Poetry International Poetry International
Poem

Heather Phillipson

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Actually, we live in heaven.
Eau de toilettes. Nibbles. You manhandling
the dog-food with your firmest hands on.
Aren’t eyes are brilliant.
Maybe even better than the dream of grass blowing.
Ha! The sky just opened up, betraying
much more of the mystery of brainstorms.
What a triumph our human state
and by extension the world around us
is getting loved-up on the cardinal aorta.
Touch my pulse to make it official.
Probably just been to the lido, hasn’t it, the compulsive splosher.
Remember eye-sex over the microwave.
Remember champagne & valium.
Let’s relax a sec and recharge our selfies.
Repeated ideas massage the limbic system.
One lithium zeitkeeper, booted to completion.
Until, at some hour, my oomph
becomes sensuous becomes lascivious
accretions exploding the centres over
and over to the extremities.
Then there's manufacturing water from hydrogen,
hyperbole from early autumn,
the retina as a tough/fluffy carpet,
creating an indoor potato farm
fertilised by my own excrement.
Inhale: my high street hums of fried sentiment.
Catch me in the sub-cellular molecular feedback loop
tuning in to the circadian pacemaker
sounding like literally adios. 
Close

22

Actually, we live in heaven.
Eau de toilettes. Nibbles. You manhandling
the dog-food with your firmest hands on.
Aren’t eyes are brilliant.
Maybe even better than the dream of grass blowing.
Ha! The sky just opened up, betraying
much more of the mystery of brainstorms.
What a triumph our human state
and by extension the world around us
is getting loved-up on the cardinal aorta.
Touch my pulse to make it official.
Probably just been to the lido, hasn’t it, the compulsive splosher.
Remember eye-sex over the microwave.
Remember champagne & valium.
Let’s relax a sec and recharge our selfies.
Repeated ideas massage the limbic system.
One lithium zeitkeeper, booted to completion.
Until, at some hour, my oomph
becomes sensuous becomes lascivious
accretions exploding the centres over
and over to the extremities.
Then there's manufacturing water from hydrogen,
hyperbole from early autumn,
the retina as a tough/fluffy carpet,
creating an indoor potato farm
fertilised by my own excrement.
Inhale: my high street hums of fried sentiment.
Catch me in the sub-cellular molecular feedback loop
tuning in to the circadian pacemaker
sounding like literally adios. 

22

Sponsors
Gemeente Rotterdam
Nederlands Letterenfonds
Stichting Van Beuningen Peterich-fonds
Ludo Pieters Gastschrijver Fonds
Lira fonds
Partners
LantarenVenster – Verhalenhuis Belvédère