SUN GIRL

SUN GIRL

what is it
about these lionesses?

this one pitching up
late trashing my party
all because
           by right should
not
   allow myself to
feel depressed on this day

by immortal decree can
only be pure
ray
    of sunshine

Gil Scott-Heron cassette flashing past my ear
             hurled
with such
     aggrieved force

birthday present saying
the sender she so pissed this
not
    (however revolutionary)
   going to be
televised

such an apt and thoughtful
sought -out gift

thrown with much
malice or
       that thing called
love
I had failed to recognize

POEM FOR HELEN NATASHA

POEM FOR HELEN NATASHA

tough love
cruel to be kind

but let mention she
who needed to win
most of all

see her favourite’s name
up in the city of lights
Achilles slain
the towers fallen

she who was raped
less than harmoniously returned

and who, being man,
being man born of woman
would be so
out of his right mind
to vote
against her
spurn that offer

she flirting with the idea
of full divine disclosure
revelation

of that so in utter excess
of mere mortal beauty
mere legendary
beauty of
a Spartan Queen

straining against the bit
holding back unless
her hero
lose his sight
die sublime

kind to
be cruel
cruel to be kind

LONG NIGHT

LONG NIGHT

let me walk you through
the length of  a night
the breadth of a poem

sorry if you so surely Shelley
about the nature of rhyme

miss a beat, grimace
flutter as the lines stutter
not Homer blind but
pretty much a
stick-shuffling cripple

trying to make it through
short days
long nights

when you so cookie-cutter
about everything
dial in delivery
         everything on the menu
from hot to
G spot

long night love afterglow
basking in luxury

let me
    cuddle my pen

dishing you
        this trash

EDIFICE

EDIFICE

let’s start with the cliche

we used to drive past
your supreme campus
buge, lofty bukldings

and I used to dream
of being here, battling
my way against
the odds
tp achieve some
sort of degree

taking two trains
to ger here
      and the climb
up the mountain

red gown red wine
one glorious moment
standing in the sudden
sunlight
    outside of the Hall
my very lazt dsy

and you
your last day here too, twenty
four years earlier
younger
      that previous graduation
(already becoming
part
    of the furniture)

and thinking
    here in this place doomed
blessed to always
keep crossing paths

quantum entangled, caught
in the same
fine-
    spun web

not really not really
empirically verifiable
falsifiable

     just two names once spoken
in the same passing
oblique sentence

two names
to conjure with, before

they
   headed off in different directions quite
diametric

and me long before this
floating past the University
in my father’s car
making
    a wish

TRUNK CALL

TRUNK CALL

trees get caressed
the wind don’t give two hoots
about how
gnarled the trunk
venerable the branches

me, however,
not so lucky

had to donate
my sex manuals to charity
now the print
grown
   so small

funny how it happens, how
time loses elasticity
my sprint becomes
an amble
   becomes a crawl

but you
faithful breeze
finding blossoms around
my boughs could
not believe
I had
    something under your
touch eager to
comply, act
in

  concert
go reciprocal

be bathed and baptised
believe in

gospel of my resurrection
what you whispering here

DIAMOND

DIAMOND

I write
thinly-veiled
stories of my life

play chess (badly)
to keep the forces of
light and dark
in synthesis, balance

look out at the stars
each a solar
nuclear furnace

and wonder
about gold and silver
dark energy, anti-
matter

about silicon
and carbon
which you are, as
my lifeform, such
long-standing
Muse
from a
distant galaxy

asking me
to cross fifty light years to
come visit

carbon compound
you are

compressed
to diamond

ROOM

ROOM

stet
Heraclitus you are wrong
this man
   cannot step
into that bed
river mibd a river

back up a bit
let’s forget media res
simply
   start at
the beginning

virtual particles abounding
no hope of
even one
     actually actualizing

promise of this moment
never to be realized
come and gone

so many wave fronts
from bed to couch and
back again
  washing over me

you
   by now
sleeping serenely
me maybe
astral travelling
as far as I can tell

room to
expand, manoeuvre

room
for doubt

here we
      make love, don’t
make love

roll two lovely snake eyes
so you may guess
which
   forked path

possibilities, probablities,
green light
    for go, red
for full stop

in this little ecosystem, tiny
echochamber things
horribly resonant

yes
   roll those bones
roll
    with
the flow

tick the will
they won’t they
        take what’s
in the box

you know
    whose doomed cat
is waiting
in that box

the whole nature of
connection, entanglement

now
   premised on our moment

and what other, kinder worlds
have decided for themselves
have themselves
found out

let them
     film the morning after
still through a lens
of blessed
   enchantment

Pan panning with magical
camera across
the mystical space
that will
            always
be
   her bedroom

for the record (record of
flautist playing
the firsf
    time I ever saw
her face)

nothing
to see here

IN CONVERSATION

IN CONVERSATION

In a parallel universe
that Adonis and Aphrodite
ruptured
the myth
    with joy of together

went to the ballet, caroused talked life and poetry
           over lamb souvlaki  and
red wine
    at a beachfront taverns

talked love and the
art of making it
stretch out
       beyond infinity
until the early hours

can tell you now
given the
nature
    of their divinity

this just has to be
the greatest conversation
on the
    nature of love

spoken, whispered,
since the beginning of time.