Just a quick note to say that my final poetry collection VI is on sale for the first time since it’s release – the ebook is 99c across various retailers and I have a few print copies left, which I’m selling for $10 posted 🙂
(click the image to choose your preferred retailer)
And you can contact me via e-mail to order a print copy 🙂  [   mountain0ash[at]gmail[dot]com   ]
You can also sample some of the poems here:
four poems
each pale song
into a tin can
Here’s another poem from the collection, hope you enjoy it – you can sample more from this post (which also has purchase links if you’re enjoying the poetry a lot :D).
into a tin can
a home
in the silks of grass
with fresh tar
on estate roads
too new
to have had
even a single innings
played upon them
streetlights go snapping on
and I’m still trailing
Goliath’s finger
across a map of Europe
we say to one another
we’ll just work harder
but there’s
such slow terror in staying put
I peel another banana
and kick off the same
sequence
of tin-can surprises
I don’t want to leave the house
anymore
and when it rains
no-one can collect a single drop,
everything
scrambles in gutters
and when they cross the fields,
even rainbows
tangle
in barbed wire
Hi everyone!
Today I’m happy to finally send VI out into the world 🙂
This one feels a bit bittersweet actually, seeing as right now, it seems that VI is going to be my last* collection of poetry, so I hope folks find poems within the covers to enjoy and also poems that will hold them over until something changes for me.
Long-term readers might see perhaps a bitter note running through the collection but I’m sure that there are some uplifting moments in there too 🙂
If you missed my previous posts about this book, you can sample some of the collection right here at the blog – here’s four poems, along with each pale song and one more to give you an idea of what’s inside with stage show yellow.
Ashley
*That’s a little dramatic, I guess. It’s probably more accurate to say that I don’t know when I’ll be releasing any more free verse. Haiku might pop up again one day, but there’s no real plans for either in the future.
Here’s some links I’ve cobbled together if you’d like to grab a copy:
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each pale song
your hair has grown deep
into the green stone of age
just as hills have grown between us
and oceans salt everything –
sunbathers
and their pastel umbrellas
get away with nothing here
and driftwood piles
in hours
heaped upon
what few memories I have gathered
even as my head spills them
in a dance of clouds,
torsos thin,
each pale song
a gouge in my chest
but it is simple enough:
I want you
and now the statues have turned all
shoulders
tear-drop smooth
and the polish of feet
across your body,
how many is it now?
your hands were so wide,
as if to rival Atlas
who was always just out of sight
who was slowly unfreezing
and whose pulse
was seismic
but who could not fit you
within his stern gaze
and I will forgive every stumble
each scratch
each sour bite you give
when ignored
and even, envy so great
as to rattle my very bones
but you hid so well,
caught,
suspended
between a breath
and the settling of night
your sweet face
I wonder
did you ever truly need to paint it?
your own voice grew young
in my listening
and
I leant against cool railings
and you called me back to see
secrets
that were everyone’s
but become ours
by the whispers I couldn’t fully unearth,
as crowds of automated eyes
pillaged you
as I myself would later do
as so many could not resist to do
and what I kept
could never satisfy
your immortality dried
as we worked,
great deserts in our fingertips
and dust in our kisses
and though I cannot feel more shame
knowing that I want more
at least when change came
thank god
you were not part of its neon creeping.
About 12 days to go until release of VI 😀
cicadas play back-to-back sets
eventually
emptying their entire bodies of music
and when nothing but the shells remain
the wind comes to tickle them
I walk a town sweltering
beneath yellow gels
like a stage show set in Mexico
with dogs sticking to their water bowls
and policemen in the ice-creamery
and no-one can move without
sweating
no-one wants to talk at all really
and so we pass like liquid robots
all looking for a new sound:
the hush of ice
whispers in the shade
or the splash of a long river
bending back
into a blue miracle.
from VI – due Feb 1st, 2017
Here’s a little sample of the poetry to be featured in IV 🙂
Looking back, I realise that it’s been at least four years since my last poetry collection featuring new work (between giants, 2012) was released and so around Feb 1st 2017 there will finally be more poetry available! (I also hope to announce another haiku collection with Ginninderra Press in the near future too).
shreds
if you’re somewhere beyond
that keyhole
Alice-like maybe
or sleeping so soundly that
the thunder of
my chest collapsing
does not stir you
and if your pin-cushion veins
are the first things to
change
I want to see it
beyond the rustle of bed sheets
and quiet green bleeps
of equipment
so empty of love that they
must
have never been sad,
which isn’t to say you haven’t made me
happy – Christ no
it means only that their electricity
cannot grow lonely
and that it is never going to be a match for your lungs
and if you don’t wake
for many hours yet
I’ll be listening from the kitchen,
my hands like dull spiders
on the cutlery and pots and dials
and I’ll be listening
for the moment you stir
so I can smile as you wake
try to be strong
as you have been strong
for me
stronger than the pain
that
like a wretched ghost, wrings out
its song in the whisper
of your bones,
but a ghost you will nevertheless tear into a million shreds
and then release,
each one now thin enough
for the clouds to swallow.
menu
up the back
and not quite hidden by the menu
his voice is an idling engine
until he orders again, broken crockery for lips
as he grinds words out
for the girl at the counter
who’s waiting for a tip
with miniature scarecrows for her hair
and an expressionless distaste
that rattles mugs, catches in the fan
then falls across us
with the feathery touch of a sigh.
boat or cloud
the road slithers into hills
lined with awful
plastic and paper breadcrumbs
before flinging the car
up against the ocean view,
a line of silver and blue
unbroken by any boat
or cloud
houses have been
deposited on the cliffs
like white pieces
on a mountain-range-chessboard,
each move taking years
and years to complete
on the other side is Amalfi
stuffed full of buses
and sipping at the water,
lemon cream and refrains
from the Tarantella,
the bubbles in its cafes
racing one another
up the glass.
3885
the clothesline
swings
in a dry wind
and the echo of our voices
runs
down from the river
to where I stand
in yellow grass
eyes fixed
on a horizon swollen with blue
the river
where we’d swim
through the black gold of the water
rapids
gnashing teeth
and water dragons
nimble
as we give chase
how sharp the bite
of the sun
who we would
more or less
worship for the entire season
no sand too hot
no bike seat too hard
no hole too far
and nothing
nothing
coming
even close
to lasting long enough
Forthcoming 2017
