ONCE UPON A TIME

Tags

connection, death, Life, linear, non-linear, poem, poetry, time

ONCE UPON A TIME

endings
proclaim the rule
of the linear
I’m afraid

and yet
step back
see
how we have come
full circle, full circle

I was riffing on love and
you thought it death
I was riffing on death
and you named me a lover

Oh that cheap, pop-Freud
how convenient a crutch
stick with
which to understand
the Sphinx’s riddle

your Queenly egg of self-satisfaction cracking
telling yourself
this is where it ends
or could be
where it begins

sucker for redemption, for fresh beginnings
that’s a lip gloss that will always give
feel free
to send me to my grave
covered in that impression

ending
for the both of us, twinning
us from birth
better
than expected

GIFT

Tags

death, Life, love, poem, poetry, satire, Truth

GIFT

the only
share

is
price

the only
exchange
nuclear

the only
gift
the curse
of
prophecy

where you saw
love and life
their
truth
so
sorely relativized

and our
joy
become
our death

SUNDAY MORNING POEM

Tags

Creation, Humanity, identity, poem, poetry, Universe

SUNDAY MORNING POEM

walked around the house
early Sunday, just after seven

in direction clockwise, not wanting
to stir up anything

thinking about and then kinda looking
for the order of things (as in the verse
of golden age Latin poets, and
Greek pre-Socratics

knowing that
in terms of the logic of mythology
a calculation error already:
day of the Sun not an
afterthought
but absolute point
of beginning

wondering
in this time of social chaos, quantum
uncertainties
would any such writing
still
be possible

maybe chaos
is the principle for
a whole new politics, whole
new aesthetic

how would we fly
without the craziness of
turbulence
being just one
example
before any metaphoric
leap of faith
into the unstable, into radically
dynamic systems
things so
open-ended yet
absolutely in thrall
of initial conditions

this I
debated with myself
in a species of inner dialogue

until
it was time that flew by
Sun had sunk west
on its way around the sky
soon
to kiss
its name day goodbye
batter at
Monday’s
Industrious door

OUT OF HOUSE AND HOME

Tags

absurd, Change, Life, poem, poetry, postmodern

OUT OF HOUSE AND HOME

I ticked the box
the box ticked back
or it went
and unticked itself
then answered back

already close to
dawn so
the light filtering in

so cold in the bed
the sheets and blankets everywhere
no one
to tuck me in

no one to
bring me breakfast
sing me a
dawn song

just somebody’s cats
sharpening their claws
they
must have eaten
the two cute kittens I got

eat me
out of house and home

EVAPORATE

Tags

loss, love, poem, poetry

EVAPORATE

in the absolute absence of love
let me evaporate

when you next call
(if you ever call)
there will be
no breath
just vapour and
steam

or perhaps plasma
if the warmth I felt for you
residue of that period of
intensity
searing, blow-torch desire

turn
incandescent, go supernova like
exploding star

and that
if you had loved me
would have been
the perpetual expression
of my desire

TOMB

Tags

Birth, death, Life, poem, Poet, poetry, Reader, transformation

TOMB

poem
is tomb

poem
is womb

he’s gone
who wrote this
felt
born
to write this

and by gone
you know I mean
really
dead and buried

yet
as I said earlier
poem is
also a
womb
(repeating
myself here
in case
you didn’t hear me
in case
some problem
with my voice
my strange mixture
of Northern British
and South African
accent
and as
a consequence
the words
failed to register)

as womb
there is life
to be found in
the dust and the death
of all that
is here written

stuff to
being into
the light
(strange is it not
that you
here to
birth it?)

CAT

Tags

Cat, liberation, Light, poem, poetry, wordplay

CAT

Cat ate
my homework

ate my
birth certificate

and ID

ate my poetry
and my
passport

my wedding
and baby pictures

my pension
and Ph D

cat ate
my insurance policies
that had me
covered
against these
eventualities

thought cat
would now
eat me

but cat
was cool

cat
was fine

cat led
me out
into the light
which I saw
for the first time.

HEARTBEAT

Tags

Humanity, Light, love, pain, poem, poetry, religious, Sacrifice, spiritual

HEARTBEAT

it is a
terrible
terrible price
to pay

shining like
a light
but one
no one
sees

a terrible
terrible
price

but I
would pay
it in a
heartbeat

but no one
asked, you see

THE STARS

Tags

Cosmology, Humanity, meaning, philosophical, poem, poetry, Stars, theology

THE STARS

always the same paranoia
that the sky might fall

humanity
screams so loud
the Universe shatters
like fine porcelain

so
I
look to the stars
to see
what I can see

see that some vaulted
as if in imitation
of some cathedral

observe them twinkle
hard to believe there
is not a message
there
or something

hard to believe
they should be objects
of such fear.

****
so you
listened to the stars

and yet
heard nothing

nothing and yet
I see from
these images how
your imagination
went wildfire

summoned objects of
deep familiarity and
yet such strangeness
out of that
vestry, that repertoire

images to
terrify
the mind
delight the very soul

turn us
upside down
inside out
stretch us to
the limits of
faith and belief

****
she told me
she reached out
touched a star once

did not grasp it, grab it
pull it down

nothing so
Faustian in any
bargain with that power

I touched her
looking for
the star inside her

asked her
if love
and desire were
things cosmic
and if cosmic
then pre-determined
perfectly symmetrical

told her
I had once deeply loved
a creature unsymmetrical
her eyes
slightly at odds
but her breasts
perfect
more perfect breasts
in the galaxy could
not possibility exist

she told me
my mind
worked like
that of Aquinas
but in the crassest
way possible

so I think
of what she said
am
haunted by
what she said

cannot sleep
can only think

feel
totally eclipsed

****

make way
for the stars

make way
make way

we read them
heard the sad tale
of their
final demise

and with it
our departure too

once they were
pure thought, abstract conception
in medieval scholasticism
just a
governing principle
a point of origin

and now
in quantum cosmology
how so
absolutely different

whose children
born of you
creatures of your furnace fire
subject to your great gravity
possessed of
your will, your dream, your
imagination

born to
in our own teeny-tiny
explosive biological moment

have not
heard the best

or worst

in what
you say, have said
still have
yet to say

DAWN IS MY RISING

Tags

Birth, poem, poetry, rising sign

DAWN IS
MY RISING

the dawn is
my lover

my midwife
my Muse

the light arriving
like it did
the moment
I was born

when
I woke

rose
to meet
the Sun
on the horizon

as now I
rise
to
meet you