ALL THE WARNINGS

Tags

Britain, Earl of Oxford, Humanity, identity, King Crimson, philosophical, poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, Prince, Reader, Shakespeare. Sir Thomas More, slavery, United States, wordplay, writing

ALL THE WARNINGS

All the warning signs were there
as my eye caught sight
of Lord Oxo, chatting amiably
with Sir Thomas, Lear, Prince and King Crimson

there where the Avon
becomes the Mersey
flows into the Thames
flows into
the Tiber, the Hudson
and the Ganges

sitars appeared, struck up a duel/duet
with lutes and zithers

music that could not drown out
the cries of suffering from the bowels of ships
heading for a new world, where the
dream is one of a power that can
green-transform everything

and there
engraved in stone, another
false monument, this to
no mere actor-dramatist, but
to the principles of humanity that
embody in
eagle-feathered, golden perfection
the great holy light of our human enlightenment

but
by a backdoor, by that same tawdry sea-city
the beauty of another music now returns
and
our Lord’s scenes, scripted and acted
are framed in such a way
that the metaphors of
our being are
rendered literal

Sir Thomas with a word or two about Plato,
Papacy, and the nature of the ideal State.

Under the spotlight for his soliloquy. Easier
to listen, easier to read
than author or reader
forced to follow from the heart of the flames.

SIDETRACKED

Tags

Africa, Cat, philosophical, poem, poetry

SIDETRACKED

nothing gets sidetracked
like a cat

can see it live when
the pupils get dilated
eclipse the irises like
dark moons

sometimes
I must be cat
(sans fur species, tailless
two-legged variety)

because I get
so sidetracked
my world
pushed to the side
like a typewriter carriage reaching
the end of its line

and how sidetracked I must be
to have ended up in Africa right
on the Ramatlabama border
father
to Bengals
lover of a woman
whose name I mispronounce

spots before my eyes as my tiny big cats
leopard (and cheetah) spot past me

need
to get this sidetrack thing down pat
go off
the rails in this strange, accommodating space
ever so gracefully

RETURN

Tags

Britain, British, Consciousness, death, Eat Coker, Ending, Heaven, Humanity, identity, Life, Liverpool, meaning, Metaphor, metapoetic, philosophical, poem, poetry, Reader, river, River Mersey, River Tame, spiritual, THE BEATLES, time, TS Eliot, Universe, Water, William Wordsworth, wordplay, writing

RETURN

a command came
from the brown god

which left me
under no illusions

and there I was writing
deep into the night
through sleep
through dream
following that river
my river

as we made
our course
to the sea.

****
Oh, the disregarded
divinity
of this labour
words are
cheap
are below
us
I hear you say

in the voice
your words commandeer for you

****

river of life
what songs
do you
have for me?

what songs from
my childhood
for I was born
beside a tiny river
a trickle of
a tributary
that
on its way
to the ocean went
Strawberry Field, became
full Sergeant Pepper

not that
those that bore me
much cared, knew at all

and last night I dreamt myself
crossing this river in your victorious city
finding my
way

finding my way
and now everything
that I write
you must view
through this prism

must write what I wrote
through this prism

river of life

celestial city
surreal little lanes and streets
of which your
four troubadours sing

****
deep
into the night

how deep
your inquire
and
what the depth
of this river?

really, such questions, interrogations
that I should be forced to
made to answer

for I know not of depth
beyond absolute abyss, the rest
relatively speaking
I only know flow
this
a poem of rivers

river of
my birth
river of my dream, my death,
rivers to which
I will always return

as the poet in the ninth prelude
speaking of
waters doubling back
finding ways
back to memory

I will just shrug and
smile

be your village idiot
not spiritual professor

(for what did we learn
not under
revision
in eternal state of advisement?)

as the night
gathers shape

and the fire of the spirit boils
the water of the soul

and the air
lifts up rain
caressing that surface

and the earth will wait
as the earth is wont

the earth has me booked
and placed
will find space
for my body

and the poem
being done

what left for its fate
but to fold into
ship shape

return
to the brown god (damyatta da)
give
back to
that source
set adrift on those flowing
never ending waters

GARDEN

Tags

bower, envy, Garden, poem, poet laureate, poetry, rivalry, satire, writing

GARDEN

I dug a
garden for
you that

you may well consider
enclosing adjacent land
extending into
full-blown bower

all the better
to poet-laureate yourself
around with your dinky rhymes
jiveless chimes

the lines so
neat and
faultlessly
circumstantial.

DAVID

Tags

identity, King David, poem, poem poetry political moral, Poet, poetry, poets, spiritual, writing

DAVID

what am I?

it does not make any sense to say
“man filled with the spirit”

for if possible to fill
then technically, also, half-full,
needing a top up
and running on empty

similarly, makes no sense
to say, man
delivering poetry

for how, where, deliver?
to whom, by
what means, through
what agency

killing the word itself all
such questions of logistics

and yet with some poems (not
this one, not
this one) there is

a kind of a glow
a lighter-than-air sense of achievement
of belonging, however tenuously to
that great, great tribe
who trace their origin and
path to God through
the shepherd David

PALACE OF SLEEP

Tags

afterlife, Creation, Creativity, death, Dream, Keats, Poe, poem, Poet, poetry, Rebirth, writing

take me to the Palace of Sleep
where the air is hashish-heavy
as thick with dark autumnal cloud
as anything written
by Poe or Keats

sky dragging itself across
as if stuck somewhere
and out to test the winds

but let me
sink into that darkness
night so perfect, it is the null equation,

there
where words are absorbed, lines, phrases
disintegrate, are so carefully dismantled
scattered like leaves
on a river, like momentary
phosphorescence on the ocean

no dream here, at least
none that
is remembered,
only the blending of
currents, change,
reconfiguration

she said that I reminded her of Keats once
this before she got married
but after we
were lovers

perfect sleep in her arms then
no thought of
darkness, any kind of
renewal, rebirth, re-
definition of self

as figure who writes
not figure who loves

the gates to every Palace
secretly open
unbeknownst to me
at that
most lost of lost moments

SHOW ME

Tags

poem, poetry

SHOW ME

let me out
show me
the door

or better,
draw me a window
where I can see
all those things that poems
are supposed to
be full of

Nature like a garden
a garden like Nature

streams whose murmuring
remind you this house
you have entered is
pure sound has
been constructed
out of words,
beautiful
words

a synonym for
these strange,
cryptic squiggles

PASTORAL

I have
a flair
for interior
design (née
decorating)

look — we put
a lake
here, a
few trees there

now you
are already thinking
pastoral. Half
way to
utopia.