Tag Archives: poem

ROARING TRADE

master poetry
in 28 days

a poem
every ten
minutes

start
   haiku first
graduate
to sonnet

soon
you will have
authority in
your voice
sensational
articulation

be the deadly most
dangerous
person
   in the room

office
   guru
and celebrity

loved by both low
and high
if they weren’t
so seriously afraid

just 28 days
from image
to metaphor
to rip-roaring trade

AT THE TIME

we
were always
in a different time
zone

perhaps even
epoch

but then again, maybe
it was all down
to me entirely

light years away from anyone
in my own nebula
or just
high above, if not
deep below
the surface
of this planet
(who knows?, perhaps
both
at the same time)

fifty years whizzing past
each other, never colliding,
not even
a glancing blow

destined for
bigger things, battering our
ways quite
independently into
populated planets

as if
    radar guided, as if
beautifully synchronized,
exactly timed

AND ALL THAT

I was present
at the funeral of the dead Universe,
not a pallbearer
but did bring flowers
(obviously not there
at its birth)

was sure
     they would let me
give a little speech
but was assured
I wasn’t
important enough, and
being a sort-of poet
would be
bound
to get the tone wrong,
if not break into
rap, or, heavens forbid, song

and so
     my bubble burst,
disappointment expanding
at the speed of light

I found a fulcrum, place
to stand, and lever

spent all of eternity
dissing the hell out
of everything, everyone
that somehow
found themselves forced into
or openly deciding

to love badly, and
be loved badly back.
     

LET US

Let us
not talk

let us
just listen

hear what
everything
is telling us

all those soft, soft voices
and those
that
are impossibly loud.

CONCRETE

poem in the mirror
poem
underwater

poem hitting
the ground running

poem
smashed into
                 concrete

p  i  e
c
   es
                       a ll
ove
      r
                                     the
p
  lace

CAMILLE

saw you hanging out
at the Mad Hatter’s party
with Madame Ferocity

your girl
I believe, after you
gave us the lowdown,
told us her true story

or was it
more like home turf for you
the two of you
wearing matching aprons
sinking strong, dark
Italian roast
espresso after espresso?

there in some Sicilian cafe
bristling with costa nostra, being
their regular haunt?

Then,
her back being turned,
you tried to (brigand
that you are) sell me the line
that this Amherst spinster
be some
daughter of
Dionysus

making so persuasive a case
in usual heavy artillery style

that was easily seduced
(how could I not be?)
dragged along
pointedly and
pitilessly
for the ride

BOTTLE

this poem.
is irradiated

that poem
is irradiated too,

it says
so on
the bottle

helps them
I suppose, can
only presume
negotiate the mechanics.
of speaking
truth
to power.

being shining examples
of all that light can
achieve

when a billion years
of concentrated matter
is turned
into energy
in one
billionth
of an hour

ON THE OTHER HAND

daylight here
giving me permission to
write whatever I come up with

conscious that the Austrian
did legislate
of what we
cannot speak we
must needs be silent

this itself
being a species of silence

whitespace, words,
you yourself fill
the sound
syllables in
feel how they match
the rhythm

darkness however
(and here so hard to
decide between them)
rejects
silence
in favour of secrecy, mystery
all that
be whisper, middle-of-the-night
to and fro, touch and feel

arabesque
circling the absolute
homing in on fat zero

and,
done with that divine calculus,
invites the light in again
with all
due protocol and
consideration

the love stand-off (some say,
cold war) between them

feels
in my bones
to be too much either-or

sometimes a bit too
sublime, intense, fraught
with havoc
for the sense
of settled taste you
appreciate here

POSTSCRIPT

blue books
black books

Necromicon
Tractatus

red books
green books too

in the forest, in
the galleria, let
them blossom
let a thousand, million,
billion
books bloom

grow thick as tree trunks
wide as rain forest
be there
for solace or
subversion
lying at the bottom
of every top drawer

or
to prevent escape
save them
from themselves
innocent, experienced
chain them to the pulpit
bolt them to a lectern

cannot have these mechanical
birds of Caxton
soaring flighted, heading off
their own way

spilling our secrets
to red in tooth and claw
alien minds
and their technologies

friends (cousins) far
too green for our liking
brimming with
levels
of Aries energy beyond
rational compare

reading
us the riot act, dictating
terms and conditions of our
post-
human future
final touch put to that
postscript which
you

first read here