Ÿseult’s Poem

I tear at the sky to reach you
And the clouds are left in tatters
Loose shreds all around.

I open the vault of heaven
And not finding you
Leave it bare and stripped and spoiled.

I ruin seas so that there will be
No more veils to hide you—
So that those pale cataracts can drift
Waveless and tideless.

I put out the candlelight that
Bathes you
Since sight only shows us apart.

I tear at the clothes that you wear
Until they are a torn flag of wind
Flown and abandoned

Until I smell your naked flesh
Smell the ache and fire of you,
The hot glass that streams from you,
Mirror and lake.

I tear at you naked with claws
I open you wide like fruit
I make you wild like hammered metal

Like a frenzy of blood
Like the sun in its torment
Like the nights that fall forever
Over us like cloth.

No hour can contain me.
God cannot hold you from me.
No distance can keep me from your side.

Now that we are shadow-crossed,
Now that we are tide.

 

Ÿseult's Dream

Ah the sadness of our dreams
That go unfulfilled.
We walk in them forever.

Ÿseult you had this dream
This strange delirium
That filled your blood with fire

And you walked through your blood
As though through a forest
Feeling the mystery

Of your own desires
In every alive part
Of the world.

And it is from the edge
Of this dark arena
That they way-lay you

Faces masked—animal-like—
You must remember to pretend
To be surprised

For that also is part of the dream
And on which
So much else depends.

And here is where your dream
Takes you over
Like a sudden winter storm.

Helplesness drugs your arms
And legs
As in the dream they strip you—

You hear the rough music
Of tearing fabric
And the first breath of cold air

 

On your skin.
You are open like the night itself
Like the candle of moon

Flickering on a shelf of Earth—
And they lay you down
On the forest floor

Which is also your room
Lit with lamps and your own
Hot blood.

One cock touches your lips
And you open your mouth to it
While other hands

Brush at your thighs.
You open your legs to them
Feeling with every increase that

You are becoming yourself
Feeling that your cunt
Is open to the night and the world

And the most beautiful thing
That either
Have ever seen.

And so when a cock enters your cunt
Pushing your legs apart
Your mouth tastes

What your cunt feels
And you are joined to yourself
And you surrender

To the night
That has completed you
And that has meaning

Only insofar
As you are in it—
Dissolved tablet of desire.

They fuck you now
As if you were falling snow
As if you were

Melting lamp-light.
You are rain
On their windscreen

As they drive.
You are oil between their two
Storms.

They fuck you like war
They fuck you like a drum.
You are liquid now

Between these stone cliffs
A boat rocked
mid-ocean

Sucking on a crescent moon
And fucked
By night-black light.

So we arrive at the dream's
World-centre,
The place

In which you are eternal
In which
Pleasure and desire

Are not yours alone
But the
Blood of God pulsing.

And that is what you
Had whispered
At the flickering stars

'Fuck me until I am Holy
Fuck me until I gutter
Under the

Breath of God
Fuck me into a new Earth.'
And in your dream

What is whispered comes to be
And a dawn comes up
Through the earth,

Through your body
And your eyes close with colour
And open with lit cloud

And wrapped in lightning
Your ass and your cunt
And your mouth

Stream come at once
And your dream becomes
A river flowing from you

Open as a door
Toward the answering
Dark.

 

Statement of Artistic Intent

What I am going to say is going to be strikingly unfashionable — perhaps even perversely so.

For me poetry is the deepest of all the arts, and it has real connections to ancient magic. The idea of magic, the original meaning, was the idea that by uttering certain words one could command the gods to do what one willed. It was out of this idea that the psalms of the Old Testament were born, the incantations of the Greeks, and the Vedic Hymns. Poetry was originally a way of commanding the gods to act, and even in its more secular forms, as in The Iliad and The Odyssey, the poems are punctuated with invocations.

It seems to me that the best without being too self-conscious about it — poetry such as that of Whitman, Rilke, Ahkmatova, Montale, Bonnefoy, and even Ashbery. Even when poetry is ostensibly erotic or romantic this trace is something that I try to pursue, as though it were a seam of gold in the side of a mountain.

When people speak of beauty it seems that they often mean the sublime, and it is this sense of the sublime that unifies my ideas about the visual arts and poetry. I don’t say that I achieve these aims merely that these ideas shape how I approach what I do. Poetry should make the reader say ‘This has made me see things that I hadn’t seen before, it has made me see the world afresh’.

Poetry is inherently visual, its aim is to make people see. Even if this seeing is itself a metaphor, it shows the close connection that exists between the visual arts and poetry.

I was born and grew up in the south of England, on the South Downs. I started writing poetry in High School, initially with no influences at all, but rather soon discovered Yeats, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot. Fortunately, by the time I published my first poem when I was 19, I had discovered my own voice. I won the University poetry prize and then started publishing more often in journals and magazines.

Last year a collection of my poems was published called The Cloud Chamber, by Dyer’s Hand Press. Unfortunately, distribution was rather limited and I’m looking for a better outlet for those poems. In addition to poetry I have written four plays and a large number of philosophical articles and essays. Two novels have also been finished. I enjoy photography and the photographs that appear here are published for the first time. I currently live and work in Australia.You can reach me here .