Seven poems by Carolyn Finlay

Moth

Moth are you wanting,

loose shapeless “velvety”

loosely “aflutter” or

restless under hems?

Moth are you wanting,

inadvertent uncovered

uneventful moth are you

lost are you vagrant?

Moth are you wanting are you

face-burying lollipop-licking

variable rainbow-decaled

transcendence?

Moth are you wanting

after lights out are you

restful after

want want want?

Is that what we

shoo out

and after the slam catches

the out-light is that

wanting slammed out is that

the taste loose

beneath the moth in the mouth?

This Time Just for Love Not Money or a Good Look

Hand across face

down from a tunnel, promising

red rock sunrise and crystal waters

When we came up for air

I was helpless

Couldn’t stumble

out

Now you

you curled in current dappled yourself fed

me took me down past out through

balancing rocks, newts

tuneless, eddying

one wave at a time, three, four

You can’t go your sand canoe’s

spinthrift and

tumbleweed and

thievery

and

suspense the usual

dragonflies

Safe Keeping

She insistent on flying in her inside out floral frock but always

to economise heart it’s no use for still his hands flap

(usually air once a getaway only doesn’t)

at her like balloons and won’t remember in the morning where

the ziggurat steps belong to her outwardly.

Toast, bronze breasts, before the museum

stretches the ozone layer the taxis

delivered up.

Some holidays broaden across

a body of water.

Honestly both of them suffer the same malady air dried

hearts shrunk as Sumerian apricots (please)

rattled in a leather bag.

A hook smooth embroidered (please understand) round

the waist for that silkly white stitched in grapes and

(his hand flaps) eyed by peacocks.

Bangled undecorously though

the fruitstall reality unpeels

an osmotic pressure of

melons

contained within

a diamond

mesh

red

nylon

sleeve.

No longer predict or

loosen.

Like [X] Only Not

your absence is there when I call and somewhere a sniff of stillness

escapes your window and your splinters of cut-out glass lying

in the high colours of the sea.

yesterday was tick-the-box, the mind leaks too

obscurely out of a pinprick jammed with trees

and that’s the first of one

discovery after another.

the best wine in the swamp’s hauled off

six inches under where the locks break though

the flat road at your door nuzzles us free

of any need for tidal olympics and who’d

have thought we were so

easy?

but this was not what we came for.

you parcelled up the tulips and tumbled

feathers but none of them could

compare to a simple

plum

or,

discernable behind the shaggy horses,

the orange light in the sky

coming back now.

Transparencies

eggs crack needlepoint streetlight and

motiveless transplanted random

grinning

what if I give this

unthreading a silver point on

yellowed leather fretwork

of eyes bigmouth

what if I give

this a name spelt underwater bound

to elastic wrists or the swish

of a lift button

what if I

cave in dig under webs past massive

helpings of straightforward out/

through/in/vulnerability

what if

I give this time or rehearsal down

the quayside of red leaves and just one

embroidered comma

what

about sunglasses a hat the wind snicked under

shrugged up collars the final furry

lipping snapped around glove cuffs

what if I give this

up?

Mountain Stop

Spanish colours.

Anticipation slaps at foliage in the border forests

pulling you and your swizzlestick swagger

down all the November trains and on

past their illuminated sky, aged

by the fractions of autumn, his mother’s

glass flowers, her tin crucifix.

Though bold in the face of the gale,

fear shivers in like a whippet.

On raindrop radio the rhythm murmurs loose like

likelihoods for half-gloved divas on the cranky steps

and a cold whiskery brush of air that knocks you

sideways into the nearly there night.

Your slivered resolve almost catches in the rosary pearls,

the slick diamond grin on the photographer’s face.

But love yes love, this is all about,

blowing in the manner of the piles of leaves

or tough girls’ skirts nowadays;

present, but, as is the way of it,

with shifting edges. Holy Maria

of the last assumption,

still one step behind, with the black

leather, the grey paving slabs,

your red velvet heart.

Building // Blocks

spin turquoise / building two blocks

up (down) (past)

chocolate sky

(future)

female vocalists (expressWay)

spin mustard / no limitations (past)

(passing lane)

just (yeeeees) experience

hey just more

(future) fun

playback track

(ooh ah love to love)

uncoloured fields press uninhibitedly against

turquoise sky

(big, open)

(present)

* * * * * * *

she was leaning on the gate

(she) was thinking about poppies

(she) and blood

and the (conundrums of)

beauty/death he came up behind her she didn’t

take much notice of the other

car that pulled into the layby except

the colour / which / was /// greensilvergrey

red barns roll down the side window

(ooh, big this time)

(fields)

she didn’t

(take much notice but)

after a time man gone

car gone

(but) (ooh ah)

fields-sky-buildings-turquoise-mustard-chocolate-past-

present-future (be)

(ooh ah)

be mine

(burrow me)

Contact Carolyn at: cfinlay@info.com