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

Resolutions?

Talk your thin, fool words,
Make your feet-of-clay plans –
Both will carry,
Curse-crystal clear –
Feel the gods laughing presence,
As they position game-pieces,
Sharpen diamond teeth?

Plant your pale, flags
On maps-that aren’t;
As if they mean something,
Are terribly significant …
If it’ll help.

Conceal tribal silver
As is traditional,
With future beauties, power
And conceit
Atop the sacred rock:
Strap war-doom saddles to
Belligerent bull camels –
Time is treasure –
The star is
Always moving on.

27/12/2012

Heron

I am heron,

Last of the lonely fisherfolk clan,

Wrestling breath and existence

At December-Edge Lake.

Needs must when

Winter-king rules;

So I will take

Frogs from frozen mud,

Cold-killed cadaver from bog ditch graves,

Maggots from fieldside muck-heap

And warmth from memory cells –

And shun your hypocrite charity.

My hopes and words I store

Between stare-down-the-Devil eyes,

Behind decision sharp weapon bill

Beneath my fog-toned feather cape.

They are mine, not yours,

Seek them not.

I seek no camouflage for

Past, ruthless savagery –

That stranded me here –

Fossil in all but fact –

Pale target for avaricious

Cowardly mobs of

Bright-urchin gulls.

Denying the truth

Destroys the soul

As sure as sin

And damages any future

I may hope to have.