poetry – Page 111 – poems 2 die for

CRUEL

PLANET (JANET)

WINDOW

at once
a suffering and
a fufillment

at once
ink and psint
and canvas
and wood

but
also blood

fast raw red arterial
but black where
death has
already infested

out in the heat, the cold,
across every extreme
I see you slaving
trying to bring
to state of
truth and beauty.
some murderous,
killing idea

there where the ice is
point at which
some
gas freezes, there
where flame can
easily smelt steel

maybe you should shred
smash crush
all that tortured you,
so altered you
by way of
acceptance and repentance

but she, the Muse,
has got her sting and fangs
and claws
deep into you

tells you
there is more, you
                         know there
is
    still more

MUG AND BEING

five types
of bread

seven kinds
of beans

a bean smorgasboard on
a tiny toast

tell me Juliet
you are the expert
on the names
of things

could this bland name
cover
such a
stupendous thing?

or are we now forced
to jack up
our language
as common parlance
turns
cordon bleau, basic
foodstuffs
forget
their station in life
invert such an
ancestry to
plead
their case for
being haut cuisine?

once upon
a time
coffee was
just coffee

being
before essence
bean before
steam

and so much de Beauvoir
Sartre cafe existentialism
beat
poetry: Corso, Ferlinghetti
hinged upon it

but now
you need a handbook of
coffee phrase
and idiom, a coffee lexicon,
a coffee thesaurus

not just
spolit for choice but
thrown into
infinite quandary

whilst
business is buzzing
deals are
going down

brains going whole full
minutes without
delectable roast
flavour
indispensible caffeine
(unless caffeine
free because
trendy to be so special
stylish or
in caffeine
cold turkey)

to drink to take to eat
to go

dolce dolce rapido
latte expresso

sweetie
dear

would you like a house cup
cup of
house brand with

sublime piece oc toast
(actual piece of art)
and
the being of your beans?

Need your answer now
before
beford you very eyes

I percolate
become pure dream

MCCALL

you told me
about your beloved dog

whose name,
unforgivably,
I have forgotten

I am on my way
to forgetting everything
every day
the jigsaw puzzle
loses another piece

and the picture on the box
must have been replaced
because I would
swear by
all that is holy
I have
no knowledge of this one;
would attest
in a supreme court not
to have seen it before

not to have
seen you before, remembering
good times, the odd
great time
before it all went to Hell
turned cataclysmic

falling further from grace
than fallen angels
ever did

no pride, I guess it was,
that threw our
little world into
terminal
tail spin

the worst kind of pride, pride raging sad shadow
born of childhood pain
beyond our
undetstanding at the time

that time of which
you told me, your your legs
striding through
the veldt, dog whose
name
I have forgotten chasing
you, loyal
to a fault behind you

and me
not in this scene, here
just whisper

waiting for the moment of
our meeting and
the thought
(for which I do
so apologize
that here you are
here we are

neither of us from this moment on
ever going to be alone

QUIETLY

me and my
postmodern imagination

sat together quietly
thinking about you

comimg up with famous
film scenes the three
of us might appear in

just the three
of us
cutting and pastimg
from classics, mainstream,
and independents
alike

as if we had become
possessed by the genius
of Mr Tarantino

players and played
as it is with
practically everything
most of the time

you, me
and my postmodern imagination,
only thing that
connects us
any way at all

TEACUP

when
contemplating

the fragility
of a priceless teacup

remember
that only when
it is broken
does it lose
its fragility

its beauty;
its curse

say goodbye
to all it was

brainstorm a
future
where the
world is its oyster
disaster, chaos
no longer
feared

their terrible power
lapsed into
comic irrelevance

a cosmic joke
you can take
to the bank

where they all are
suited, shrouded
in grey,

the experts on priceless

HOLES

you leave holes everywhere

everywhere
a hole

with bodies
to fill it

this is
your supreme talent

you have elevated it
to a high art

put pen to
paper
brush
to canvas

all we see
holes
holes and death
grotesquely
intertwined

no other picture
feasible, possible
each death
a mirror to
the hole
in your soul

riddled with
death and holes
horribly, tragically
your entire
(as in whole)
identity

a hole within a hole
infinite recursive series

recurring
empty signifier,
null
set
fixed
fixation
supremely stuck

nothing to end it
void it
collapse it
deny it
for all eternity

holes
everywhere

you leave holes everywhere

MIKE

great a Tae Kwon Do
(gang of young heavies
round at our little house
to claim money
owed them)
me smiling like Mr Niceguy
carving knife hidden
behind the couch cushion
behind me)

not so good at popping
ligjtbulbs with a airgun
in our kitchen
firing range
my sniper’s instinct
something we did
not share
(hope you do not feel
that I
am sniping at
you now

catching you for all
and suddenly in terrible
cross-hairs)

and you
always so ultra mod and style
and fashion and look conscious
didn”t ever
imagine members of
your sacred tribe could be
as narcissistic
as that

and that beautiful Tess of
the D’Urbervilles girl you
took into
your bedroom
moaning with
vociferous pleasure at
whatever you
were
doing to me

and me as per usual
univolved, unsatisfied
and she
exactly my type

and our little terraced house
in the collapsing inner city area
just a stone’s throw
from City’s
great storied ground (before
greener pastures
called
courtesy of Arab money

and the job you hooked up
for both of us guarding
the then
Polytechnic
lecture roomz downstairs,
unisexual residences
upper floors

place where
I had my David Bowman
2001 out
of the body experience

place where we
played football with
the cleaning
crew in
a basement corridor

place where you insisted
I read every page of
this book you
swore
I would swear was
“even better than
Ulysses”

never heard of Thomas Pynchon then
or his 1973 masterpiece
of apocalyptic
postmodernism

and the crazy way
that year’s cup final
followed
the track of the channel
we were watching

Arsenal
better (who would have
guessed!) on BBC
on ITV
United suddenly, magically,
with all the mastery

2-0 down at halftime least we
United fans could do
(with the muscle of
the biggest United in
the room
who just so
happened to
be younger brother)

was cool
all that Gunner ardour
and rampant triumphalism
down
a cold cold bath
up the stairs
strategically waiting

one night
at the Poly workplace
(Manchester Central
University now) they
left the
door to the upstairs rooms
completely unlocked

and there I wandered
taking in everything

finding myself on a balcony
looking out
into the night lights of
this
sleeping, dreaming
city of
my birth and
place of study

wondering where
this world was at and
where
I was heading

what
    other
      strange definitive friendships
would carry further
along
   whatever track

and which
friendships, to my shame,
I would
let disappear

Tag Archives: poetry