
SUNTIME





SHINE
“Speaking to me.
They wash and
tub and scrub.
Agenbite of inwit.”
James Joyce, “Ulysses”
are you
warm
warm
inside
full
of insight?
agenbite
got
your tongue?
cat-like your preen
sunlight making
your fur
(if you
had fur) warm
as toast
questions to ask
before quietus
perhaps it fades
perhaps it
annihilates in
a gathering of stars
on the pavement
in your own
backyard
too little light
but now
all the suns
thought it was a summit
but it was
the sum
of all spectacle
PANIC LITE.
moral panic
Janet!
something in your pants
something wriggling
in your panties
threatening every
aspect of your identity
have to go
airtight, watertight
totally clamp down
if no one can
breathe
how do you hope
to
however can
you expect to
guide the world
to the light
(nothing we fear
more than your light)
****
moral
panic, Janet!
let’s not forget
those who began it
THE LIGHT
they switched off
the light
but could not
switch it back on again
or maybe
just refused
leaving the world
nor in state of day
neither that of night
just in that limbo darkness
betwixt and between
where all
their machinations
burgeon and thrive
reducing the value of
all that is
loved, all
that is life
taught
from the cradle to do so
finding this state
of being so
infinitely agreeable
CLOUDLESS
a cloudless sky
stopped my scarlet red
Citroen
to open the farm gate
cannot pretend to
understand the physics of
colour or
indeed, the physics
of sky
you lost me as soon
as you spoke of wave-lengths
and light diffusion
but here we are (or at least, here
I am, your presence with me
somewhere
between metaphor and
simple rhetorical gesture)
here we are
as if shielded from
the Universe (which is
the case exactly) virtue of
us being
(no clouds
to distract me) right
at the epicentre of
a surrounding sphere, looking
out from
inside the skin, the translucent
skin
of a beautiful blue ball
expanded to a size, a height,
that just works for us perfectly
reminding me
as this time of ultra
advanced return
of feudalism
of the music
of the spheres
with all that economy
with all that cosmology
nothing in a million years here close to
that darkest conclusion
that things beyond this
blue bubble
moving away from us so fast
they are
beyond
all
Doppler red-
shift
beyond very
speed of light
and
so
back down
to Earth as always
for
sheer preservation
of sanity, not
let all this here
overwhelm me
wanting
those clouds back
wanting not to imagine myself
inside the skin
of anything
wanting
to just go
where it is all heading
commit
to that glow
light speed beyond
but (blessing of
relatvity) with it
one
feels
just
floating
moving in one’s mind
from
incarnation to
incarnation
no desire
to be laboured by
understand
the physics at all
BURNED
I sat in the shadows
where else better
to hear you proclaim
the light
proclaim yourselves
the light
and as
the light
to fight off the darkness
one must go
deeper into the darkness
than the light
could possibly know
I saw you
proclaiming yourselves
the light
messing with
the light
to counter the darkness
and getting burned
horribly burned.
DAWN
dawn
but it is never
a true dawn is it?
always just a metaphor
for a thing that can never be
and so that border zone
between soft light
and soft darkness
must surrender
the light proclaims itself
another day, and
big deal
soon the machine warms up
sets itself the task
of fulfilling
the mandate
day as before, as yesterday,
as every day that has ever been