Tag Archives: death

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

ONE

ONE

was introduced to death
by a Ms E Dickinson

late of Amherst, New England,
a word mistress of sorts

somewhat
   impure in speech

not privy to her
standing however
     I do remain clueless
in terms of her value
as per
   stocks
        and bonds

and with Lord, who does
all such measure
        down to the last
grain
    be it gold, salt
or sand

and after
     breaking the ice, whose
depth almost glacial,
formally, with decorum
               as only this miss
shapeshifter can

death and I spoke ghost,
conversed
       in plain Indian

so many tongues and indeed
histories of
    this place, all places

sweet in sad sublimity,
     rolled into one

HAPPY FAMILIES

HAPPY FAMILIES

we were playing
happy families

in the darkness
buried, bleeding
starving

to show that we are
humsn
    do what humans do

get bombed to bits
buried alive
by other humans
who contest our right
to be like them
to think
   and bleed and love
and feel

trying to do
what humans do

buried alive in
a flattened town
thankful at least that
unlike
     so many we

may yet survive
if and when
they dig us
out

playing the cards that
we have been dealt

to win
    the gsme you need a set

death and judgement and
the devil and
the falling down
.
cough the thick debris
dust out your lungs

and shout out what we all
do not, should not ever doubt

we are
all one family

BURN

BURN

life is not
margarine

spread liberally itself
across crisp, crusty
oven-
    fresh bread
yellow golden

no
life is that
which sticks and
burns

rips off your charred skin
falling from Heaven
like napalm,
      white phosphorous
or those cluster
people killers
that break into toy-size
teeny-tiny

run like Cristiano
fast and zig-
zag as
    you can
across the entire Nou Camp
a bomblet
will find you

mind body problem
nothing in the body
the mind
   has not figured, over-
thought
   how to how to
horrendously kill

but the Sun continues
for millions of years
this avatar of hierarchy
will
    seem so god-
like, be
forever shining

until
    like us

it get old, fat and greedy
swallow
      the Earth entirely

desperate for survival;
new stuff to burn