Camera,
transport my bones
to the breakfast tables of the world.
My legs, arms, ribs
without muscle:
beside the cereal bowls:
Let your readers
salve themselves
with the rawness of their reactions,
. And, with the turning of the page,
have the bones
returned to my private ownership.
sunlight shroud on the street,
slump of old houses,
nothing stirring.
A face in a window
like a saucer in darkness
looking out on nothing
but the years unturned.
The enamel white moon made a ladle on the water;
Li Po, a tick full of wine with a romantic heart,
rowed his boat up the long handle towards the bowl.
It was a gentle night, the air warm and all was still;
he, with fondest memories of all his lovers, sat
awhile, allowing himself to be enthralled by this beauty
and became ecstatic; alone with the universe, colossal
therefore, and filled with the dream of love, he fell
into the water with arms wide to embrace the moon.
It was sudden, chill and lightless;
deceived by love, he fell past euphoria
into the dank cavern that is the final knowing,
while up above the moon continued to beguile
all the wine-drinkers with love in their hearts,
all those who would drink their dreams into reality.
It’s past my bedtime, the sky’s a screen and Laurence Olivier is fleeing
through a forest, dark branches clutching, clawing at him;
a gothic tale, a black and white drama.
Running onward, not towards, but away from somewhere, someone,
something, the story I haven’t seen;
before him the story still to be told.
I am at my window, the land I know is gone;
I am alone beneath the expanse of the Heaven's adventure;
I watch it, take it to my bed, trust tomorrow my country will return.
Another cancer-ridden lung;
its blackening tissue,
from the air,
ugly as any tumour,
as aggressive a cancer
as would cause any patient
to stop.
The blank, white page;
I stare at it like it's a snow-filled field,
catch sight of you at a side window;
note you do not wave.
But, seeing the exotic landscape behind you,
a Leonardo backdrop,
I decide, bird of paradise, to fly there,
flare among the branches.
Vacuous occupation, the page declares;
look here, here is reflection.
