
STROKE




FOCUS
Ah, yes,
you tell me
you are writing better now
finding perspective
keeping everything
in sharp,
sharp focus
how sharp I ask
you answer is
nothing but pure,
sublime
show
not tell moment
as you show me
the blood
running
down the page.
BET YOU
bet you
you read this wrongly
take it
the wrong way
to a wrong place
against
the grain
exult in your power
as supreme
bad reader
sorry to
point this out
rain on your
May Day parade
of tanks
and workers
but everybody
misreads me
it is my fate,
the flaw
in my system
story
of my life
that gets blocked
at the school
board
denounced
in the praesidium
even though
it is all
so unreal
a game,
a mystery within
a mystery
one of those
far-fetched, trying
to push the envelope,
post-
modern, self-
reflexive tales
recounted by the most
untrustworthy of
openly
unreliable narrators
way too
metaphoric of its own
good
mirror image
of the stupid sublimity
of all
cosmic creation
FRESH FRUIT
On the farm
I wonder
about the ideology
of a tree
the entire tree:
roots, leaves, branches
cannot
escape asking myself
what haiku currently
courses
through the flowers
Of course
this is (dear reader, I
do recognise) a
category
mistake
of the first order, and will
no doubt, none too late,
be brought
to my attention amidst
much
wild snarling
and thus forgive me
my contextualizing in a poem
how much theory
pervades
everything (truly
it is in
its nature
to be an invasive species)
and Fall and Autumn and
all those mellow feelings
much
written about
some ode or other
that leaf to dead leaf
is
remembered
all the wherefores and whys
as to how
this system getting greener
came
not just
to be but
into conscious being
ruthless and polite both
stuck in a rut this day whilst
supposed
of infinite variety
and my voice
estranged, coming back
to me alien
as if
freshly arrived, in awe of
all capacity to
shift the
word of perspective
see things differently.
SILLY ME
silly me
how silly could
I be!
all the ills
of the world
I do allow
to make
me
sickly
so please
do not simply
condemn
if in this
fall
from grace
I do
maybe
vomit up the odd
poem
or two
perhaps
quite hideous
possibly
outright
sublime
silly not to factor
all that is genius into
the chaos
of big picture
ABSURD
in a poem
it gets so absurd
the whole thing
can be changed
by
one word
for the piece
at hand
it’s life
or death
the shift of shade
you now express
EMILY SYNDROME
stuck some poems
in a folder
ready for revision
(Oh,
happy day!)
left them not
so long but
long
longer than
intended
albeit without Sun
or air or
indeed watering
at all
so imagine my delight shock
and horror that
day of
days, moment
of reopening
when found the little bastards
to have thrived
and multiplied, some
even grown in size
to embrace the gamut
from
split little
atom through to
Pandora of expanding universe
poem growing up
prophetic,
apocalyptic
whispering, screeching
to the Universe
their
primal truth as mirror
and
testimony (dear
reader)
to all
expanding size
WIRING
sorry about the writing
must be
something in
the wiring
keeps
rejecting dead
reckoning
flying
off at a tangent
seeking out the truth