Poetry by Oz Hardwick

Night is a Dark Fabric

Night is a dark fabric, torn,
patched, that she wears like wings.

Star or streetlight, she knows no distinction,
each glow bulbing like spittle on lips.

Where drops dip down, seduced
by gravity, they disappear, absorbed

in feathers and fibres. Scab-heeled,
she runs down mantled streets, trailing

blueblack billows and something like language.

​


The Demagogue

Stood on his soapbox, shouting the odds,
raising Cain, summoning fire and rain,
a plague on the land; he’s a one man band,
out of tune with times he doesn’t understand.

He’s been here so long, he’s a statue
with a worn inscription no-one reads,
his Verdigris complexion a witness to neglect,
his guano-spattered brows raised in perpetual shock.

A clock with no hands, his chimes ignored
at each dull apocalypse, he rings no changes,
never changes his tune, just loudly fiddles
as the burning world speeds past in soapbox cars,
blazing downhill to some destination
he’s always promised, but doesn’t remember.

​


A Postcard Undelivered

There are lights on a coast I barely remember,
a harbour hoarding waves and reflections,
Mooncast and magnificent, challenging my adjectives,
winning every time; there are hands holding hands
in a circle round a fire that draws all eyes
in on themselves, to deep space
where that first foot still edges to Tranquillity,
that first kiss still hangs in air
scented with ink and ozone, quivering
like that first unimagined loss, and everything
that will tumble after; and there are dead friends
skimming stones in the dark, singing to the Moon,
eyes wider than the whole damn ocean,
lighting up the pier, short lives blazing.

​


Unnatural History

I’m not as scared of the stuffed animals
as I was when I was young. Glass eyes
glimpsed through glass are dull, holding
no malice for me or the hunter, himself
long dead.

                     Instead, they are alleys,
tossed in a game with arcane rules
made up by kids with long shorts
and home-made jumpers; they’re stained glass
windows of a profane structure. They don’t
stare, just sit, neutral, in coarse pelts,
rough coats for sawdust.

There’s so little to see here, it scares me.

​

Bio: Oz Hardwick is a writer, photographer, music journalist, and occasional musician, based in York (UK). His work has been published and performed in diverse media: books, journals, record covers, programmes, fabric, with music, with film, and with nothing but a nervous voice. His new poetry collection, The House of Ghosts and Mirrors, will be published by Valley Press in September 2017. Find out more at: www.ozhardwick.co.uk