[176 words]
Serpentining
In a dinghy
Over fluid
Lucidity
The specular
Reflection
Splitting light
Into prisms
Like rainbow
Scales
Like the beginning
Of creation
Landing on
The sand
Tiny blinking
Salt crystals
Skeletal beetles
Freighting grains
Upon their backs
Formed translucent
Through a sea bubble
A wet speckle
Crawling from the
Waters of prehistory
The generosity
Of barefoot sediments
Soggied off
In the cold blue wash
But it isn’t only blue
It’s a pigment mixing
Marbling of
Swept up sand
Of milk frothing
Foam and
Unkempt ocean
Swirling into
A candied
Apple lacquer
With soft light
Crackling on
The surface
A glassy sparkling
Sea resin
Both hard
And soft
Frozen
And moving
Everything
Everywhere
All at once
The wild churn
The wet havoc
Conquering
And reconquering
Then folding back
Into itself
The swelling
And throbbing
The multiplicity
Of incidents
The liquid
Reciprocations
Triggering new
Emulsions
Put down
Your phone
Put down
Your paintbrush
Put down
Your words
This is something
That evades
All capture
This is not
Painterly
But something
Creaturely
This is the
Place
Where language
Dies
Matthew T Phillips is an Australian poet who sees poetry as a liquid amber attempt to capture the viscous music and magic of life through imagistic writing. In another life he was other half of electronic duo Retro Culture and an anthropologist. Now he seeks the living cinema of poetry.
