Lakey Comess



Urban virtual buzz and pizzazz

Urban virtual buzz and pizzazz.
Hit the communication,

mill all the pieces,
chat under the linden smog.

                              *

The earth graves stones, wandering stills.
You want to keep ten little responses,

pounce on the officer’s cap,
nightshade the porter.

Gant curtains with twitching and peer.
Perception has slipped off a shoulder.

                              *

This is not grass cut and the gardener’s boots.

This is the sheikh’s falcon, hooded and jessed,
blind in both eyes, smelling mouse.

                              *

Persist in the flood, lights
and dumb cold. Stop at infinity.

Look both other ways,
then left again. Right.

The noise of traffic is current and starlings.
Exhaustion shifts into paces. Shift spaces, measure.

                              *

Far shore has blown onto pavements,
radios hide in the hedge.

Up the down, link the dare to assassins.
You are writing this piece. It’s irreversible, shows all the lining.

                              *

Summer flambeau, scatter blushes,
                flaunt donkey and bray.

The rest is conjecture.

                Trawlers pass harvest,
fine hard kicks the apple.

Spate forces semaphore and gesture,
clocks all, fugue to parody, room of instruction and art.

Hassan ibn al-Sabbah,
                slip garrotte
                               and snap.



RED PRIEST, TOUCH OF THE TANGO

Wild feelings of gypsies run through the world,
series of epics, carols.

Cellists wear black and red shoes;
answers deserve questions.

Anomaly absorbed time from time,
                               Red Priest, touch of the tango,
flamboyant treatise on ornamentation,

Standing and bowing,
wild chases on shore.

Keep you close at a distance,
(how modern it sounds),

utterly magical equations scattered around,
roots going back, kinship, curses,

North European lyrics, an old British poem,

over the stars,
                dust, rock face,
sharp veritas.

Band's getting you up on your feet,
edit a bit, play a few months

(just to be
crayon-coloured strand, dense stage.)

A geologist could tell you, illustrate point,
draw diagrams, make sense of the update.

Lark ascends beams,
bolts North towards sound.



Tabula rasa

                endows setting for dazzling destruction. Do you pray to a fat,
round god or do you embrace something less conventional?

Incursions into a past first excite, then incite.
Time to de-mob the foot soldiers, burn all the great coats.

… …

What really has changed?
Has radiant moon's skull turned night into day ?

Has fog lifted?

You have kept both your eyes wide open,
blind to repugnant spectacle.

… …

Shadows elude you,
deaf as you are to amoral turns of phrase.

Ah, but you don't subscribe to or recognise contradictions
inherent in that school (which is no-school) of thought.

Vitriolic voice over or under?

Duplicitous cyanide sonnets, black room philosophy,
lacking courage, conviction,

reverberate brutally
in safety-in-numbers fraternity.

… …

Double pages feature ominous consequences
which never again hasn't wiped out.

Your absolute beliefs
are surely hobbled by self-hatred,

terrified by pitch and toss of plane
caught in storm, paralyzed by shame.




Lakey Comess, born U S A in 1948, has lived in Israel, South Africa and the Orkney Islands in Scotland and now lives in Lanarkshire. She has contributed to Versal, Big Bridge, Gulf Stream, Milk, Hutt, Otoliths, SideReality, Hamilton Stone Review, Mad Hatters' Review blog, On Barcelona blog and other publications, also as Lakey Teasdale.
 
 
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