questions for painters

Questions for Painters Nathan Thompson

The Red Ceilings PressMMXI [rcp 25]

www.theredceilingspress.co.ukwww.redceilings.blogspot.com/

Questions for Painters Nathan Thompson

For Rupert, with thanks for his encouragement,

and, as always, for Laura.

With thanks to Barabara Beck at Upstairs at Duroc, in which a version of one of these poems first appeared.

Questions for Painters #1

reading rain’s small-printtomorrow will be greener more probablecompleting its circle phosphorescence sea songson black glass pictures hanging up a small roomlandscape walks backwards through your retinasplit and oily

why do you think you are in control?

this interpretation thickens clocks moving pastdark mornings maps in silk telling you whereworms can be avoided here be absencesclaiming parity on terms withthe gaps between drops a con artist’s tearswaiting eyes open for mine shafts your honest ownershiptravels incomplete where stories begin


please don’t make me be specificyour smile is abstract forging contourssounds like coyote makes a run for it

how much do you believe in what you’re doing?

the devil is in the tulips dancing bicyclesexchanging kisses I’m sure you understand plays on wordsmouthed yesterday shaped like a sofa

this new science of seriousness gets me downstuffed parrots in boxes form and contentchoices within obedient or disobedient your socially atomic activity an allegorySisley with Gauguin’s cigarette contemplating the Nile


we’re playing data cowboysnow on the steppes this is bad naturalization

if you had commissioned it would you be pleased?

Clint forgot his banjo and our liaison’s sure fucked

promises fulfilled

cyber-sculptors are first out of the cavearticles incorporating ‘too definite’I don’t believe a stroke you paint

an associational system based on digital marble‘look down the barrel of flux’ understandinghigh yields my skull is crystalsavvy remember partner prosthetic animals are not your friends


a name many people can use‘I’ would begin but adopted a pseudonym

why wouldn’t you want anybody to know?

this is the future reflectively mediatingwithin the speed of itself no-one is shocked

praxis tentatively a convenience please smileyou are at least partially responsible for this confusion


what do you think about when I’m alone?

cold storm-fronts echo movement through the calendardeserters defect fluxus it’s 1990 and we’re all on strike

a woman over my shoulder reads this with disapprovalrain starting on the page blending colours pink darker

if we walk down your street it is always nearly tomorrowhard to remember when I wasn’t in love with a kisstight to your chiselled figure I’m not surewhat I’m asking for or if it’s relevant

gulfs of amber defying hard linescontours in distress redden your ceremony full stop


hello I’m just leavingI resent the things you say you believe inand you cannot draw me straight strings sky taut puppets

teaching the meaning of irony

what do you want?

I’m not sure I care how grass encompasseslion-free savannahs absence causes painlike lions tight round your little finger

music starts if you believe you can accomplish light pinging off plastic


sometimes if you pretend to understandAndy Warhol becomes imaginary likemaking friends with Penelope Pitstopyesterday I was sure I knew what constituted

not being an artist

a sign readingprivateno

or

propertyparking

depending on the swing of a door confuses mea sample of poetry is included in the appendix


we don’t do much in munitionspointing fingers is leaves flickergold end of a centurywhen the sky is blue so much is hope

what’s the point in meeting you half way?

a duty on peaches luxury peering roundframes out of the window Midasreversed gold touched becomesinfants’ heads and out of date CD players

I don’t understand this enough to locate youhow myths fade to forgotten hits listwrong turnings down water-logged alleywaysI must be mellowing giving the benefit of your doubtto gondoliers who know much more than this square circled by loan sharks call meI don’t know what but I’ll answer dadamemories a huge slug emulating acrobats


call me I want my memories to fadeunder the slow generosity of strangers

moving shadows a lantern turnscreating ghosts that etch other people reminiscing

another limb to find a use for is this abstract?

I can’t tell which direction the shoes I bought for you will walk inalmost prose a moment fixed to slide into imitation

language dropped from a great heightsplatters interpretation you move melines I can’t get out of my head


it’s a day later now you have arrivedin your book chocolate and cognac made simplemidnight footsteps in the hall trip-wired statementsof muscular gentleness I imitate trespassstars procrastinating quiet sounds

sitting down to write to someone else is difficultI’m not sure who ismore wary of asking questions you want answeredsuch as

how many giraffes before beauty turns to terror?

a piano recalcitrant among reed-bedscadences end rhymes poking headsthrough water

the clocks have gone back and it’s darkto be told where to go next without stumbling

Nathan Thompson

Nathan Thompson’s recent collections include the arboretum towards the beginning (Shearsman), Holes in the Map (Oystercatcher), and A Haunting (Gratton Street Irregulars); the day maybe died is forthcoming from Knives Forks & Spoons and The Visitor’s Guest is forthcoming from Shearsman. He lives in Salford, where he is studying for a PhD in Psychogeography and Contemporary Poetry.

Thunnerplump

And so, we say,friendship ends herein a tidal column of cloudthat crumples the sky.

Today has the saddest eyes,a tick of rainbefore the thunderswallows us into a house

roomed by chance.Raw edgesof what might have beenscrape my metal fillings.

Magpies people the lightlike an old moviedevoid of soundbut for a theatrical pianist.

We close the bookon the last brick of the storyas dark paint swathesold weathered wood.

The Red Ceilings PressMMXI [rcp 25]

www.theredceilingspress.co.uk www.redceilings.blogspot.com/

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