pleased to feature a new poem by Geraldine Clarkson today.
Liquorice Aunt
It was a liquorice aunt refused to give me if I didn’t tie my boot-lace there and then (Oh, I shan’t!) and it became the emblem of all that was denied, or bartered for slavery of petty sort. Ebony wheel of sweet-sucking sugar dribbling juice, prolonged for hours: St Catherine’s martyrdom, and mine.