The Poetry Project

Cosmic Triptych

Claire Laurence

Trickery of a mortal Trickster*

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Where are you?

I’m at the frigid edge of the solar system

Between Pluto and Neptune

Waiting for you

To reemerge as a new planet

A better you

One that can love me
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I sense the resonance of your heart pounding, the thunder inside of you

But I can’t reach you.

Are you getting closer to me?

All I can hear is the sound of footsteps in the rain,

the sound of you coming home?

Turning my telescope ever so slightly

I see the city bustling, the teenage boys dribbling their basketballs across the street

Strong matches to distill

As their small bodies dribble, drizzle, drip, drivel, drool and drop

The object of desire
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‘Behind the moon

An entire body of constellations were waiting to say hello’

But I could only see ‘the narrow entry’ from which you entered to reach me

never the true you

This invisible gravitational magnetism pushing us closer once more

Like Pluto, you are no longer even a planet

All these ‘human fleshy things’ that we knew too well dwarfed

The contours of you and I, pulsing in unison

Now a mere mirage in another universe

Mist and destiny lingering in the presence of yearning

You tricked me, once again

In loving you

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*Written as a dialogue with Lights Out: Gatekeeper- Axel Kacoutie.

Sloppy Sloppiness*

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I dangled off of the cast iron column on which this church rest

Grasping the cold fluted indentations in my palm

Until my body slips to the ground

In a daze, dozing off elegantly, as if the world was watching

I started to grind the cold soil with my hips

This became a sort of vacillating dance

One that my body couldn’t fully grasp

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Wishbones

In their nascent form

I emptied the content of my wallet

There was no longer use for money, rules or clothes

What am I

If not a shirtless man crawling on the floor of a church in the East Village

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I raised my arms upwards, elated

Bathing in this full exaltation I brought into being once again

The ground attracts me

This exuberance stemmed from the soil I lie on

A pleasure I didn’t deserve

The feeling sliced at once

As I slip toward this inebriating barometer of the mind

Falling back inside the threshold within which I decided to contain myself

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Mother Earth

I stand on my head

Blood rushing to my cheeks

No care in the world

Other than to impress you

Madness all around us

I live for your smile to redraw itself

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*Written during a performance exercise, based on Meg Stuart’s ‘Are we There Yet? - Damaged Goods’ with emotion prompt of ‘Sloppiness’.

Break through - give me a break

2 rays of sunshine
In parallel paths
Diverging radially
The center holding
That ungraspable thing
Pure and tender
An unspoken clarity
The fiery core
that we so badly wanted to reach

But living is never arriving
Through widening and narrowing
I expand and contract toward you
Gliding, stumbling, betraying, trusting
Diluting the burden
Of the unknown

I hammer the nails
Pounding and throbbing
Until I try to break the nail itself
That iridescent blue effervescence
Emerging through the shear force of my body

M y
B o d y
S h e a r i n g
Untethered atoms slide, brushing shoulders
Colliding toward a break of dawn
A breakthrough

If there is breaking
Let it be your heart that breaks open
Slowly pulsing toward an ‘Us’, this illusory ‘Us’...

Work from Trick Methods with Rachel James