Nothing Ventured, On Holes

 
Logic of the pronominal shifter
pyramids blood stains all the hes and shes
indecipherable collectives half moons
ashtrays promises punctum refugee
I said to her and she said back to me
enduring thought of a pair of ankles
what is remembered and what forgotten
life’s sad litany of objects accidents
bumps on the road events traffic lights
that word called love that word called hate
clichés comments caught like falling leaves
a woman I once saw on a tube train
spite so hot it dogs you to bed
like Nietzsche training himself to vomit
incommunicable diary of death
antifascist antifacebook rant
hiding from you letting you see nothing
we need cash to run this economy
burying the truth like nursery rhymes
letting you in and building a wall
eternal return and a Mulberry Bush
I am a man who stutters as he speaks
down from his own narcissistic hillock
prurient poetry bioreader
triple negative aesthetic on tap
hiding from you with my trousers down
irretrievable actions of the mind
the most topical poetry in the world
published as the t.v. spits and splutters
memorial text of somebody else
do not mistake me for a Modernist
nothing ventured and language like a wave
inorganic scar-tissue text
my life’s furry dice thrown out the window
a readable tariff of existence
a hole so small you cannot see through it
blood or rust on the wall becomes art
the rain has started and it will not stop
visible liver spots of a big house
democracy feeds the one-percenters
like taking an x-ray of how you see
graveyard of conventional imagery
archive of everything subject to time
your poetry takes up photography
backlit testimonials of being
prophetic confessional anarchic
I will look for you under the water
spilling yourself out like so much loose change
stirring the cement so it does not set
new mimetic jumbled realism
this will be my Blakean grain of sand
 

Graham Allen

Graham Allen is Professor in English at University College, Cork, Ireland. He has published academic books on literary and cultural theory and on Romantic literature. He has published poetry in numerous journals and was the winner of the 2010 Listowel Poetry Prize. His epoem Holes by Graham Allen was first published by New Binary Press in 2012. His collection, The One That Got Away, was shortlisted for the 2012 Crashaw Prize and is to be published later in 2013.

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