Revelation
Look at how the eyes melt,
Not straining to make edges out of invisible wholes,
Maintaining a woozy unity,
Like the flush flush of a frosty sea.
Beneath tongue-head orange lobes,
Bubble bold blasts of static,
My home is not apartness,
"Me and You, You and Me".
Look at how the eyes melt,
Surfaces shimmer refracting curves reach out,
Is this light which shrouds the darkness,
Hidden for all to see?
Morning tide fetches the dreamers and sleepers,
Carried by a rushing wave;
Leave me in that twilight realm,
Waiting, waiting...
Out of the Dark
Out of the dark, indistinct murk,
A figure who, in one instance,
Recalls to mind
An image
Of unchanging natural beauty.
Turning a corner and taking leave,
The unbidden aura of your presence
Can yet not undermine the poem nor
The image
I treasure of you in my mind.
The Coast
I took a bus to the coast today,
Not far along wind-beaten tracks,
To rest in open solitude,
Where free expanse affords welcome vision.
Where the horizon beckons like a homeless god,
And the breeze buffets the snaking sand,
And the memories that spring from silence
Lie expectant in my eye.
Clicketty-clack, clicketty-clack,
We move forward, or so it seems,
A gently thrumming, swollen engine,
Affords rhythmic ballast to a restless mind.
And through the crash the breaking waves
Usurp a barren winter sky,
Like so much loose ephemera,
Enticed much like the humble bee.
And when I brush my fingertips
Along coarse-grained, riven sand,
It reminds me of your missing touch,
Of vanished fragments in times just past.
Approaching the shoreline on tracks
Which closely hug the twice-stripped coast,
A beach is the edge of this world,
As much as the time we were together.
An address to another,
One not yet, long ago, over.
An address to another,
Is a figment of a lover.
I think of you everyday,
In much the same deathly way.
Control
One way of holding you
Is to stand in this narrow space
While street lights flicker in
Concave window frames
Against the night sky.
One way of holding you
Is to feel the solid embrace
Of cold, hard marble which
Yields nothing to the gentle
Drops of water trickling by.
One way of holding you
Is to cast desperate glances at
Strangers who merge on
Footpaths with speeding automobiles
And splashing scuttling tires.
One way of holding you
Is to observe your reflection
In the shop-front window display combine
With lifeless mannequins as
You run into the road to die.
If I held on too hard
You told me my wish to see
These paving stones assume
Grid-like symmetry was
A hopeless human cry.
I am that man, old and worn,
Who wanders this street at night,
Gripping with vain hope the
Uneasy fissures in my coat,
And counting the steps I’ve taken
To commit this dreadful crime.
Shades of Red
I could go wandering to catch the shade,
To clutch it, clasp it, and carry it away,
To watch it flicker in ever new array,
Or let it slope off vales that nature made.
I could hold this light and watch it blaze,
Follow the shadows as they burn all day,
Dance in patterns as the sun decays,
Or wait in hope amid the gentle haze.
These shades of red exist to be contained,
In poetry and words, memory and paint,
But nothing can capture your resplendent state.
Those auburn tresses have always remained
A secret so beautiful they blossom again,
For all that you are, I learnt to speak too late.
Experience
Believe me, that morning, or afternoon,
I’ll never forget
Was unanticipated and
Shook the two of us
Like some hard jolt from
Our daily rhythm.
Days would disappear in the
Long ensuing swell -
Call it what you will -
And often we would forget
What each day meant
Before it was too late.
I let the strangeness filter
Away in routine measures and
Familiar doubts and saw you
Pass over me in longing and
Shame and
Loneliness.
Let me live again with you
Through that thoughtless
Embrace and demonstrate
The ecstasy, torment,
And bitter fear of
Experience we’ll never share again.
The Grid
Desperately raking, frantically making,
Critically collating, the time.
Endlessly grouping, tirelessly reducing,
Minutely manoeuvring, the sign.
Successfully ordering, forlornly sorting,
Brutishly bracketing, the cry.
Carelessly categorizing, spuriously selecting,
Torturously tidying, this lie.
The Guilty
The guilty man is locked up.
Imprisoned inside violent cells
The waste and squalor
Of battened hatches
And deceitful, broken looks.
He looks on in regret,
For actions sorely misspent
And time inside
Where no hope
Becomes him, for none is his.
My guilty man is made to check his
Every action, and reflection,
For the time is his and dictated
From without, he never
Moves in truthful ways
Nor freedom has.
Jealousy
Jealousy, that clasps and keeps her even from yourself,
Hold, hold, what duties have you before all who love?
Closer
So cold, beating bitterly against
The wall, shivering as you do.
You beat me as hard now,
Wandering through the house,
The bed is empty
And so cold.
Lost before the morning,
With quarrel and burning
Lights aglow.
Hurting your cry,
So crushed and broken,
Lost before.
Your face in the night,
Bright, expectant flight,
Rushing out for you
To pick apart the lengths,
So long to see
Your pretty face.
Welcome at the door,
Come with nothing but hope,
Your arms and
Bed, resting for hours
Turning to face you and staying and
Staying forever welcome.
The first blessed time,
Brought to my knees,
Star-crossed glimpse across
An ancient sky.
Together in laughter
A hand to hold, the first time.
Closer, closer,
Always getting closer.
Closer, closer,
Promise me it’s closer.
Closer, closer,
For years and years,
Closer.
Saturday 3 April 2010
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
