WROTE YOU INTO MY LIFE

Tags

poem, poetry

WROTE YOU
INTO MY LIFE

I wrote you
into my life
thinking
of the
ending of
a Shakespearean
comedy

not the
beginning
of a tragedy

the stage
not yet littered
with enough death.

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SUCH A BEAUTIFUL CONCEIT

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry, satire, Water power astrological

SUCH A BEAUTIFUL CONCEIT

who cares about whether
it was Elizabeth or James
when Hamlet
was on stage?

ditto today
who cares about
Britain and Brexit
and all
her travails?

who cares? is there
anyone around
left to care
how so badly-led
the country just sank
and fat, greedy
corporate politicians
trod water but
then drowned?

(what were
those words in The Wasteland
T.S. Eliot said?)

deep under the lie
all the cities that died
who gives a toss
what was lost, what
little survived

we cannot imagine what
they thought, nor
should we wish to

but the words, those few
writerly words that
cut to
the core

sometimes we hear them
carried by the air, borne
by the sea
sometimes

we hear them
(or we
think we do
think we do

such a
beautiful conceit)

WITHIN

Tags

poem, poetry

WITHIN

I have a box of mirrors.
It is full
to the brim
with nothing
but images

the stuff
that Shakespeare’s
Hamlet would
have called
shadows and
ghosts

each one a
reflection of
a reflection
of something
that could not be
has never been.

And yet the
out of the box
thinking cliche

still haunts
the shapes within.

CALIBAN’S ISLAND

Tags

poem, poetry, Water power astrological

CALIBAN’S
ISLAND

as the magic disappeared
Caliban’s island
began to sink

what had been
built upon
the riches of
the world
no longer with
the power to
sustain it

but Caliban
refused to
be disheartened
downhearted as
the waters rose

thinking: with
these scales and
with these fins

I can swim and
swim and
swim

find my way to
a land of beauty
resurrect all
that was
my dream

LEAPS AND BOUNDS

Tags

poem, poetry

LEAPS AND BOUNDS

I was the man
in the wheelchair
self-
propelled machine

history had left me alone
on stage during
a history play

I was
to be a mechanical in
a life-celebrating comedy

but they
all went home
and I, well I’m
still here

watching as my skin peels off
my limbs wither, old
life is sloughed

but on the upside
my teeth remain, just (forgive
the overkill) two
twin fangs

long and hinged and
loaded with toxic venom
(my internal
chemistry as you
see, now evolving

by leaps and
Ophidian bounds

no one now
need
(or indeed
dare)
push me around

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

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

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