He wore a robe and a smile, a jaunty man with jokes and a shiny creased face. Tea? He poured and his companions became girls. Yes, please, they said, slid the china cups closer. Then he unrolled his jokes and they giggled and fluttered and he ran a hand up the length of his tie…
Month: October 2015
Mute to the Chatter
He knew he was spoilt But there came a shadow of envy behind every gust of wind Green through their metaphors of meaningless pastures Encapsulating their distaste to his silence Brick walls of silence Travelled the road long into his forgotten past A cost that stood the defectors ignorance So simple in their eyes Would…
Land’s Lament
Scoop the soil in cupped hand and watch it fall grainy grey; bend on one knee so that the corded pants are tight at the knee, then lean in and down, to smell the soil’s goodness; close your eyes to heighten the joy of its sweetness. Sow the seed, feel the dust rise and see it…
What Is That Book About?
1. It is about the lightness and delicacy poets use to detect the real in Reality— there, while under the weight of the Rolling stones, those sponges of gravity, is the minuscule sound of the tiny grains too small to be affected by the roller smoothing crystal gravel for the seal. 2. The little book…
swing
I swing upon the hour until midnight stills the soul and I am nothing but lumpen flesh, still breathing. Morning out my window flowers bloom; but afternoon rolls so slow and I’m blown. If lucky I’m there til the evening fills me; like sea air. Turn in, nothing’s here: tread soft the wooden…
Feathered Chains
Your ankles dangle in the water held fast by the passage of time kicking hard against the ripples the future carving saintly lines Forgotten pride pulls your skin flakes off as age wears you down to drift there among them corpses the sacred deeds and the sorry drowned Weighed down by a thousand links feathered…
such words
such words some words are prayers in themselves no need of a long breath to know their song vesper evening star such words are worked in gold in grief in shadow of the fallen day in sky found of morning ocean mountain star some words we take into dreaming enfold with love’s heavy cloth…
tianjin
tianjin from the deck you saw the wild blue. knew the full wind of an open sea the city astern lying fast in the haze. saw the blue unable to rid that haze open the heart-to-shit street of days to the blown clearness above. saw a swallow hit the gusts off the waves a…
The Little Donkey
Some here cry when the donkey comes, clopping on the seal, rangy hills at his back. Each year he does this; by day he is Seamus, at bugle’s call, he is Simpson’s steed, to remember the man, the deeds. He is led by boys in khaki, over-size trousers buckling at the ankle, and he has…
disinter
I I’m sick with emptiness; excess; an ambivalence I can’t express, ever; one day some fine/blade may sever that vein/for me to tell, until then listen well if you will. II Some…nameless one remains: an inner eye; living corpse, half- hid in the undergrowth; enemy within, who knows what I think, I thought was…
(from) detachments – 1 & 2
Cut Bless my suffering cut short, shorn like lawn on long summer days. Tedious heaven. These hours of suffering are swathed by an eternity of days: was, will be. Bliss. There’s no death but how to tell it? Last night was all one to me – Whitman…
Road Trip
On days such as this the road is a black mirror, rolling out hard and long into the distance, ridges bars of bouncing light, the tyres hot, thrumming on coarse chip and the birds weaving in the high thin air against the sky; the hot air a brush on your face and teasing your thoughts…