His Room

The piano with its lid down
is a lung. White light
assumes the dust in it is poison,
dies quickly. Until the moon
the only sound is
breath of wood and strings.
He sings, but as little like a wolf
as loneliness resembles being loved.


(c) 2007 JL Williams

The Hole in the Tree

Time, whose life depends on ours,
keeps its secrets as only the best lovers can,
those we meet in passing
in places with no name
where joys exist purely
and are possessed completely
though not at all.


(c) 2007 JL Williams

Ariadne

Leeward, men on bright ships.
In the night
stars reflect
the surface of a black sea.

Each man a pirate for my heart -
none that can bear
its ruby spikes,
its tips wet with all their blood.

My island, my white dress.
Bells' toll
echo in my womb
that can only weep.

They cannot have me.
No man can.
Death is my husband.


(c) 2007 JL Williams

Like a Wild Horse

Coming makes him look more beautiful
into a room with light through leaves.
He jumps her and she's started, running again
to the sound of merry bells.

Against the wall, thrown,
light in her shape - it shivers, it shakes, she
undoes the weight of him with her
tremulous sighs.

Hanged high, like a wild horse
she breaks him over her belly, he
tosses his hooves against the light,
falls shining into her improvised embrace.

He sings to her, she whinnies, is
turning her elegant face to the light.
He walks beneath her, she tightens
her thighs around his pounding heart.

Coming makes her look more beautiful.
Music flutters about them like many-coloured
butterflies. The light is flinging their shadows
into the sky as if they were birds set free.


(c) 2007 JL Williams

Under the Tilted Ceiling

Some animals after being caged
become afraid of the sky, some
love it more forever, love it
more and more and more.

The hall is an interim of justice,
its view deceives and looks like
shrink or curving - dive
below the sight line, take in
the spirit of the passage
between two voids or train tubes -
sing, bird beneath tilting rafters.

Hold, again and again, and again
the visage of the beloved. If only
we lived this once if only
we learned to live outside of cages,
to let ourselves out and
fall for the sake of the chance to fly.


(c) 2007 JL Williams

WORD, TOOL

"My objects mimic the everyday. they are not tools. A word cannot pin down its functionality or its category." Leigh Chorlton


I be, I no be, I is, define me, define this!

Word is Tool is

And forever we will remember
Carlos, Carlos the art teacher with wings and crazy hair
running in the night field, eyes closed, flying screaming
"USE THE RIGHT TOOL!"

hands of rocks

unsign, unsing

a boy in the bubbling pool
has the power to make new metals, his
eyes gleam he LAUGHS easily, undoes
his swimming trunks to show me

Word on the tongue!

Moth on a pin!


(c) 2007 JL Williams

Bone Horn

This body will become an instrument.
This body of the beloved done with being alive
will not stop making music.
From its bones guitars and trumpets will be made.
The offspring of the body
will play the music of the body on the body’s
own cords.

Relatives will gather for the bone music
that goes like this: hrum hrum hrum hrum hrum.
It does not end until the players must sleep.

No fruits will be picked,
no furrows dug, no corn or wheat shells ground.

The village will be busy
with dance and song,
with the music of the beloved,
of this body.

(c) 2006 JL Williams

PARIS, 1870, ‘Portrait Romantique’

The portrait Cézanne painted of him was bizarre.
“Romantic…” Cézanne called it at the opening.
“Look at the thick rabbit hair, the
freshness of him! Look at the petal soft lips!”
And it was as if a bone
was waved before a pack of wolves, the way
our heads nodded
with concentration, in time.

But how could he not see, we wondered
silently, collective, how the budded mouth was pinched and drained of colour?
How the hair hunched as a rabbit,
cornered, in fear curls from the hounds?
Those slathering jaws.
We seemed, at once, to lick the backsides of our sharpened teeth
while we questioned, what manner of master is this
who has trapped that pair of hunted eyes and smeared them
wild and black upon the wall?

The only sounds besides Cézanne’s exclamations of “Charming,
isn’t it… seductive,” the scraping of toenails
on the polished marble floor and the throaty panting.

The boy himself crept trembling toward the panelled door
praying we would not smell him
as his father always could and the others – children, men…
aware that he was the chosen one, the painter’s sweetmeat.

How we all spent dim and
tortured hours drunkenly fathoming
ways to be inside Cézanne,
to feel the dens and tunnels of brilliance.
How we plotted the death of the favourite.

The capture and killing were too easy
to be ecstatic, merely satisfactory.
His face looked just like the painting
before it was ripped apart by fingers
and teeth.

We were so many.

It seems Cézanne was a prophet
as well as an artist.

We realised we were glad
it was not us he had
made pictures of, or touched.

And we were full, content,
with nothing to be jealous of
and left to rut
in the alleyways
like dogs.

(c) 2006 JL Williams

Though You Writ Scripture

“Dance boogie wonderland Dance boogie wonderlandMidnight creeps so slowly into hearts”

from The SexY Jihad by Stephen Cullis


Scribe, “edacious” writ unto body makes for ravenous prophets.
Though you writ scripture forget not you are a ruler of starving princes.
Perfect yr hand.

Prefect, this Girl Eden confesses only lies i.e. names her confession
not because she is good, because the food you give her
is an obsequious lie. It is not forgiveness.

Liar, undress yr wounds. These are Roman wounds.
These wounds are Japanese. You bleed from pores. The blood
is light as stars the first occasion them SHON* un the morning.

Scribe, yr garb of wires sparks electric lightning bolts.
Zeus Arcing Electronic of the Genome School, laser scalpels
beam from yr bent crown like thorns.

Scribe, survivors workshop the gestured kerning of yr script.
Capitalise Your Name When You Sign The Wounds.
Electrocute those pilgrims po’faced senseless dead-womb’d high on oil fumes.

Gastronome, starve the tiny bird then offer it rich seed.
Watch it stuff itself then lift ‘tween finger and thumb,
drown in brandy glass. Swallow whole.

Swallow the fig-shaped fruit of believers’ offering hole.
Do not chew the flesh of apple pie-fed worshippers i.e.
the chequered picnic of the saviour.

Saviour, protect the flavour of raw fear.
Eat beneath yr napkin to conceal the shameful glut
of magnanimity.

Scribe, a hundred tiny hands touch yr aorta,
pet and squeeze yr atrium, like birds gyrate on currents
inside yr breached casement.

Scribe, dark swallows populate yr intimate system,
dip their elegant tails in influenced blood,
confess a perfect scripture unto yr masticated body.

*SHON: Surface Hors Oeuvre Nette (French: Overall Surface Clear)

(c) 2006 JL Williams