AnnMarie Eldon

rugs and stunts

the places where you fell asleep
meticulously noted by
others who could
account where
you would
not

a library where you said your head
fell upon your desk all night, a
house where supper
went cold

a lover who believed in you
a holy sister too, freed
from her order

and your maraudering
complications uncovered

eventually

a just human to human touch
the persistent phone calls
from an ex wife you said
you never got

the hotshot lies

a dear little art gallery you found all by yourself
a hospital appointment
the Frenchman
the Asian
the cripple-infatuation so deftly handled
in the bike shed amongst summer roses
a sudden bladder infection
from a bug perhaps

old alibis
triangulated

how we find you out
how we mock you
how we pity you
how we loved

you. For God knows what impossible
calculus it needs to keep
these plates spinning

threads breaking
with each
stretching

truth is a thick depth
not a thin surface
not all of us
bent

on pursuing an exit
out of the psychosis
you project: oh the spaces
you have slept whilst others
kept their home fires burning

the clean sheet you are already pulling back
for another
the cover up

women clearing up after the Resurrection
no commitment too great for separation

How Compassion Was Not To Be Found in The Hallowed
Retreat but at The Heart's Necessitated Indigence

Scutcheons, uncoursed sneck-rubble cellaret,
the oak desk's apologetic lost badigeonated shim,
whorlings, sparlings, unbestéd, fusty, velvettéd chairlings.
No rite gained in ligneous secrets nor stouter granite
undressed flint pocked bearings, hollyhocked pailings
where starlings stremorate their seedful yearnings.

Neither within the washings of the brittle outer
scrittle quoins which mock their inner post-modern
for-face shined stripped pine uncarpeted floorboard
counterparts or standard Duluxed Off White glossed
wainscotings, woolly ready-rugs and tables' tastefully
refined tenderly defined lace dangly trimmings.

Not for children's helping themselvesings, dogs (even
repenting) undisciplined lollings, beautiful blues
against more blue purply campanulas, greens over-
full stelliformed stitchwort creeping, analemmadded illicium
dripping the end-of-today's finishing greasy rain dregs
drown on pimpernel wedging their fostering narcissi.

All that and the joke pixy prisms at play amongst Trustees
who walk in a showy shown sway, half-full tested to have
to fully appreciate God's way of bringing the light indoors.
More clean than there are hours. Foresworn non-
decay of daily chores, a discipline,
a Rule Made For.

Thermals pecking the drapes' plumb line verticals.
Calls by the unexpected, by phone, by statementing,
by remarkably-like-barking mating squirrels, tight wallropey
tail stalking, who spitefully cheek-puff, therefore logically
ferret away unripe walnuts, pea sheeny and hard
as apostasy.

A politely knocking inquisitor. Sublimation hidden
in guests' mindful admirations. Openness
midden in such depths as foundations must be built
upon for ancient things to stand.
Renowned Persons.

The book about this place which is history being written,
a demarcation marked not inside any visible
margins but derided as the non-permissibles.
I am suddenly broken by eyes more scantles
and personae slate, the saw-toothed veneers,
the flexi-plexi-fixed smile acceptance plugging my true state.

I want to lie without the division-wherewithals and not lie
and prime my dearthest lacks river (Isis) away.
Wash the collapsibles into the horizontals so the home may
cant and dither, whoever owns may give a shroud,
may wrap me in their most abode,
where risk no longer is a category
and arms nothing furniture but those which hold.

Be bold the cumulus stuccos a scurrying demand,
battles a failing dusk but I must fashion a soft
new architecture to fit the existing style: creak out
my freestone vulnerability, my ghost flotsam personality
and quasi-professional jetsam crust who was me.
It is not between plush and gush that I am stuck

but by what gentlefolk a'surd who seek to lose
themselves and the stringent order of an old house
where a carpenter has not been heard entering
the locked gates entitled No Parking (for aeons).

Wood shavings have lain scattered like anaemic gold
flakes, stingy snowed
below and from here
I was not found
having been
found stark
wanting.

Built of brick and stronger stuff, went peaceless on my way,
not quite what I could have for-at-face-value sold,
yet enough at least to get me through
a day.

tru(c)e

he did not
............careen and the blue lobed or cross won't help
carve her from marble
................ (you) she walked the verges until she bled
he had blood on his hands
............................the marks stood up as do poppies
gathering his clothes a storm
............................her bruises pressed against the w
precipitation beads the wainscoting
.................................indow like antipasti and extra,
but cut escape into her into her flesh
...................................extra virgin olive oil in a jar
their heads salved to a pulpy formality
.........................................................petals spot-
followed her arse beat caudal molecules
..........................................calcinated by her tears
almost to vanishing point until he
.................................she took grass by the clump (it
could no longer stand smooth
........................................was the only salve imagin
and sliced the scene in tw
.............................................able available) falling
o with one heft her
...............................................as only she was able
threads bare and heft her with one
........................................break framesing scissoring
menstrualled bare as he was able
.................................t/he precious protected species
a lick-patch a(s)he was
.........................a rosepath behind her her eyes thorns
strewn as
........he could do none without her and when the rain
fell it
.....despite any prevailing conditions scars roads signs
fell
..misleading only so far as they would go each wall
...an edge
true

metabletica 5

ground a giant dead heroin addict’s arm
black tracks busted by the worm police

rats have eaten crisscross drainpipe
grooves around the compost maker

nights anaemic blue opal bait has fastened
its pull within delunared spaces

several mornings I have checked
for how many pellets to replace

have inched further and further across
the right hand side of the bed where our death

permits boundaries remain unlaid
and any sex thirst is routinely

splayed between silence
and seven years’ rotted

edict. There are happy
families out there

attentive husbands and women with shiny eyes
who have not been subjected

to the lecture-roses: marriages too
without maggots in closets

or the separation hex looming
its constant fix need

I hear scratching yet sheets
do not even suppose a corpse

listen to what rot your psychosis
cause causes

growing older in the adult day surgery unit

1

how non-propagandist fingers
resist hoist, flet swathersome
neo-characterture belly sweat: thri
reponderous. Dram me'in please. A
swim-med swamp, mayn’t rise

no quick, no reflex proper yet
fastéd was as if stomach all that
mattered, tanked with something akin
to pethidine and then all chatter as if merely
more than as if not as if sum of all tall stories as

he’s a man in a white skullcap
and white clompy plastic clogs
no – white plastic clompies
and blue and blue and
and oh quite obviously lookedupto

who is qualified enough to slug epidural
through the spineskin disc gap chord anatomy
parted The Red See push aims me over
my own wee little cracklely pee-proof
pillow I go

numb with the great steroid hope
and any Cartesian apartheid
between heart 'nd dope
feshonned out nope
blood pressure

fine would you like
a sip of water?
world reels a
bit more
bionic

than an
hour
ago

2

having a cannula remooved
is like pulling a Christmas cracker
all tense shoulder faked fear and anti-climax

3

I have a bruise
diarrhoea and no party ha