From the Edinburgh University Companion To Twentieth Century British and American War Literature

I had thought for the last couple years this poem was lost, but using the link in the footnote in the book excerpt I was able to locate the original version that had been on Poets Against The War. That was at a site run by Glenn Butkus, link here: http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/2009/09/artificial-light.html please visit and support people into poetry and ideas and truth and beauty and goodness and...

Artificial Light

Under the sweet desert
the anniversary impulse 
is bred into
the soldiers heart...
in time nine beats
for eleven measures
and self disappears 
into the Arabian rhythm.

In rhythms and beats the orange
sun rises and violent
its violet edges 
say good night
and good morning
to insurgents and surges
of soldiers playing and plying
the dead for mediated
affirmations of each other's
causation.

Under yellow sodium 
artificial light 
death came.
To each with ecstasy, sadness, 
passion and numbness;
To each with pain,
forgiveness, 
and hatred. 

Two televisions sit facing
each other, transmitting
in different languages, filling
the air with sounds
mixing together,
playing to an ever
deafening crowd.

-Mark Brunke

https://driftwoodforgetting.blogspot.com/2009/10/artificial-light.html

Feb 29

Last
the book of hours
We read

With odd strains

The book I want to hear

Would be earthly read
From your lips

Someone to say I love you
In some story
Of my own

In some obscure
pension

Last the book of hell
Is this forever
waiting

No, that's not true. Not hell, but joy
at having been in your presence
for a short time, a few hours in total.
I thought love had left me behind,
that my life was to be lived out
in Eliot's coffee spoons and workdays,
in decaying while my children graze,
something left broken, just broken
a little too much, by divorce.
As with our intellectual entanglements
in this too you proved me wrong,
simply by your existence,
an existence which gifts elation.
I know it is my desire that paints
me in sorrow, my poetic
embellishments are just that.
I look back in wonder at the sheer terror
being in love with you brought me.
Somewhere in the grey fog
and depression of love having fallen
apart for me before, these words,
this gift, had faded. An in an instant
moment, walking in the woods
with you, they returned,
on a footbridge, as I turned,
and looked in your eyes.

Leslie, like a fool

I thought it was love.
Even if it wasn't, it worked.
It was, and is an is, remnants
of moments in your presence
forever changed me for the better,
and is daily seen in the way
I think and breathe and walk,
My better imagination returned
after years and years away.
I can only ever have gratitude
for you giving me back
what I thought I had lost.
This is not a poem.
Its a simple thank you,
may the last thing I see
in my minds eye be you,
and as the clay crumbles
from my hands, and as these days
of love songs fade,
may the last
I write be
Leslie.

Feb 28

I'm a depression in the pale earth

A mess searched for, scattered things
I'm walking when I forget
where I'm going.

Something's wrong

I'm never moving on

Something's gone,
I'm travelling without moving on.
Where I go, I should end up
somewhere else, when I go,
But the train stops, and where
I started,
I'm there again. Your eyes,
     in my mind's eye.

I don't know what to do

So in love with you 

Your moving along

Faster than a song

Just sitting there with you

Was the only thing I could do 

To ease that feeling in my bones

The one where I'm always alone

Your right, I wanted a date

But I just needed a friend today

And again always again

There was no one

I do not understand 

Tuesday as well

Trapped in the looking glass 

Of a fading past, 

holding memories

Of a love that held it's distance close

An aspiration not to be

My being not to see

A love I still hold close, 

though a smile

In mind brings 

happiness, 

memory

Gives way to reality, 

she is not here, 

And sadness engulfs me. 

While humming along, humming

Molly Malone, pretending dreams

Come alive. Come alive, oh,

You follow me like a ghost.

My heart floats, my body sinks. 

Feb 28

I imagine foam parting as you crest
I imagine sandy points and clear refraction across
your summer skin,

an afternoon in this illusion
-
you disappear

by the oyster shells, your hair laying back upon
settled green and green grasses,
everlasting sky

and silence except for a quiet wave,

and the earth.

Then I imagine watching you rise.
She-Emerges-In-Eel-Grass.

Feb 28

I wish I could say the things I can't say
To you but I know I can't speak of them,
how you inspire creations but are 

not embedded within, more that you free 

My mind and open my heart to allow 

Uninhibited representations,

Expressions not manipulations, my

Emotions in words are only singing, 

But it all just captures a day, a state
Of being, so I can't run away from

The truth, no one moves on from love. No one.
It stays in you, it changes your heart, it
  brings you back to life, even when it hurts.

If the Fall is it is I who am falling,
falling further still, falling as Summer turns
to Fall, buried in leaves fallen in memory,
of sitting in Spring as the Sun moved through your eyes.

If the Fall is, I have fallen, and still
falling for I fear the hurt of hitting
ground, but also because there is no ground
where love lives within. Passing my beating
Heart, a bird sings in a morning forest.
Let it all fall to the ground, let it go.

If the Fall is, I pray for the wind that
it will let you know, like a lie I love you
As earth holds the sky, in Falling becoming aware.

Falling beginnings held within an August 

Late rain, the Easter water of Spring in

Vapor ghosts another whispers to mine 

ears. The ringing is there and it is your name, but as Walking-In-The-Rain held her

Tears to not give away any pain, so 

She--Tries-To-Fly-But-Fears-The-Sky weakens

To a kiss, her hands covering my eyes.

I lay in the grass as the blue hour of

Sunset turns this evening to night and

I wonder why I fill myself with ill....

Why hope for what can never be, why hope?

Is love sitting in the grass, alone and 

Looking at the ever darkening sky, 

at the new moon with old eyes? You're the one 

But you're not the one, it's that I see you 

And I know what's missing. I understand

It's formless, but now I know what

It is possible to miss. I miss knowing

What it's like to feel in your presence, 

That sense of awe at 

such beautiful existence. 

Feb 27

Here I am in your work space again
All in love and unable to say it...

there I was...

there..

Flowers accumulate, a simulacra
Your silhouette, then your profile
Sundrenched, then your etiquettes
Then my heart breaks as the hour ends
I fall down stairs in heavy steps
I fall in my chair from a sorrow 

In my chest
Collapsed in flowing tears drying
As they traverse my flora skin
Made it through the remainders
Of a fading day only to realize
I'm so in love, I'm so in love.

I'm glad I was near her, to breathe
And be where she moves, to feel
The light from her, to be in love
And sit next to someone
I was in love with, to watch
Her eat pizza, and hear a polite
Goodbye, it's not much,
But isn't this how
The world ends?

Feb 27

When Winter comes
Will I have told you I love you?
What will wilt in this dry air, and
what will become of desire?
What always becomes of desire.
Let's not be 
oblique, I mean 
my desire for you, a past now dim,
I mean,
that which is satisfied 
and hydrated
with satisfaction. When Winter 
comes for me what will wilt what will is
the will I have a memory of? your 
edgeless sloping skin
in my hand...

        And if I can 
even spit words
will I say, "at least I had eyes that day..."? 
       Your voice said 
my name, it emerged
from your upper register, it was 
everything.

Some of the
worst memories are like that,
a coat of feather down 
soft as dust,
a scent whose 
moments linger on
in the body's memory, 
awakened, 
and with a memory weight
dusty clay like powder, 
where your own body
image
lays in departed 
packets of dropped memory:
will even the air never forget? 

What good is Winter
then, if it persists 
or seems to exist
to show its the end 
of an age, but only 
in reminders of desire?

Are you under this sky
and is that moon
shaped the same
where you see it today?

What is a good Winter?
It is your eyes,
as time descends
upon them,
And my eyes upon
Them then
In that same time
Descended.

Feb 26

I am still,
Concerning you,
Completely in love
Completely unresolved
So I will be silent
I'm sorry I hurt you
When I said I love you
or offended, or threatened, or confused,
I couldn't read the signs, they
were in some human language

that's always been beyond my pale.
Little by little, little by little,
Little by little, love never dies,
it pokes and it probes, it prods
and reminds, it remands, demands
without demanding, the horizon
grey thoughtless skies beneath my
feet above my eyes, from my
grey thoughtless skin in winter
dress, my empty skin lays upon

this bed, longing for the sleep
that gives respite of depression,
marrowless meatless my eyes
roll around, to think I thought
I had something for someone.
Empty skin lifts to hang about the day,
draped of grief if grief is the word
between zero and none.
Love shows us our lives,
or lack thereof.

Lately
Everything
Seems
Like
I'm
Evaporating
Nothing ever lets stars outrun nothing.
Keep everything like love obscured good goodbyes.

All the ley lines lie towards the Sun
Confused me such
Leslie sitting close instead of across
Your beautiful self near as my dust
Your grey shirt of yesterday afternoon
In my pale morning lust.
The push, the pull, reading too much,
The words, the words, what do I speak?

If I could go backwards and tear my tongue
out, its an easier disability for everyone
to understand. A wounded heart is a criminal
weakness. When I die, I will have told you
I love you, and it felt like I died.
I have to look back on my life,
at this impending end, a year, five,
eight to five I'll get seven,
And I can see why I never ventured
before, why people don't.

I can see it now, everywhere I turn,
for miles, in the rising sun, the flat
grey sky, the endless night,
the waxing crescent after
the new moon, I can see it now,
the silence. The space between
the commuters, the noise in our
debates, the safety of loneliness.
I see it in my lenten skin, draped
and formed of this illumination.

Feb 25

There is always a place within me that will hope
but there is always a place more within that knows
its just friends, an acquaintance, nothing more
that I will never be nothing more
that I will only be nothingness
there is always a place within me
that will hope
but remain unloved
there is always a place
in remains
shattered in devastating loneliness
that wants to lay down in a place
of soft dirt
and become heavy earth
there is always a place within
me that will hope...
it should hope
less to hurt less
it would hurt
less to hope less

Feb 25

all these tears in darkness weep

ends bleak morning with a dream

your heart far away from everything

these streams, my eyes yearning

whom fortune has chosen to never seize

thinks of you today and only weeps

my blind love a heart won't bring

these streams, my eyes yearning

one today will bring you candles

and count fires for another year passed

another will bring you gifts in gilded wrap

I will lay unraveled in darkest silence 

shame and embarrassed at my words undone
retreating to not hurt the one i love
for the sight or sound of me would cause you pain
a failed love I could not hide from thee
My I love you I should have refrained
I hurt by knowing I hurt by speaking
I lay in darkness that I revealing
Was reviled oh were I to go back
I would go back to silent dreaming

these streams, my eyes yearning

whom fortune has chosen to never seize

ends bleak morning with a dream

thinks of you today and only weeps

A failure at love
Who weeps
Ashamed for words shared
A heart broken in pieces
At the thought of you, your name
On my lips, your eyes in my memory,
What is the name
Of that love?

I die daily living on in grief. 

All the day is darkness I bear to weep.
I lie daily dying down on me.
All the night is light my body becoming.

Missing Pieces

Feb 25

Laying down under the Sun collapsed
Raised above graveyard and garden
A quarry stone and shale in my pocket

I am wretched
I came here to die
To live hereafter
In peace

The juneberries dry blackened and
Deep green leaves turn brown
These grounds my ancestors walked

I am wretched
I came here to die
Alone, unloved
Unforgivable

White and gold an eagle guided my path
I hear the summer birds in cricket grass
The pasture is littered with cattle shit
Within barbed wire edges

Save this wretched mind
For I came here to die
To be changed
Expire

Now I sit in Winter's grasp
the last wheat in mine hand
saturnine image mind
grey upon my violet thought
Summer so far past...
all love is so distant,
for another favors well, and
in my mind darkness dwells,
save this wretched mind
for I came here to die,
Sunlight the summer's ore
tells me no more,
the muse has taken flight.
Her pink wings are invisible,
only the thunder understands.

Feb 25

Leslie follows the Sun
She makes my head turn
to follow her there

Arcturus rests just above the horizon
tonight, just above Virgo, and in an
unpressed jacket over an ivory blouse,
a cream satin finish that drapes
across a road, side highway named
a frontage between me and the highway,
a small ditch of flowers
and the February slush of dirt
and window castings,

like a flower that remembers the Sun,
my leaves drop in the evening
and my roots absorb the rain
and I dream like a flower...

that we're looking at the same
evening star.

Like a flower that follows the Suns
the grey green eyes of the Sun,
wild sunflower under a barbed fence,
its back to the hearth growing,
like itself, beneath the celestial record.

Leslie follows the Sun,
she turns in space, on one leg
lifts a knee, her hands move about
to retain balance, as the solar engine
moves towards morning, ever morning
in the reach of its flares.

Feb 25

I love you
You don't like me
It hurts
And that's
Everything
Right now

still

and I just wonder

what the hell happened to me?

You, I can't stop thinking of you.

How is it that I am left

completely unresolved,

no matter what?

It's not even a poem anymore,

nor a lament, 

its become this artless thing,

this wail.

This wail.

Feb 25

Come lift the devil door, the devil's oar,
around my sore arm left,
the indent of my appetite
left on my flesh, carve it from
my bones when I am right for dead.

Make me sigh, from memory, from inside
my eyes, from memory in my mind,
of your thighs, crossed, and your joy,
the inverted curve of your nose
and the outward curve of your cheek,
your geometric inventions, the rhythms
of my obsession.

Hold out the weather, hold the waterfront
beneath you, the port city in your view,
its Icarus somewhere to your right,
past even the height of your view,
drowning from your touch.

The muse is gone, and with her touch,
the remnants that inspired much,
without magic just artifice.

Feb 24

The small rain
Raining down this morning
If only I was with you Leslie
Hearing you speak of things
The way your passions
Drive your voice the easy way
Your head tilted
Slightly messy blond highlights
In a right angle pushed
Behind your ear

I miss the listing and listening
Your hands play nervously
With whatever is near
Everything in this world can
Be near you

Except me
And that I hate living with
Being nothing to everything
And time moves so slow
I need the feelings to go away
Buried somewhere
This is not the eternal recurrence
I can bear

A bear wearing melancholy
Under a blanket blank stare
Listening to the rain, it's rhythm
A soft percussion of loneliness
I miss you

Feb 24

Who believes in a Fool's parade? Hello.
Adieu. Hello, Adieu. Hello, I do.
Not the street my feet tap upon moving
Towards you, you who walked into the back
of the room, and stood, your knee triangle,
the first of the angles from heaven 2 blue.

August to September where in splendor
I watched again as you worked magic in
magic working through my head, October
I was gone, but it was January
before I could courage muster to speak
even the least admittance of liking
and in February say its crushing
but March was word puzzles to say I love
April found the words given back to me,
Unread. So in May I said I love you.

In June I fell silent, as May's words hurt
You, and that I could not ever bear to do.
I send you dead flowers to remember
August seventh to July fifteenth, to
remember falling in love one last time.
A gift who's smile awakened life within me,
that life left behind to catch up on living
is now within my grasp again,
my love for you connected me back
to pure imagination, I'm sure there are
rational reasons, and you could tell me them,

I would lean on every lean word, and nod
at my stress indicators, and ...and ...and
measuring again the angle of your hair
as it passes by your ear, the color your
eyes take in whatever light...could
it just once be the moon...
when I last see you my thoughts will be

I love you
when I last see you today my words will be

Good bye. Who believes in a Fool's parade?

Feb 24

Sois sage, ô ma Douleur, et tiens-toi plus tranquille.

My grief, to silence, hidden. 

The flowers for love mentioned

And rejected, but for love in me

In still remains.

A still life broken. 

Love is inescapable, love is dirtier. Love

Is sorrow. Love is pain, love is distant. 

Love is fear, love is silent. Love is

Aloof. Love is scared, love is dying. 

Love is alone, love is tears. Love

Is hopeless. Love is gone.

Feb 24

The rain fell on the city.
Your eyes illuminated
In electric flashes splashed
Across evening darkness
As the rain steadily tapped
Against the window, water
Shapes and shadows morphed
By an endless lightning,
Your flower in lime lit moments,
As your smile and body
Glistened in the darkness, together we
Whispered before the thunder,
Your Thunderbird body comes out into the open. 

This night you said you loved me.

Flood and debris gathered sticks were
Rolled in pooling water, even placid
Surfaces slightly were turned from a
Gathering underneath, an
Undertow pulling towards the sea, we
Lovers who lose themselves
In the deep.

We seek the earth and sky

As two rakes for whom

Being lost in hearts pleasures 

Were once a distant life, and now twice

Lost in storm debris we find

Strange waters between our skin,

Illuminated to our three eyes by electric

Flash, to ears by roar and laugh, 

For our fingers that press and give, 

A tongue with a tongue and a salt taste, to our hearts

A single vibration of our creation

And embrace.

Your Thunderbird body cried reflections
In your lightning eyes.
Strange waters between our skin, two rakes for the earth and sky. 

Feb 23

Twenty three is this number

It's always fascinated, held in some

Special way, not too be

Recycled or made of recycled things, 

And the first thought I have

Today it's the one I have most days

The way my soul was transported

By looking into the translucence 

Of Leslie's eyes. Love is...

A simple and humbling experience

Of potential of our human capability 

To apprehend the transience 

Of existence as a moment and as

Infinity. A moment with someone

You love. Life time.