Rupert Loydell and Robert Sheppard
from Risk Assessment
Becalmed
Becalmed and somewhat adrift staining air for all time
listening doesn’t begin pink ears straining such to hear
years waning turning grey flecks infecting blue sky shifting
its scenery across the roofs last evening thoughts flickering
song thunders far away deep throat of winter’s end
ionised particles of discourse living out each other’s lives
luring people into my world focussed to a spot on
my pin-pricked retina still feels like tears
slowed down to rapid vertical rain covering the day
with English Pastoral Regret autumn come early again
Indian summer no show rolling over the treetops
like a hymn sheet small unreadable print
reaches you as curling fractals as two decades engulf me
concepts drain out of an answer the island its sand
what we weather changes our psyche
strolling players my inhibitions tender life
Fortunate Implausibilities
Fortunate implausibilities remembered as sackfuls of mania tipped
into the furnace madness burns the media skin away
implausible weekend supplements damning the landscape
with faint rain plausible reasons a feint
spoken in your own voice we’re dancing and
we’re each writing a line defiant before ourselves wondering
how the fire started the more we quiver in
the fumes the more we find and expose impossible
moments and manouevres tiny contact prints of
joyless blowjobs petrified orgies moments sold on street corners
to convince us we’re real cartwheeling categories of obsession
the necromancy of nomenclature dead reckoning done
all such memories merge into none museums of the skylark
giving useful skills to humans content with their routines
the dropping summer sun bleeds into the sea-horizon
dreadnought furnace firearms distance dark
Rupert Loydell is the Managing Editor of StridePublications, Editor of Stride magazine, Reviews Editor of Orbis, Associate Editor of Avocado magazine and a regular contributor of articles and reviews to Tangents magazine. During 2003-2004 he was a Royal Literary Fund Project Fellow, working in Exeter schools, following a RLF Fellowship at Bath University. In 2004-2005 he is a RLF Fellow at Warwick University and Poet in Residence at Sherborne School. He lives in Exeter, Devon with his wife and two daughters. Recent publications include A Conference of Voices, The Museum of Light and Endlessly Divisible, and four collaborative works.
Robert Sheppard has published a number of books from his long project Twentieth Century Blues, including Empty Diaries (Stride Books, 1998) and Tin Pan Arcadia (Salt, 2005). He has previously collaborated with Patricia Farrell, Scott Thurston and Bob Cobbing. The editor of Pages:www.robertsheppard.blogspot.com.