Now I know the taste of your lips: it is an ardor. Sanguine as, what’s left after the thing itself is gone. Which proves I’ve lived. And that’s there amongst all my treasured phrases. This is why I write. For the ambiguity. And can I describe it? 27 Feb 2005–4 April 2012
November 11, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
The season of smoke is upon us— But then, aren’t they all of smoke? The baked pollen of Australian flowers Give us the quite different smell of bush. Our ‘Spring’ less torqued than, bright- Eyed iris tightened by freshened glare. My childhood winters played with A wood-stoked fire behind sooted glass. And what about the […]
November 10, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
Untitled Tea Making myself, and burning bone to cast china cups, drinking the tea for the love of it. Scrawling messages in pale clay for under- neath the mulch of leaves. Even if it’s only I who will read my future at the end of it. (Thanks to the Ben Zabbia Band for inspiration.) […]
October 26, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
When I arrive, quiet an uncommon chill holds but is not taken by the hooks of us, inside. Only the defeating bubble shrinks on us, and in our car, cooled late in the otherwise hot Malaysian night, we visit neighbouring kafes to drink tea, or to abstain, and are smaller–surrounded, but not taken–by unrequited rain. […]
October 19, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
All our shocked–and secretly smiling–bodies. ~~~~~ Wow this is a short one (but I love it)!
October 12, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
Just a quickie! ;D ~~~~~ Watching you clack the keys. Board silent to me—your head wired to the sound; all I have is the plastic depression, the acoustic hollow. Though I see your neck bent over the perfection of your music. It is watching the smoke of a firework blow after the bang. The laser […]
October 5, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
Funnily enough, this particular poem has also found itself (as prose) in Playing the Dragon King as discussed on Monday. ~~~~~ Guys dance; lights splash across floating glitter. We move by the dance floor as dust on a struck drum clash by the bar, crowd barely a man deep— and stand watching us. Now I know […]
September 28, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
I didn’t think I’d write you another poem, not for this occasion, and not for many more. Maybe in another life, when we both must– but not now. Then you went and told me of the roller skates in your childhood: mud drains, sisters, and gave me a little, younger you. I have precious insight […]
September 22, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
I crack my toes in the morning —languidly— and I think of you, as if beside me. That’s how the phrase turns. The nitrogen burst, like that of an upward-open eye. Pop! Could we laugh at that? And I know. I wish. To laugh in bed with you. It’s only one morning were I wake —and […]
April 4, 2012 by Paul McLaughlan
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