WHILST I STILL HAVE LEFT

Tags

Blood, Chess, death, poem, poetry, struggle, writing

WHILST I STILL
HAVE LEFT

writing to
defeat poverty,
forestall death

trying to
beat a Russian
at chess:
Sicilian Defence

the blood in my
veins not
turned to
dust
yet

still good
O neg
might as
well grab
yourself
a pint
whilst I
still
have left

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POETRY AS COMMUNITY OF PROPERTY

Tags

marriage, poem, poetry, writing

POETRY AS
COMMUNITY
OF PROPERTY

poetry is
hard
so hard

like seducing an
alligator
or a
dragon

not so much
in regard to
the sex
the carnal passion

but the settling down
finding a
house
furniture

antinuptial contract,
community of property

TO LIGHTEN THESE BONES

Tags

death, Ending, female, loss, love, poem, poetry, Reader, Twist in the tail

TO LIGHTEN
THESE BONES

do not let him
sully you with
his tragic tale

the same one he
tells everyone, the
very one he
forced upon me

against my
better judgement:
would that he
had emailed it
to me or
linked me
to the post
on social media

for truth be told
I do not do it well
that most painful
of sub-genres,
tragic love
story,

once told that story,
insidious as a poem,
threatens to
never leave

will hollow out
your skull like
a bleak crypt

same space that hitherto
had served as chapel
of blessed marriage,
angels singing, whole
eternal until death
cast asunder glorious
moment, supreme jamboree

but now we
know how
false, how fake,
how ecstasy, delirium
stripped away
attention to detail

those telling details, demon
small-printed
her words
her vows

what sense
do they make now?

if only perhaps God
had changed the camera angle
changed the lighting

that tale
of despair
heard once

is too often
is stuck with me
forever

and then stark and stunning reminder
there is no redemption — there are
no creatures
to bless and then the
albatross curse falls
slips overboard

like an
evil lover
a life-
in-death lover
suddenly
called out
suddenly discovered

Oh this tale that has become so close, so real

his truth now
my truth

his loss
my wandering

his mirrored face so
full of my emptiness

perhaps
I am become
both tale of woe and of warning, corpse and groom
Janus-faced looking forward and backwards
at the very same moment

see the moral, see the meaning, get in close
so you might read the stone

which will teach a lesson, love’s
hardest, unkindest

no love, never love,
but at least peace to
lighten these bones

CHESS WITH NEMO

Tags

Captain NEMO, Chess, Colonialism, Jules Verne, loss love, male, poem, poetry, power, Race

CHESS WITH NEMO

I should play more chess
now that love has discarded me
despite the devotion, despite
the poetry
despite the gratefulness of she
whose body suddenly became
one with
the cosmos, one with the ocean

but this dolphin time has ended, I no longer
taste the salt of the sea

no longer find those coves, those
deep underwater canyons

so when
Nemo’s men drag me aboard
and he dives to great depth
perhaps we can play
on the great table in
the Nautilus huge
study-come-observation-chamber

he
conceding me the first move

when I would have preferred
the mystery of the black pieces

and so, we shall see,
whether we go classical, open-lines,
or something more
modern, diabolically defensive with
vicious scope for
counterattacking

we play, already so many
possible permutations, early
patterns emerging

we speak of our wives sharing
those tragic tales, though
the nature of
the loss so absolutely different

outside, through the great eye of the porthole
I see that the sea has
suddenly been lit by huge bioluminescence

for me (perhaps for him too) via
synesthesia, a moment of recall
and perhaps revelation

the smell of her perfume interfused with
that of our bodies

rhythm of Nature, rhythm of
iron
industrial machine to
hammer out our pleasure

but then
we drift

and where to as paradigm and
inescapable metaphor

except the sea, except the sea

and here
we are our minds tested to the ultimate
by things that move in ways linear
up/down ranks and
files and

(of course) deadly diagonals

at the heart of the game, avatar of
every choice that will lead
to conquest, supremacy, mastery

the white
and black queens, executors-in-chief of
their contending regimes

BLISS

Percy Shelley
is waiting
on an
alien shore

for his robot wife
and robot baby

she returned to Earth
to do research
for her robot novel

when they
are all together once more
as it was always
meant to be

it will
be bliss.

NEVER DREAMT

no more
chaos from you
Mr Butterfly

on this
day of liberation
she has you
me
pinned, penned

your only flights
flights of metaphor
if you
had time to think,
space to move

battering your cage
your nose
pressed up
against the glass
she
has zoo-reptiled you

like those unfortunate creatures
plucked from tropical lands
you saw
enclosed, withheld,
contained in
a cubicle with a view

which, tragically, comically,
as a child you never dreamt…

MODIEGI MCCALL

how did my humanity
get so bleached?

when my wife
last put it through the wash
she used tropical
fabric-softener

those deft fingers digging in
yet not added much to
my melanin

JOINTLY FLAVOURED

LET ME NOT TO THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS ADMIT DECONSTRUCTION