love – poems 2 die for

ARROW

was shooting arrows
picking my spot
missing everything

out
of inspiration

maybe need you
to act as
my target

strike
statuesque poses

but there again
your speed of thought,
                                 your
blinding beauty
                     bound
to dazzle
     spoil my aim

get me
to aim
too high, perhaps
too low

shooting arrows
tipped with love potion
threatening
your equilibrium with
potent
erotic poison

and yet
calling my bluff
with contempt so openly,
dare I say
nakedly?

you caught freeze-frame
striving to catch them
as they
whizz by

wonder where you might
keep it
if you managed to catch one

pluck it, so to speak,
from the sky

my best guess
telling me

in a silk-lined box somewhere,
casket
close to your heart

not to
rule out
    heavy return fire
streaming in from your
redoubt

hit me
    palpably and yet
just a
flesh wound

to get
   full flavour possible to have
to stick it
     in deeper, extremities
of joy and pain
as, desire
running rampant, I much
            mortify myself

out in the open
no chance of lovely
assassin here
pulling back her bow-string, silent
in the forest

shooting
at small, small, dodgy
creatures
I warrant mostly
mammals

once hit a
goddess (bit of
spectacular misfortune)

she
returning fire, shooting
from the hip

hit me
fair and square with
that selfsame dart

and there
I fell

in her arms, mortally
struck, wounded forever
slain
by
Athena, Ishtar, Isis,
Aphrodite
perhaps Artemis herself

done in by a goddess,
best, worst
kind of death

RAINBOW

I was inside
a rainbow
playing
Chess

Queen’s Gambit Accepted
which I was
once warned to decline
but now,
as a matter if course,
of course always accept

the pieces shifting from
shade to
shade
(fuschia versus turquoise,
lavender versus burnt sienna
never
black versus white,
or, for that matter,
white
versus black)

and me, since we
were going
classical
not blitz,

having time on my hands to
do a bit of devilish intellectual
handiwork and
imagine a
world where
one might insult the law
savagely, force
a backrank mate in
the opening and
prance
away, scotfree

living to fight
another way, show
the world a
better way

but then, as always,
with all your
vast YouTube tutoring you
indeed
got the upper hand

gave me
your most gracious victor’s
handshake, and
indeed kiss
which was sweet, and fine,
and almost everything
but it was
not what
I had in mind,
not the bearhug my heart
was set on

but so it goes
time passed, would be decades
before our rematch

revisit
that old rivalry, rekindle
what, if anything, left
of that
old desire

light that candle
point it at the heavens
aim it
at a star

one at the heart of a rainbow nebula
one that
tells a different story

from those who string us along
with wild musical metaphors
of pitch
and tone
and, above all, resonance

everything connected by
what we cannot see,
simply
too complex for
this dimension

and yet carrying this song
everywhere instantly, all
at once
hither and thither

the game
already played, outcome
there in that very first move.

FOR THE RECORD

the needle stuck
unable to move

doomed to persist in
this groove

me
likewise keep harping on
clinging to all
that I
once felt about you

who felt so
always out of reach
stuck in some
mutual exclusion zone
the pair of us

our story, such as it is, whatever
it was, easy
meat for
all those fake
grammarians of desire

and this the fate
for those who read,
who write,

looking
for that true text
that hides inside, lingers
perhaps beneath

between the lines
if there
ever were lines

demarcations to
keep our darknesses
strictly apart

disregarding
the Sun, the light

you in the
arms of
what I could
only presume to be
a living god

me
finding myself,
imagining myself, however
far-
fetched a, follower of Francis

yearning for
a sanctity poverty might address

BIG CAT

big cat, little cat,
let us not dance around this;
I will touch you regardless,
more than brush your fur

seeing yourself
slink right past me:
as if!

little cat, big cat
those eyes at night
I can tell how
keen they are to leopard me

look here
Mrs Sabre-toothed
all these love wounds
where you nibbled

were it not for love
and due caution
you could well have
severed an artery

nestled between
your two paws, soothed
by your purring,
all that
is ferociously sweet
about you

me and all my poems
bleeding out

CROSSBOW

I interrogated Aphrodite
after the fall of Troy

so much death and devastation
through her direct interference
all for a single
golden apple, and the required
abduction of a queen

holding her in
the sights of my
crossbow whilst
I bombarded her
with questions

on the nature of love,
her sacred domain, and
why
it should exist at all
when it destroys
so many of us

or leaves us
alone and yearning
victims of its disdain.

SOUL MATE

you asked me if
I were still
looking
for my soul mate

in turn, I enquired
about your ideal lover
and how you
would recognize this
from how
he made love to you

suggesting what I felt
on this score
providing you with
an admittedly limited
graphical illustration

which seemed
to spark something
all cylinders firing
beyond my expectations

as you rushed off
at top speed
to search for a soulmate
to match these criteria

ready
to scour the planet looking
for the rest
of your life
if needs be

DOWN THE STREET

heavily disguised
beauty herself in person came
walking past
neither close nor
giving a wide berth

to me
did not speak:
not a word
not a glance

best response possible
given prior
misadventures
seriously sad encounters
(though one or two
with great physical
moments
memories burned
into my consciousness)

all of which colluding, conspiring,
to stick me here in
this rather unique
place as
unique places go

beauty always
heading down the street
moving away
from me

heading into the distance
leaving to me to remember,
kill the dream, forget

RWGIME CHANGE

REGIME CHANGE

we are meeting for coffee
fifty years to the day
we last
saw, spoke
to each other

could be real could
be just a dream

reality getting so porous
you could easily just
stick out
your hand
test the fabric

odds and probabilities
suggest five times in nine
you could
stick
your finger
straight through

the veil fading, evaporating
and something no less
ephemeral now
about the realm
of truth

all of which we do not discuss
hard after all those years
to find common
ground, something
worth sharing we
know
will be appreciated

meanwhile flashing in neon
writing on the wall
portents eveywhere
suddenly it
is all
a troubling semiotics
of apocalypse

heads blown off my
bombs, pulverized by
missiles

innocents vaporized
at primary school

signs and codes of
death and
second
coming, dynasties
of temple

perhaps (thinking aloud)
the world needs regime
change
for our very survival we
need every single regime changed

I feel, though you
shrug, the betrayed presence
of a half smile.

WHOLESALE

Saw you
with your lover
said “hello”
took
a photo
of me
the two of you
did

sent it
to me and
am looking
at it now

no longer
your wholesale admirer
but nevertheless
trying to
recall your
perfume

we were
both young then
vibrant, insouciant

so much
in love with each other
but not
at the same time.

TRIAL

thought you
would love me
if I were
brave as Achilles

had a body like
Apollo’s
not a blemish
not a scar

if I could
sing like Sting,
Robert Plant or
Pavoratti

or riff
like Django or
Jimi Hendrix
on the guitar

if I could speak
French faultlessly,
seductively, and
then write
like Proust
or Rimbaud

had the intellect of
Derrida and
the wit
of Oscar Wilde

and all this childhood trauma
that I carry with me
this toxic
family stuff
inside

you would love me
once I found
the instant
total cure for it

or battling and failing
to shake it, negate it,
integrate it
shape it
to true loving ends

you
would love me
for how hard I tried