AH YES

Tags

Metaphor, poem, poetry, Rimbaud, synesthesia, wordplay

AH, YES

Ah, yes, Rimbaud
synesthesia
can be
a bitch

I watch you sinking
absinthe after absinthe
coupling that yellow-green taste
to the smell of
the anise
sound of
that unreal colour

as it
circulates, investigates
does
its delicious damage

helping to couple tastes, colours, smells,
sounds
kinesthetic feelings of
movement
(real
or imagined)

and me
in the meanwhile
I am ducking
blue

praying for yellow
that sublime sunshine babbling
banana yellow
whose vowel
sound could
not be more open
more full
throated

like the pleasure taken in
your body’s willing warm reception
as opposed to its
austere
spiritual
rejection

for which we need
cold palette (for your
palate) of
high-
frequency, short-
wave of
astral azure, indigo, cerulean
every shade of sky
and sea
that comes
in
true (and
sometimes deathly) blue

ESCAPE

Tags

poem, poetry, poem poetry political moral, spiritual, poverty, Humanity, Fall

ESCAPE

I wandered down
towards the station
to test my loneliness
and get a glimpse
on unfiltered humanity

so much sad, hard truth
to encounter there, and
if you
feel yourself
coming over all
philosophical or theological,

questions to ask
that may not
have easy answers
or answers at all

the Catholic Bishop
in the You Tube videos
will speak, I’m sure, of
Grace, God’s Mysteriousness,
and the Sin
of the Fall

but if stopped you suddenly, brother, sister
and harassed you spiritually
over your sense of this conviction

I’m sure you will ask me “what fall’,
knowing every scar that happened
every inadvertent skin-scraping

know that this
fuckedupness of life (to
coin a term) is
a horrible injustice, an affliction

for which
you bear you blame, no causality
responsibility

carry on
about your business

moving away from me
in the opposite direction, wondering
at what nonsense I am
up to, what a fool,
man with too much time
on his hands, should
leave people alone, not
be interfering

and yet — and do not deny that flicker
in your eyes — in you I saw it
in all
of us
I see it

the vaguest dream of a thought that
at the heart of this pain
hope of escape

EXTREME

Tags

conflict, division, Humanity, identity, poem, poetry

EXTREME

woke up
feeling extreme

that the whole of my body
had been divided into two

or
maybe four

East, West,
North, South

someone had
demarcated into quadrants
mapped everything

made the lines
so clear
what were lines
turned into
borders

to cross those
borders no
longer possible at all

and there I lay
divided, subdivided,
each part of me
speaking different
languages

the whole of my body
getting ready for war

COLD TURKEY

Tags

drug, infatuation, love, poem, poetry

COLD TURKEY

hate the very thought
of going cold turkey

deleting all my links
refusing all your calls

no longer letting you
inspire the worst inclinations
of my erotic
imagination
(how negatively,
censoriously,
the world would react
to the
unbelievable
reality!)

hate the very thought
of losing the
intoxication of
your voice

seeing you
at a distance

knowing how
hopeless my addiction

how truly
terrible
the cure

OR SIMPLY BUY

Tags

poem, poetry, Shakespeare, Value and meaning, writing

OR SIMPLY BUY

stop those digital clocks
light
a candle

for Shakespeare is writing
Shakespeare is writing

steaming ahead
syllable by syllable

you can hear him hammering
out blank verse, quatrains, rhyming couplets

the product so polished
if it was worth
hard cash you
might
invest
or simply buy
(per word, per line
not sure what
the going rate is for
stuff
unrecognized as yet)

INDIAN OCEAN RAIN

Tags

Durban, Innocence, love, Mahikeng, poem, poetry, Sensual, South African, The Fall, The Garden of Eden

INDIAN OCEAN RAIN

they tell me it’s raining
in Mahikeng

the town has become
Venice of the semi-desert

the roads torn up by
the minor flood
but soon
the dust will swallow
it always does

whilst you and I
are here in Durban
standing illicit in
this very different rain

a summer deluge soaks us
and so no
choice but to
resort to skin

perhaps more than
just our bodies, perhaps
our souls washed by
that warm Indian
ocean rain

and he we are
almost like Adam and Eve
in Eden celebrating
their first rain storm

the lightning from
sky to ground
that just
an icon
of the lightning between them

the raw electricity that courses
through them
manifestation
of an innocence now
beyond our conception

so badly, in that great mythology,
did we fall

so completely lost the memory
of those wilder, instinctive pleasures

which we, in our sublime ignorance,
assure each other that
we cannot but feel

TAMAHAGANE

Tags

afterlife, Japan, katana, Oda Nobunaga, poem, poetry, reincarnation. spiritual, samurai

TAMAHAGANE

I do not think
Lord Oda sleeps
nor or
all this time

something tells me
his consciousness
searches for the truth
about itself

the life that took itself
(seppuku, the perfect death
intensity of pain
hereby alone
erasing shame)

in a sacred place your great sword waits
as that
perfect blade

nothing aging
that
deathly slowly

Oh victor of Nagashino, forgotten
how it was
when you led
armies
in the field

composed poems, loved,
forged a nation
under one rule

that great power, that fire,
never could that

be
lost

ultimately lost

GIST

Tags

balance, binary, Chaos, good v evil, katana, poem, poetry, power, Reader, samurai, Sexual, woman

GIST

I came
to midnight in
you

under satin sheets
black and stupendous

outside demons and samurai
were locked in battle
never – ending conflict
between
chaos and
control

neverending, where the
best victory to be hoped for
being
temporary balance

and under those sheets
much intricate balance
cut and thrust
too

but not
claw versus katana
fang versus naginata

which I presume
you have gathered
having caught
the gist of
what this
poem is about

AS THE STUFF OF LIFE ITSELF

Tags

Life, poem, poetry, Sexual, spiritual, writing

AS THE STUFF
OF LIFE ITSELF

we went to
Church together
did the spiritual thing

came home
ate fish
and chips

made love
discussed her poem
how the metaphors
weren’t quite
working

as good
as the stuff
of life itself

PREDATOR

Tags

human, Humanity, Nature, panther, poem, poetry, predator, Reader, shark, Snake

PREDATOR

water streaming through my gills
bringing the life-giving oxygen

I power my way forward
body so streamlined it is pure vector

dorsal, pelvic, pectoral
gigantic fins to stabilize
as I torpedo towards you
through the water
you being human
this being
no fair fight, supreme
mismatch

Oh yes, when I die
let me reborn in some
size or shape of deadly predator

hunting you down hopeless, hapless human
locked onto the smell of your blood

yes black as night and cruelly beautiful
my eyes blaze like emeralds
lit from within
my claws to catch and hold, dagger
canines to do the coup
de gras with

or slither like lightning turned into muscle
each drop of my venom there, in theory,
to wipe out an army

more than enough
to deal with you

who so
foolishly, artlessly,
entered into my target territory
whose heart
I have on heat desk

my speed
coiled up for
all such

devastating encounters

and yet
in your eyes I see recognition
absurd realization you
know me from somewhere

but I have have long forgotten you
reader, or the
wish beautifully realized

expressed
in this poem

having forgotten what it is like
to have been
human

my poetry now a matter of
rhythm and execution;
timing and kill