1, poem, poetry, – Page 20

AMEN TO THAT

the spaces
between words

letting me hedge
my bets
with you threatening
to go
full Plato
get universal with me

can’t
allow that to happen

need to scratch around here
making my own noise
doing (as they say
in sixties-speak)
my own
thing

the light fading
and light, searing light
an intimate part of
my origin story

what saved me
in saving my father’s
seed

thoughtful fireball
suddenly at the heart of two cities
obviating the tactical need
for father flyboy, Mr Grand Slam,

to drop serious deathload
on temples and those
sweet bridges you see
painted on
porcelain

maybe catch some
vengeful ferocious flak
my brother
told me
without little boy and
his fraternal thermonuclear twin
(dropped on
that most Christian of
Far Eastern Cities)

he and I might
not be having
this conversation

you and I sort of making
acquaintance

whatever that
is precursor to
(the spaces
between words
throwing
a spanner
blowing us off track)

and yet
if we are, despite appearances
to the contrary, about to meld
go full Plato
before
some altar

would smile and say
Amen to that. Amen to that.

BLINDFOLD

I understand
the logic of
blindfolds
and firing squads

but blindfolds
for academics and
all those entering
tertiary education

seems to have taken
strategies for
a dumbing-down playbook
to a whole
brave new level

way higher dimension
that anything
hitherto observed
in the corporate sphere.

TIPS

the tips
of the trees
are dancing

the clouds
above them
sublime

as they float
high above
composing, dissolving —

I feel them
pulling me
up,
towards them

here below
drinking chilled
tap water

when the vista would
seem to demand
sparkling wine

KNOWING FUĹL WELL

KNOWING FULL WELL

was writing to you
carefully

knowing full well
how the choice
of a wrong word
can devastate meaning

this even though
whatever I did
manage to write
you would most
definitely
not reply to,
perhaps, I contend,
not even read

whilst
this happening

everything went dark
not just for me
but for everybody

and therefore
my forlorn hope
for future
communication
immediately dashed,
suddenly
no longer relevant

worse still, no one
left to
help either of us
understand

no one for us
to talk to to figure
this darkness out

SENSE

you think
they are
margins

left
right
justified

they are
actually fences
actually walls

you
think
it is
editing

in effect
it is
gatekeeping

you write
what you wrote
speak
what
you said

nothing
controversial
nothing to
get upset
about

vetted
and validated
it makes
perfect sense

UNTOLD

and now
for a riddle, a parable,
a moment
of silence

this poem
cannot speak
is best left unsaid

let out
sent on its way

tracking sweeping sky to Earth
Earth to
sky parabola

from absurd truth
of particle accelerator

back and
forth
to ancient text

everything is
written the way it is

you and I
written
the way we are

when I heard
you were praying
as hard
as anyone has
prayed
for a rival’s death
celebrating every casualty
in the war you began
as proof of the supremacy
of your (not my)
one
true God
God of missile and bomb
and accurate targeting
(your
thermonuclear arsenal
proof and sign
of how
thoroughly blessed)

but, forgive me
this sad,tangent to
careen
off at
and let us
get
back to the soul and
stuff whereof made

would if I could
try to manufacture me
a new one
fresh from the factory
smelling like
instant salvation (not
like the rose-
scented stigmata
of Father Pio

sanctified on
account of, yet
despite, his suffering
Rome’s
constantly bleeding,
wonder
of this forlorn age

beloved, most loving
saint

SMALL THINGS

Small things
shifts, nudges,bruises
inconsequential
bending of the light

all unnoticed
until something dawns
familiar turned
alien, climate
changed, landscape
erased

supercaldera
on the boil

and yet
radical interconnectedness
you
spin one way
your soul mate tru-luv
opposite apposite
spins the
other

hard to believe it
hard at work
behind
the radical separateness
on the agenda
to bombard
our feelings

mystical it is, which
is just the acceptable way
of claiming
answers are infinite

the Universe
suckered by divinity
into plunging
for
endless variation

the better
to live, survive, thrive
evolve into something
that will
sense
how it works, show appreciation

Arundhati,
burning the midnight oil,
her queenly pen unwavering.

RIP TIDE

it will all blow over
all be gone
next throw of the dice

compressed
into a space
ever so tiny

lead-lined
solid lock

to which the other
half of me (or
perhaps three-quarters)
telling
my sunlight self
to give him
a fucking break

or
(translating
direct from shadow-
speak)
what hope for the species
when it exalts its dredges

to them
doth lovingly entrust
its final demise

swept out and down
into the ocean trenches

sad
that in this last, last
wager

all so gung-ho
no one left to hedge their bets
rethink the logic
of rip tide
(sinking like stones
one and
all

two
for the price of one,
arm
in arm

no last magic
melding of
their warring selves

LID

Let me
shut the lid

the fallen, the victorious
even the defeated
are right as rain

whilst
there is no sang-froid
with our
two generals

in this game
of question marks
and exclamations

a different kind of
battle is determined
by the opening move

only now
ironically as
my eyes fail me
do I start
to see the patterns

too late
for that old crazy
dream of mastery

my default settings
not exactly in tune
with the
exponential dimensions
and configurations

of this impossibly calculated
not
a hint of gray eight by

eight square exact white
black world

wherein
you have the power
to wipe
the floor with me blindfold.

Category Archives: 1, poem, poetry,