ARCHITECTS

the architects of our
future
where are they

I do not see them
creating structures in marble
that gleam glorious in
the sunshine

or gleam at all
unless you switch on your PC

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GUY IN WINGED HELMET

I offered my services
to the Universe

immediately a knock on the door
a guy with a winged helmet
sent to laugh

at the thought
that the Universe was
not
using me already.

PINK SHOES

I built a house for
her pink shoes
and stockings too
(the black ones
ripe
for peeling)

and no big bad wolf dare
sojourn here but
soon
shoes tired of waiting
those tiny feet
that danced
so well
stars at disappearing.

Message for the New Year

WATER BABY

I was never
a chimney sweep
water baby

swimming along in a
stream of tears

surfacing in a
William Blake poem
for critics
to mull over.

SHEPHERD’S DELIGHT

Someone
roughed up the cloud

or
ploughed them through

an agriculture god
with a mind
for
war

for growth
a savage propensity

(Roman Mars springs
serendipitously to mind)
leaving the sky
furrowed and
bloodied, a

gladiatorial delight.

TIME HEALS

grass grows
fast
furious

trees grow too
slow (but
so
solidly)

time heals but

that is the time
of trees
no rush
for that wound to close

ACROSS A GLOBAL STAGE

Bruno
burned because
they thought his
infinite worlds might
burn history
deny
plausibility
and yet
terrible, horrible as that
flesh-crackling fire was
it forged his name
a fate
to compare with the
unremembered Earl
whose body
unread, unviolate
peers up through
history as if
from the bed of
an ice river
watching as the ghosts of
time’s extras come and go
pass back and
forth (his
fingers one
might think even
here, even
now
itching for a quil)
this
five-act world continuing space
East to West, across
a global stage.

POEM NUMBER NINE (SAVED FROM THE WEIGHT OF RESURRECTION)

POEM NUMBER NINE (SAVED FROM
THE WEIGHT OF RESURRECTION)

 
The clock face told me
it did not have to shout
said:
 
son you have grown
almost as fat as St Thomas Aquinas.
 
for you
no speeding down the diamond
diagonals
 
outstripping the bishops a la
Giordano Bruno.
 
Forgive me father for, against my natural inclination,
having become (no doubt in
the matter)
too transcendentally fat for lateral
movement
 
fated to flounder through a world of
froth and curd and
inconsequential trifle
 
such as will never force the hand
of the supreme authority
who will never have an issue to
take up with me.
 
Generalize this
and the future is clear
 
the clocks all jam with the
flavours of inertia
 
stuck at that
perpetual highpoint of the
status quo
 
and industry as usual for
unholy entireties
of eternity upon eternity.
 
Starvation now would be
my stitch in time, taking my cue from
the unfed millions

my stitch in time
saving nine
 
however you look at it
the resurrection number.

DODDERING

Here you see me
doddering across the stage
forgetting my lines
making wrong word
choices
like a moment ago
when I said “stage”
not “page”

always confounding me
on a dark stage, in the spotlight,
this thing metaphor.