Category Archives: poem poetry

BREAK

BREAK

so much fragility

things collapsing
falling apart

nothing as fragile
as a poem,
                   however

even

         the        lines

    break

EVERYWHERE

EVERYWHERE

I turn into
a statue

I pop up everywhere.
Timebound, my punctuality
is whenever
you least expect me.

I converse with vipers;
chat to elapids

see me in a debate here
with file snake, puffadder
and cobra

no time for niceties of argument
these guys,
    low on rhetorical nuance
on tactical subtlety

jump right to their conclusion
flying in the face of counter-
premise
     or inconvenient fact

and yet, something in me
herpetological too,
in awe of their
sublime
           beauty

agog
at their wisdom

                         shedding
my skin.

SWAN SONG

SWAN SONG

was singing the multiverse
thinking of travelling under
an alien ocean
in Nemo’s submarine

light years from our home planet
travelling metres deep
twenty thousand leagues
         under that sea

the pressure getting to me
rivets popping

no one
   able to make sense of my
song
        as it rises from alien
depths to cultivated surface

finding the ears
     of beings like me except
they have
     neither space, nor time

for outlandish things

AJAR

AJAR

listening to progressive jazz (Ian Carr’s Nucleus
            with Chris Spedding
                                on guitar)

same time ploughing through Joyce’s Ulysses
say ploughing but sometimes
                                  one is surfing there
on a glorious wave, following the sweeping tide

nothing I can think of
could exceed this configuration
                                  in respect of
artistic complexity, cerebral
                                      integrity

unless
      twin philosophers of the body politic
were
    (becoming Maenad, going full Dionysian)
to pop in
      for a spot of ménage a trois

or
  no less exquisite
the
    jam session
    to end all jazz
                      jam sessions

in case
      they coming left the door ajar