ultra wave

the first ice cream van of summer

breathless shout / mum / outside

the first ice-cream / van of summer

puts down the phone / picks up her purse.

found poem #1: telephone call note.

No Exit - William Garvin (Arthur Shilling Press, 2010)

The poems in William Garvin's no exit hum and buzz with the sounds of malfunctioning technology. We are 'drowning in video screens' with a ': network systems overload > { }' You can see from these two lines from the opening poem of the sequence that we are going to be exploring the other side of technology, the side where it breaks down and we are left trying to cope, banging our heads against the keyboard. Perhaps that is the 'no exit' of the title. Windows open 'on eternity' or appear as '...window star pool...'s. Garvin uses the page like a vandal. Most poems scatter across the white space using the stuttering language of computers. Underscores, backslashes and html code are used as eccentric versions of punctuation. It's exhilarating. The sequence feels like a malfunctioning urban landscape from which there is no exit.

You can buy it here for a modest £2 + 50p postage direct from the excellent Arthur Shilling Press.

sarajevo poem #3

sarajevo poem #2

eiffal terrinle

thirteen buildings

after holiday inn

& baricades (buses, containers

five grpe wodes

& graveled glass

punctured bicycles

our broken taps

require pliers

& patience

on the board

a knife lies

on its back

seething teeth

tocal weer gund

under portraits

of russian

tourists taking

potshots at domes

over blue trails

in the tearful

mountains

of fortress in

blitted drsnx

(eiffal terrinle)

we die in

the bread queue

or by the taps

at the

old brewery

of love

sarajevo poem #1

Sarajevo.

gar den pleas ant

it was sum

mer

& forward to

the peace of Hannover

to be away from

the wall

between his toes

at the end of the gar

den just through turn

ed twenty six

years old

a breakfast bar

in a magazine

to a pleas

ant man

a university teach

er the raked grave

l that re

vealed re

member every

thing

& our caucus

& after bound

ing by the black ()

hooks

i caught a second

ary invasion of ex

creble portent

this was the six

eties & we had

the newest tech

nology .

i was ghost .

fifty feet hi

gh in the air .

all of us were

the spectre of wa

r was heavy .

it was above &

below the news

i was beneath

the news

i slept under she

ets of news

i trans

formed the data

into prose

like japanes flow

ers

arranged on page

of elegant fire es

cape

& our caucus

Flwrs

conquering the gates was a bustop.

crinkling the bridge of his Germany

a country regenerating off a small downy feather.

Joseph could not be expected to the gulp

attempts to scale it that remember everything.

French windows and into the glare

died Fine Art in Berlin.

Joseph had a flowerbed on a windowsill

head of an elegant carnation, Joseph,

atom; the stamen, circled with bees

here in this garden looking deep into the

the old physicist, sees the flower as an

unlike the autumns from Joseph's

piles of rotting leaves. Now, though,

breeze. the garden was so alive, so

childhood where summer lay dying in

f

all under the contras (coca-cola skies broken by beating wings

they said “be fragile answer none.”

we said nothing

a poltergeist[1] for supper

eating an angry ghost - speculation. This specter[2] stands on a leg of fire.

over the jungles casings

into the churches

over the sea open doors lay eggs (black dots falling to the breakers

to the fishes my brother

always a bigger fish

than before (the Indians laugh

the priest’s[3] last hand

two fingered on a flat forehead watch the hammers (and pipe)

confess breakfast (more

speak into a fist

and disappear

---

[1] General Leopoldo Galtieri

[2] Hollow, winged dart.

[3] Father Christian Federico von Wernich.

a

b

c

hitting thud

cheering up larkin

series one

Every time the line hits water

nothing happens –

only expectation of guts, gills…

Under curved boat,

wooden edged,

fine silt buries bones.

Underneath:

fossils of friends –

a lake of everything cold.

*

The ubiquity of grass –

the long October

of the planets.

there is noise,

familiar, received

- it is Russian and plural.

Semi frozen,

of winter,

bordered by greasy forests:

this colossal land –

never Russia

always home.

*

Peel of bells

and autumns

scaffolds raised

against the banks,

An accumulation of rusting

and of time, aprox.

There is only

the hearts and eyes

left in animals

*

The closing cut

in the sky

shows a metal-bodied

plane, briefly –

seconds only, almost transparent, but

real, touchable

and gone.

The building

offers nothing:

fire escape

windows

reflections

bookcases.

In elements

there is continuity.

a flooding?

a switch.

On

– off

on

–off.

Further green

growing mass

of Leipzig

and Eindhoven.

Sonderkommando

hefting axes

smashing chairs

sleeping

eating time.

After this

the summer

collapses.

I am proud

of snow.

CERN (i)

Cyclical, underground and breaking -

one hundred before the atom.

elegant – only in its form (the skin is pretty

always covering

endless muscle

and potential.[i]

underneath a pinhead, billions[ii] - an atom

in two hands

the shovel/the pen.

one breaks, three breaks a bridge across a wing.

Unpinnable, one sits amongst the chair (the second begins

immediately after

the previous,

the boundaries smudge.[iii]

Working on stasis

on wooden benches

where elements sleep

unable to silhouette for movement.)

The constant buzzing of objects and animals

solid and gone

everywhere at once

eat the tomatoes in the greenhouse and the carbon in stars.

---

[i] Circulating with good lifetimes. Splashes of particles, periods of quiet beam.

[ii] Thanks for following, systems commissioning begins; the clockwise beam.

[iii]Energy in tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny particles; 450Gev of energy crushing a nut.

CERN (ii)

Aerials point towards them

a summoning arm under clouds

(With peacock colours

the image centres and folds

The voice speaks

sensitive to the pressure

a barometer[1]

of the archaeologist

(the butcher

with fleshed bones

and creased apron

washes his boots

in the overflow

a bitten nail (in that cause and solution)

a poultice and reminder

a terrible pendant

of the feather strewn

box, of the pecked neck

and the paper shell

(Flowers bought by the girl given to the man she motions

never to sing to growl

- coming into a sea-town

empty handed

expressing elegence (in flight) a stone

into water

thrown

a spla(((sh)))[2]

(a quiet arrogance, a wingtip, a claw[3]

a fishing bird

tumbling

forwards

ecstatically[4]

eyes open

for the second after impact

(([ripple]))[5]

---

[1] a symbol of mounting underwhelming disappointment.

[2] representations of real events.

[3] following the line of the forearm into the animal.

[4] aggressively.

[5] the eyes covered by a thin film.

CERN (iii)

The stars centre (a miniature galaxy -

(((((((((((((((((((((o)))))))))))))))))))))))): time

((((((((((((((((((((((o))))))))))))))))))))))): position

(((((((((((((((((((((((o)))))))))))))))))))))): money/heart

5 y x7

(x+y-7

(smudging around the nucleus – the dot of universe

returning to Hellas on

hands of gold and clay feet /////////////////////::::::::::::::::::::::(o)

Across the sea the elements

twitch into the s((((o)))n

on beams, on st((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((rs, on songs:

U

e

m S

v

M

S

N