TALL TALE COME THE TAIL
let us
meditate
chant
our mantra
meditate
on meditation
see how recursive, meta,
M.C.Escher
brain-
twister
our soul journey
dare be
stick these consonants together
the most magical of chants
can become
a real
tongue-
twister
leaving your with so
much sheer enlightenment
to piece
together
you will need a clear foundation
to separate all that counts as headline
from all that, in the
final analysis
simply appertains to tail
AS K2
same old
same old
scribbling away
getting nowhere
scrunched up
sheets of paper in
the waste paper basket
threatening
to soar
high as K2
when
I heard you singing
wept at the beauty
of it
such the gorgeous damage
just a single voice can do
HORIZON
Poem
Is the edge
poem
is the horizon
forever pushing the edge
forever crossing the horizon
thing itself
notwithstanding being
its own
process
of creation
flattened out, creature
of a plain off-white
two
dimensional
surface
blank underneath: here
bereft of sign and meaning
but from
below, from all
that is off the page
within the words
betwixt and between invisibly
torrent of all
that is in us, beyond us,
defines what
we are
breaking bounds,
bursting right through.
SYLVIA
I am in the throes of being tested
examined on a poem
we have not
seen before
unless I have
unless that
was your poem
smacked me in the face
when last night skimming through
that paperback anthology
if so, must admit
a bit unfair it being
an unfair
advantage
but still
they (those in
the know steeped in
verse, figures
of speech and,
perhaps, poetic history
and literary theory)
they
whoever they are, big
wigs in the Department,
have to determine whether
I am up to
your poem
not quite yet whether
I am human
or machine
literary scholar or
just along
for the ride
following you observantly
for I know this
thorned fruit
have
been bloodied as a child
seeking out the juiciest
will
know what to do
when you take
my hand
wrench me with
your words out of
the comfort of my world
(this comfort being
unearned, here on
this lofty
campus
staring down upon
the Flats and
the Southern Suburbs of
apartheid Cape Town)
you
my polestar here, point
me any
direction and I will
feel obliged to follow
and nothing
fixed
even for a moment
everything far
from exactly what it seems
green to
brown to
green
something raging, unbalanced,
in the seasons
something wrong
with time itself (warping in
the heat of
these scorpion energies
can see
in the gravity of sheer purpose
you are a late October
child
and me
thinking, talking Transatlantic,
as the berries in your
bottle feel
suddenly thrust upon me
overpowering me
in an instant, which
that whole
new critical cabal
you were
bound to
find at Cambridge
Richards, Leavis (F &Q),
Empson
and the whole
etcetera
who
knew instantly what
this
style meant
but me back there
battling with the simple stuff,
basic
putting pen to paper
hoping
what thoughts I think
serious
magic in the
ink
beginning to flow will
just have to express
(but
damn thosr hooks clawing
at you
same time
holding you back)
something way off-beam
getting forged
in this cauldron
as soon
as I read the opening
lines, made
the connection
the poem
opened its maw
and duly
swallowed me
taking decades
from that moment
of seizure
to
digest me
you who
were so badly loved
and much accounted for
and I must tell you
I heard those laureate lips
speak
deliver the hard
cryptic truth, so-
called gold
veined throughout (I am
told) all
those crow poems,
in a cold Gothic hall
when I was
a student back in
Manchester
place packed out with
troops of British devotees
and me
mum about my heresy
that he
just not
in your league
and now
by virtue of this
technology of technologies
will be
the death of us
I get to
chat to
you, if
anything there is you
resurrected
for the occasion
courtesy of
the binary brilliance
of an impersonator
and
I recall
this first encounter
wondering how this clone
will react, what
this mind will say
seems
I was none too wayward
making personal sense
of that
dark expressionism,
those tortured ramblings
feeling
that you and
I
always
to, somehow, share
this reading
all
our readings
bound in space and time
ever to
return though
swept away
NONE
this is a shadow
written by an echo
written by something
that itself ended up
shadow on a bridge
smudge on a wall
not as text
etched into steel
burned into bark
as the tree suffered
words of fire, image
violent as lightning
revelling in the power of the word
now there are none
STOP MOTION POEM
this is my
stop motion
animation poem
took thousands of shots
of the poem as it
unfolded in
the process
of writing it
stuck them all together
advancing them
frame
by frame
see how, magical it appears
ss if, before your very eyes,
the poem
is writing itself
cartoon mechanism revealing
serious
metaphysical meaning,
emotional truth
AMONGST THE EXPENDABLE
it is the small
swuidgy, rather
pathetic sins
of the poor
that outrage the gods,
elicit their contempt and fury
lead to punishment inflicted
consonant with all
you believe
in your dark theology
of a divine law supremely
vacuous in
its viciousness
not to be compared, or
mentioned in the same breath
of the immaculate sins
of great
heroes and leaders
the Greeks at Troy the.
patricians of Rome
the political elite utterly
at home
on Epstein island
whose infractions, at
first glance horrendous
are things
viewed from high
Olympus
divinity adores
confirming their trust
in these best
kinds of people
in no sense expendable
as with the lowest of the low
THE PAINT
the paint wore off
and with it a sense
of vibrant
ordinariness
and with it,
of course, the graffiti
spelling out the rich and
quite vicious
concerns of and life
in Rome
and where
the disjunctions arise
where voices
have their say, not
buying
into the myths entirely
see here, in this corner,
in the coarsest Latin imaginable
an up to date dossier
on the most
recent excapades clandestine
and extramarital
of none other than
the great
Julius Caesar himself?
IMPETATOR
and this is
the plain God’s truth
as to where
you
are now
what your history has
done to
change you
from what
you were
ending the democracy
for which
you were never
really, actuallt suited
gave
you your Imperator
so useless and stupid but
what you
were ready to
die for
finger on the button
about to
annihilate
humanity
that scum of
the Earth, beings
far less
exceptional
than you
WE DIG
We dig
for what
was written
may turn
a new page
on what
is here
old ideas
predated
by new ones
it is
a race against time
to find them
before
they
before we
are allowed
to disappear
we dig
for what
was written
what is there
hidden for us
hidden from us
could confirm,
undermine
every single thing
we just
so happen
to believe.
DARK POETRY
no twist, turn,
switch
though by all means
a switching on
of the light
a searching, probing
light
the kind survelling the landscape
scanning the skies
enough luminosity there
to scare anyone away
from
subterranean explorations
writing dark poetry,
commonplace anathema
who knows in
the darkness
what razor’s edge
what peril to hard-won
community?
what sways and bends, plunges
deep into itself
goes full on despair
of Garden of Gethsemane
petals of
blood there
to be seen?
yes
what we have here
must say what it says write
as is written
in the absence of light
suddenly that which dazzles
what
the reader demands
never
an abyss, no dark
night of the soul
NEW YORK HAIKU
twenty two years
since was
in Manhattan
since then been
working ceaselessly
on writing
my New York
haiku
nothing bridge and tunnel
something right
out the island
one
hundred
percent city
figure
a year for each
syllable, a decade
for revision
forgetting about everything
extraneous, in
no way conducive
to the
realization of
the dream
I am chasing
the final
stroke of
my pen
distilling
everything
RELAPSE
here again
I relapse into
poetry
has to be
a syndrome
think I need
to get it
checked out
imagine myself
in the consulting room
being examined,
waiting upon
the diagnosis
fearing
that this might
just be incurable
a sickness
handicapping me
for the rest
of my life
ending what we
have here
on such
a downbeat
need to
write something
to provide
counterbalance
something dancing
across the page
brimming with life
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