Tag Archives: death

RUBBLE

RUBBLE

my poem
lies under rubble

dead, asphyxiated
would be on
life support

but
there is no life
is no support

my poem
is getting
amputated

will lose a whole page
has already
lost
    stanza
after stanza

without antibioticd
without anaesthetic

each line screams
as they cut
through
bone

you will have forgotten
these words
and the mass graves
of those
that have
spoken them

as you stare into the sunset
across the Mediterranean
from
    your beautiful
seafront property

looking out towards Greece
the rubble
          of great Troy

and the gods
       of Homer’s world

ALIGNED

ALIGNED cannot escape it this recurrent nightmare wandering lost around a campus looks like every university I ever taught ever studied at looks nothing vaguely like any of them at all and where is my time-table, my course guide, my GPS nothing in this scary dream line working like clockwork siderial-aligned and my classroom, when I get there, terminally empty an easier death metaphor would be so hard to find

LIKE A

LIKE A

was
light years ahead

and now
I am dead

soul free to roam
in that dark space

ghost
    music only

ghost poetry

voices, songs

Ginsberg, McGough, Henri,
Patten,
     Ferlinghetti, Corso,

the Beatles,
    Hendrix, Cream

and the Rolling Stones

BUT THEN

BUT THEN

poets marrying poets
do not do well

let me labour
the obvious: on
the one hand

Ted
   on the other

Sylvia

and on the other
      I leave that to those
scrutinizing their
letters
   delving into
           their lives

this whole enterprise
a dubious affair looking
                for dubious affairs

something
     about love and poetry

in this configuration
such a curious mismatch

amusing in a sense

    but then there is death

CLOCKWORK

CLOCKWORK

like clockwork
everyday
      somewhere
in the world

a poet
jumps under a train

they know
it’s a poet

because
they find poems

send them to me
to fix, to edit

a labour of love it is
piecing them together
making them
              whole
editing
      out
            all

the
stuff
  that might
derail the project

all the unconscionable hurt
and real raw pain