The Green Zone at Midnight by Paul-Cooper, literature
Literature
The Green Zone at Midnight
Like human teeth, the boots crunch
the throat-clear truck revving
to ship the soldiers completely elsewhere;
beyond the stucco sheet concrete
of the barricade, the dead heft
of ordnance underwater sound
scattering stars like dark shoals.
Searchlights detonate in the hot gloom.
They spill through the cobwebs of wires
and lie white on the sand, in pieces.
I slipped and wrote a poem
soft as old playing cards
the plastic snapped from the keyboard,
my finger pocking rubber like
a dead piano note; dust-breath.
Missing key, lone and ridiculous
as a Scrabble tile.
I slipped and wrote a poem
blunt as a hollowpoint.
The soft silt of flour on the keys,
globes of oil left jointed sinews
spelling sharp advice from the sweating
chocolate block, the slim kitkat
of the spacebar.
I slipped and wrote a poem
dead as stardust.
The thrum of typing through the letter mist,
insect clouds of occasional undressed
punctuation, crowded like yet-to-be-formed
letters failing
We stood shivering, my Dad and I, shrunk
under enormous arctic air, watching
the source of all tears spin silk into the stars.
Homeward bound, this mote-borne traveller;
pilgrim after warmth and light, a shattered vase
with nothing to end its fall, spilling glass dust
into a darkness larger than the fever-dreams of God.
Four thousand years ago, it lit the night
and saw the Akkadians scattered like dolls,
a forest of flags tattered in the chalk of moonlight;
urus turning the pages of the ocean;
the hundred-year pharaoh narrowing
rheumatic eyes at the first clear gleam of bronze.
Separate ways.
You fall back into those millennia
Tremolo dusk. Sunlight rills cast
nets along the tigerstripe waist
dusted by ringlets of rosin smoke.
Protea's loose purple shade
sediments the honeyed brazilwood,
the heartache of acacia down in Soweto;
liquid boléro of heat. Zephyrs trill the aloe's
luthier curves, the purfling of matchbox houses.
Strings tuned to four crystal fifths, glazed
by the vibrato breeze.
This sluice of swamp,
weed-throttled and starred
by lilies mossed benches
lit by lichen like a night of fireworks
and the dregs of forgotten picnics
lost to sleep crumbs.
The gunfire of a diesel ticking over,
heaping sods of dry earth teeth
polished to a gleam of blue steel
by sparked stones.
Engines row against the earth,
snarling it with mesh and acetate,
pestling stone to powder under tangerine totems
riddled like the sides of bullet-flecked tanks
straining at their hydraulic sinew.
In the ruins where we
cricked our necks,
lost in the tent of shadows
where we strung candles and
the brambles s
He is trying to wipe a stain from his spectacles.
His doe eyes are shallow pools black with bloom,
nodding from the glasses in his hand to the
bench's arpeggio score of faces.
The courtroom light cuts gems from the lenses
they squeal at the silk; he blinks deep as a frog,
huffing beads of breath on the cold glass.
A mote of dust caught from the cracked earth,
baked dry by how many summers cemented
by hot spit whipped in the oven air.
There is a cough, and he fumbles like a man
catching his dreams; his glasses lurch
like splinted birds and he clips them with a breath.
He is trying to wipe a stain from his spectacle
We traced the dark mass of the hills,
star filaments of crushed glass
sharper than the rain flecks on the window
that you thought were paint.
Your voice doesn't wear pain well,
but I love the way codeine makes you blush
gives you eyes like lacquered salad bowls
in the monitor's tribute to moonlight.
Drunk with half-sleep, I heard a train's
sigh shift up through minor notes
and teach you to speak.
You asked why I soothed
the hol
Sometimes in the evening when I'm running
feet are making patterns on the pavement
shoes are worn and clapping on the concrete,
I lose the thread of thirsty wires
and it's dark in my head and I wake up
not remembering where I've been
strung up, ivy puppet but
if I'm lucky I'll be fully-clothed
and nowhere near the motorway,
snug under wet cardboard
stomach heavy with dreams:
mangroves of light sprouting
under powerlines epileptic
like sped up film and
when I come home my wife tells me to
wipe the age off my face.
Bathers' feet print the stone,
the smoke of shrimp frying in oil
making sweet meat of the air.
Fat Ojibwe sucks the grease glazing his fingers,
peels the crustaceans from their ghost skins,
twists off sheaves of their toothpick legs.
The carapaces ooze when pressed:
Black pearl eyes, wet pebbles
juices welling between the soft armour plates.
He reaches for a bottle with an oil-dark label,
lugs legs of slow sunshine into the pan
embossed with pepper slices.
Starfish of sliced chilli skim the surface.
The Green Zone at Midnight by Paul-Cooper, literature
Literature
The Green Zone at Midnight
Like human teeth, the boots crunch
the throat-clear truck revving
to ship the soldiers completely elsewhere;
beyond the stucco sheet concrete
of the barricade, the dead heft
of ordnance underwater sound
scattering stars like dark shoals.
Searchlights detonate in the hot gloom.
They spill through the cobwebs of wires
and lie white on the sand, in pieces.
I slipped and wrote a poem
soft as old playing cards
the plastic snapped from the keyboard,
my finger pocking rubber like
a dead piano note; dust-breath.
Missing key, lone and ridiculous
as a Scrabble tile.
I slipped and wrote a poem
blunt as a hollowpoint.
The soft silt of flour on the keys,
globes of oil left jointed sinews
spelling sharp advice from the sweating
chocolate block, the slim kitkat
of the spacebar.
I slipped and wrote a poem
dead as stardust.
The thrum of typing through the letter mist,
insect clouds of occasional undressed
punctuation, crowded like yet-to-be-formed
letters failing
We stood shivering, my Dad and I, shrunk
under enormous arctic air, watching
the source of all tears spin silk into the stars.
Homeward bound, this mote-borne traveller;
pilgrim after warmth and light, a shattered vase
with nothing to end its fall, spilling glass dust
into a darkness larger than the fever-dreams of God.
Four thousand years ago, it lit the night
and saw the Akkadians scattered like dolls,
a forest of flags tattered in the chalk of moonlight;
urus turning the pages of the ocean;
the hundred-year pharaoh narrowing
rheumatic eyes at the first clear gleam of bronze.
Separate ways.
You fall back into those millennia
Tremolo dusk. Sunlight rills cast
nets along the tigerstripe waist
dusted by ringlets of rosin smoke.
Protea's loose purple shade
sediments the honeyed brazilwood,
the heartache of acacia down in Soweto;
liquid boléro of heat. Zephyrs trill the aloe's
luthier curves, the purfling of matchbox houses.
Strings tuned to four crystal fifths, glazed
by the vibrato breeze.
This sluice of swamp,
weed-throttled and starred
by lilies mossed benches
lit by lichen like a night of fireworks
and the dregs of forgotten picnics
lost to sleep crumbs.
The gunfire of a diesel ticking over,
heaping sods of dry earth teeth
polished to a gleam of blue steel
by sparked stones.
Engines row against the earth,
snarling it with mesh and acetate,
pestling stone to powder under tangerine totems
riddled like the sides of bullet-flecked tanks
straining at their hydraulic sinew.
In the ruins where we
cricked our necks,
lost in the tent of shadows
where we strung candles and
the brambles s
He is trying to wipe a stain from his spectacles.
His doe eyes are shallow pools black with bloom,
nodding from the glasses in his hand to the
bench's arpeggio score of faces.
The courtroom light cuts gems from the lenses
they squeal at the silk; he blinks deep as a frog,
huffing beads of breath on the cold glass.
A mote of dust caught from the cracked earth,
baked dry by how many summers cemented
by hot spit whipped in the oven air.
There is a cough, and he fumbles like a man
catching his dreams; his glasses lurch
like splinted birds and he clips them with a breath.
He is trying to wipe a stain from his spectacle
We traced the dark mass of the hills,
star filaments of crushed glass
sharper than the rain flecks on the window
that you thought were paint.
Your voice doesn't wear pain well,
but I love the way codeine makes you blush
gives you eyes like lacquered salad bowls
in the monitor's tribute to moonlight.
Drunk with half-sleep, I heard a train's
sigh shift up through minor notes
and teach you to speak.
You asked why I soothed
the hol
Sometimes in the evening when I'm running
feet are making patterns on the pavement
shoes are worn and clapping on the concrete,
I lose the thread of thirsty wires
and it's dark in my head and I wake up
not remembering where I've been
strung up, ivy puppet but
if I'm lucky I'll be fully-clothed
and nowhere near the motorway,
snug under wet cardboard
stomach heavy with dreams:
mangroves of light sprouting
under powerlines epileptic
like sped up film and
when I come home my wife tells me to
wipe the age off my face.
Bathers' feet print the stone,
the smoke of shrimp frying in oil
making sweet meat of the air.
Fat Ojibwe sucks the grease glazing his fingers,
peels the crustaceans from their ghost skins,
twists off sheaves of their toothpick legs.
The carapaces ooze when pressed:
Black pearl eyes, wet pebbles
juices welling between the soft armour plates.
He reaches for a bottle with an oil-dark label,
lugs legs of slow sunshine into the pan
embossed with pepper slices.
Starfish of sliced chilli skim the surface.
We stood shivering, my Dad and I, shrunk
under enormous arctic air, watching
the source of all tears spin silk into the stars.
Homeward bound, this mote-borne traveller;
pilgrim after warmth and light, a shattered vase
with nothing to end its fall, spilling glass dust
into a darkness larger than the fever-dreams of God.
Four thousand years ago, it lit the night
and saw the Akkadians scattered like dolls,
a forest of flags tattered in the chalk of moonlight;
urus turning the pages of the ocean;
the hundred-year pharaoh narrowing
rheumatic eyes at the first clear gleam of bronze.
Separate ways.
You fall back into those millennia
I'm writing a blog over at WordPress.com
http://whatalotofbirds.wordpress.com/
I'll be posting about music and arts as I come back from Sri Lanka, and posting creative writing tips that have helped me develop. I'll be posting throughout my course at UEA next year, so stay tuned and get the latest. Follow and I will of course follow in return. ^^
Hey guys - I've spent the summer working at a writers' magazine in Cardiff. It's got a load of great advice on writing, literary competitions to enter, interviews with authors and industry reps, and guides to submitting to agents and publishers. Plus of course articles by me! About interesting things. You should check it out. :)
I've reviewed my degree course at the University of Warwick over at Suite101. If you're thinking of studying literatue of creative writing at any point it might be worth a look. =)