Five Poems by Grant Tarbard

 

A Life Held Between Covers

Idols, I have amassed a hippodrome,

my cross to bear is a vessel of Christ

too, she sees paradise through her open

window enveloped in pearly box-spring

of cloudbursts. She hides gravity behind

her handkerchief, the fixed distance we’re so

settled with is illusion, a cardboard

set of breathless stars flirting in the wings,

a curious assemblage trumpeting

red mouthed language of the universe’s

sighing heart. She hides time in her leggings,

the old pair that sag like an ageing face.

I accept the decay of my marriage,

she still sees peace lilies sprout in springtime.

The Art of Articulation

You’re here now; shall I applaud her on her

final appearance on this cast-off stage?

Shall I ask her a newspaper of whys?

They’ll be buried within a weak never

of Saturn feasting on his gnarled children.

I will needle no questions of her then,

there’s no particle of her that’s not left.

History itself ceased, aeons unmade, 

her voice is but air pushing through a flute.

Am I a coward? I didn’t protect her

when she was torn from the decoration

of perfection. What’s the answer to this?

I think the answer to life is to live

inside a whale with all your needs swallowed.

Coffinmaker’s Blues

Watching M, the Fritz Lang film. That scene where

the police raid a cellar bar, the volk

run up and down the only staircase, no

more knowing which direction will set them

free, whistling at the cops because at least

there’s hope in complete disintegration.

The film was made in 1931’s

Weimar Republic and I wonder who

became a Nazi and who resisted.

Time, the missing child, is slain. Pause all noise,

this room is but a rehearsal, echoes

resound off the far wall. I lift the screen;

and saw infinity’s dress with the sky

inside where we used to forget ourselves.

The Motto Scrutiny

I signed the pact of paralysation

but she didn't, locking arms walking in woods

had to go. I've scorned essential movement,

death's deletion is a trait of my skin.

I'm terrified my unaffected limbs

will be slackened off, the rigging of me

collapsing under a clap of thunder.

To be disabled means the loss of will,

the decomposition of vanity;

a used motto of suffocated eyes

scrutinising every muscle I move,

a slip up under the mask of spastic.

Hope is still here, although my house will burn,

we have parlour games of love and leaving.

Slaughter 

 

What a charitable beast is Death. Claws

inhabit the once sunken galleon

of her armchair. No-one sits in it now,

each moment lost of a make-pretend life.

You do not deserve an explanation

Death said. I will not whimper my griefs

so you'll have no hurt quarry to pursue,

wash your slaughtering hands. Oh come pity,

come the feeding teat of night and gorge me—

a wilderness of squandering, a hand

with just robbed station flowers languidly

disappears up my sleeve as a starling

animates her flight, a low-angle shot.

Reel breaths whimper a silent reverie.

Grant Tarbard is a form of jellied molecules that loves ice cream. These molecules are the author of Loneliness is the Machine That Drives the Word (Platypus Press) & Rosary of Ghosts  (Indigo Dreams). Upcoming books are Dog (Gatehouse Press) & This is the Carousel Mother Warned You About (Three Drops Press).