Christopher Mulrooney

son et lumiere




koax

crek crek



moonlight and

frogs



in the pond

where I mist

to see the eyes

on me









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City of London



tea with milk the river ran
or coffee maybe at a pinch

slate-grey with scarlet trim

etc. the descriptive responses
of the think tank
precipitate a long roster
usually elided
for the capstone on the edifice we present
therefore I submit

on the face of new things altogether
winds bear new witness

but it is not a new thing
not at all to have this
Dr. Gachet defending
and diagnosing
Edgar Allan Poe
from the heights along a new river
perhaps not




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the serinette and the lightning-rod



I had flown in on a dare
to his own house I went
a cub reporter
that's what I own like 6 T-shirts
and a bag of milk chocolates
but no-one else could

we got along just fine

he served the soup out of my tureen
I mean the one we had grown up with
all the time

his favorite saying was
I'll be peckered

his favourite thing was an antique
serinette
he had rigged up with
electricity from a lightning-rod

he spoke about conductivity
lots of materials he said
just can't stand up to my action

I started in the business he said
twenty years ago I had
lots of people working for me

you couldn't imagine what it was like
a sterile litigious environment

all day long the claims were coming in
I had to stamp each one
with purple ink

anyway you had to
had to get up the stairs
and go to the roof to put the thing up
and run the connectors right the way down
to the bottom
it was a similitude of something
yeah

now though when there's a storm
I have bird music

the house had varying instruments
and pictures

we had soup for about an hour
and then he listened to his serinette
warble in the lightning

I was glad I wasn't going to fly
again until tomorrow




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green and pleasant land







fancifully they remarked the long since trifled with and soon to be forgotten

mystery that was the wheel and furnace

of the house the great mystery and keeper

of the toad house and the revenues in the interior whose ministry is kept

down in the house by the river where sat

the poet laureate as grimy as could be

in the soot air and sang



I walked as far as I can go

to Aberdeen and back again

and this whole story you must know

to Aberdeen and back again

and so I know sure the might and main

that do not manufacture the solipsistic trivia that multiply

and divide

these chairpersons ringing all the bells on all the dinner tables in the kingdom

one by one till all are done

and that's the song as it was sung

by the grieving laureate









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porcupine


the hemispheres collide and draw apart
like you and my heart
I shall wander aimlessly like a spent shell
and wish upon the deepest hell
that you were of my mind in this
and that is all the man would say of bliss