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JP Seabright
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the poet
JP Seabright is a queer disabled writer living in London. They have four solo pamphlets published: Fragments from Before the Fall, No Holds Barred, The Insomniac’s Almanac, Traum/A and the collaborative works GenderFux and MACHINATIONS. They have been published in journals such as The Rialto, One Hand Clapping, Fourteen Poems, Culture Matters, Under the Radar and 14 Magazine, as well as nominated for Best of the Net, The Pushcart Prize and The Forward Prizes.
the poems
Dungeness
The shingle glistens suggesting buried
treasure under a bleached whale of a sky,
grey smoke mingles with ashtray clouds,
a nuclear desert crunches underfoot.
The hum of the reactors is silent now,
the world's contracted thus,
blue-feathered birds curl and call
over a dilapidated corrugated shack.
Time stands still. Cronus and Chroma
collide where stone solicits sky,
the air itself imbued with solace
and the metallic taste of sea.
Stories of those who sought a living
as scattered flotsam on a desolate shoreline,
are lost in the rags of time. Dungeness
is less a place and more a state of mind.
Clothe the Night
with Stars, My Love
in the sunshine. your horse. the forest. hungry and frail.
the woods are washed. with the orb of broad waves. eyes
disdain the world. and the cough of the poet sings of
flowers in the stream. the autumn of the west. the
splendour of the moon. this wilderness of death. so vast
and beautiful. dust strobes. the self is still. our faith has
dispersed. peacefully. noiseless and few. a gap in the
clouds. an impossible sun. its curtain hangs with the
heavens. abandon those who rest in the shade. wear the
storms of men and brides. acrid in the stream. rainbow
shadows. like a birthday. heavy and decorous. starlight
wanders at the threshold. feeble yet found. clothing the
night with stars. the calm of the sun. a servant of the past.
a bright steed mingles in the water. streaming of stars. your
screeching. eyes of the sea. winged with the bursting.
overwrought and mournful. felicitas seeking the sun. one
life of a day. a garden flower. the sound. and sometimes
the heavens. murky and white. lovefull.
Nocturnal Omissions
: I am a ghost of a chance : a weeping husk of a human : scattered
remnants of once-functional behaviour : barely grasped : longed for
: no longer attainable : I am my own undoing : an unravelling :
this unbelongingness : this : this unwarranted fuckering bliss : this
sickening lurch : I play paper scissors stone with my memories :
each trauma crushing : cancelling out the next : the act of
obliteration : a removal of meaning : how joyous! : a negation and
a revelation : a quivering flatline : cut down to the quick and the
dead of our own true selves : whatever that is : this : skeletal kiss :
embryonic kick : fuck the shame away : in the dark : on your own :
your phone’s flickering hiss : a faithful companion : outside : the
city is on heat : your body a hot flush of mistaken identities : mixed
media on rye : the city is a hex : your body a burnt match : fire
flares the streets : your body stains the sheets : with thoughts of
filth : nightmare ejaculate : lick your bones clean : and yet : it is
darkest before the dawn : this : is a lie : sometimes the dawn never
comes : sometimes the darkness is within us : some have darkness
thrust upon them : the city is a hellscape : life is hard : don’t let
anyone tell you otherwise : the utter aliveness of it all : this : this
relentless existence : sometimes I think about dying : peace for our
time : go home and get a nice quiet sleep : looking back on this
half-century : a battlefield : these scars : wars fought : sometimes
won : mostly lost : losing : still : the slow decline to senility : I ask
for pity : as I age : for despite all best intentions : I come to closely
resemble : the man I most despise : tomorrow never dies : but this
darkness before the dawn : this what if this is all there is : and yet :
lighter days are coming : is a lie : I tell myself :
Publishing credits
Dungeness / Clothe the Night with Stars, My Love:
exclusive first publication by iamb
Nocturnal Omissions: Impossible Archetype (Issue 11)