Gareth Durasow shares latest poetry collection

Gareth Durasow teaches creative writing and drama. His poetry has appeared the Rialto, Shearsman, French Literary Review, Polluto, and most recently in the LS13 anthology from Dead Ink and Valley Press. His forthcoming collection, Endless Running Games will be out later in the year, from Dog Horn Publishing.

 

Prayers for Anakin Skywalker

1

Every dandelion knew him, knew to be braced for its brains blown out.

The woods he used to roam resorted to scorched earth tactics

burning its mattresses, cushions and pushchairs

to stop thinking of him, the way that he was

a little boy, dog-happy in the loaf-thick snow

mistaking sandbags for piglets asleep at the roadside

carrying a baguette like a pole-arm all the way home

Just the height to be clotheslined by your wing mirror

How he clambered staircases of waterfowl in flight,

trapezed the vapours of Red Arrows out to pasture

besmirching the name of any cloud he liked,

painting the shells of local snails

to know them on return, to know which were loyal to him,

never seeing his hands when he dreamt.

 

2

Night rain,

a sky tearing arrows out of itself,

the stratosphere veneered with a zinc complexion.

Flashes of flak,

your popcorn at critical.

Starships failing at obtuse angles.

THX has a field day –

orchestral manoeuvers,

turbolaser pwnage.

The force of greater numbers and budget

g-hardened,

eating Gs like Jesus is their copilot,

gunned for by the beaks of lens and boom mic

or firing from the hip

with murder in his eyes.

If you peer into the visor there’s a Māori inside,

stubble set to heavy,

teeth to coup de grâce,

life lines identical from palm to palm,

the famous pride of the mechanised Republic,

the military brightness of bugle and drum.

 

3

The Force that formerly you held in bridle

now a bounding, ferocious beast

crazy and ready to slaughter, to devastate

to engorge between toilet breaks

Stumbras the hammer, pillow the anvil

for the nailing of horseshoes onto your skull,

an era in boiling, the Force of the present

anger to something, hate to whatever.

The Force, it is a hurricane

it sluices your blood through the wildest boar,

cuts and shuts the heart of a wrestler

to the chassis of a beetle.

Looking over your son’s shoulder

how would you like to hear him say

it’s you he’s busy drawing;

a stickman in black

and vigorous crayon.

 

 

Horatio in my pocket

               after Hamletmachine

                                    ~ NO PART FOR YOU IN THIS MY TRAGEDY

 

I am Horatio,

the one denied a mortal swig

who envenomed steel never took.

Back when you lived I killed a snapdragon thus;

pinched its head between thumb and forefinger

to play the ventriloquist next to your ear –

handsome devil, may I tear off some bread

and scatter it among thy quarrel of ducks?

Ignore uncle bastard on matters such as the exemplary shave,

how you can afford to be bold about the neck

to whiffle thy razor shell scalpel keen.

Let us back to Wittenberg on any deadline’s eve

alarm clocks blunt on the hide of our dreams

a bromance in the bibliotheque

to rip off the cacography left by yesteryear’s geeks

towards a second-class with honours

and a job no-one kills for.

 

 

Poem for testing your vision

Now we have reached the trees – the beautiful trees!

their roots in someone’s casket

contracting from the soil a human wilt,

bark aspiring to marble,

trunk to Venus de Milo
and to that end wishes lightning to strike twice
to drape their arms across car windscreens

the tiara they proffer no tiara at all

but the jaw they grew up with,
the memory of birdsong as it sounded before
laughter and smoke alarms,

rifle report

of a child advancing

plastic battalions

blasting snails into rubble and slag
happy as Ginsberg in Bunting’s lap

we’ll be together at the end of the Stelliferous Age

building a sandbank with our pension of skin,

gifted to the Westerlies, encrusting guitar strings.

 

 

She waits in IMDb.com

A lone woman stands on the side of a desolate road. She appears to be concerned, confused and lost. / She waits half the day for help, but when the massive truck pulls in behind her, she begins to feel something is very wrong. / In a waiting room of an airport, a young lady is eating crackers while she’s waiting for her flight. / While she’s waiting to leave, she acts as our guide as we travel into the lives of her flatmates, her boyfriend’s band, her family and few complete strangers who have nothing to do with anything (probably). / A young girl who has lost her love to the sea (in more ways than one) can’t seem to get her life off hold as she waits for him to return. / She spends her days lulling a doll in her arms as she waits for her love to rise from the depths. / As she waits for her husband to return, she occasionally spends time with her friend Bernadette, whose presence makes the long winter bearable. / She spends six years raising her daughter alone while she waits for her husband to return from overseas. / She waits tables. / She waits for the end of the world. / She waits in front of the door. / While she waits with dinner ready, imagine several scenarios to enjoy together. / She’s waiting for a special prince to sweep her away. / She is waiting for Jóska at the train station of a small Ukrainian town. / She is waiting with a meal. / She is waiting at the train station with coffee and serious doubts. / She is waiting for the train to arrive when a mysterious and soaked man shows up. / Chained up in Hell, she is waiting for her boyfriend to rescue her. / She waits for him in the confines of the cult’s lascivious leader / holding onto the promises that he made and the belief that he would never abandon her. / She is waiting on a train, he is waiting for answers. / As she waits for her train, the stranger lurks nearby on the platform, so that he can make sure to sit in the same carriage as her. / With every struggle to catch her breath, we feel more deeply her pain and helplessness as she waits for the miracle that destiny may never deliver. / While she waits for her train, the young woman finds herself slowly captivated by the alluring text messages of a secret admirer. / After her pals can’t dissuade her, they insist on going with her to the trendy bar where she waits to get picked up. / Gleefully hooked on her dangerous new plaything, she waits for her little game to end. / She gives him an ultimatum that if he leaves she will not be waiting for him when he returns. / She is waiting for surgery that can restore her eyesight. / She waits till Tim (as he said in the letter) would come later in the evening. But he does not come. / When she tells him that she is pregnant and that she will wait for him, he has no other choice but surrender. / They plan to leave the country together, but at the airport she waits for him in vain. / Locked in her self-imposed exile, she waits for the right moment to step back into the world and claim what is hers and hers alone.

Follow Gareth Durasow on Twitter @garethdurasow

 

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