QUITE

Tags

poem, poetry

QUITE

“I haven’t quite let him die.”
Charles Bukowski “Bluebird”

sometimes the light is so sharp
you can run your finger along the edge

I have longed for that light
across my wrist, testing my jugular

sometimes I fear poetry
is just a synonym for emptiness

maybe it
was always so

Shakespeare staring at a blank page
and then that sharp light in
a mirror, in a prism

we watch
still mesmerized, will never
forget those words

Shakespeare now the three-legged
creature in the Sphinx’s riddle
walking across
the barren, empty stage
in the wings

a crown, a lute, a sword:
some old props inadvertently left lying

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DESCANT

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

DESCANT

Shakespeare wrote
a play but
the actors didn’t
pitch
citing deconstructive
thinking and
creative differences

and the stage disappeared
as if Prosperous had undone it
— was needed
for commercial development
(new law
of enclosure meaning
no more public spaces)

oh the clouds streaming freely but
then buffeted this way
and that
not a star to speak out
(what can
compete with neon)

once these words
looked not
high-and-
mighty, just
so right — and fine

don’t need to be
a figure looming towards fate
of MacBeth to
descant on the
emptiness of time.

RENAISSANCE MAN

Tags

female, poem, poetry, sexual symbolism, Universe

RENAISSANCE MAN
“Deserts of vast eternity.”
Andrew Marvell

counter-intuitive it may be
but when I walk down
the road after
hearing your voice
I feel the cosmic
pull of gravity
sense the degree to which
time is stretched and compressed
according to
relativity
and therewith every
rhythm in my body, every
beat in my heart

you
are dark as the night
the stars are set in

and so many
stars, huge
blue-white stars

and pink ones, our colour,
our sensual, together colour
greater than
the Sun, our little
almost-forgettable Sun
for brightness
and for overwhelming size

in this Universe where
our connection began
eyes, mouths first and
then
every molecule

the sonnets for her
pouring out my pen
(us just
your average run-of
-the-mill dark lady

and her
a little less than word-
worthy
Renaissance man)

COBBLED TOGETHER

COBBLED TOGETHER
“But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.” Hamlet

I’m the poor poet
who cobbled this together,
Lear-like, out on
the blasted heath
no
dutiful Fool to counsel me
in respect of
fatal choices

just the usual bunch of
nouveau superiors to
scuttle past on
their way to the city

taking pains, making
every effort to
look down their noses at me.

NO MR SHAKESPEARE

NO MR SHAKESPEARE

Yes, I am writing this
not a Kit Marlowe or
one-and-only Mr BilI Shakespeare

the wards flow
from my digital pen
inspired by…
well, I think
you know who
you are

captured here via your
impact on me (happy, benlgn,
brutally transformative)
not as self
delved into

forced to walk some boards
pretend to the Globe
speak the pentameter, divulge as soliloquy

Sent from Samsung tablet

THEIR WORD

we have to
take their word
for it

this Big Bang thing
cosmic inflation, Universe expanding

too much insight
here could
drive you mad

since where
matter and energy supposedly came from
a question that
does not make sense so
better off
not asking

the laws of physics at that point
just a bare suggestion,
tentative hypothesis

and then the
consciousness we are
not supposed to have
no reason for it, flimsiest
rationale

but what if the Universe is
a bit more mindful than
we give it credit for

right now, as wave fronts merge
and patterns are interfering

Hamlet on the
battlements thinking
just my luck to be
dragged into a tragedy
by a ghost

and this ghost being of
my father, man
who neglected me

the stars look like shards
fragments of
a primal mirror
so no
complete picture

waves crashing below, as they
will for a literary eternity at Elsinore

how he would love, how we
would love (since
he speaks so much
for us)

to slip into a pool
of blue luminescence

who cares
whether it be a boundless ocean
or barely a pond?

SONNET

I wrote you
a
sonnet
which was
short of
fourteen lines
didn’t
rhyme

or
end
up
in bed

rhyming
like a couplet

PROSPERO IN EXILE

he purports to be
Prospero

but his finger
is
so
fish-bone

has
to be
a Caliban

his claims
so fishy
(has he
even
seen, been
to the ocean

danced in the sea
where all
creatures meet?)

and those grievances
he washes and
irons for us
like a redemptive
suit of
fish-scale

how deep they go
straight to the bone
were he
not already jelly
way beyond just
cartilaginous

and if
Prospero

what of those
ripples of incest in every
untoward suggestion

what tide of
Miranda lust swells slowly
there

to crash all
tsunami like
voice from
the unconscious

whenever she
as magical, intangible,
genetically engendered princess
appears on
magical reality screen

SHAKESPEAREAN LOVERS

let us be
true Shakespearean lovers

quaint quibblers
reveling in the joy
of punning banter

in the scrabble of tight foreplay
sating need

I READ SO MUCH SHAKESPEARE

I read so much Shakespeare
the rhythm did not
so much wear off on
as become me

I rode across the stage
of life with
sublime regularity
like mounted cavalry

and,
as with Shakespeare,
kept my
life off stage
or screen
for
all my
battle scenes.