Portrait

 

this way,

flesh pouring;

mouth agape,

teeth watching

there, there,

tumbling dice,

eyes unhitched,

plunging down

faster,

concaved cheeks

coil inward

to the perfect ohhhh

Explorer

 

Collecting your warmth on the palm of my hand,

explorer of exotic landscapes,

brushing over the warm skin,

the shallow arc of your back;

closed eyes; the sunlit concave of a desert dune

among the sun-warmed backs of dreams.

Our Days

 

Days: we grow into them,

eventually wear them snug;

you and I were different fits.

Days of mild disagreement

stacked one on the other

became disaffection;

passionate conflict

might have rekindled love

but ours were days of indifference;

we passed each other

without touching,

we went to sleep without a kiss.

Came a day when you said

you’d rather go out without me;

came the day when I did not care;

the day when you said

you’d rather live without me

and the day I did not care.

A Memory

 

I have a memory:

two lovers lying in a meadow,

a cosmos of May flowers;

their laughter swishing them

round and around

a bee-buzzing ecstatic day.

                            High up swallows tracing circles,

                            lavish displays

                            of their mastery of the air;

                            they watch with fingers entwined;

                            swallows too,

                            magnificent in their flying.

We don't imagine it

 

She holds her child in her hands,

barely more than a basket of bones light as twigs.

I see the anguish in her face, and try to imagine

the weight of my starving child on my hands

but cannot; I cannot bear to put my child’s face

on that emaciated body.

I will not bear her suffering, not even in imagination;

maybe that is why such horrors persist.

Quantum Exploration (as far as I can make out)

 

Each discovery opens the door

To a room more empty.

Converging to a point,

and it bugle-shaped to infinity.

Universe

 

Stars make space in my head.

Standing flying,

The universe without within;

Minute, infinite

I.

Harbour

Full sails once,

bulging with summer sunlight;

we would have gathered them in, eyes.

Geometries of whitened stone:

disused warehouses;

midday has lain down,

stretched out, listless beneath the walls.

Water that is lapping against the quay-side,

speak up;

what is the history of this place?

Entwined

 

Part river:

play of current on bronzed pebble-beds,

sweet.

Part stone:

tapping waters in the sound boxes beneath boulders,

their back-beat.

Part waterweed:

the choir’s descants ascend to high C,

the shape of it.

November Landscape

 

Sopping fields

green with water,

lush drumlins

sluicing November rain

down their soused sumps,

spewing stone-coloured cloudscapes

onto the road,

coughing up sozzled fences

from beer-brown drains

to hobble under their load of time

tunelessly

into winter’s torpor.

Escher style poem

 

Having arrived at my conclusion,

I embark upon a contemplation

of the issues.

Since there is nothing to consider,

I mull over them

and  reach the decision

that my ruminations are futile,

that I have already fixed

on a resolution

and that considerable forethought 

will be necessary 

for the solution I require.

Withering Peach

 

His face, a withering peach dried of happiness;

cares relentlessly tapping at his temples;

years spent yanking a livelihood from obstinate fields.

Still that skulking alertness, a hunger behind his eyes;

trigger-fast assessments, critical, begrudging;

observing the world with a lead-shot gaze.

The exertions of neighbours stored, bones for picking over

through interminable nights; nights that stack,

block upon block, building building hatred.

Hopelessly Adrift

 

Let’s say, I was to walk out in public bent into this shape:

it would be concluded that I was a half-wit;

from posture alone!

And let’s say my hair is unkempt and

I’m wearing a big black overcoat, hanging open;

people would cross the road.

If, on the other hand, I retrieve a kitten from the depths of the coat:

they’ll consider me harmless, away in the head,

still better avoided.

And, with all of that, if I appear to be perfectly happy in myself,

I’ll be discounted as a pitiful poor soul,

hopelessly adrift from reality.

Box

 

The house is a box.

I live in it,

like my skull,

among my things,

navigation markers

of my everyday.

Beyond the windows

chaos,

beautiful, daunting;

I gaze out,

make plans to negotiate it;

it stares back.

 

Happiness, a sudden burst

into song, driving along,

turning the radio up,

world streaming toward of you

and it’s all yours.