Tag Archives: poem

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

OCEAN

OCEAN

Raymond
your ashes resting
somewhere in
that great
Pacific Ocean

together there
with your beloved wife

would travel there
to pay homage
except you
left me
no money
not a cent, not
a dollar
   (each one of
which much
South African money)

so much for
exchange value and
the price paid
for poetry

you a scientist yourself
of fundamental
life chemistry
told me
    you did not could
not believe in
the crazy
madness of the quantum
whose most
attuned minds find
it hard if not
impossible to
plainly explain

and so
we agreed to disagree
at moment
    somewhat before
you died (final
collapsing of
our wave front)

PIsceans both:
let us leave it to ocean
to have the last word

make of us
what it will.

FLIRTIN’

FLIRTIN’

the Universe
was flirting with me

at the quantum level
basement, mezzanine,
and other
levels

and thinking myself
star child suddenly
I flirted too

Universe
longer in the tooth
than me
     must have got
the wrong messages
probably
   reading a poem
where as
per usual

was
denying my age

but what could I do
but be
unfaithful to my reality
by playing along

for the Universes
was fine, looking
really good this evening
unlike during
the day
   when of the cosmos
no one sees nothing, sunlight
blanching everything
into one
   bright blue sky dark
gray sky, everyday
                 stereotype

yes
  Universe was flirting
endeavouring
maintain
     a solid connection
pique my degree
of interest

establish the terms of
our reciprocity

without which neither gets
to think existence
    

LEO B

LEO B (for B.C.)

I can’t be sure,
but I believe that this
poem might not
have been
what you had in mind

when you asked me way
back then “to come
and look
after you”

whilst he who relayed
the request
would be a month
away amongst
the ladies of Spain

I’m not sure if a poem, this poem,
is what you would
have wanted at all

but sensing innuendo
I felt I just
had to decline your
gracious offer
face your lioness wrath
when I told you this
short and sweet
over the phone

short
and sweet

sweet
and short

since I did no comfort
caring back then
I have no idea
what
you think

how
you read this

what shared, interlocked, idea we have
of a poem

and how it is written, delivered
and read

how both parties in
the creation together
forge its
meaning

of what is here
a poem
might have been
a novel

gorgeous entwined narrative
we lived to regret
then revelled in.
View

VIKING

VIKING

when a Viking
turns the
other cheek

it’s to show you
the humongous scar
where the spear
went through

and let it not be said
that Vikings lack forgiveness
many a crazed Viking
has stayed
   his hand somewhat
dealing out death
with much softer blows

lacking a poetic culture that
would civilized certainly
and thus unable
to write
   their side of
the story

I therefore on their
behalf appoint myself their
spokesman to the
rest of us
    ordinary, somewhat
shocked and
non-comprehending members
of our species

since I am no Viking, or
by my reckoning, as
much as half
clearly isn’t

CART

CART

another cart
I am
   tired of carts

keep asking myself
what I am doing wrong
or right
to find myself forever
being stuck in one

pushing pulling
being pushed
being pulled

tumbil, trolley, cart
tired of them, sick of them
whatever name
to
attach
to them
in whatever language
still exists, whatever language
I have spoken

and yes it sounds poetic
sounds cool and
sounds fun

to think
first time I stand up in my cart
see the sunrise
feel the Sun

warming me
back in this life

speak whatever I need to spesk
still have to lean

cart
   around in my head re-
incarnation to reincarnation