Pomes Flixus, MW Bewick

Fluxus

In the smog of alarms ferried to sleep
with the entitled crow and toothpaste brand
it’s tough to alphabet an eye
as the copy is leaked from content labs,
the danger mediated into noise,
the music swept behind the OOH
at the roundabout in its amplified mime,
the zephyr of cars and shabby revelry
haptic and fenced in its chosen attire,
the reasoned thought unravelled by the dream
that change can be made a tool for change
when change is small and easy to pocket
and then, stalling like a stone, the standings
of broom and dust, so upright, the fading scars
meaning nothing but the bets of years to come,
the safeguard bargains, oh, something
clammy in the hands with the drizzle and coffee,
not what was expected and thoroughly unprepared,
the bins overflowing, the taxis at rest
and this, the encounter first and last,
like the thought of us when young and coltish,
the chance meet made antithetical, unleavened, said.

The poems in Pomes Flixus are a collision of constantly shifting perspectives and descriptive transitions that transport the mind to unexpected places, undercut preconceptions and arrive, often poignantly, in non-culminations. Found phrases, pop and classical references, the avant-garde, below-the-line commentary, the vocabulary of finance and marketing, all co-exist alongside depictions of the natural world and the suburban everyday. The impressionistic vignettes, whether seeing a leaf on a path, waiting at a station, remembering absent friends, or watching the rain, never seek to define. Instead, they celebrate ambiguity and the subjectivity of thought that underpins our temporal experience of the world. Beneath the heteroglossia and aleatory effects, is a series of sometimes startling evocations of life in the modern world, sharp with considerations of culture, class and the use of language itself.

88 pages

ISBN: 978-0-9931259-7-3

MW Bewick is the author of Scarecrow and The Orphaned Spaces,
both also available from Dunlin Press.