SurVision Magazine
An
international online magazine that
publishes Surrealist poetry
in English.
Issue Thirteen
CLIVE DONOVAN
Ideal Day
The day ideal:
An idyll, an idea:
Somehow it must have colour;
low definition, please, no fierce outlines,
even some spillage, so we may speculate the edges.
And now we have a picture to gaze at.
It can move, it must move to stay alive.
See the thoughtful swirls and folds of its contours?
It could be that I need to carry this composition
out the door,
take it to the street,
busk it, beg with it, take it for walks,
drag it in grass, fly it like kite,
see if anyone at all would like to play
and share this ideal day with me;
this not-special day,
this ordinary day,
this day, like all the others, snared
in thorny brambles of the park.
My killed balloon of playtime daytime
turning pastel pale, leaching away,
even as I grab tired handfuls of the flimsy stuff
and I can see right through the shreds of residue
– right through till tomorrow
which, I can report, is made of glass,
waiting to be broken into:
There is an altar upon which I sit,
my back to you, arms stretched forward,
carving air, layering thick impasto
like a fevered devotee
and all around like trampled gifts,
the deposed canvasses of yesterdays.
Clive Donovan lives in Devon, England. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Taste of Glass (Cinnamon Press) and Wound Up With Love (Lapwing) and his poems appear in Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, Prole, Sentinel, Stand, etc.
