SHINE

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

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

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

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

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

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