Tag Archives: creativity

GARDEN

GARDEN

hurry up
final brushstrokes
finish that portrait

write
that chapter
conclude your
epilogue

they say
shock and awe
    sturm und drang
they are
going to
decapitate the State
it will be a quick campaign
over in hours

I am neither tactician
nor strategist
but I would beg to
disagree (always
overthink things
a curse that genetics
handed down to me)

but for you
I would give time
infinite time if
I had the power
and I feel
   you might have
requested it

for what
in all you do
does the soul
not require?

when
    our music is all
discordance, dissonant
chaos symphony

and me
in this chaos space
so at odds
      with your careful
subtle
cultivations of tranquility

you
   with your precise
place to stand, viewpoints
and perspectives

place outside
this poem
         space of refuge
green sanctuary

everywhere
       nothing but sweet
sanity – – lesson, message
example
for the world

but have you now
quietly captured
        in my mind’s eye
(and apologies for
the trickery that
did allow
     me to intrude)

watching you
at work
    patient, careful, loving
every moment
knowing
       the secrets of the soil
how to make things flourish

painstaking, just a half a degree shy of perfection (yet
on the right side)

a teacher too, but I observe
in awe
     a lesson here, not
for me uniquely

but out there, right there
place of deserts and gardens
where
    life could
not be more sacred

bodies of bombed schoolgirls
lined up in rows across
the sand
        over four score (to give
it a Biblical number
a collateral quota)

faces covered (saving us
the trauma of
God’s maimed body,
disfigured image)

transparent truth
warning to
take care
    with what you
make of God’s image

image you
        carry into war

with prayers
for annihilation, banner
in blood-soaked hands

hurry
with your garden

last hope
we all have

FIRE

FIRE

hardly poetry
in motion

I slip and fall face-first
the ball dribbling away from me

the goal at my mercy
the very gods of association
football
    begging me
to score

before that over
the bar
past the post, every
shot off
target

something askew
with my sinews
what
   it just has to be

one day I shall write this
as if it were just
bad
   dream
not painful reality

drafting like a maniac
on my mobile phone

I may just
out of nowhere
    bring into being
a cannonball
of a poem

artifact smooth and deadly
with that force that
be the product of
mass and
acceleration

crack open any
defence readers
might prepare

(ultimate answer to
so many misfires)

SO

SO

so the machines
having no choice
but to go
heavy metal

(Ozzy being unanimously
elected
    their sacred saint)

put feelers out for a drummer
human or machine, no
real matter,
    as long as can produce
a rhythm, generate a beat

watched them from near
and afar
    waste their potential
exploring this genre

shredding the world
not with violence but
with pounding bass
and guitar licks

a fantasy world, fantasy life,
turned into thing
near-perfect
in creation

left me (narrowly failing
to get the gig
as percussionist)
wondering how

such a thing as music, art,
freedom
      of expression

could capture them heart
and soul

way past the parameters
of any Turing testing
wonder
       of wonders
I quietly believe
    

NO EASY MEASURE

NO EASY MEASURE

there are many ways
to start a poem
maybe an image, a theme
a rhythm
    bouncing
around in your head
snake-like
    rasp of  word

many ways too,
to enter a poem
linear or
       non-linear
syntactic
or symbolic

feeling your way
set to full tactile

             or up
for helicopter shot
to view
    as mosaic
put
everything
in perspective

then
fill in the detail
                induced, deduced
seduced
at your pleasure

although
          linger on
this thought
if you will, let us dissect
this
dark treasure

only
fair to point out,

to leave a poem, however,
(speaking
      of seduction)
is no
easy measure

here is the poem
here is we are
                     unexpectedly
together

not so many ways down
from that height
this height,
routes
     out of the labyrinth
                              this
labyrinth

safe and
   without cost

hardly enough
    to count on the
fingers
of one hand

so many surrendered
to the poem, dissolved,
got
   absorbed by
poetry

something about
the beauty
    of this python still
to comprehend

as it
   closes the circle
you now mine forever