FOUR Poems
George TTOOULI
FOUR Poems
George TTOOULI
George TTOOULI
this year a delayed heat
as if we’d all been holding back
until the temperature was right
now the trees are spurting green
abashed, even their ivy cladding
insufficient. April’s thawed us out
and all the armour we’d built
around our minds has fallen off.
Where that leaves us: bare
bodies in the air in the ground
the ground riddled with tendrils
sucking our genes into the plants
the plants plucked for our selves
to ingest our selves. Abashed, even
when we’re learning to forgive our
selves for our naked winters.
abashed April’s armour
air abashed back
built bare
bodies cladding
delayed fallen
forgive green ground
ground genes
heat holding ivy
insufficient ingest
leaves learning minds
naked plants
plants plucked right
riddled spurting sucking selves
selves selves
temperature trees
thawed tendrils
winters
years
(untitled)
if trees broadcast data
in leaf packets insect bites
the edges of messages
not corruption integrated information
as fingerspaces gaps between branches
exchanging letters on air
among all gaps bodies including ours
a squirrel’s chatter
distorts into spaces
the body secure
in a sycamore’s apex
sunlight coats our arms with words
in the shape of molecules skin writes back
a reflection of colour gratitude
on the soft surface of light
everything means
as if there was never an otherwise
for excluding anything from our hearts
name-calling anything unintelligible
incapable of language
but our own shortcomings: what
have we learned to see in connections?
corruption
is impossible
safety unsafety extremes of
imagination
the same lacunae different meanings
for each of us
corruption impossible
ideals non-entities
nothing is real but the communication
itself equals a whole impartial fact
im part ed
bread crumbs
recording the path
a broken trunk an epiphany meeting
epiphanies the junction between
understanding and awe
like lea ping betw een bran ches
sa fety un sa fety
as if (no) know ledge (edge) is light
(light) ning stri k in g it sel f
imagine /
every name we share is precise
from a line by Stephen Cope
for Florence Sunnen
I’m dismantling myself, part by part
to give to you: the birds I imagine
in my heart and the bars that hold them;
the song itself now yours and the strings
condemned to play this off-time key.
A dolphin leaps an amphibrach
between my skull and liver
when you listen to me, transforms
from turtle to tortoise and back again.
Every limb is a deertrack rambling astray
in fern and shrub, the long meadow returns
to me as skinfurze, now yours,
every pitted and permitted surface of my outside,
microbes rewriting communal epics in my pores.
Reach out and take up these words
and strike them how you will, out or through—clouds
of mosquitoes at dusk; shoals, herds
at the trough of my self orating
everything I give you when I give.
fern leaps limb
listen liver long
off-time orating outside
rambling reach returns rewriting epics
everything now clouds
communal condemned epics
everything
self shoals shrub skinfurze
skull song strike strings
surface up now
now everything epics now
Sussex Envoi
The Sussex sea slows, slower, then ceases to drape
the once hard stones with its breakers, the expression
of the pebbles now one fine-smoothed crescent bowing
of bay-stretched sand. Ripples freeze in the red-orange
sunlight, a water-walked pathway, set in a wax-
soft texture. Two pairs of eyes take visionary
skates across the immutable blaze. Together
our lips find ways to sing the dawn into silence.
°
ways sing silence lips find dawn
together skates immutable blaze across
visionary two texture take soft pairs eyes
wax water walked sunlight set pathway
stretched sand ripples red orange freeze bay
smoothed pebbles fine crescent bowing
stones once hard expression breakers
slower slows sea drape ceases
°
ceases drape sea slows slower
breakers expression hard once stones
bowing crescent fine pebbles smoothed
bay freeze orange red ripples sand stretched
pathway set sunlight walked water wax
eyes pairs soft take texture two visionary
across blaze immutable skates together
dawn find lips silence sing ways
George TTOOULI is a writer, editor and teacher based in
Coventry, UK. These poems are auto-transects are from a wider series called from Animal Illicit. They are attempts
at decomposing the human and finding something living inside.