Christian Jensen


Grey Sands

Is that Grey .. in your head .. is it .. sand .. grey .. matter .. grey sand in your head?
where’s your myelin ey? conductive coating ea!

I’ve burnt all the remaining driftwood in the house,
tree logs are scarce in the middle of central suburbia.
I have to trek far out west to even see a chopping block or an axe
where the big Chicken, by name, my mate the Chicken,
a chicken that swims with sharks, literally, he works in an aquarium
and brings bundles of potential heat;
a true believer
who shares the understanding of the gift economy…
…and names.
                              and friendship
But right now
I’m down to the piled up pizza boxes and newspapers
of flatmates and myself

making the fire

glass stain poker rain
the black metal hooked into the burnt structure
toppling over the fragile black skeletons
framed in a line of moving embers

the grey sand is spilling out my hearth
under streams of smoke
the grey sand is covering painted tiles
with hieroglyphs
of flora beds

filling up the space below my base of fires
flakes of writing cover your dunes and fade
admirably resistant to the searing heat
and licking flames

The poker rammed into the belly
of grey sand
lifting fragments up in a wild
                                                             but somewhat controlled
                                                                                 flailing
lifting ground up to be clouds
                                                            but somewhat scatters
                                                                                 plots
of grey sand
sucked into the consuming rumble
of glass stain

wafted and pushed up the chimney
Grey sand
sticks to the walls in clumps
clogging and tightening the outlet
of a combusting pyre

needing wire brush clean at a later date
there is a possible threat of chimney fire
while the cold winter is creeping in
bodies lie carelessly tossed cardboard empty in a corner
slowly decomposing in a stoned mire
bodies burn eagerly to warm the walls of any house
but always leaves a pile
of grey sand



Christian Jensen was born and bred like a modern nomad along the south coast of Norway. He is currently living in Auckland, New Zealand. There he is working on his first collection of poetry called Hunter,Monk, Skeleton - a dithyramb.

The poem above first appeared on his main blog Postscripts.



 
 
 
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