Three Poems by Matthew Caley

Wispy Streamers

       Willem de Kooning
steps through then beyond himself
through strip-door tassels
into an interior
of glare    murk and yes    more variegated strip-door tassels
or tic-a-tape shredding from a steamer
as it departs New York    he's engulfed
     by cantankerous crowds on the quay
                        'Goodbye!' Goodbye! they say

      waving him away      [the reverse of how he arrived]
themselves lost in thought
and mostly on mute    popping
                          the odd champagne cork. Too aware
     to lose it even after

      he loses it    mind blank but hand full of cunning
blood pumping through empty vessels but
       he never thinks
               of stopping.

The Height

    here at the height of my powers   
I feel so tired
as if beyond the snow-line
so give in     lie on the snow
under alpine larch   hard-stemmed long Brac-fir
                                                 or Pinion Pine
the pain in my shins
at the height of my powers   noticing
    even in spring   even in snow     you now
                                                turn a naked back

  bare as Tibetan cypress or Chinese Juniper here
above the snow-line
everything that isn't     happens in between solidities    is
    what makes these trees shake

    fist-fuck     gut-punch with muffled detonations      
                                                 invisible snow-showers    
the inverse of blossom
– remember that city of stucco? –
in the gulping evasive air    my head becomes light    I feel so tired
        here   at the height of my powers

The Confessional

       whilst shaving my left nipple
well   around my left nipple
                 – we all have our vanity –
I slipped   nicked myself
to make a pert blood-bubble
semi-translucent
with bathroom windows in it
          curved-sheen C's of mercury

   how I wish you would sense it
approach in silence
              and suckle
   with your cool mix of spite and solemnity
                     to get your first fix

  to draw forth my soul
          with your blowsy mouth
lick the trickle down my chest
   that will soon rust my belt buckle
     take down whole districts
                               like any variant
blights an entire continent
   with drought and pestilence until
                   somehow we see this out

Matthew Caley's latest and sixth collection is Trawlerman’s Turquoise (Bloodaxe, 2019). Prophecy is Easy, a pamphlet of loose versions from 20th-century French poets, was published by Blueprint Press in March 2021.