Friday, 17 May 2013

Fragment of a loss


A Loss

Our reaction tells us what is not

What is the what which is that which is dropped

We map a route over and around these temporary permanencies

Which is the thing that is that which is stopped

Holding tight onto the lines that trace the relief of exile and embrace,

Firewall across temple entrance blocked

Settlement and disruption; and no messiah to shift the boulders, just bulldozers

Of detail, these streets of family, feud and fealty, wear their experience

While these plains of false refuge shimmer with the delirium

The roamers line toward the sunrise, gung ho gun toters riding

Whilst the wrapped shepherds appear still moving, in this reality they are redlighted, past their event horizon

History spirals, collapsing timings, closing on itself,

Cities of the Night emerge from dream into text into flesh on sand building brick on brick, until the architects are in the red

The balance sheet asks, and paper tells

Dry as the sides of these vacant wells

And there is no carpet to sweep it under

Save the sky that covers all

No necessity

Just desert floor, steel boots, fatigues and weaponry


Never Quite Still


Never quite still

A rivulet, blinding, thin, wrapped to asphalt ground around

Islands of green shoot

The branches tickle the midday air

The dead just stare

my 12 o’clock shadow points the way home

at the crossroads of the permissible and the forbidden,the sacred and the profane

the outpost and the empire

the animal and the machine

chatter, grunt, click, buss, flap

the flocks in the pen and those on the hillside

in the hutch and in the battery don’t know the difference

between the hum, the rubber and the needles

sits a single flower, quivering

red with a blue heart

not unique but the first

a precedent in my day


Monday, 14 January 2013

Types

Blood, is blood; 4 types, no religion
Washing from the red to the dead
Washing into sand, into pavement,
Into white cloth, blue and black

(A) Blood filled with wine, with caffeine, nicotine
Blood with memories heard and seen
Blood soaking into stone, long after the surface washes clean

(B) Into soil, dark, sun drying, linking these bodies with the earth,
Blood in the oil from the fruit of the tree, child of the soil, laboured into birth

(AB) More blood that comes in beauty, in nature, in creation
Blood on the brow and the cord the child that enters, and coursing through the veins
Of the Mother, proud

(O) Blood in the same veins, running cold at the sight of the
Blood on that same brow of same child, making a mark, molding a temple
Blood crusting around the perfect circle between the eyes
Blood swathing the metal that penatrates deeper, erasing fragile matter leaving
A name, a photograph, a banner

Black and blue, cloth white into pavement,
Into sand washing from the dead to the read, wahing
No Religion
4 Types
Blood is Blood

Saturday, 15 December 2012

mood


Reaching/Still can’t touch peace/Boxed in between lines/So I trawl through the profane in search of the divine/Shared bed/Lonely mind/Frantic making up for lost time/From all the dry dark times when you thought that I was fine/And when I thought I felt something like happiness/I wasn’t permitted to make it notable/Are these emotions or just motions that I’m going through??Vain pained by my choice of outfit/Or am I just crafting the excuse to justify the need for an outlet?/Ageing fast don’t know what I’m about yet/If you’ve got no account to speak of how can you put your money where your mouth is?/ Yet I’m chasing freedom from debt/Emancipation to dance with a lighter step/Or maybe just shifting the balance/A heart and a feather/My transgressions weighed against my talents/Angel of death at my shoulder/Digging in with talons/Human condition could be making me callous/Can any man say that he walks with no malice?/In heart, thought or action?/So many times I mistook anger for passion and chased a phantom/Fixated by fashion/Negative energy/Who can say if it’s temporary?/I still appreciate all the love friends sent to me/ I won’t say it’s pretence but eventually/ I’m scared that I’ll have replaced innocence with decadent tendencies/That this compassion is mislabelled malevolence and this solidarity is a tossed offering to all those I feel I’m better than/But second guessing can’t make me a better person and fear of perversion is just a diversion from acknowledging fear of fear itself/Another version of the paralysis that stops us from working for something else/A different wealth/Regardless of mixed motivation/Not seeking for approval or beatification/I’m a scholar not a martyr so a pen  will guide and chart my destinations/The cartography of contradiction/And we all know that life can be stranger than fiction/Can’t say I won’t behave without inhibition/But I’ll try to use it as a brake and not an anchor to position/Clarity shows the only certainty is that my  doubts provide definition/So if I seem different/Trust it’s the same song/I’m just moving to a different rhythm/And if you see me visibly wounded/Don’t take it for granted/I’m exposing realisation/De Prodfundis/I can’t expect your love and I won’t demand it/In these sentences I’m free yet remanded/ reporting on time/Courting attention /Representing myself/Where justice can't be is art even handed?

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

untitled (8/12/12)

Constant tension/quivering underneath/ fluffy cushion surface/ shy smiles mask a face//That has witnessed/Waking nightmares/No protection/ From these monsters that now live within/ Polluting a picture perfect landscape/Making permanent homes/Educating their young/Stealing their innocence/ Just as surely/ Reflection of premature jading/ Premature closing/ Of mind/ Of roads/ to other chances, other futures/Everything is permitted/Theoretically /Nothing given/Actually/Blood from a stone/Blood from stones/Blood from bullets/Bullets/Blood on stones/Flashlight/3 AM blindfold beating/Reflection from glass eyes/Stuffed toy bears witness/Voiceless/Whilst the twin sleeps/Waking to the report/That another monster/Is restrained/That she may sleep/Yet more soundly/Tonight/Steel/Rubber/Phosphorus/Will keep/A safe separation/Containing the thread/Incubating the fear/To purchase her freedom/A price seen elsewhere/Felt too/Tears for the fallen and bent/And laughter/Hollow/With the cold dark space that keeps widening/Inside the heart.

Monday, 10 December 2012

countertop

Mint leaves over ice and sweet strings played softly
Caressed to life underneath the gliding words of a language infused
To my side dates in cardboard, almonds in plastic
The counter top a junction where journeys meet friends, smiles and fresh flowers;
A Monday afternoon the Envy of most,
Sea cleansed, sidewalk warmed,
I'm not guilty, I'm alone, there's a difference
And the difference is these witness eyes
A happy enough spectator
Red menu silver ashtray in this cosy street side niche, spilling out
Melancholy tastes good

Tuesday, 4 December 2012

debt

Hada mish  la laba
Hada mish la ard
Always take more than give
What is there to share? What gift?
It's never enough. It's never anything.
Inna bifra mishanna dein?
I don't think so
Inna bitaham qatir ilyom
And so what?
The most for the most..to the utmost...OR something for someone sometime like now...
Without hurt, without promise of a better person beyond this desire;
Looping, serpentine, mobious, perfect, closed
To tell a story that satisfies
We reduce, isolate, paint broad and simplify, insulate, package
Sometimes stray threads frayed tell the tale of a rougher fabric mishapen
Underneath, straining to be freed; Ugly, rougher, singular
I don't want to be...everything for everyone...OR...something for someone
Shred these lines, thow them to the wind and let them fall in new formations
Strung together by the will to teach by learning, to pay by earning and
Find this language of my own underneath the fold of creased sheets, the dregs of finished bottles and the Questions that I ask just to answer the silence