reader, writing, poem, poetry

MACHINE

MACHINE

“The autonomous logico-fantastic machine is something I like insofar as (and if) it serves some real need: the need to enlarge the sphere of what we can imagine, and to introduce into our limited range of choices “absolute rejection” by means of a world thought out in all its details according to other values and other relationships.” Italo Calvino

you must have
read this poem yesterday

or maybe you are
planning
to read it
tomorrow

stop me before
I ramble on erroneously:
you may well
have read the poem
today
already

perhaps
you are ahead of me

just how it is
how this machine works:
nature of the game

it could be stone-cold fact

that you
are always ahead of me

maybe you read it
when I was undressed

might have told me
I would have dressed
smartly for you

or gone all Lagerfeld
dressed
to kill

but what use seduction
when I may
well
be dead already?

what use
          putting pedal to the metal
linguistically speaking
upping the ante
so that
        my words
                 might touch you well?

you read this poem tomorrow

you read this poem
how things at
that moment dictated
everything

and
short of signalling every cue
or clue

nothing I could do

HITHER

HITHER

I wandered through poetry
thought I knew
this place
well

looking for wisdom
looking for humanity

my outlook by
no means negative
      though by no means
expecting
wonders
        miracles, transformation,
soul-shaping
life-
defining metaphors
and sadly I must add
conceding
   no possible hope
for love

which is exactly where I found you
chatting to my Muse
(why is
Muse never lover?)

man
most well-measured
not a syllable out if place
but your
voice
your voice

I do not hear
perhaps it is just too
comfort-zone, risk
averse

agrophobic
when it comes to

to the beyond, the boundless,
our freedom
in a nutshell

shattering it to smithereens
with the force of
poetic pressure

and perhaps
the poet too

perhaps
we should stay contained
work like
jewellers do
in miniature

for this is a dangerous age
bad time
for words

and I, for my sins and
pretensions of
truly sinning

have wandered so far
of course, too
far away thus
with
grace

let me leave
you here

for who
would now come hither?

LISTENING

LISTENING

am listening
waiting to hear
what you

have
to say

all ears
but do not ask me
to press this numbered
button or
the other

as if a golden time
will suddenly dawn
wealth
will be released

if largesse came my way
would not know
what
to do with it

ditto
kindness

outside spray of flowers
drooing from a tree
steal all
my attention with
their cerise intensity

such that
words get re-defined
beauty in my
linguistic ineptitude
poetic
incompleteness

press one for
whole picture

           two for duality
if you happen to agree or
strongly, poisonously
                             would adopt
a position
   entirely contrary

as contradictory as any
reader might be