The Time to Choose

The

Time to choose,

Tiger Lily,

Is nearly here:

The sweet

Or the dark?

The demons that seemed

So glamorous earlier

Will have their pound of sin;

The words that sounded

Once delightful

Have their hooks in you.

…Were They ?

We are all capable of such extreme,

Easy self-deception,

Such arrogant vanities –

Aren’t we ?

The plain truth was always that

The words which we scratch

With broken-holiday spades,

In drying sand;

The shapes we construct

Between tide and tide;

That we daub so righteously

On the division walls

Or broadcast to the electric winds

Across the wireless world

Were never meant to last!

Or … ?

Time …

Thunder quietly stirs in

The dark music distances

At the end of the silver day tracks:

The one armed smith and

The eight-legged stormbringer.

A different crew walks the morning desert

Between directions, must be

Getting closer to the time

To visit the city I fear,

To use the words we never said.

Carrying Messages.

Scenery’s never been so vivid.

But rain is rain;

Diagonal rods,

The spaces between,

Carrying messages

The Spirit of Melinda

Alone in a boisterous crowd;

A mob expecting spectacle:

Thunder, fury, blood,

Maybe more ….

The Wrong Kind

Wharf-pool water –

Century’s stagnant mirror –

Surface made of shattered

Butcher’s knife blades and

Shards of guillotine in a

Brick-sided drawer:

Across

The words she seems

To set down so effortlessly

Sing to my soul across distances –

Geographical, cultural and temporal –

Arrowing across

The ether wastes

Like a coming-home smile.

 

9/7/2013