Nathan Anderson


At the Base of the Volcano


I won’t leave Jerusalem!
        come over
              come         over


beaten with the typewriter
till bloody and raw
            I love this dance
over
and
under


Merry Christmas!
taste the snow
                there is no snow
                it doesn’t snow
I remember 
I remember
                        

                       strongarmed and afraid
                       replete with new absence
                       tired of remunerations
                       constantly starving
                       as a widowed mastication


out in the valley of angel mellifluence
caught and sounding wonderful
‘step’
‘not anymore’
‘have you heard these newfound bells?’


only                         only                         only



transcendental in your Swinburne way
loving this jewellery
home again 
finally
Tired at the station
at the philharmonic
the scientific retreat
the emblematic stall
coming from the houses
to birth like mice
and mothers
on the road
and finding their children
walking aimlessly
through turnstiles
dressed in white
heaving with desperation
at the numerical absence
of tangible God
   sleeping lion
   stone sarcophagus 
walking wild-like
down impregnable streets
singing songs 
of manumission
and thinking you 
had heard it all before


Now entering the sugar skull, the blaring lights, we find ourselves 
conflicted as the sirens sound, the hammer belts, the noise, the 
noise, the NOISE! How much we shake and move in fits of rage. To 
sound as though we are embellishing our thoughts, to find great 
energy from far outside ourselves, yourselves, ourselves, yourselves, 
coming once and only once. I knew it well, I knew it better than I did 
before, I knew it better than I ever have, oh mother mercy! OH GOD!


Ballast
wrought
with iron
and buckles
of wheat
taken from
the endless
pressure
on their feet
which find the 
soil
in the way
my feet
do not
find 
the 
soil



Nathan Anderson is a writer from Mongarlowe Australia. His work has previously 
appeared in Otoliths, Gone Lawn and elsewhere. You can find him at 
nathanandersonwriting.home.blog and on Twitter @NJApoetry.
 
 

previous page     contents     next page