MASTERPIECE

MASTERPIECE

those meticulous lines
so clear under
the desklamp
in the light,
           a masterpiece
             

nothing at this high level
possibly frazzled,
sublimely repressed

I wonder
how they look
8n the shadow
what happens to
that cross-sectional
perfectly angular shading

when in state of shadow
things leak into each other
diametrically blur

one step away
from the beginnings of
the jagged  the wayward,
the ice-engineered,
the downward spiral

and me
       playing chess against you
crushing you in a few moves
even when my
game is
inadequately considered,
too unpolished, simply linear,
absence of
tactical wizardry in
my pedestrian play

Oh fathers, wish it were the case
that sons
      caught in deadly duels
with them in
the underbelly of
cloud cities (which
some architect had to
dream up
ex nihilo)
knew as they traded
blow for blow
what lay behind
that steel mask

to give you your due
you were the master of
everything out there
in here
that comes in three dimension

new how the tools cut
to your drawn specifications
could make
the thing conceived of
exactly

when it comes to you
and I however
no worse joke
than the one of tooling
to make
the one of match of object
and its conception

how could you have got it
so wrong  fucked up
every single
measurement

and yet
   think me grateful having
been produced this way
your masterpiece

CEMETERY ROAD

CEMETERY ROAD
“may not mean to/
but they do”

I’ve read that
this be the Larkin poem

by any metric
it’s a real shocker

give it its due
painfully spot on
must have
   begun somewhere

with Adam and Eve
tragic trace elements
springing out
of the big
bang
catastrophic for
the happiness of our species

and so me
      not yet teenage

about to be whisked, nay,
catapulted to Africa
and apartheid
South Africa
at that

far from this little British
cul-de-sac
        joy there in the sweet
English place of
pastoral they
call
   a pastoral

where my father dutifully
taught me how
to ride
a bicycle

not much interest in my
life

     this broken life

after which
my father’s little dream
of upping
roots, defining
his Empire

       somehow not
translating

finding purchase, believers,
means of manufacture

will not
     let this poem end as
dead at
    point blank range
as Larkin’s does

LUCKY MAN

LUCKY MAN

lucky you were
to survive
terrible things

you did not bomb Dresden
or Hamburg

or all the towns
and bridges
in Japan

prelude to
that most terrible
of all
invasions

in avoidance of which
they removed two
whole
   cities off the map

writing me into life
and thd whole of history
a bit differently

and you
      not plunging to Earth
fear and panic-striken
in a crippled Lancaster

symbol of war’s
    terrible fall from grace

the Icarus
in us all

the suns, twin suns
they dropped

casting
        such a shadow

lucky you were
        lucky your life in

regard to terrible things

SHADOW

SHADOW

I misremember you

still
in your shadow

anniversary
of your departure

in size and proportion
shadow
     is giant

sometimes you cannot even
capture it on
old cinemascope screen

and you were giant too
when in wonder
first saw you
       peering into my cradle

wondering
    what you were thinking
who or what
you were

still wondering
what you
            were

what
      you are (immortal
philosophical question)

what you were thinking
all those years
              shrouded in shadow
what
you were thinking.

I remember you.
   Trying to forget
    does not come easy at all.