Tag Archives: poetry

AT THE SHEBEEN

AT THE SHEBEEN

I took Wallace Stevens
down to the Shebeen

we dined
on braised cow’s head
and a selection
of South African beers

all of this chased down
with tub-fulls of
salted caramel ice cream

throughout this novel experience
I felt I could detect things whirring
in that machine-like faultlessly
poetic brain

something afoot behind
those placid eyes
finely meshed, sublimely
purposeful

some I dream, gut-feeling,
but also there
in heart
of hearts

he will real all this off
by way of a special poem
cleverly infected
                    in language
flirting with becoming
totally impenetrable to me.

READING MR STEVENS AS SHADE OF COLOURLESS GREEN

READING MR STEVENS
AS SHADE OF COLOURLESS GREEN

close to the shoals
of colourless green
Mr Stevens verged
close
to wreck, was
my initial fear

this I saw
oe believed
I did espy
with my
own two eyes each

mesmerized
though
the sound did sedate whereupon
yes, seduced me
to a danger
I dare
not stomach
actually embrace

and to
think out there
a, whale of a, whirlpool
Charybdis to outdo
closest thing
terrestrial (I meant maritime)
to that fat
killer singulaity
they say drives the galaxy

and yet be
a secret
submarine portal to
an all new
nonsense Wonderland

where
Hatter 2.0 and
the entire 2.0 gang

speak this post post post
Also Sprach colourless
idea
sleeping, dreaming, totally
insomniac
deconstructive
jibber jabber

giving
the poem such
a hard time of it

ideas colourless green
fried to a frazzle
in the desert

or there miraculously in
the mind of Apollo
whilst

he sleeps
lives his cosmic wet dream

read it here, on the page,
then tell me
it might never come to be

TICK

TICK

beware the
time, of the tick
your speech
already rambling
pretty fucked up

and
      tick yourself
you bite, you suck
give yourself
permission to leave
the table Harkonen
blood-bloated

who were meant
to be more symbiotic
than parasitic
in style
of leadership
   delivering so little
promising
so much
   taking so much

you said you
would drain the swamp
end up draining us,

draining us, denying us,
despising us, depriving us,
meant
to uplift

giving new sick meaning
to the image of bounty,
symbol
of overflowing

but
speaking of symbolic
it seems you eschew
all that
is indeed so
better to stick to
the sclerotic, the
crying out for diagnostic ,

tick
   gets pulled
tick gets squashed
all its pilfered, stolen
blood
   one fat smudge
of what
it was
nothing else to see

THERE NEVERTHELESS

THERE NEVERTHELESS

we both got
Daddy pressures
both got
Daddy issues

lifetimes (mine longer
yours, shorter) of pretty much
failed adjustment

tough to find
a resilient forgiveness
strong enoigh to survive
first emotional storm

and since
we are comparing wounds
(our best effort at
any kind of
hoped-for intimacy)
i might suggest
though mine is deeper
yours deep enough
that there
is no
stopping the bleeding

a red
deluge in the making

mine
a wound no one, nobody
ever there
to care about
presume to notice

yours, pages and pages worth
unbandaged, still
outpouring

everyone there for you
(too hideously late) but
there nevertheless

HOLLOW

HOLLOW

I believe it was he
who wrote The Hollow Men
so obvious
person to speak to
fighting this
emptying out
inside me

tried to track
him down
show him my words
ask why they sound
like
empty shells, receptacles,
dull and
distastefully metallic

scoured the deserts, every
academic precinct, places
of learning on
both sides of the pond

Nobel Prize man, last
I heard of him
his very words
being mouthed
magnificently by
Mr Brando, renegade
colonel
   stripped of every shred
of normalcy by
anti-coloniaj war,

by now
the malaise my words
spreading paragraph
by paragraph
turned exponential

a death pallor already
so far down the line hardly
worth talking about.

LABOUR OF LOVE

LABOUR OF LOVE

we are
so unlike

she creates landscapes
has always had
her head
screwed
on tight

sees
the picture
implements
the dream

no place, space
for irony, ambiguity
sudden shift
back and forth

between
high and low
East
    and West
North and
South
inside, outside
nightmare and dream

this very enterprise
premised on
shift and change,
subtlest suggestion
fluctuation

ah, yes
      there we are, out
of nowhere had to
just
   stumble upon it

world’s apart these practices,
so entirely alien
to each other

labours of love
for us both

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
    could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
    big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
   their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
      about to
break

the story
       so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

CLOSE SHAVE

CLOSE SHAVE

first shave
close shave

so relieved
it was not
an open razor
I piped like
one of Blake’s angels
of his demons

but fatherly shadow
stalking me from childhood
lurking now
that I have
come of age
unable to deal,
with what
got twisted
in his own childhood

now praying that my
hand strays
cuts
a neat necktie
about my throat

or worse
spectral, haunted,
down-levelling figure
for whom
sons must
stick in
neutral or
pose insurmountable threat

and me
not in eager concurrence
to proclaim
all sacrifice sacred

find any
solace
in theological
explanation

striking out alone
at this late, perhaps final stage,
wondering what
merit
in trying to be wicked
daring to be profane

writing the peverse new
script of my entire being

on the surface of
this mirror, drafting
the introductory passage
to a great
memoria

finger
sliding across reflective glass
recording as condensed steam

IN MY STRIDE

IN MY STRIDE

ever looking
for the real deal

spoke Latin, Greek,
Italian. Aramaic,
finally switching
to Arabic

of which I knew
more than a smattering

always
on the lookout
for great voices

texts steeped in wisdom
prepared to give you
their all

and now
in this time of ghosts,
abounding spectres

I take all
of the evidence
close to all your hearts,
for and against

as it comes
in my stride