from Hallucigenia
occult amongst all
this seeing is what
unseen will change
amongst all this seeing
was anything ever seen
by which I mean
could anything be
meant beyond the moving
of meaning that means
somewhere at sometime
to mean beyond
its movement?
it’s easier and maybe
healthier to be moved
and once moved, keep moving
what can you see?
*
see out a glove do people see
do people stop the crying so
a whimsy tea in howling
the crying do not but see
no feel on chair
the weight by spine
that travels there for now
for now a happening
beyond a do that brains
a lobe of brain is tiring
and god and shit and
and heavy slip of trench a tour
or anvil stop until you do
not know nor help
the world until until
is not until but in sickness
and otherwise the crying still
on now and then
a happening and not
until but still as knowing
still you move
and moved by still
can be and being fill
with something more
than words
*
so much to say
and so little worth saying
being, by turns
a cynical spiritualist
and a spiritual cynic
to imagine
leaving the world
to enter this –
for what wonder
still is
as much as struck
still with falling
short
of what is
possible
when, with irony,
conceding
the impossible is all
that lends such laughable
inadequacies of word
a purpose, a desire
to be in,
reverse a purpose
to realise in play
sidle up
bejewelled anew
the walkway
in such hermit crab arcades
to visit, for instance,
the enigmatic
Nectocaris, a dapper
squish-link of almost
squid
or like a Nautilus
shuffled
from its chambers
to smoke on the veranda
extemporising, silken wit
on the finer points
of evolution – what was missed
or presumed or
presumed missing
unknown, tentacular
chat of ages, caught
mid-speech in shale
to be found,
540 million years later,
Cambrian
ambiguity of phylum:
twirled flesh kites
encased
to be in, the poem
chisel / brush
zoo of
all time
in print
im
the ghosts
taken
down
in rock, blunt talk
hammering at
‘time’
as if ‘all time’
was
kept and is not still
is of always
around and through
the impossible
happening
again and again
for the first time
& i never thought
it could move me
from gravity’s
stern formality
but it did
& they soared over :
Marella, Yohoia, Olenoides
Opabania, Burgessia, Nectocaris
Odontogriphus, Dinomischus, Amiskwia
Branchiocaris, Perspicaris, Canadaspis
Naraoia, Tegopelte, Asheaia
Odaraia
Sidneyia, Sidneyia, Sidneyia
Molaria, Habelia
Sanctacaris
Alalcomenaeus
Emeraldella, Leancholia
Wiwaxia
Anomalocaris
& who better to tell our story
than another worm with legs ~
Hallucigenia



David Spittle is a poet, filmmaker, and essayist. His first full collection, All Particles and Waves, was published by Black Herald Press (2020), following the pamphlet B O X (HVTN, 2018). For the last decade, he has been running a series of interviews with poets on film and filmmakers on poetry; it has now been published as a book, Light Glyphs (Broken Sleep, 2020).
Spittle’s first short film, Light Noise, was funded and broadcast by the BBC – now available to watch on iPlayer. The following year, he was commissioned to make an experimental documentary by the Austrian Cultural Forum on poetry in the pandemic, Where Is Everyone Austria. He has also written three operas and, in 2014, was commissioned by Bergen National Opera to write a song-cycle which has since been performed internationally. Spittle holds a Literature PhD on the poetry of John Ashbery and Surrealism. He continues independent research across Poetry, Film, and Noise. dspittle.com