death – poems 2 die for

FINALLY

finally
I am acclimatizing

can see
things changing
things that
hitherto
put up
such strong resistance

but now
am moving past them
saying goodbye
to all such

finally
ready for life,
equipped for death

CAKE CUTTING

I am waiting for you
to get here

hoping for you to
help me cut
the cake

no sign of any of you
your places empty
conspicuous
by your
absence

Michael
Murphy
Anand
Terry
Faith
Muriel
Gideon
Carlos
Roy
John
Raymond
Saskia

seventy three candles
twelve for each of
you

one for myself
wanted my birthday to
be a fantastic
time for
all of us

forever
worth remembering

HALF-TIME SCORE

oodles of suffering
eating this icecream
without sprinkles

the icy cold vanilla
travelling down
a tooth nerve

but, hold your horses,
let’s get the half-time score
from the West Asia war
all those cruise and
ballistic missiles leveling
high rises as if
they were fragile confections

death feasting on the complicit
as ravenously as
with the innocent

death longing
for a war that
will annihilate us all
nuclear winter us
out of this,
bad joke of a time

there you are
in that disintegrating photograph
so sure of yourself
Mr Wry Smile, so unsure of
yourself : deconstruct
this photo Professor Academic
Expert
so much space here
to delineate those inner doubts
and (to make no bones
about it) existential torments
scars of neglect

and what eyes have browsed this?
looked here, remembered,
eyes have looked into,
souls loved, have loved,
still love
could never
possibly forget
(know who you are, know
what history we have,
stuff
shared together)

and now having
pulled this out of the hat
my next trick
will be
one of disappearance
taking all this stuff of self
off the shelf
go Cheshire Cat on you all
(having at times
threatened to
go full
mad hatter

perhaps in truth, far more Alice
caught right there
before the door into Wonderland
crazy. divine, nonsensical
quantum who
knows what
Wonderland

battling to balance
medicine that makes me
too big medicine
renders me too small

she
of the sign of the Libra born
most loved of the beloved
quietly shaking
her head at this point

NO BRAINER

maybe nothing
maybe everything

no brainer
given what you stand to win

and if you lose,
well at least some schaden
consolation
everybody loses

not a single winner
no one
coming
out on top

Yes, Blaise,
I wonder what Jean Paul
would have
made of this, argument
observing the world
through those thick
existential lenses

sipping his, ninth coffee
smoking his tenth cigarette

wondering if this
fine, very modest but
highly intellectual Parisian
establishment

could be the blueprint, the
archangel archetype

for all the
great coffee houses in
the afterlife,

worth wagering something on
if when
the great debate is
entertained between existence
and essence

it would be bad faith not
to consider the being in
and for itself of coffee itself

INVOCATION

It was my optimum desire
to forward you an invocation

and tell you (in an appendix)
that you should genuinely
feel free to deploy it
as you see fit

but I was unsure
of my vocabulary, in
particular which
verb would
be the most appropriate

so desperately reluctant
to get things perchance,
breaking every
protocol, twisting
customary practice,
getting things
irredeemably wrong

especially given
our fraught and brittle
exchanges
over the years

where so hard
to judge whether
things
between us
cold as Arctic ice
on boiling
like the magma
in massive Vesuvius

and so
I left it to you who or
what
best in this context
to invoke

whilst I felt caught between
the wish that
in all aspects
you might “glow”, or
there again “sparkle”

beauty of rich sunset
versus diamond string
of stars

unless
best do both

or best, neither

as the days shorten
and never
grows real

I will invoke the gods and
the Universe itself

to ask, as last best gift,
some light might find you.

FUNERAL PLAN

they keep
phoning me
to sell me
funeral plans

somehow they got
my number give me
their spiel
so want
a “yes” for an
answer

but as death
capitalism goes
nothing here
strikingly imaginative
deeply inventive

not
a single offer
of a burning on
a pyre
compressing into
a diamond, exotic
ship burial

talk of
days in Elysium
drinking pure ambrosia

flying through
the clouds eagle-
winged to
commune with
the Great Spirit

on take
the escalator down to Hades
consoling Orpheus
swopping tunes
lovely threesome with
his darling Eurydice

or
speaking of wings,
winged helmet things,
being
swept up to
Valhalla in
the arms of a Valkyrie
there to eat
meat, drink mead and
do
my Viking thing

wondering why
I
denied myself
such wicked joys

believing saintliness supreme
kind of life
and mode
of being

a host of Valkyrie
working on me
doing all it
takes
to shift that perception

now that
is what
I would call

a funeral plan

NEITHER HERE, NOR THERE

NEITHER HERE NOR THERE

sadly I have
forgotten you already

though a little bird
keeps reminding me
how razor smart you
were
and how beautiful

something I have to tell you
before this poem
goes off
the boil

it’s Christmas day after the day
after the day after tomorrow
I would wish
you every joy
but we cannot risk climbing
out of our trenches
onbewapendt
exposing our shared
humanity
risking all
that vulnerability

I can whistle the tune of
every tracks on those
albums
you gave me for
Xmas
God knows how many years ago

and soon but not
together obviously we are
going to
    wake up dead finding
ourselves one
hundred
   percent spiritual
able to laugh
   (not earthbound resounding
seismic belly laugh
more celestial titter)

at all
those
misunderstood signs, wrong
words, mistakes,

as far as
eye can see landscape
of obstacle and
barbed
wire

here where time is meaningless
and
spanner in the works and
as a
consequence jammed
clockwork

but I did send
a dove with a message

if it reaches you if you
read it
deep as I have tried to be
it is all neither here nor there

LESS THAN FINE

wanted to write a
sexy poem
very
sexual

but the ink
prematurely ejaculated
shot out of my pen

wanted to a write a
very scary poem
ultimate scare

but the ink froze
my blood curdled
as it
hit my brain

wanted to write a
very sentimental poem
terribly sad

but the
page got fluffy
all
of a sudden
out of nowhere
went all
soft toy on me

didn’t want to
write an
elegy, my
elegy

a poem
on death
but you
twisted my arm
persuaded me I should

promising me
you would give me
the perfect
last line

all those last lines of my own
though by
no means hopeless
less
than fine

DEAD

trust me, it’s complicated,
but if you
are reading this poem
you cannot
be dead

maybe
not quite alive
but cannot be dead

no paradox here
neither the trivial
nor the magical

just a philosophical aside
regarding your
spiritual condition

not alive perhaps
but not yet, definitely
not yet
not completely dead

so many
I know (have the pleasure)
would argue
totally gone
do not yet realize
it
but beyond the pale
dead

but
step up
to the mike

and give me
your best whisper

here I feel, hear
breath, am certain I feel breath

Tag Archives: death