Friday 5 May 2023

2 Poems by Mark Goodwin

Headless Hunter

To best give tongue requires your getting ahead of the rest of the pack. – Lord Glost


his boots as brown as oak-bark

his jodhpurs soft


                          white as morning mist


his gold buttons stamped

with flowery fs-for-fox

his scarlet cutaway coat

flows & drips over

                          his flesh & bones


his black top-hat’s

swirling nap gleams

like moisture

                          on a dog’s nose


his fists clenched

his veins raised

his fingernails

                           black-rimmed


his severed neck

bandaged tightly

with a white cravat


pinned with a silvery

                         thread of brains



Darkened Room

there’s nothing alive in here except you


although a clock calls to its mate

on the other side of time and reminds


you of the rhythms of the living


barefoot you edge forward

expecting a toe to be smashed


stamped on by some ox of an armchair


you try to stare through the room’s

opaque black air


but there’s only bloody beast-shapes & odd


sharp swirls of imagined light grate

across your retinas


somewhere there will be a door


and of course corners

where space like different seas merges


in this dark the dead-ends of corners seem

to go further than open doors


perhaps traces of hope linger in the right-angles


there is a new smell coming from deep within you


a standing lamp clatters against your neck

its flex wrapped round your ankle is reptile


you’ve left your hands crawling on a wall


the lamp that could shrink this room to a lit finite

with a hot thought in its head


is a dark figure more human than your self


Bionote

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist & fiction-maker who speaks and writes in various ways. He has a number of books & chapbooks with various English poetry houses, including: Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, Shearsman Books, & also Middle Creek in North America. His latest chapbook – to 'B' nor as 'tree' – was recently published in Sheffield by intergraphia ( @intergraphiabks ). Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester, in the English Midlands. He toots poems from @kramawoodgin@zirk.us, tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com

my books
Erodes On Air . https://www.middlecreekpublishing.com/erodes-on-airLake-Skin As Eye . https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/products/lake-skin-as-eye-by-mark-goodwin  
Rock as Gloss . https://markgoodwinrockasgloss.wordpress.com
Else . Back of A Vast . Layers of Un . House At Out . All Space Away and In .  
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Goodwin-Mark-c28271739 Steps .  http://markgoodwinsteps.wordpress.com/
Portland : a Triptych, with Tim Allen & Norman Jope . https://www.knivesforksandspoonspress.co.uk/product-page/portland-a-triptych-by-tim-allen-norman-jope-mark-goodwin 
Distance a Sudden . http://longbarrowpress.com/current-publications/mark-goodwin/
Tones Fled All .  http://www.leafepress.com/catalog/goodwin/tones.html
Shod .  http://fiveleavespublications.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/there-is-no-doubt-that-that-shod-by.html
Clause in A Noise . https://issuu.com/alecnewman/docs/clause_in_a_noise_by_mark_goodwin
my poetry on Twitter: @kramawoodgin
https://twitter.com/kramawoodgin 
my sound-enhanced poetry 
https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com/

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