AFTERGLOW

Card and card. Resilient new
edges to surfaces.

Glossed surfaces support crisp
edges and the text "Holiday Inn, Cancun".
Holiday in a clouded room
(it does not rain).

Green headed card
on card. Stapled. The strips are layered.
Compliant.

The fire is tamed in cold heads.
They await the cold strike with warm hands
against the cold strike.

Eruption,
(the smoker's cue for satisfaction).
On black.

Unsmooth on unsmooth.
The burst of shhHHhh.
Crescendo. Decrescendo.

Flame.

Extinguishment.

Afterglow.





THINKING UP NEW THINGS
(For Martin Creed)

Balloons and white balloons and
fashion and fluxus assert a fast and
flickery alien artwork, half-full and
half-empty as a sufficiency of
balloons buffet and bounce on a
spiral staircase

Challenge the commonplace
not fakery but the creed of Creed
reductive repetition setting up space that
draws the line and draws the line and
links with life that lasts as long
as air is bounded

no one is looking or if they're looking:
 
                questioning
                                            playing
                  wondering
                                            gullible
                      vacuum
                                             sculpture
                         weird





DAMASCUS

In Damascus pigeon dealing is unlicensed
on the roof tops
in the maze
of the mud paved
in the urban
on a spot
in every street
it is only
in the morning
in rooms
in darkened rooms
mud rooms
urban rooms
urban mud-paved
in spots
dark dark spots
in unlicensed premises
each morning
in the street
on to Damascus
from the mountainside
birds swoop silent dog-fights.

Inspired by Kathy Wilkinson's article:‘On a wing and a prayer’,
The Independent magazine, 17 Feb 2001.





SOME SMALL BEGINNING

Nothing.

Time.

A wavelet and a packet and a particle
form wavelets, packets and particles.

An atom.

Two.

Three.

A molecule and molecules,
materials and polymers,
gold and silver. The skin.
Gold fashioned to decorate. The skin. And diamonds.
Iron forged to decorate skin.

The sword and the manacle and diamonds shine
when you and they and you and they are new.
The shining light, a link
to the source of the light,
The wavelets, the packets,
the particles of light at the speed
of light.

To time.

To nothing.





A GOOD FRIEND ASKED FOR A POEM THAT RHYMES. HERE IT IS.
(For Simon)

Blip.
Blip grip.
Blip grin hip.
Blip grain him slip.
Blip grim home slim rip.
Blip grime ham slime rap trip
Blip grail hone slop rope tripe
Blip groan hand slap ripe
Blip groat horse stripe
Blip grill hype
Blip gripe
Blipe


                   © Glen McDonnell