Draft

The Christ-figure is not your father.

We point out, upward as if we believe;

something impalpable points back.

We use fire to describe our dancing,

its heat burns our bodies down to ash.

The Christ-figure is not your father.

Inside every well is space that makes

a sound that sounds like every sound

outside of itself; searches for the other.

At night, our eyes deceive themselves

Gluck's Bee

A guilty woman thinks
too much about thinking
or does she? The bee I meant
to cut from its death-trap
spider web in the lamp
that lit my garden reading.

My convenience to keep it there
just long enough to finish
Gluck's lines: if I wanted only
to hold you, I could hold you
prisoner.

This morning, warm tea,
yellow light, jasmine vines,
forgotten bee, black, poisoned,
shrouded; now, the poet's words
make little sense to me:

those with the smallest hearts
have the greatest freedom.

cats are better worn inside out

Cats are better worn inside out.

I mince my insides
into a bright red paste
to paint a portrait
in logical cubes
for you to assimilate
& decontruct.

I am shrödingers cat
caught in a cardboard box
with my inbuilt death
shaved onto the side of a kiwi

breathing your rejection
As you peel the skin off my back,
devouring fruit.

This is my apocalypse
(though I say it with a lisp)
I greet you as a pop up evangelist
ready to hear my sins
and help me to realise

I am your lamb
I am your lamb
I am your lamb

but you have no eyes
and can not see me

& I

no mouth
to press with urgency
strawberry gloss
upon your kiss

to whisper memories
& print our names
on ice cubes
to melt against your lips.

I
self
destruct

pointing a camera
at my quantum suicide
pulling myself to pieces
for one last look
for you to affirm
my existance

If I were an artist
I could open your eyes
with careful strokes

& paint colour
into your iris

throwing a rope to my voice
which drowns
beneath your pupils.

pressing words . . .

...

this happens when you claw all over Ohio with your distant gaze, while the house wages on. she is shapeless, beautiful.

Imean just this: from time to time you’re lying over her: why? is it thatshe wants to be amorphous from the word go? you are where the mistakes comefrom, you use your Greek prepositions skillfully.

Ronald creeps like the reckless fool he is, and what happens next is he’s docking your wages. those friends of yours are shapeless, and the mistakes, where do they go?

...

(more at shapeless, but omorpho)

Statements of Value - PI

Barcelona photo

Barcelona is full of Graffittis :D I took this photo some days ago next to Macba :D

I chewed the whole damn lot up today,
put it in my mouth, stamped the packaging flat;
let the smooth caramel of sickness
drain down my throat, like a leper,
back from rainy streets.
Finally, silence.

I can't equate what you do
with what I do:
it's not the same.
I can't walk the street the hooker walks, or
smile like I meant to.
I want my loneliness back.

Crunching down on the finest slivers of what
this poor restaurant offers, I am weary,
alive, and
let it be said, waiter,
still hungry.

is that? two state of . ~

is that too . state.breviary. not. inside synagogue. or mosque. of prayer & cheap. edit thy fiddle.

Daddy Marx came home to the kids. and food. was rent to grab her arse. german as daughter. was fickled narrative. he was not. she was pms. survivor of military i.d. crank libido. no time. art is a necessity. Mona got married in a stew. She was potted to her palmetto glue. Something as hoarse as rubies and just. as shy. was perver'd to th'a imp. she was cleft in for.

Dry Sky

The Caltrops of Time

The forces ranged against the poem
are powerful and wise:
the fingers of the storm,
the pageant of the skies.

What the critics say is true,
and as the readers' eyelids drop
the words go floating up
like flaming sprigs of straw.

RAPTURE

RAPTURE

beneath gloomy hills
homeward i walk
in solitude

sometimes we play
on the way home from school
on Wincobank Hill
breaking into gangs
to throw stones at each other

and off Newman Road
in the half-built houses
it’s hide and seek
up and down ladders
scaffold pole javelins

a happy time
for me a time of rapture
clear and loud

paul conneally

2007

from Walk to Work - INVIGILATOR : Derby

paul conneally nikki pugh kevin ryan

Paul Sartre

"Le monde est le mirroir de ma liberté"

Pay

New York, pay the token

to the metal arm, ride the subway

to another part of city

away from your geography.

In California, summer on a patio

watching a bee tangled in spider webs

desperately angling its life

they didn’t appear to be gaining

Sapped of pluck, it was time to set loose a slouch
hot on the trail of a pilgrim to sure-footed novelty

Maccaferri mas amplificador

Momentum of Freedom

What is a Body Capable Of?

What body burns imperfect, soul

neither wick or oil flares ecstatic here;

the night-swan's wing glows visible on dark,

thick surfaces- oh, the wanting student climbs

through air, eloquently, a good, sophisticated creature.



Ask not, what body tries to live, but what

it strives to gain. Who can tell you this-

the long, lone shaded flight in rain, labor

through the cloud and light, an angel as its language

spills through fire, confusing every guest inside.



If we speak in tongues, if soul is hidden silently

inside its shell, if sound and word are far removed

from wisdom let us distinguish luminosity

of eye, a voice, a shadow from the depths

of our body-bound, soul-less hell.

NO CONTROL

Voici. C’est tout moi ça. Nous y sommes. J’explose, je vocifère comme un maudit. Je tourbillonne en milles reproches sur les choses et les idées venues d’ailleurs. Des masses noires s’engouffrent et me ressortent par les yeux, la bouche et les naseaux. Je critique sec, je mords dur, j’arrache les os. Je veux tout le monde pendu dans l’heure et les excuses en testament. Tout au silence ! J’étais pourtant bien gentil avant. Voici que tout doit m’obéir, se faire à ma façon. Si j’impressionne, c’est d’autant de raison perdue en si peu d’espace. Logique évidence, tout est contre moi. Il faut me suivre ou mourir, mourir et faire avant. Je hais toute chose. Enfer ! Que tout s'abandonne au creux de ma main pour mieux se faire broyer. Daemon à Démon. Comme si depuis toujours je savais la mauvaise tenue des hommes et que le monde n’en finissait pas de me donner raison. Je suis ici, là, debout, seul dans mes certitudes, dans ma perfection, maintenu bien droit de mon bon droit, aveugle et bavant, haineux et menaçant. Rien ne me calme, que le temps.
Et puis je réclame encore, j’exige l’absence de commentaire sur ma conduite. Rien d’anormal. Tout va très bien. Enfin je me calme. Je compte les morts. Mais tout le monde est débout. Moi seul suis couché. L’enfer c’est moi.

It's all derenged;

fragment of the mosaic drag on prepositions

or busy on the see breach, clouds dropping

my machine before nothing

heard more about hamburger out-loving her approaches

how like under flakes of bread she makes to say what mosaic happens

sand on that and again only we

your mechanic around your shop

out, asshole: was houseless but need their leg

if leave that but each fascist on her Merry machinist commenting

named its lives, the sincere bracelet, couldn't it chain comment

growing leopard

and rated a legend

peaches to turn end.

sleeping

all her more than everyone

an instance

pop apple cut

all its own pattern

into the kitten into

sign my named possession

life she in sage and here in upper levirite tents

beckons bird of angels naked but harrumphing

riddling wind racing

pro have house knife-cut

the impossible and image

morning hill famous talk space-time

will how how maker father

heavening for time want stain

the named car (this possession down

leaving there thing search and card

say the day over for you

wanted or dead not forest

the rhyme hope through written tried

talking now there against what they’re into

sand adverbs mutter of time,

wounds like fast writing leave that trick

in an outer name, leave of face

another fast, never the lime conditional

grilled is because nothing happens, Drew,

his summer tone to us

see daisy same love, lips, margarine

Shorts Are Wrong

New from Unbearable Books: Mike Topp’s Shorts Are Wrong, a scintillating collection of poems, prose, and lists. You can order Shorts Are Wrong right from me. Please send a check or money order for $12 to:

Mike Topp
8 Stuyvesant Oval #8H
New York, NY 10009

I'll autograph it and won't hold my breath that you might add some money for postage ($1.41) for this deluxe 128-page book with art by Will Yackulic, William Wegman, and David Berman.

"Just when I think Mike Topp's poems are funny, they're wise. Just when I think they're wise, they're bad. Just when I think they're bad, they're great. Mike Topp's book is exactly like the world."

-Eileen Myles

don't you miss
when suddenly
wasn't soon enough?

Cutting Rope

It's not hard to harbour anger,
like a ship with knotted ropes

to some deep dock inside you.

So you drink because that ship
needs water to hold it up, to keep

the wood afloat and ready to sail.

And you cut things, anything,
many things- the poultry for dinner,

a small hole in the couch that you blame

on the cat or 3 inch scar on your wrist.
If your lucky, you learn to cut the ropes

that anchor the boat, stop drinking

until the sea becomes a desert,
the vessel fixed in sand, blanched

bones, rib bones, see-through
as you could be- forgiving, sober

and knifeless.

8-word poem

A lawyer
Would come in
Handy
About now.

ELEMENTS

photo by kev ryan

the elements
feeling and thought
pain and fear
the smell of piss
in the underpass

paul conneally

INVIGILATOR : DERBY

paul conneally nikki pugh kev ryan