1, poem, poetry, – Page 46

EDGE

only a love descant
could be that beautiful

unless we consider
the melodies of death

whose
melancholic timbre
haunting finality

succinct
completion

all things considered
give
it the edge

TEAPOT

below
everybody’s radar

a fabulous world
bunkering
at the bottom
of your
white rabbit hole

and
after a divinity of
fine tea in the
arms of such company

time to reset
boot up
swipe
delete any virus
inconvenient program

waiting for
the bus of old age
who on Earth is
going to believe your story

the jury out
on whether the bus has
been missed, is late,
can
be said to exist

that debate
still raging, if ever
so quietly,

the luxury of it all
every tea set fully furnished,
expertly laundered

no future as monolithic
on the horizon, on
any horizon, as that
presents us as star child

not wishing to moonshine you
Cheshire Cat or Caterpillar you

you my dear girl
captured in this selfie
under the hat you
borrowed from
that mad
fellow

nothing in your sharp mind
going to change the heavy
metals in
his system to
gold

who single-
handedly threw
tea pot into unknown
postal district
this saucer into whole
new big bang aggrendisment
lurking in
galaxy not up
to us
to speak about

DARK SIDE

“You have no idea
of the power of the
dark side.” Star Wars,
Episode V The Empire
Strikes Back.”

Garside
dark side

my sleek black
serpentine muse
surfacing with a list
of devilish assignations
from
deep beneath the pithead

me paying in blood for
these limited skills (can
barely call
them art)

but today a difference:
wraps me up, hauls
me off
takes me deep
down in that elevator
sheer
demon deep

leveling out there
whar she blows

other uses for these fingers
back-up dexterities

learn to
probe shadow, uncouple
shackles

take on board so much
blistering anger raging
irreverence

raving               raging
words
           ruins
runes
spreading chaos
across the page
.
stooping to levels
below the unthinkable

damned
to write horrors, delights,
infinite beyond
the gurgling sounds
a throat might make, doomed
damned
blessed

infinitely so
for all time

FIRE

I am fire
born just
shy of fire

when fire comes
to swallow

I am
now you see me
now you
fail to see me

stick turned
to embers

very
fast food

and your lips
bathed in capsicum
hellfire delicious
beyond
imagining

stoked
fired up
to hire and fire
your shit together
locked
and loaded

raring to go
round in the chamber

DUD

I sent you
my poetry

my book

of
failures

every single poem
a failure in significance
coming nowhere
near saying
what
I set out to say

wanted
to achieve

everypoem
a dud
by a mile, by
a hair’s breadth

thinking of your hair
all your
hair not

too
coy here

every poem a mission
a reach

question asked
connection begged

exquisitely
sometimes here perhaps

where not
accomplishment entirely.

CURVED (TOGETHER)

chaos dawned
fractals like schools
of forever spawning fish
did
abound

and with them
as summoned

Aphrodite
that absolute beauty
born of monstrosity

was born
(if birth is a word that at all
befits
her genesis)

time stretching
space stretching stretching together as
interlaced reality

everything stretching to
accomodate
run
with that pattern

and with Aphrodite
the universe really curved. with but
a single goddess glance
stone, rock,
sand
came alive, sure antithesis
to Medusa

she and me riding that wave tracking
that curved ball

roving
through left field (the grass
grown too tall for baseball)

moving all the
time
     desire and its object
gold and
    base metal chasing each other
ad infinitum Achilles
and tortoise
       mortal and
               divine
sacred and profane moving together

PERFECT SENSE

they returned
from the stars

less than
gloriously poetic
but who
we were we
to tell

expecting free gifts
not extenpore pastorsls
and sonnets

our highest virtue
being utility itself
their
ultra violet skin tones
and much
mutated fusion of
every dialect of English

made everything they said
every utterance
they made

much like their poetry
and what
they revealed of
their world

something doomed in our ears
to fall desperately short
of true
perfect sense

****

BACK TO BACK

here we find
an island of lost love

typical
single palm tree
distinctly cartoonish

two in fact
back to back

this is yours
that is mine

we no longer really
express concern or
curiosity

even think
of swimming the distance

after decades
of messages in bottles
seductive gestures, crude
gesticulations,
blowing kisses

waving
at each other
hoping
and praying

in our heads it has all
become too distant, we
are too far away

for anything
in our
former expressions of
stubborn desire

to make
a difference
,

SO MUCH BETTER FOR IT

When the great
god Emperors
go juggernaut

it will
ss always

be poetry
that suffers

and there we see Ovid
the pornogrpher
banned from Rome
languishing in exile

the great Julisn
city of Augustus
now so much better for it.

BUNDLED

and so I bundled
it up
my
lost soul

in some
old cabbage leaves
we (as a family)
could hardly scare

still somewhat green
they were
and likely to remain

though by no
means as green

as blossoming orchards,
rich fields or
(real
or counterfeit)
stacks
of new money