the-sum-of-many-poets

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

lawn alopecia

I walked in on a plan to stop breathing

a chicken shack of ribs

piano keyed around a lung

twenty four bars of an incarcerated song

gasping like a blue bottle on the sand

me & the canine

swap worried eyes

a nose by a million olfactories stronger

makes sense of a magnanimous inhale

the dog’s juvie rap sheet is filled

with questions on breathing

ex con

exhale

the pooch went gonzo

crawled out of a crack pipe & zoomed with bikers

hovered over the mojave

a supernova

shed its winter coat to the sun

a cognitive head tilt

I pause for a moment

dig a hole

not by the angry guy

but by the hound

we stretch

we yawn

pooch is licking the filthy plates in the open dishwasher

who’s to say there isn’t a profound thought in there

we close our eyes & look to the sky

how does the air carry so much calm & fear

spring blossom killed by frost

the poison trumpet of the jimsonweed

plays to the shaman

& then

lamellar snow flake number two hundred & thirty four

reminds me of a star that never was

the hubris of the world

paired with a bbc laugh track

the lawn is a map of countries

some are verdant

the rest are burning

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

care label

he’s holding a boutique drink

made with pine bark extract

for brain clarity

great power bestows to those who hold it

the label shines like a latin motto

all the mothers of vinegar are turning in their graves

he cracks a rodent’s neck

opening the lid comes with its own subtext

a fermented recipe hisses from the bohai sea

oh bewildered sun

the clouds are lanterns waiting to burn

dawn is a wasted redux

we tilt to the satellites

drown them in white noise

then there’s the sigh

all living things have their own version of it

we unfold arms

some to embrace

some to break

a butcher bird speaks

from the root

of the tooth

of the word

monere

for the ghost of the moment

his arm is a mercurial coastline

paper boats have drowned on this impasse

& yet

palm trees

lanky friends that they are

bow down to blonde surfers

flaunting the nepotism of poseidon

this deep fried town

its gallery of faded ice creams

a tidy town to ease its self loathing

her name means hope

amal

the sun is there

such as it is

to ruin or gild

it tells a story of loneliness

a sermon to no one

of feeding humanity through a crack in the wall

salsify

waist high in the reckless wind

tuba down amongst the isms

runs a milk tear

falls on her shoulder

a goatsbeard mantilla

he removes his luxury knit

washes it with his bloody knuckle

hemlock tea & madeleines

a gossamer forest of aryan hairs

he fashions the flag into a cape

& makes it his patriotic screensaver

they’re rebranding snake oil again

please

make great

uncritical rah rah

for the house of mace

kin to kin

crow to murdering leaf

woven into wilds

woven into jawbone crowns

do not lynch

lie flat in the shade

the sun briefly hides behind a cool green elegy

they come with a call of blades

the necromancer

it writes with a left hand

tie it to a drowning stone

the withering sparrow will sing a hijacking song

into the tawny owl’s flooded eye

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

norfolk

the world is square

I hear a distant ocean inside the dishwasher

surely the crockery on this voyage is doomed

mood comes down from the fens

black shuck like a saxon chief

skulks around the hems of my jeans

skulks the mirror’s dark patina

in the shape of east anglia

a mason within the glass was sent to break this

hammer to pane

spell be broken

spell be vanquished like a chemtrail

the fissure is a mountain range

asymptote to the corner of my eye

it wants to join my body

take its geographical place on my skin

another rivulet for the river

another river for the marsh

that aches between my shoulder blades

a bird less marsh so lonely

only kindness can reach it

domicile within the dark green frame

the winds come here to be defeated

all of their glorious curls

taken out of them

they gently move through the linen

my face is a sheet

draped on a skeletal chair

all my wild hairs need shaving

& the antique mirror

sends a message

lipstick hostage

rescue me from this violent neon

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

don’t scare the fishies

baby seal camouflage likes to smoke

hammers a rod into the ground

excalibur if you’re worthy

for the rod is regal

when it bends to the aquamarine

baby seal black sits on his own

a tribe of two

in silent ritual

where all actions have a purpose

the erasure of all woes

I want to ask them if it works

at this point

just the name of a stranger could

but I lean on the word

no

too much

the cars are perched snout first to the water

sea birds for hood ornaments

the bullets of their eyes

aim through the windscreens at the drivers

eating hot chips

seasoned by the sea

& I am a new dog

watching the horizon like a front door

separation anxious

under the lamppost

superfluous in the daylight

the curve of its neck a question mark

a shit stained perch

waiting for the nocturnal romance of night

I watch

with the feathered vagrants

whose need for names are irrelevant

none of us even close to an answer

the question expands

a helium balloon at the circus

we’re not here for the fish

black swans launch from the basalt

a chevron letter on a white sky

the wind seems too light for such large creatures to fly

& the day is large

with no prospect of flight

I am interrupted

two gulls fucking like glasgow industry

in the parking lot next to me

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

post dog apercu

in the gunmetal mind

a sonorous basso says lousy fink bastard

the cynical yawn is contagious

glum on the download

syncing with a cynic can be bleak

statistically

unlike the optimist

the gig ends sooner on a sad model

trust is for suckers they say

in the third century b c

this movement flourished

ok

so faith took a beating

decades ago

sunk like a river stone

what we need is awe

the epic unfolding origami telescope

that looks back in time

when the first tribal campfire switched on

so

so

so

far

far

far

from machiavellian musicals

maybe on their deathbed

they think

people are wonderful

a life of negative bias

ending with an incandescent full stop

the tiny human

in their cloud brightening

geo engineering parasol in space

the tiny human

a tower of walking salt

badly hinged

a pub raffle scotch bottle

tilting in its own drunken cradle

sunset the stylus

refuses to let go

gets into a staring competition with the skeptics

panning for hope

now we’re getting brighter

swaps wisdom from a borrowed brogue

everleigh the postcard made it late

turned it into night

turned it into a haruspex universe

& the stars

I saw omens in their entrails

impound under the overpass

I’m a car

barking its alarm like an orphan

find the humans

ninety eight percent wolf

grappling in the margins

they belong to the word for damaged creatures

rise you fever of rays

delicate as walser’s handwriting

make a nebula to mark the occasion

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

daisy killer

clockwise it is a hindu sun

a long tailed pheasant star

four celestial horses

pulling the cosmos in circles

counter clockwise

elements of kali

the seventh of twenty four teachers & saviours

arriving on a jainistic night

from the sanskrit root

swasti

a symbol scribed with mammoth ivory

perhaps a paleolithic stork in flight

fertility

soaring over a hisarlik mound

from the vedas

may we meet with one who gives in return

who does not harm

depicted in the book of silk

it hovered above the world

until the world knew its name

still it sleeps in the indus valley

bronzed & pure

every monsoon river coursing through it

like thoughts

some fevered & sick

empyrean

seraphic

beguiling

a symbol of divinity

sometimes

informally

you’ll overhear it on restaurant tables

before the dreaded shutter click

divine

but of all its synonyms

godlike

waits in the wings

waits in the onion grease of odious footsteps

to corrupt

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

the botanist

away from brutes

away from this scurvy cork upon the sea

its wake so heavy on the water

like a scar that never heals

& I am barely saved

by water vigils

effervescent verses & furious tides

& the swimming troubadours of the grand azure

even the inanimate anchor

yes

I envy the anchor

baptised everyday

born again in the deepest solitude

once

I dreamt of impossible flowers

another life

a palimpsest under the skin

lost

in the sails

bound by tortured masts

stretched tight across the wind

the chest of an alpha male

dragging us into oblivion

each canvas

bleached in reckitt’s blue

omens of domestic servitude

to whiten the colonial world

a sentence of red earth

speaks across the shore

across the fine bones of coral

a last ochre breath

matrilineal kin

of the

bidjara

ghungalu

garingbal peoples

their precious dialect

an exquisite secret told by leaves

told by the clans of sixty thousand years

& if islands could send warnings

mulgumpin

& its dark dream of tea-tree stained lakes

would dispatch the osprey

prey in the talons of its tarsi

so they may notice something smaller than themselves

& something bigger

& the brevity in between

a ship in the harbour

gravid with exotic disease

its barbarian flag

blood red

corpse blue

& white so blinding

I have a book of sketches

filled with endangered species

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

magic goatskin

a mouth maneuver

morbidly queues in carnival outré

pockets to the south

pouts like a weary church step

barbs the lower vermillion

meta hangdog like

perhaps a deep sea fish

barely visible by lanterns

sends a joyless speech bubble to its lips

uses filigreed edges

uses a coal mine confession

writhes under a microscope an anthrax question

another mouth

receives the sabotage

makes a strangled cloth of its face & responds with a readymade

bumper sticker suggests

an infidel’s slack prayer

the wake of its yawn is an air raid siren

sure

the idea is woodwormed

it tells the sorrier truth anyway

over time

it builds a crumbling wall against human cannonballs

against falling platitudes

take a cue from nature it says

shut down

drop a leaf

drop a grieving letter

stares at the ground as if burying a loved one

i’m valise the mouth says

guts unpacked in front of him

or

maybe he’s just curious

but no

I don’t want to talk about drunk war leaders

snipers a smile into the moving crowd

a glass vial with a moth inside

quasi

it does what it’s always been able to do

lands a navigator’s kiss on ursa minor

manifesto sparkilo fuming

the boy who befriended light

where is he

who sheltered in a field from boarding school scourge

the trees he said

their shadows became his companions

laugh buries fatigue

bells the opiate mind

joins the moth

joins the porch light that was never the moon

mouth tells the head

take a deep breath

hold it like you’re swimming towards an answer

exhales a whistling sheoak

toys the rough hem of a broken nail

the pretence of something important

do you see it

teflon like

a twenty first century choking hazard

stares back anyway

unable to hold a memory

©️ david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

salem

around sunset

the sow

leapt four feet in the air

gave one squeak & fell down dead

the farmer’s banjo arm

a cursed ear

clutched in his palm

& the perley’s sick cow

who went mad

ran into the pond & drowned itself

surely the raving tree

slave to the wind

spoke a proposition through the leaves

found a restless soul

obsequious & broken

& claimed it

this harlequin woman

jinxed the village with a strand of her hair

once

she even uttered a poem

conjuring sweet ambergris from plague

blame belongs with her

in the ground

in the crevice with elizabeth howe

the witch’s mark upon her

away from the sycamore & its wooing limbs

the trials of piously high anxieties

already the genius

draws a diagram for killing

ann putnam junior

her most aggressive accuser

laments

fourteen years later

walks the ruins of her own future

what could a twelve year old know of executions

the piss & shit of hangings

what furrows a child’s mind

ask the mother

ask the wasp in her mouth

feeding a puritan’s satan fetish

a small gnarly man they say

with cloven feet

approximately the height of a walking stick

first comes anger

followed by mischief

fools

he is the walking stick

& who will carefully

lovingly guide

the blind widow of elizabeth howe

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

between the brenta & the sile

santa sofia’s gothic fingers

pick the locks of the city

a foundry of clandestine meetings

& we are

a bridge of sighs

beguiled

confessing to the long shadows

ancient salt traders

watching buildings plunge into the water

iridescent on the murky emerald

like phantoms on a staircase

sometimes a garland

sometimes a wreath

these submissive ships

move through the canals & islands

romance petrified on their walls

crumbling & edified

carrying lagoon dwellers & winged lions

how they transcend

the hem of piss & vomit left by day trippers

& we rally this crooked masterpiece

we will not forsake

its dim lost corners of sorrow

& love

a wick of light

turning with the gardenia’s caramel perfume

©️ david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

mineral slippers

caught in their nocturnal jump

seems the stars

vanitas that they are

poured themselves into a salt lake

its phantom wake

a saucer of milk before dawn

sun

rise you diligent baker

we make animal tracks in its crust

disobedient cubs

etching our own hieroglyphs

soothsayers

the wood swallow

the lace monitor so long it licks the horizon

& me

the greater bilby

we call from the rosetta stone

to the nothingness

as great voids compel us to do

moot on existential absurdities

elevate a flake to the sun

at certain angles

a prism switches on

in tribute to the rain

a cryptic response locked inside

amplifies when it touches the tongue

the famine of colour is a paradox

white holds the quiet like a bell jar

as if a century seized in its own cog

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

idol kashi gyraf

of botanical wallpaper & mules for door handles

the manuscript spoke a second ago

so much brass

burle

merzbach love affair

escher concrete essay

concrete comma

complete naegeli

skeleton cuckoo on the shoulder

actually

on the villa of your shoulder

geese cliches

& conifers don’t mean so much

when you arrive home

the rucola won’t taste the same

in seven hours

take the medication

strap an airline friendly pillow to your giraffe neck

think of deep sea fish

think of the chasms they come from

think of parmesan from parma

wrapped in cotton

wrapped in your suitcase with nebbiolo & all of its nom de plumes

things are different on ober level

even the lauris nobilis

hedged into an over zealous moon

what beats inside of the tropical palm house

& the grumpy hedge of shonbrunn palace

hovers over the danube

waiting for the bells

the two of clubs is missing

usurped by the rita taxi business card

two worlds are missing in your jet lag

you write a letter home

wherever that is

catch up

come back to me when the ache for lecco is less overwhelming

the glimmer from the lake is on video loop

not beta

lost in the heyday of the eighties

still it hangs on to mtv’s

set in italy

set in vienna

alban berg sculpture sings to the skull of karlskirche

a song in the comb

decorated by a soldier passing time in the trenches

forsaken by such delicate things

last night he dreamt of idrija lace

& the carniolan honey bee

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

folkstone

where art blooms

a wet dog

from a highways bus stop

so does hope

ad was sent as an artifact to siphon

in its fecundity

speaks a fusillade of mandolines

chopping forty-two different ways

ad infinitum

the unfulfilled decision is gaining weight

bring back lady bird johnson’s

anti-billboard campaign

in a stomping war over street art

ad exits

stacked like a ziggurat defeated

post regicide

macbeth like

scrubs the infomercial from its hands

enough cologne

&

anti-aging cream from the shark’s anus

tomorrow’s landfill never wrote a letter

wish you were here

take a deep breath

of visual fresh air

just a wee trapdoor of sky

& imagine us

carrying a crayon that beautifies

our new cave walls

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

seams

I found an old concert ticket

in the lint of your coat pocket

a naive heart scrawled on the back

the perforated line

travels through the middle like

a prophecy

if I hold it to the light

the tome of its tired icon

seems to float

which has me thinking of ghosts

the sentimental kind

that speak to us

from some sovereign moment in our future

that spook the wings in our chest

& launch a constellation of trysts

i’ve pinned it above the calendar

the bank sends every year

a kitsch loyalty gift of painterly scenes

july is a storm over a seaside town

& the image you took of mackenzie falls

it had its own pulse you said

your box brownie

swallowed its soul with voodoo

but not even a photo could stop it from beating

this road trip

we’ll smoke chesterfield kings

holiday reckless

drink black coffee from your grandmother’s tartan thermos

perch with the gulls on limestone cliffs

watching white caps break off the fleurieu

swaddled like newborns

in our coats from fletcher jones

until the wilds

pull at our seams

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

valley of woodwinds canine

as for the punctual starling

what will it make of your size six shoes

tiny canoes

that much smaller without you

will it build a home in the heel

confide with a single note

the forfeit of all things to the forest

the clouds are warships

stealing amethyst from its plume

what does a starling make

of unseen workings

germane & sacred

of bodies transformed

of collaborations with the soul

a divine premonition

somehow a threshold confessor

the moat of its eye

unfortified

yields a broken levee

please

look favourably on its attempt

somewhere in the quill of its song

the hollow of a hebrew word

spares a god’s fatigue

that leaf

rocking a cradled goodbye

just the wind mocking a human gesture

the spring of such antics

the pendulum of a bird’s tail

how did we stray so far into the feral

& think we’d be safe

lilies were stargazing long before this

before this

you were indestructible

but no bargain exists

between the sick & a poisonous thistle

 

she is haunted like a newborn burgundy

dressed in the pyjamas of the departed

the bird has lost its call

the bird is a hammer

tapping a fault line

tapping an amputated smile

an algorithm to wake an android child

 

you'll find him at the foot of a ruse

toes in the gloaming

rehearsed in the dolour of others

 

his marrow arm

carrying a firefly’s cradle

your cheek

a flushed stone pulled from orbit

 

the body’s earthquake

the unbroken lung

internal fleets

speaking animal frequencies

 

have you seen the mother of loneliness

her woeful bay

calling for the scruff of grief

©️david sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

dream heavy

I know a planet that dreams

sometimes of us

a sleep story

within a light year

where we make lists

such as

band-aids & dental floss

a planet’s winsome human art installation

which features a sun

& the dial it casts across small creatures

like the ladybird

lovingly named by a lonely person

some will tell you

a portent of impending wealth

but what bearing did money ever have on a light year

just blink & you’ll see what I mean

they live in the eyelid of a lilac dusk

celestial ash

irritated into pearls

i’ve buried oyster shells

in the tragedy of cesspits

so they may dream about planets

& swallow moons

©️David Sichler

[the-sum-of-many-poets]

learning to be less warlike

pigeons understand space & time

which could explain why they perch for so long

two swollen hills of an open locket

hinged for life

philosophers

a theory of bobbing heads

I concur

I concur

a mannerism that brings greater vision

unsolved riddles trouble birds too

since mesopotamia

when a rock dove was an ancestor in waiting

far from urban gatherings

of no feral homeland

in perpetual audience with the

dawn

diesel smoke

breadcrumb city

an orchestra

every wing a note

the trill of the third more narrow feather

whimpering in the bell tower

from the twenty six letters of our sacred alphabet

they curate

m

y

l

o

v

i

n

g

human

a war mangy figure

that may return home

to feed a symbol of peace

©️David Sichler