Charles Borkhuis, poems
John McCluskey, paintings
Poems and Paintings from Finely Tuned Static, forthcoming from Lunar Chandelier Press in 2017
paintings: vinyl paint and ink on vellum and assorted papers; collage on 8" x 6" x 2" hardboard
paintings: vinyl paint and ink on vellum and assorted papers; collage on 8" x 6" x 2" hardboard
body held together by a thousand cuts
force fields in the glue
little made up names
stick together like thieves
hundreds of them needed to form a face
then cut and paste so only
the melody bleeds through
song of the scissors on a dark street
the body looks like a map
of a city no one has ever seen
layers of coral and turquoise shells
fit over your eyes like stained glass
strafed by starlight your arms
and legs stretched to the borders
pulled past the frame until
a taut chain catches and droplets
condense around your features
are those tears for all those
who have lived and died
or just more tears in the fabric
_________________________
why this nothing
inside something
that squeezes my hand
and moves away
why this yellow page
as the site of a crime
the time it takes
to erase all signs
the space
that runs through me
empty center of the x
where crosshairs touch
a snowy face
these few words
that live under the skin
that trick the narrows
from their shell
that come to uncover
and disrupt to divide me
from my atoms and dance
between yes and no
between the gift
and its theft
the head may shake uncontrollably as it dips
below the line chaotic fields contained by the sky sometimes
leave little plasma leaks we call them trails it’s the same for the
sentence of course little breaks in the current may be erratic
at times not unlike the bachelor’s delay between the bride and
a suspension bridge framed in glass best to work in the gaps
if you can find them we mostly lie in anticipation of the jump
hovering as it were in the indefinite one wonders if there’s any
need to land anymore one rarely ends up in the same place or
as the same person
we all know the ordinary
blink turns the world black then back again they call it continuity
but I have my doubts anyhow we won’t be talking like this a few
words from now it’s always too much or not enough a little like
lovers floating on the ocean in a bubble but what isn’t unless
chance breaks the glass and escapes through the cracks it’s better
that way some say evidence that something has actually
happened perhaps it’s all child’s play anyway secrets lost and
found and lost again clues in the tall grass the poet’s body
painted red then coyote comes to steal our heart so what
everybody likes a good picture that you can interpret all sorts of
different ways as when the dead pinch us awake and no one’s
home and everything’s already known and then forgotten
as above so below I always say what’s a little sand on your
banana after all shit turns tricks on eternity and body parts
left to their own devices choose robots every time let us embrace
at the boundaries each sentenced to his own splitting dimension
complete with a host of forces and characters remember the agile
rabbit who jumps four times over his own death and the subtle
energy that collects at the limits which is to say the joints the
gateways where the tongue has been cut loose from its moorings
______________________
perhaps there was a leap
over the jagged chasm of forgetting
so we might begin again
at the scene of a crime
the painter buried in the underpainting
the nude descending an escalator
the underworld frames us
each inside the other’s waterfall
insignificant to the multiverse
you hold the sentence between your teeth
no biting no broom away to the burbs
not this time not with my tongue
up your next word
not with the electron’s leap
through water on the brain
exchanging hydrogen atoms in the vast fluid circuitry
we might slip between the lines
if I hadn’t turned back to see you disappear
ghosts are brought to tears
listening for your voice in the static
just another confidence game
between the detective and his criminal
who dies running through a crowd of bullets
who’s left on the other side
to witness the intimate distance
false negative running his motor
we’ve all gotten away with murder
as fate would have it
dream of a funny valentine
just a slip of a girl
I can’t speak of you now
I can’t speak of the end
or the beginning not now not like this
better attend to the blue weave inside a warble
the red buoy bobbing on the waves
below the line chaotic fields contained by the sky sometimes
leave little plasma leaks we call them trails it’s the same for the
sentence of course little breaks in the current may be erratic
at times not unlike the bachelor’s delay between the bride and
a suspension bridge framed in glass best to work in the gaps
if you can find them we mostly lie in anticipation of the jump
hovering as it were in the indefinite one wonders if there’s any
need to land anymore one rarely ends up in the same place or
as the same person
we all know the ordinary
blink turns the world black then back again they call it continuity
but I have my doubts anyhow we won’t be talking like this a few
words from now it’s always too much or not enough a little like
lovers floating on the ocean in a bubble but what isn’t unless
chance breaks the glass and escapes through the cracks it’s better
that way some say evidence that something has actually
happened perhaps it’s all child’s play anyway secrets lost and
found and lost again clues in the tall grass the poet’s body
painted red then coyote comes to steal our heart so what
everybody likes a good picture that you can interpret all sorts of
different ways as when the dead pinch us awake and no one’s
home and everything’s already known and then forgotten
as above so below I always say what’s a little sand on your
banana after all shit turns tricks on eternity and body parts
left to their own devices choose robots every time let us embrace
at the boundaries each sentenced to his own splitting dimension
complete with a host of forces and characters remember the agile
rabbit who jumps four times over his own death and the subtle
energy that collects at the limits which is to say the joints the
gateways where the tongue has been cut loose from its moorings
______________________
perhaps there was a leap
over the jagged chasm of forgetting
so we might begin again
at the scene of a crime
the painter buried in the underpainting
the nude descending an escalator
the underworld frames us
each inside the other’s waterfall
insignificant to the multiverse
you hold the sentence between your teeth
no biting no broom away to the burbs
not this time not with my tongue
up your next word
not with the electron’s leap
through water on the brain
exchanging hydrogen atoms in the vast fluid circuitry
we might slip between the lines
if I hadn’t turned back to see you disappear
ghosts are brought to tears
listening for your voice in the static
just another confidence game
between the detective and his criminal
who dies running through a crowd of bullets
who’s left on the other side
to witness the intimate distance
false negative running his motor
we’ve all gotten away with murder
as fate would have it
dream of a funny valentine
just a slip of a girl
I can’t speak of you now
I can’t speak of the end
or the beginning not now not like this
better attend to the blue weave inside a warble
the red buoy bobbing on the waves
clocked inside each now and now and now
the second hand would like to speak
but two familial giants are holding up the ceiling
revealing marbled cracks in muscular stone
lip-sticked opacity and bad to the bone
magnified down to a series of countless cuts
on the genome from which we descend
abandoned children at the window keep tapping
correction upon correction
till the palimpsest squeaks
till words bleed through our eyes
and the many-armed accident advances
golden scalpel leave me red
dancing upon the cutting board of big ideas
army ants carry pieces of the self
home between their pincers
get chummy with the wrong clues
and wake up inside your own shadow
we make the rules and then we break them
face-to-face with the cosmic buzz saw
that creates and destroys just for the fuck of it
perhaps some psychopathic juvenile delinquent
divides us down to the infinite first step
leaves us in knots lost in an atomic jungle
with confused quanta on our breath
oh alienated ethical animals floating in a bubble
oh nuclear shakedown at the core
we have come to split the egg most holy
to detonate the forces that hold us in tight orbits
we have come to pulverize the sun into finer and finer
grains of being to detonate the broken record
of paradise playing in our ears just for the fuck of it
the second hand would like to speak
but two familial giants are holding up the ceiling
revealing marbled cracks in muscular stone
lip-sticked opacity and bad to the bone
magnified down to a series of countless cuts
on the genome from which we descend
abandoned children at the window keep tapping
correction upon correction
till the palimpsest squeaks
till words bleed through our eyes
and the many-armed accident advances
golden scalpel leave me red
dancing upon the cutting board of big ideas
army ants carry pieces of the self
home between their pincers
get chummy with the wrong clues
and wake up inside your own shadow
we make the rules and then we break them
face-to-face with the cosmic buzz saw
that creates and destroys just for the fuck of it
perhaps some psychopathic juvenile delinquent
divides us down to the infinite first step
leaves us in knots lost in an atomic jungle
with confused quanta on our breath
oh alienated ethical animals floating in a bubble
oh nuclear shakedown at the core
we have come to split the egg most holy
to detonate the forces that hold us in tight orbits
we have come to pulverize the sun into finer and finer
grains of being to detonate the broken record
of paradise playing in our ears just for the fuck of it
all this as if to see a less
encumbered stroke where music
may light upon a thought’s digression
perhaps to paint with scissors
life makes a hand of it or not
the arm bent at a certain color
smeared and dripped over multiple
mistakes overpainted to glimpse
perhaps a phantom limb caught
in the fabric
I’m ok if you tell me the blue arm
doesn’t live here anymore
abandonment revisited
caked over with pigment just
lying on the bed turning colors
sometimes I can still feel the paint
on the blue arm blown clean through the stops
_________________________
lost trail enough to linger
among the flies
and bits of stone
what was there all along
unseen
people never stop talking
the nature of a crime innocence walks with us
the tissue of events
internalized
and repeated
staring at the empty page
features fade into the fog
and moving leaves
patches of mustard yellow
laced with viridian spores
strange markings
on the arms and neck
his face behind a steamy mirror
letters begin to emerge
through the layers
next morning she finds
words have colonized the dish
encumbered stroke where music
may light upon a thought’s digression
perhaps to paint with scissors
life makes a hand of it or not
the arm bent at a certain color
smeared and dripped over multiple
mistakes overpainted to glimpse
perhaps a phantom limb caught
in the fabric
I’m ok if you tell me the blue arm
doesn’t live here anymore
abandonment revisited
caked over with pigment just
lying on the bed turning colors
sometimes I can still feel the paint
on the blue arm blown clean through the stops
_________________________
lost trail enough to linger
among the flies
and bits of stone
what was there all along
unseen
people never stop talking
the nature of a crime innocence walks with us
the tissue of events
internalized
and repeated
staring at the empty page
features fade into the fog
and moving leaves
patches of mustard yellow
laced with viridian spores
strange markings
on the arms and neck
his face behind a steamy mirror
letters begin to emerge
through the layers
next morning she finds
words have colonized the dish