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Abstraction; A Distant Fawn; Night Sea Journey by Patrick Wright


Abstraction


the greatest truths I’ve found are

that god is a ladybird in disguise

Hades will remain mute to my protests

after the apocalypse I must nail

meaning down through inscape

the choice to go on living arrives

when I feel vertigo over a cliff

the sound of immanence can be heard

as the rain blitzkriegs my glass

one meaning of martyr is to bear witness

when I save a snail on the pavement

I save humanity

at least Christ only had one crucifixion

I need a ghost in the machine

science is just a line of paradigms

I need my black swans and white crows

my words must serve as a requiem

love is beyond Aristotle’s categories

all these are variations on a theme


A Distant Fawn


Off in the glades, a fawn crouches, hears its own

heartbeat, a wolf upwind. & still a whole field

killed by lightning. Orphans search for mother’s

scent, before their heads sprout into branches.


Was it God in disguise?—the fawn at Darsham

Marshes. Ghost-like, going off. It seemed to say

I’m here, don’t follow. By the trees we glimpsed

a whorl of fur, receding further as we stepped.


My lips on your forehead. I was a fawn in your

limbus. I was going off, going off in the distance.


Night Sea Journey


It seems you’ve left me floating in the Sea of Cortez.

Left with after-effects, torso upturned to the stars.

My bed surrounded by a carpet, the ocean’s depths,


I wonder from where the light of dreams emanates,

how shadows are cast in the cortex. Other realities

are as close as your jugular vein. So says the Koran.


On the verge of jumping after you, what stops me?

I’ve made an altar, placed trigger objects—amulets

to amplify the residual, the mind an aerial.

I’ve burnt incense, switched devices to record …


By the morning sun, the lounge is transfigured. I listen

for raps, hear floorboards expand, often a distant siren

or the sound a mother makes after the death of a child.

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