Calum Gardner
matters
(from ‘summerletter’)
dream the abstract
something social:
beauty not coming
at the seams seems ineffable
colour-trumpets heraldically flush
but so tidy a system is bound to be whisked away
hard science wrecks a will
stands in for demolition
girlish on the face of it
and even improved has us running scared
phlogistonic itch for something part of that impenetrable
membranous medium between sense and nature
(neither of course being material
matter’d be better
and more separable and isomorphic
and thicker/muddier/wetter
and effabler
which (however) would be a change
nothing else counting but unnatural
inseparable (ah) matter (made of light))
*
the list of ways they use to make matter real
surely maintenance is conservatism
or is that the etymological fallacy at neverwork?
rough cities are dreamt of in the face of falling stock
how are long times preserved
how are stocks and bones
how are faces and shins
how are futures and shorts
or gold winters made up?
there’s nothing concrete
and it comes out of how we treat that sound, our son
the low temperatures at which biles
and other humourous flavours boil
stains living in woods are trees
cat-patterned, tortoise-shelled,
rabbit-tailed, barnacle-bottomed, sea-scraped
*
what matters is shaped by the directions taken
that allow things to appear in a certain way (ahmed)
if it matters, it is because of the movement it makes
through space (and) in relation to other things
and if something does not matter it is because
its movement blocks appearances
engendering that abnegative death
the death by blockage
blocked lives claim their mattering by eruptive means
mapped across and with history
whatever happens in the guts happens
at the product of convergent lines
overlapping patterns here of bodily winds –
not only (your) sirocco smell
but your velocity, heat, and consequences
Calum Gardner is a poet, critic, and editor of Zarf magazine, and currently teaches at the University of Leeds. Calum’s poems have been published in places like datableed, Poetry Wales, The Literateur, and Jungftak.