7/24/2017 0 Comments Poetry by Oz HardwickNight 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
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