Tuesday, 6 September 2022

Five Poems by Tom Brami


 

God’s Stars, or the Automatic Screen.

 

We could say that the camera shows more than necessary

being positively stupid, unlike a sculpture.

 

Like the One of God, 

the open whole remains enfolded in each shot. 

A bird eats an eel alive. 

The eel eats through the bird’s stomach. 

 

Here it comes, 

                        The cunning sun.

 

The ground is what I kneel on

and on it

John is a name 

the prostitute’s mark 

when does George emerge

from Gerar, from Gyon,

from dry of carnal lust?

When does the universe expand

into postcards stained at the edges 

with the fingerprints of a possible past?

 

The wind 

on the ground. 

 

Entrails. Covered wagons. 

Snares laid, pitfalls dug.

 

Where is the sloop yacht that violates attention?

 

 

Manifesto Destiny


In this sequence of landscape

we the people logo scorn 

the rear projection of our leader

his noble council the uncounselled 

life-grim war animal

of Augustine’s world

of Hos the sorrow mound

of the white chaste elephant

clit of the landscape

the edge of manifesto

yew beauty

yelps the Whig’s descendent

like a highly spiced Marco Polo

fetching thee

 

beautiful detached arm

 

 

Vampire’s Kiss

 

Where were you, Nicolas Cage, when the sea foam                            

gathered at the shore?

 

Was it necessary to stoop and curl your bottom lip?

To use your hands as weapons

as if humour was like it was

when the mechanical was encrusted on the living?

 

I remember your performance at the museum,

we scratched your emblem on the column

and joined you in a writhing quarry

for the love of goat, and of goat man.

 

It’s ram-head Radiohead

on the Spartan stage,

Gilmour before the many-breasted vest

that made you cross-eyed.

 

Jennifer Beals

appeared the moment I loved you

 

like a dolphin or expelled human

loves Pompeii

with iron-age attitude or think pink solo show.

 

They embed your head in the rustled fleece.

A smooth sculled love loops the necropolis.



How they fought TV

 

Heidi sung a womb song imbibed and reordered

Sol watched movies on mute. Jeff sat elsewhere, in a field

The words Kunst did not say were later to abscond

Harry fought the urge to be meta. I failed

Ham helped shift the poles. Shem pissed into the cardinal wind

Aggie stuck to a fourfold schema and found nations in soil

The sun was an ordering principle and Bob closed the aperture

Jerry absolved the animals the industry keeps running

As the eye that Monica massaged fell from its trope

Randy developed the striking ability to produce volume

At a fixing that’s toing and froing. Emily found a parasite

Code at the photo but spoke twice like a painting

Sarah went to the bookshelf in search of a scholar to pet

Felper asked the psychic at the head of the division

About now is when the oboe tropes kicked in for George

And Mary hollowed out her point of view with a camera pen

 

 

Father’s Photo of the Actor

 

It’s not that change is mummified

in father’s photo of the actor.

 

It’s just the bottles and slops

Remind me of father at twelve,

asking the actor “would I be famous.”

 

Strands of scud clung like a clam to his scull

beneath the scar sign of healed skin

that is significant for the bit actor,

as hats are to the dim of body,

 

but he is naked

as he appears in The Pathetic Fallacy,

as he was on the day of his birth.

 

The truth is that it was the squalling air

that he banished for the sale of his mother,

 

and I will never forget

the puzzling coldness and controlled anger,

the thing-handling clumsiness,

the hounding down for the rest of my natural. 

 

This is why I am at the brink of speaking.

 

This is why I desire his cadaver be shot

out from cannon without grief show

or rest from need.




Tom Brami is a poet and filmmaker and PhD candidate at UW Madison. He lives in Australia most of the time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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