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AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
the cabin I once graced
now lies
at the bottom of the sea
seems it was something
of a cursed vessel
and where I am now
this semi-desert
an inland ocean once
paleontology
has determined
in the long long view
that tingle tremble
beneath your feet
may
at the end of the day
be a matter truly
tectonic
I almost drowned
on a ship
in sea water
the day before
it docked in harbour
thought I could swim
just sail majestically
across the water
me being
most water
of all the water signs
sank
like a stone, a thing
of lead
thought wrong
somehow feel that this is
not the last
episode in
an ongoing saga
me,
and the bottom of the sea
****
OTHERWISE
this flower
might well have been otherwise?
how on Earth can you not tell?
watching from the wings
I will always be there
as my snake self
coiling, uncoiling, sliding
over under
slurring those many
hissed syllables
in order to educate Eve
as to
words, possible worlds,
way
beyond her current
Scrabble set
and in one of these
an Adam without sin
who remains
eternally alone
looking everywhere for
a trace of that beauty
he has
yet not an inkling of
feeling, despite himself,
an inexplicable sense of
emptiness, incompleteness,
loneliness, loss
whereas
in all other permutations
he faces a time that
will come when all gardens
must be levelled
where
the leaves, the trees, the clouds,
the crystal streams and
mirroring waters,
the beasts and birds or the air
whose names
Adam gave
will all forget, be forgotten,
no one will remember, no
one to remember
****
PLAGUE
after years of boarding
and other water torture
he wrote his poems
to continue
the struggle
ease
his pain
avoiding
the word “raindrop”
like the plague
****
CHAIN
For you, Sir,
who have
seen been everything
and so much besides
I am here to announce
my bright design:
a
Seraph
in a clam
can
evolve to
the summit
Sirrah,
can do what it can
cutting out
the middle man
whose passes
everything up
down
down
up
in the chain
of command
****
STEAM
let’s make
fire together
in
our little boat
bottom of our boat
when
the sea rushes
in
we may drown
well drown
unless the fire
the water
go
for each other
turn us
into steam
****
COMPOSITION
pass me your pen
and I shall note down
those distances
the chalk on the blackboard
having list its imperative
the writing
on the wall changing
the moment it
gets written
the truth of relativity
not yet board-dustered off
yet already
done and dusted
and how many tiny white
flecks
look like motion-
captured stars, galaxies
in their movement?
at if
squeezing
the truth out of us,
pinching our analogies
the Universe were
writing us
writing the Universe itself
putting us
into, pulling us
out oh the picture
trying to figure out
which composition
works best
which
makes the
most sense
****
CHATTER
the forest chatters
so much
to talk about
stuff
every tree and
squirrel
needs to know
and you
keen to listen in
lacking the equipment
to tune into
those airwaves
wondering how
much you
have
missed
how key
these messages
going over
your head
(in a
manner of speaking)
****
AUTOPILOT
“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”
I was admiring a metaphor but then it sank
not in wine-dark ocean, somewhere between Charybdis and Scylla
but in turquoise sea, shallow, placid
verging on perfect island.
Earlier
the Captain himself had
put us on autopilot, too suave a narcissus
not to entirely confuse skirting sexual danger with
courting maritime disaster
and complete disaster was it too, for all the beauty of vista and shallowness of water, though not without its
comedy of cruise-control leading to full
Groucho Marx-moment of
tumble into lifeboat (what could be
more providential? did he not think, was
He not reminded of
Freud’s philosophy of the ship and
all of those jokes about being in
a boat and not finding the boatman?)
What serendipity
should we ignore, dare
we escape without
risking the Olympus (albeit these days that
Poseidon, at least has grown so tiny)?
Always the softness of the parallels
that rise to haunt us
even though
we did not see
doomed forever to fail to see them
no matter how careful
we navigate
carefully, frantically, at
full panic station scan the horizon.
****
NIMBUS
exactly what devil
in the detail?
specificity is what
seemed to be
called for here
their bodies
too much addicted
to love generalization
found themselves
mirrored
in each other
yet never
entirely dovetailed
like bold octave and
sublime sestet
in terribly dulce
juiciest
sonnet
crooning here
seems premature
so why
Oh why
throw myself into it?
here that will art/life disjunction with all its unforseen
consequences
will inevitably arise
bringing
much I would prefer
not having
to contend with
someone out there
always bee in bonnet desperate
to remind one
of how
slippy sloppy life might
well become
slipping blind
baby mice under
your front and back doors
and who can say and
is saying
now in fact
exactly
up in the high circle
Mozart Opera-ing
how when you
fall
from up there
observing Newton’s law
some kindly
sub-atomic might not
switch universes making
decisive intervention
there
from
lap of the gods
to lap of the orchestra
kindly deliver
you by parachute
recall
****
BEE DANCER
I am a bee (be
a bee)
alphabetically
entomologically
finding my
sharp little way
flower
to flower
heading home
stacked
with pollen
return
heavy with tales
exquisitely choreographed
of
how
to navigate
paint them a path
sweet
as perfume
honeyed with heart
each tiny
lemniscate
danced with
delight
danced till I drop
love
each figure of eight
****
AS IT DID UNFOLD
unfolded the Universe
as if it were
an origami
but on that paper
much
to my
surprise,
disappointed,
nothing to find
nothing
written
except the thought dawning that
all this time the
Universe
reading me
****
TETRA
they swarm like neon tetra
towards the light
or perhaps
away from it
out at six back
at seven
this is the lifestyle
that the planet
prayed for
behind
these walls, these gates
every
modern convenience
means of escape
but me
having drowned
once already
prefer the death deep
of dark indigo
down
where survival is
impossible
amongst the incredible
legions of
myth-denizens
and creatures
of infinite aptitude
biding their time
they swarm like
neon tetra, first cousins
to piranha
towards what
they believe just
has to be the light
****
ORIGAMI
haiku is a tiny
paper schooner
plodding down
a tiny stream
imagining everything
in the cosmos
to be
origami
a giant tsunami high
as a mountain
its ultimate cosmic
oceanic dream
****
REFUND
since the poetry tax
every haiku
is short a syllable
those
who never
wrote a line
queuing an eternity
waiting for
their refund
and for
those who
never learn
every epic masterpiece
of rebellion
and defiance
plunging into debt
breaking the bank
****
AH! BUTTERFLY
ah! little butterfly
fresh from your epic
of compression
and now expansion
gloriously, ridiculously transformed,
poster child for all
that less
extravagant a species
would have
never seen coming
though I do believe
wings are things
with which
I might have
been blessed before
I learnt to crawl
poems 2 die for 