i over-worded my description of the first night
of winter, i did,
i took too much pet peeves in frank o'hara style,
conversation i perhaps wish i had,
i was aiming for an example of imagism,
like the origins of movies, silent cinema
imagism is best described by silent cinema,
images don't speak, you have to speak for them,
the whole venture into the first signs of frost
got me tangoing or foxtrotting muddled with me
feet that translated for the tongue to be akin,
i should be repentant for it, and i am, yours truly,
all i wanted to write was the extract
i was trying to work on on foot -
at first i noticed the frost
and served up simile upon simile
if not metaphor in the vein of consent
to exclude any association with metaphor,
or as i might collectivise such dissection
of poetics: neither, cliché upon cliché,
the sparkling diamond sawdust,
the speckle of frozen tears,
hushed stardust of entered atmosphere...
but then i looked keenly at the frost,
on cement and on iron of car bonnets
and roofs... the stars not numerous enough
to be compared with,
and after much deliberation it dawned on me;
the frost appeared as if paparazzi epileptics,
or like a thousand photograph camera flashes
in a stadium of staged pop music...
along the linear tread of my feet the frost
change kaleidoscopic like that, like red carpet concentration
of the desired object for newspaper print CELEBRITY,
like a stadium where something memorable
must happen in order to ignite the need
for flash photography: yes, the frost appeared like that,
the frost appeared like that tonight,
and the stars were set free in revelatory constellations
where once the constellation πηγασος, where once
it too gleamed
still too much, i think, if i'm going to be an imagist
there's a further need for a 3rd revision:
frost like paparazzi flash photography
appearing on sheen of metal alloy.
there, that's it.
but of course tonight, and in hope of not over-wording...
with first night of winter where frost and clear sky,
find upon the second night the incubator of the sky
being overcast, and with the temperatures warmer
from the skyline of skeletal constellations missing,
snow falling:
with first frost one night,
expect snow the second night.
i love winters in england because there's this smoky scent
about them, burning cinnamon, and it reminds me
of home, of the child that left home
in order to become part of the "grand" multi-cultural
experiment, where multi-cultural evidence is apparent,
esp. in questionnaires regarding a necessity to pour
ethnicity into questionnaires:
white british, white caribbean (pirate), white some other,
republican irish, volatile irish, absinthe on fire swiss,
black british, flemish red indian beetroot, ginger or scottish,
other, some other, many others, punned origins, or just
simply etc.
but the cold of it... the multi-cultural capital with about 200
tongues that's london? i'd see more smiles in a graveyard,
more adults in a debility congregation,
more of anything anywhere elsewhere, it's absolutely horrid,
i have to warn myself in order to say: more warmth in
you now, than ever, and not elsewhere esp. outside.
******, already over-worded - one last line about the meagre
snow that fell today...
not meagre enough like an inverse ostrich though,
under a street lamp, head turned into the abyss of night,
watching the prickly snowflakes fall
as if a star trek canvas, slowly but assuredly
with head angled to a crow perching hunchback reverse,
there propped, propped like that,
watching gentle snow fall as if alluding to me:
a step cosier to being closer to the moon.