Salvadge Yard

“Quiet tongue, am I beginning again, her whisper of empty houses on tympani, yours, yours, and only yours were the walls painted in tangerine shades – there the rising damp twisting trajectory of the stones on the way, I, I, I my darling on ends of nails on naked stucco, undoing art the veins these the bones of me somewhere in, somewhere out.                                 

   Art you on walls now, grey concrete letting the thickness of the patches away, white expanse in lines and lines – this the splinter of white glass on my palms now, your blue changing colors on my hands – a turquoise, some cerulean hither, then the azure shade –           art you writing on my fingertips unknowingly again.”

 – In spillage of ink from me, and a few words in composition I would have verily liked my mother to hear from him, only a palimpsest of a father in my dreams meeting her. 

Illumines the glaze was that red on an iron flat, splitting now and then into lines thin atop a span of floor in grey – this the light of the night on one patch of retina pressing, pressing thus across a cornea will that soon be wet, you a figure yonder, art you coming and going on a fading memory, this a fading of you in me.                      

 Some lightness of the colors did spill on those lines an hour afore, ah! Glisten and glitter all alike, some quietude of purlieus a spread of the hours lonely on my glassy windows, thick mist of a night so cold again, ah! Did I see the flatness in cerise red, you on the rust in dots appeared.                                                               

   What lines now? Oh what strangers? They crawled – art they crawling up and down from toes on ends, up and down till art blocks of enamel berserk on jaws dry, dry, dry the lips too. Your name will I take. Yours the name in passing pictures, faces motley of these the strangers still drifting on a zephyr past me.                                                             

 On your bodice her visage in my head, she looks and stares back at you. All golden zeal on the concrete was it, a spillage of wetness in mad red, such carmine catastrophe in me – now and then, and now and then a fleet of flakes in shape of her skin, did I descry the spectacle on areas of roughness on you – one rough wall making the cement just like that complete in cuboidal figures did that not move, move, but the orange spillage on the coldness of the glass on the window down the aisle –  

Back and forth, up and down me feet inhaling the air in shapes of squares a flooring in tiles, did my fingers drag the bones out of the mahogany drip of lines on one face of a plank – ah! How lightly did you come and go leaving a twist of veins down the height of these the cylinders in shape of me! How come a face hath I not seen yet, but came it the way of my mother’s lullabies, staying, staying, staying in me! You my father who might be, how so to say? What name? What name? What name? Ah! I cannot remember. How that in blocks of paint did ooze, in interstices of bricks in some plaster that would just not be dry, a throw of hands in air again from my shoulders above, how did I see the colors ooze in violent sprinkle, hither and thither on thy Clementine this the dust of my tissues in red powder all over you, dryness of the cement underneath, is it in a hue that spills the lachrymal landscape in shape of your face.                                    

      Bones of a shadow on walls upfront me, drip I down the rising damp art you now a wall concrete churning out of a grey body, drip I beneath and below the wet lines when art the ends holding you a little beyond where my dead cells meet, beyond nails transparent, but the drop in drip, drip, drip of ruby wetness –    Was the hue in a color was that you. Was that you my father in colors of a darling grey? Was that you?    Oh dear dear heart of her, ‘twas strike across the brevity in semitones, did the notes whisper beyond the tympani inside ears of mine – your name my father who could be, yet not so, not so oh my dear dear heart!   Shapes rectangles and flat rhombuses on flooring cold in tiles again, is the smear in off-white vanilla laid, dusty brown but sticking to the grid of iron rods of the window pane art only on my fingertips the mist found, where the kites then? Diamond, trapezium in stitch of dots in powder of graphite, art triangles only the figures in the lattice of my flesh.

On bones were you. Down bones art you. Tar of coal on black roads, there she my lilac Violet in the yellow of his feathers taking flight, did he right on the yarns in calico of her hem die, inch by inch a thick pith hurled behind in ramble of feet do fingertips click for times four, Niven’s places coming to sleep on the bitumen of the alleyway on whose paving did I, did I, did I see two figures move the stones into disturbance under sheets in layer, one, two, layer four, six, layers and layers of plastic ground – but the gloss of the black night, there not the liquid rain, but the dampness of the air pressing on the bitumen of the road – were you Finch to a lonely mother? Yellow plumage at your back, but behind that body in frame of my mother now, were your feet drawling screech, screech against the marble floor, floor in tiling slippery under my toes, how did yours dread, yet give in to the push of the veins in you?                                                                          

     What shades did you go off and on, painting the floor in clay? That the burst of technicolor hues like colors turning pastel of their shades on polythene, so real on the skin of my hands now.       Lines in amperage high, straight beads of spheres protruding from interstices of vellum, this my animal skin, in dots making spheres down lines more and more, each trudging past the veins in green parallel to these the bones again. Am I, ah! How I am sorry to the keys in an imprint of white atop where seek I to take your name just for once. But the round shapes garnering on forehead, nape, and neck, and lids of eyne but on red spread of retina art tears blurring the cornea in split second of time – click, click, click the sound of metallic hands as if on the thinnest sheet of paper covered in fibers of my wrist.                                     

   Step, step, step the sound inaudible, merely the squelch of mud of their feet on wet quagmire, in their shadows did split a silhouette of father to the mother of me – crack, crack, crack then the sound a clamor loud against the enamel of teeth – through the grit did I call you; a clench of fists in mind of mine, but the desire stronger in the synapse of the nerves chiselling my abode in two. Ah! How intense the strength of the sheaths detaching from where the bones will not be. Through phossy jaws under a child’s teeth did I scream “dad”!                                                       

  Now and then again, then taste on pink cum redness of the tongue, art the blocks drinking carmine liquor, does the enamel quietly freeze on jaws of my mouth for that your name did I try to say, for that your name only that I tried to scream.    Gesso of the walls on my balcony, hath I walked outside my room in here. There in the black turquoise is the ball of snow unfolding when a chisel cuts the carbon out of the marble into sapphire stones – so many moons on the floor of my room!    Some white impression on the column down the height of me stealthily finding the rugged plaster under skin of paint white – Ah! My rear! Bone by bone is the string complete on dull stars, but the constellation made in one frame when in dreams art you careful on every patch of her skin.                                          

         Oh what light did the moon cut on the terrazzo of that the terrace of my neighbor’s house? Ah! A ceiling in inversion open to the shadows again tonight – art the shapes haphazard too, art the figures dancing the squares out of the roof for you, you, you in her; you, you, you in me. In her, in me, in her, in me.     Am I staring at her from distance in miles, these the blocks in bitumen black joining and splitting away in pieces of a road, she my mater does not think of you anymore;                Am I on bare feet on dry brown dust of the mica in a lighter shade of brown, closely by the window I stand watching over the shadows dance. Again, oh again the dance, and then the waltz of you and her in this sphere atop mine. But the lights unfolding on a thin screen in glass as happens as evening to my room differently from the city outside. Ah! Am I thinking, thinking, how I am thinking about you, but she. Does she not think of you anymore;         Am I in my body squirming, some thinness of voile of hours old rendering the blood blue slowly and slowly. In ugliness of a liquid drenching me from scalp to the dead ends, yet in it the blue, yet in it you, you all around the wetness in the air. All the blue I keep for in the cerulean, a cyan burst of the color art you pouring turquoise on white expanse of paper. I only talk about you for ah! She does not think of you anymore. Alas! Why does she not think of you anymore?                                                                 

  Aha! How I veer now. Do you see? How this digression always ahead, superseding me at the second of a dekko elsewhere. Oh daddy daddy, do I have you still? Lines in brown dripping down the plank of wood, and then again in the light of nights, do me knees crack against the planar ply – art the patella clicking against the flat ply tonight. Ah! This the ramble that will not end. These the places I gad to. Oh daddy daddy, do I have you still? Where the footprints? Why not the print of hands then? Did you stay, stay, stay with her? Where did I go? Oh daddy dear, where do I have you still?      Art the lines thick black, so straight up the height of this the frame of sticks like bones and in lumps from tissues, a singular column to pass through, does the nervous clink implode on extensions of my nails back into the skin so easily for does she not, does she not, she doesn’t... anymore.                                                              

  Oh daddy dear, you might be, oh daddy dear, you could be the man next to me.          Her, her, and hers the twitch of synaptic syncline of the fibers on her face, why daddy must you at the edge of her teeth remain? Wet enamel is held tight ledge. I fall so many times off it. You don’t. Oh you don’t.          Oh the apex might where the screens delicate to the auburn of every sunset here and there about us all, cease in tapering folds, oh daddy mark the tallness of our Mango tree for in dryness of the cambium art you whilst leaving me in mahogany scratch of lines on the dead cork, but the life at the end of the branch unlike yours and mine. That the life at the end of the branches – look dad, oh behold you must how the arms of this tree part open into nerves of you and me on the grey blue of the sky above! Art you somewhere in me. Art thou on nerves to find? Art you on my nerves to find?                                          

          Do you leave, how do you leave just like that? He the body complete is a husband already. Did you leave? How did you leave like that? Oh daddy who could be, bodies many to her, flesh in layers and layers of him, do you her skeleton make in me.      To daughters and souls tiny to picture in rotunda a dangerous place, but my den, ah daddy! ‘Twas a Wendy house without you; sons and balloons, metallic disks, spin of balls in air, on the marmoreal flatness – oh daddy! ‘Twas a game of cricket without you? He a boy still in mind of you, does not know that were all the games without you.   Thus his hand on her, on me, on him – his the hands then, his the hands time and time again.     

   Weight light on paper-thin yarns of the pages of her primer of lovers and souls in spine hard to bend, not her expanse in palimpsest of my mother’s calligraphy will you find, but my rear of notebooks in a spiral screw, plastic wires, strings and cords helical almost – must you in me an imprint of her handwriting find like letters on walls old to be found again.       White print of the alphabets of a tongue does that slap inside from left to right, left to right so in staccato schism is one sound heard, this the print in color of vanilla thick in straight lines on black blocks pressing up and down and up and down on as you come, come, come and go, come to leave me. Won’t you the names keep, two names, only two to speak of us?                                            

  Where the pages in patches now? Your chest of drawers an image so ephemeral in eyne of me that I cry the mahogany out of the wood from underneath the mica of your study. You the thief of her blue drizzle, oh you to steal the livid splash of fountains straight from the nibs in metal, you the coward on feet, letting the skin burst open, keeping the phalanges but in the house were you, you the coward on feet daddy, yet not so, not so oh daddy for you should be.         

  Where the wooden rim of fibers in shards of glass in me? Wasn’t she inside a thin plastic screen under thrust of some ends meeting off and on the cells dead in you? Art the cells dead in you? Beautiful shades in a crimson maroon, a blossom she did make on your walls not my daddy if only were you, but flatness of one page as would close notebooks in pads of your composition. Oh how she might write about you!      Those final ends of you, the cells dead scrounge not the skin of her, him, him, him the husband returning to his wife still, will you find the bones to scratch, her bones to scratch from the left, from the right, and up and down the height of a body without hurting her? Does he not daddy, he does not. I say, I say, I tell you this for he does not.                                                      

  Broke the frame of father, came he quietly by the door tonight; on cold kiss of a glass in drip of heavy mist betwixt those the stones in stitches Clementine and the skeleton am I, were you one under the tables with me playing hide and seek. Behind tallness of the cupboard do I hide, should you go out looking for her – oh mother, is he groping, seeking so, then his hands a spread, but his fingers finding you. Dad, did her fingers find you.                                                                                                                           

   Latch undone, evanescent a palm in air, then the skin of her so on salting, a fen of ours the sea to cry, art you sanguine next to the body in the shape of my mother. Won’t you stay, stay, stay with him? Oh mother, why won’t you stay, stay, stay with him?   Russet cerise down circles about the only windows still open in her, descried I a fibrillation of threads one eventide on woolen dress so puckered in tension of nerves of my wrist, seats three on futon for soft games hard on skin, then the fabric in a grubby blue, green, somewhat green mayhap, and then you. Was that you? Was that you daddy? Wasn’t that you?