A lover’s shape carved in your bed,
the silence after songs.
We only know what to hold on to
after they have gone.
For Her (Dowson Day Poem)
At times like this, my mind aches back
The burst-banked evenings of that year;
Where long and brittle shadows
Divided silence, split the skies –
I watch, crossed here, the days flow past
And marvelled at the pace
.
Of how we met, quite by chance
And negotiated trickery.
The old language of those hearts
Somehow survived the journey –
Fibre-optically, tossed down lines,
And shot from screen to screen
.
As was the habit of the time,
We spurted lines from fingertips
And pulled ourselves in poses.
As in vain I stammered from afar
And found myself, in real lives
Self-aware on strange train lines.
.
That time, as distant as your old home,
Bright eyes, red lips, a bed, that drink –
Things changed, somehow.
We glanced downcast and tried to think
Of how to talk to those we knew
And deliver us from news.
.
Yet somehow here, in retrospect
It barely changed, the day’s the same.
Back then, my daughter’s eyes were inconceivable.
Back then, someone else lived in our home.
You stop the boat and turn to me
“All too soon we may well tread
The bitter pastures of the dead –
Let’s do it all,
Let’s do it all again.”
The Things
It could be almost anything; the crackling layers of pastry
greasing up your paper bags, the smell of that air before the rains
which drenched those early, angry kisses.
A way of reading Freud, the endless, hanging scent of dye,
the tapestry maybe worth a fortune
hammered to the white backside
of your kitchen wall.
It could just as well be footsteps mutely humming
on some concrete stairs outside, the fizz of tramlines,
Miles Davis, the sound of distant dogs, that child;
I’ll spend my remaining days out hunting
for ways to take me back, and
for ways to leave again.
Bristol Festival of Nature
I have been invited to read some poems from the collection I am working on at the Bristol Festival of Nature 2014, 14th and 15th of June.
Kids II
Parenthood was the night terror
that spoiled those times I didn’t come home.
A prospective grimy window, left unshattered,
between myself and many others. More than
once I held that vigil – forty days and awful nights
willing a drop of blood to flow, as if
I’d thrust myself into a dull lunar ritual
pre-dating even the oldest stains
on this bed we watch unseen hands and
malformed feet, we dream up names
nicked from old books. An exhalation, a fragile limb
writhes daily, there, beneath your skin.
ZYMBOL
I’m again honoured and delighted to have my poetry featured in Zymbol III – the third publication from those Salem Surrealists across the pond. They allowed me to grace their second issue with The Hothouse Remains, and invited me back for more with Waves and Schooling – surely a sign of dangerous living.
Seriously though, go and check out their anthologies. All three are utterly superb. http://www.zymbol.org
Schooling
Schooling 2014 Benjamin Norris read for Zymbol Magazine
Thinking back, I couldn’t see
how God shaped England – he was
just a character on a screen somewhere,
barely even watched by me.
Something foreign,
for the birds,
certainly too far away.
.
Those days, I paced
in smaller shoes, kicking up hours,
kicking off at school –
.
hesitantly praying some early developer
would be nudged my way
by unseen hands, slipping beneath
lock-tight waistbands that guarded the gap
between what I knew, and that
which I mapped out nightly, kneeling.
.
Much later I developed feelings,
and as my hands were not yet ruined
I wrote with pen and ink –
yet, no deity delivered
though somehow I still sought
a tossed-off thought I’d had at seven
.
Perfection awaits,
all jelly-smudged lenses, belief in heaven
brought via rings and playground glances
that somehow develop into
a slow-panning glossed eternity.
.
We bury disappointment beneath abandonment of faith –
after all, we grow out of countries
and shoes
painfully fast.
Kids
Your genes; an unseen set
of countless mannerisms, the friends
you’ll choose, the bow of your
mother’s lips, all you’ll become –
.
an accumulated ocean of poses
with which to hold yourself in sleep –
seasickness, a way with words,
reactions to a thief
.
who may or may not come
on the night you can’t drift off because
of the same sad dreams your father had –
.
all tightly wrapped in tiny fists
and held before the day your mouth will move,
and our music will pour forth and plenty.
Coasting
When we’re together, I’m trailing in the surf,
my eyes picking away where the waves pull in
and out, following the hollows left by your feet –
always a minute or two behind, trying to find
something half-buried and dragged in to my toes,
a memory to wash off, pocket, and bring back home.
Perhaps I call, my voice fighting with the wind,
but you’re eager for the dunes, you’ve seen something
disappearing up ahead. Away you go, inland, inland.
Waves II
In much the same way the sea can touch
both sides of the Pacific’s edge at once, whilst
coughing up great huffs of cloud that soak
down on English towns, and wheel around
some distant Himalaya –
Or just like how it batters coasts and carves
continents new shapes, whilst leaving salts
on my chilled-stiff flesh, as we hobble
over sand which is not sand but sludge, and
yet still gallop back and back for more –
Our time is better spent not seeing
ourselves as fragments, floating on other shores.
Waves
Every seven seconds, we collide on the sand
we gathered when we drifted here – all old cups and papers,
residue, coasters, things to help quit smoking,
a marriage contract pulling back and forth,
ourselves from ourselves.
We lie, buffeted
by the flotsam of our years.
.
Outside, spring passes,
and we find with some amazement
that the moon still has a pull. The bath tub’s caked
and gummed with days. The window’s started splitting,
letting in more rain.
Somewhere, great tails
dash the seas, and we barely face each other.
In progress, for progress
I’m working on a website.
It has been a good year for me, in regards to my poetry. I feel as though my work has continued to improve, and the number of acceptances I’ve received from publications has helped my confidence and willingness to continue.
In light of this, I’ve been trying to put together a simple website to act as something of a portfolio. It can be found here, for now: http://bnorris12345.wix.com/benjaminnorrispoetry although this obviously isn’t the finished site.
Yours, Benjamin.
In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights
I’m delighted and honoured to be included in this important and ambitious project, organised by the Human Rights Commission and including work by leading poets from around the world.
The collection is available to purchase at http://www.amazon.co.uk/In-Protest-Poems-Human-Rights/dp/0957521030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382433376&sr=8-1&keywords=in+protest+150+poems
The Hothouse Remains
Written for Zymbol Magazine, read by Benjamin Norris (and Anthoine).
First video.
1.
The heat in here stays constant, netted
kept unmoving, billowed down.
Down all, all the leaves to
lethargic rubbered limbs – I can only
ascertain who comes or goes by read-
-ing the peaks in this dim but varied
show of slanting white-wet lights
2.
wrought iron corridors
this swelling, lead crystal-
-ised sweat rises and
congregates in old fields
obese lungs, panting.
A stamen paralyzes the
hacking of mists. Some-
where, damp leaves
a shattering.
3.
We grow inside houses.
It may be easier
to find us – look inside
there’s a space where you can see
a battle with the urge
to simply orbit one another
swinging around a larger mass
we haven’t found a word for
yet. The days drop off,
we spend one moment
seeking ways to wound,
the next lost in grasses with
blades splitting skies, and these
useless links are what birth us
to ensure we never really move
4.
You spoke of long-gloved hands: you claim to not
see where the climbers stretch to, only spaces:
the leaves are powder. Distance swells, unorganic
a beating through the lead-lined frames: afterthoughts
assume your shape: you remember that before we burst
husks, there was a minute when we were not
5.
What happened here?
the window lining pulled away – just
an inch, a curve allowing
different airs
to penetrate
the sticky mass, the bulb
heaving with humidity
so all clamour to the splitting
shock grows out from the glass –
the vapour’s fit for breathing
the vapour’s fit for breathing
though fast closed up again:
enthusiasm soon resembles
panic: grassy hysteria gums
and tramples underfoot while
spring passes by outside
as we knew it would.
For the year
Springs
Here returns a sky of broken clay pots clamouring
for my attention amid the memories of snow.
Our prayers for a crack in the clouds above answer
me in realisations that all of these are moving south,
and soon you will see them too. A new bird breaks my sight.
Summers
A pause chased my lip: it seems you
weigh your heat with consequence when
all has bloomed, and starts to dry:
you said something else too: you chose
to remove the sunlight on your tongue, that thing
which formed a family, you pulled us close:
still life streams and we become you:
an image, too: there were once days like this –
our mouths moved and music came:
Autumns
these feet, bridging
something gone and something not so –
all roots return. The trees do their trick,
pretending to die.
Days to come, unseen,
we get on our knees and curl
before the mists descend
with all their clatter.
Winters
January slid through her fingers, weeks ago. Soon there was
nothing left of it – they said „it is happen-
-ing to me too” they said „don’t even panic” but
for one; the days are not lengthening, not
springing up sooner. For her; quite
the opposite occurs.
