DEAD IN THE EYE

fell
into despondency
and despair

are there no
good D-words
out there?

Tarot card
of Death looking me
dead in
the eye

IF DEATH

if death happen
to come my way
quoting Keats
or Emily Dickinson

should he not
kindly stop (stop
too kindly)
but
sail by
wildly

I shall
not cry

not a
jewel tear to
escape me

BUT WHAT IF

he wrote
snarling at
death

his words martialled together
as a poetry of resistance

but his muse spoke
softly, asked

what if
death were seduction

what if death
were to come
as a
beautiful woman

what if
I were death?

OPAQUE

OPAQUE
(for Daniel)

I will be
wearing a mask
when I give
your eulogy

every word will be
carefully chosen
for its ambiguity

and, were it not your wake,
you might flash back
to the helpless
baby, your
first child, now speaking,

wondering what made
the openness of the
helpless love
for a father

turn
in expression, so opaque.

NO WORDS

no
words for
a while

I am
bedded
down

the sky might seethe the
ice pack melts

but I shall sleep
as if through
deepest winter

IN STYLE

last day
last day

want to
take a
last deep
breath

skip the
next thousand

say goodbye
in style

THESE SPECTRAL POEMS

He died

but someone else’s ghost
got in first to complete
his poem

these spectral poems
existing in the voids, the spaces
between everything written.

ORDER OF THE DAY

deceive me outrageously
on my deathbed

bring flowers, lay me
down on
silk sheets of
many bright colours

make me think that
renewal is
the order of the day

CHIME TIME

one

gone

mortality reading
like a
Dr Seuss rhyme

where
bells

never
toll

they
chime

RORSCHACH

death is the dark ink
in which things are written

the blot that
spreads Rorschach
across the page

in which we
read what we
want to
read

see
what we don’t
want to see