Tug Dumbly - Stone

Stone   

Can’t leave a rock unfisted,        

a stone alone, but must  

Gutenberg press it to skin,                       

Cuneiform its text to palm      

of clay, weigh the cooled

magma tongue of a pebble

in wallet of flesh, wombed

like a coin in a vending slot

snailed to forefinger,

sprung to sinew

of the wrist’s slingshot,   

a siege engine drawn

like Russell Crowe full cocked:

‘at my signal, unleash hell …’

Go on, have a fling,

show us what you got -

the kinetic cleanse

of a raw chucked rock,

jemmying a rainbow,

pinchin’ gravity like a fat

child’s cheek, to crack a gum,

bounce from a pond,

be gulped like a frog

in the gob of a creek.   

There’s not always grace

but can be spectacle

to the Neolithic Games,

as two bushboys lob

sandstone clods from a cliff

into a Tom Roberts afternoon.             

Bailed Up

             they sail

                         the ravine

                                         

with the poxy aim

of a Berlin bombardier      

payload floating  

to the rock bed below

and oh the rapture as those   

golden chunks of honeycomb

explode in a violent crumble

of a most sweetly satisfying nature.   

solips/tick

solips/tick

(apply liberally)

in the afterlife

there’s only Tug

didn’t notice the party was over 

that the rest of us were sleeping it off

here comes the dreamer

home to tell the forgetting

which is always where we are 

Tug Dumbly - Popular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics

A calendar of grease monkeys
cheesecaked over bonnets,
popped and glistening
as hot oily nuts,
all sultry with jacks
and pouty with spanners,
in banana-peeled overalls
and virile bandanas, dirty rags
blooming from big easy pockets.

Here’s Manuel, Mr March,
at the hood of your hatch,
dark souling your manifold.
October is Mario, wheaten mane
of a lion, dripping gold
to tease your timing chain;
November’s Juan whistles
his eye along a dipstick,
a matador primed to sword a bull,
and no question Pablo, Mr May,
will drain your sump to the dregs
and refill you real full.

I like Gordon, Mr June,
a man for the cooler months,
overalled in green, a string bean
relic of the BP Empire,
furrowed head balder
than your flat spare tyre;
concave chest over speed-hump pot
and chicaning vertebrae
clapped close to the grind.

He Charles Bronson squints
from a face hard won
as your duco’s baked-birdshit enamel;
the keroed smuts
splintered deep in his thumb
say he won't steer you wrong
or sweet-talk frilly extras;
He’s in the game for love,
not glamour.

Whenever he resurrects your car
from the dead it’s like he sucks
its wounds into his own battered
body, like a shock-absorbing Christ.
He’s no Mustang, like Mr December,
but he’s a steady finisher,
and as he brushes a fly from his
cooling tea and peels a pink slip
for your bomby Corolla, you know
your nipples have been greased.

Gillian Swain. Collective notes, Last Hurrah #68

Collective notes, last hurrah

Gillian Swain

When the moment sits with the circle

things come to completion

the story turns

voice arcs

becomes distilled

note by note

and the voices are stanzas

all alone and slip across

radius

the curl holds

and in the centre

the poem