Snowmelt Colours
As the white clump
falls off, camellias uncoil up
in a spring of pink waking.
The roof lets ice
find cracks in this ceiling,
drips
down
the
wall
melted and
pissing itself into an orange bucket.
It’s dirt,
dusty soil turned mud slide
as mountains let go,
rivers overflow,
and shitdark – obviously –
even where blood is.
On her topiary bush
the eight inches of thawing V
are now pierced
with its greenery.
Fuliginous in its
leaving, all other
colours blur to
grey cascades.
Snowmelt M470-1
sings a brighter shade
of blue-pastel pale.
Like foshadie from the rote of a child’s prayer,
onlyapoor is a confusion of colour ontothewalls
from ingress.
Aristotle could have noted
when the watermelon snow dissolves
there are no pips.
Types of Identity
A birth certificate trumps
Descartes every time,
though extrapolating would make DT
non-existent.
the refuser who sucks a thumb
the drifter who is lethargic about charisma
the searcher who dislikes finding others
the guardian who puts self above all else
the resolver who gets that gold star
Money Laundering Regulations
require ID evidence
to keep it unclean.
Acceptable forms of ID are
paper based –
flesh and blood: tricky;
actual presence: thorny;
in-your-face: awkward.
Or it is simply pastiche,
the roles played
to become
some
one
until another mirrors along.
It is nature vs nurture
all over again,
the primordial and the political
battling in biology and social things
until history decides.
Ride the mutable –
know your boundaries
and mark territory,
dress for instant recognition
but speak in the
abstract.
Facing death
to know who you are
is as finite as it gets
taking that last step.
You say ipse
I say idem,
let’s call the whole thing a draw.
Its theft
scribbles new words
on the scrabble board:
things
places
actions
memories
you did not write before
and new calculations.
Get to know your self
before it says no to you.
You may betray
one behaviour in
one situation for
one crisis to be
legitimate.
Take away the magic
and stay real.
Familiar Landscape
Relevance in a landscape
is public and ordinary
and this is why most citizens
are not poets
In a reverso world
of gazing at the panorama
you simply wouldn’t recognise
that vista ahead
Let your pigeons traverse
along the terrain before their race
and returning home will be like
formula one with wings
Nationally inspired music
can be prompted by looking
closely
and
feeling
If you are uneasy
wandering in what you know
it is possible that
you didn’t
The musical discourse of landscape
plays within a grid of melody
and sings the orthogonal corners
until improvisation
This innocence of yellow balloons
floating through tress
cannot be seen as indigenous
The olfaction-based view
is more than paradox
as you sniff out contours
and connections
When landscapes rupture,
an habitual way of life
is no longer compensation
for loss
Obviously the hippocampus
plays its part
allowing you to navigate the topography
with that poetic map
Mike Ferguson is an American permanently resident in the UK. His most recent publications are the chapbook Precarious Real [Maquette Press, 2016] and, co-edited with Rupert Loydell, the music poems anthology Yesterday’s Music Today [Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2015].