Poetry by David Ross Linklater

     Dane CC




Potpourri Soul

They swallow pills that barely 
touch the sides. They say 
it's a lack of sunshine
and vitamins, a lack of time 
to tend the branches that bear them.

Birds sing in the explosions of their fingers.
Some have come to know the bathroom 
as an arena 
where they commit crimes against themselves.
Hallowed ground of moonspit.

Others take deep breaths in work toilets.
Their shoes are away at the heels.
Their backs ache.
They are hammered by Gods and men 
who are statues to their frailty.

In dreams they always get on stage
and cannot do the thing 
or they are in a queue waiting 
and their genitals are suddenly everywhere.
They don’t have the money for therapy.

The waiting lists are long.
They know the hold tone by heart.
None are without the fear 
shrinking good shirts to steel.
The box into a circle.

They are burning in a room 
they are not the architect of.
They wander about the no man's 
of their kitchens like strangers.
Huge areas of their lives belong to others.

As night becomes a morning of thin blue,
before the ceiling drinks up  
the pretty morning hells, vexed, 
they fall at the altar of their own bodies,
razed to a cinder.

Like potpourri in a bowl 
they await eternal radio on cream 
plastic seats. The uprooted 
citizenry, adorned 
in the most precious bodies.





Just Want to Say

It all started that weekend the cat died
and the fan belt went. 
Then, each month it was something
that turned into weeks.
Cooker burst, the boiler gone, 
the man with his tools pointing inward.
After that it was people going, and more cars.
The divorces were en route.
The floor was a fine idea. 
Oh to be foetal on it. 
To tear down the shed and build another.
To gut the loft cause that’s where the soul’s at. 
There was a smell of smoke up there
and really, the place isn’t special.
Each box is useless and dumb. 
It was death by a thousand miles of the same road. 
Same junction before the same hill sloping 
to the old conclusion.
No one wants to die this many times on their way to work. 
There was nothing for it but to cove
away, the hand reaching for the volume 
to turn it all down in music.
Swear to God there’s some peace in the grooves
and not this closing in of horizons. 
We are used to the land of no language. 
Of the places we can see but can’t get to. 
We are not ready for the broken socket, 
the imperfectly pasted wallpaper. 
It’s one thing after another forever 
until the phone is finally lifted 
and one true self is peeled 
from the wheel that grinds at it. 





Do Not Wake From This

And just like that 
there was a great plough 
turning teals in the sky.
It rocked the flowers in their black sleep.
It rocked the dream he was in 
so completely it came apart in fields.
In the mirror was a horse. 
It had just been dressaging along a wall
for the sake of mastery,
pirouetting 
by the green-mile water.
The moon was so low you could spin it.
The tree’s bracelets jangled
and there was nothing so brutal,
nothing real. 
Time, as you take it away, 
do so gently. 
Make this heart be a thing  
to bargain with.

​


David Ross Linklater is a poet from Balintore, Easter Ross, in the Highlands of Scotland. He is the author of four pamphlets, most recently Star Muck Bourach (Wish Fulfillment Press, 2022). His work has appeared in Butcher's Dog, Bath Magg, The Dark Horse and New Writing Scotland. He lives and writes in Glasgow. @davidrosslinkla / www.davidlinklaterpoetry.com