the unicorn man

my friend vox anon has released
his fourth book of poetry - super cutey.
it's the work of a mind firing on all cylinders.

it is ultimately a book written to and by love..
in all it's forms. the perfect combination

of light and dark.
alchemic.
a patchwork of word images
creating a narrative revealing the friction,

and often blurred lines, that exist
between the imagined and physical worlds.

between and in each line he conjures
not so dusty memories

that comfortably sit amongst futuristic visions.
these are poems possessing a sense of time suspended,

the dreams, loves and fantasies of mister vox anon
whose surreal, and yet ultra real mind/heart

are translated and recorded in such vivd,
and often wise, word paintings
collected into a book whose pages lead you
through the nightmarefairytale
of the raw purity of his inner world,

which is, in however large or small a sense, our world.

his words should be written in red.

*

and for more gems..

http://theunicornman.com/version1/

the door in my heart opened on it's hinges

overlooking the hill where the dead lie with their empty bodies and bones we sit dappled in sunlight beneath a canopy of green. our swollen hearts beat and burst and break. and mostly in that order. i love you quietly and so hard. behind us the city spreads eastwards, obese and evergrowing; all trees and rooftops and spires made all the more beautiful bathed in the sublime glow of the lowering sun. if i could give to you anything it would be a shaped ring of light to circle your heart - as though i were a god and able to fashion such things. i believe though there are heroes inside each of us. great, noble hearted wonders waiting for our moment to shine, moments that, in fact, occur daily in the thousand acts of kindness we grace upon each other. i am forever moved by the enormity of the so-called little things, of the beauty in the 'ordinary'. one day i will compose the most glorious love letter to the world. the world that gave birth to me, that romances me, nourishes me, intoxicates and accepts me. it does not need to understand my tendency towards occassional melancholia, because i dont either. the trick is to be fluid. to flow with it and through it, to find the poetry in the dark. but the dark's not here. not today. this is the kind of day to paint with words, to keep, to say thank you for. and mean it.

"..the door in my heart
opened on it's hinges.." ~ antonio machado

impressions. the decoding and creation of

every night they've been coming one by one;

a person of significance from my past.

in dreams. bringing amongst other things

maps and histories retold

to me with my apologies, my childs' eye,

my chest harbouring the potential for thunderstorms.

*

the light of the longest day dims

filling the room with the kind of violet grey

i wish it were possible to touch.

*

stepping out of my body

i picture the scene as a painting.

the crack across the bathroom ceiling

with it's peeling paint that prompts a recollection

of the morning we lay in your bed in your house

and named every country

cracked across the white of your ceiling.

*

funny how as humans we are psychologically inclined

to attach meaning to random markings and shapes,

of how important it is to have all the answers.

*

your freshly ironed shirt balances

on the narrow frame of mount everest

hanging on the wall; walls the colour of buttermilk;

walls that have never seen straight,

lined with books, which are the only things here

that belong to me.

*

impressed in ghostly fashion on the wonky wall

a shadow slowly gains prominence -  flowers

on the windowsill opposite. flowers
that only yesterday i arrived home to find stood,
as a gift, in one of my boots left outside the door.

*

the candle to my right fizzes,

quite timely burning itself out allowing the dark to deepen

and me to prepare once again for sleep
with it's tangle of nocturnal visits
and mysterious subconscious journeys.


"what is true of art is true of many other things whose virtues fly away as soon as their names are spoken...it is quite probable that soon the painting, a rectangle hung with a nail on a wall, will become an outdated and ridiculous object--a fruit fallen from the tree of culture and henceforth considered an antique....the notion of art...will have ceased to be conceived of and perceived when the mind will have ceased to project art as a notion to be gazed upon, and art will be integrated in such a manner that thought, instead of facing it, will be inside it..." ~ jean debuffet

"..brown paper packages tied up with string.."

always red, but with red it's quite specific.
gold - Au and light.
more and more soft dove through to slate grey,
greyblue, navy, azure, indigo, inky.
tan - like earth.
a shade of green
at which i would wrinkle my nose i've still to find.
leather - dark to caramel and soft with age.
cotton - everything.
silk - lace, thread embroidered.
wool - balls of, knitted, crocheted.
paper - blank, painted, bound, crumpled.
stone - ornate, or weatherworn, palm and pocketsized.
sun - warm and worn by skin and hair.
summer rain - a seductive kind of wet.
of water in all it's forms, inner tides.
wind - to make the trees sing,
stormbringer rattle the windows,
billow my skirt with the gentlest breath.

crossing the spider silk boundaries of kingdoms i ask of the long road "please, tell me your name"...then wonder if it even matters

a grey mist of low cloud hovers over the pines slicing themselves every so often on rusted power lines. the weather grey and still, somehow nostalgic, cocoons me. makes me want to dig my roots in deeper. the grass stands tall and straight waiting for the wind. we're spattered, decorated with small crystals of rain for miles as we cut through the hills before they seem to exhale, opening themselves to reveal the vastness of this subdued in colour, but tumultuous sky casting spells of it's own. i want to lie beneath this quilt of patchwork fields, drip feed the yellow and white flowers freckling the green. i wish i was soft spoken, ivy clad and able to converse in their own language, not mine, with the slender birches in their silver skins. im neither soft spoken, nor ivy clad, but speak anyway. and touch and feel and ever deeper in love i fall.

a fist full of flowers and sap-sticky fingers

a fist full of flowers and leaves and sap-sticky fingers. wondering when the sky will break it's clouds like a dragon's backbone. shadow maker, the sun pours her amber light and the river glitters dreaming of journeys. hearing nothing but the birds, my own footsteps like devotional vibrations, and the language of the trees im trying so hard to learn.