Speedwriter at sunset

edit

Soon the sky will go red
and that is exactly when to write the poem,
when one finds a volcanic sofa-shelf of rock
on a day of Clima – pools
couldn’t team with enough life,
crabs quick/side-step all they like,
and fish dart from edge to edge
wondering why the sea became so small,
because when a sun clouded in sand
is cut by the horizon line, and rays of fingers stretch
from there to here,
it is then one writes a poem
from a sofa
on a day of Clima,
when sunset hands illuminate the land,
when surf bubbles
at last, having worn that rock
to a tiny grain of black sand
holding an essence of story,
it is then one really should write the poem,
before it gets too cold and too dark to see
the crabs side step, the fish,
and the sun
clouded in sand,
cut by a horizon line
just too clouded..

...and if you dont know cinnamon

It will come as mysterious as cinnamon,
and if you don’t know cinnamon
it may present itself to you
as apple pie, or mulled wine
- and you will remember,
there must have been times,
there must have been - times
in cinnamon flavours and allspice,
when nutmeg raindrops dark outside
felt like gentle fingers stroking your hair,
until what wasn‘t known, becomes bolder,
asserting itself in unrecognisable moments;
and unrecognised, will leave
replacement raindrops, the darkness, the window,
and many other objects of habit,
living in them, what wasn't known,
until there was cinnamon.

People of the Lie

Although you loved him, you also reveled
in his humiliation, when his older surety
was ridiculed, his place in the world...a schism, irreparable.
You, a witness, unable to acknowledge
the pleasure in this administered damage,
instead admired his footsteps, your fledgling
predator to forever protect his greatest pretense.
However, from under those feathers of yours',
Swan and Peacock both have eyes of stone
and flashing infrequently is the pleasure you take
from what you never would condone.

Nanny Nomore needs a vacation -

Ah, provocation? Fed up all the way to the spitting top valve
and way down deep to the loose bottom sphincter
of love, a-more-ray, romancing stones, and throngs,
busty lusts, a bit of the other, gone so terribly terribly wrong?

Now it's all gall, stones, pebbles, and rocks to throw
at boys and girls who got your goat. Baaah! Cheese.
Ah-ha arseholes, and lactose-intolerant fleas! Go! Pray
tell - your very own story - and play nicely if you please!

Frankly, it's not that I'm not angry too, I'd just rather revive
a healthy, busty, lusty desire for Mmmm, Life!
than ratchet: either Songs of Praise, or hatchet
the fetid, putrid bile of a raging, lost, and long gone child.

This is not guile, nor much at all of wiseness.
It's simply tiredness. So sick of hearing hoofing pellets
of phlegmy tiny-minded gobbers, upset with a world in crisis.

Endless flaccid flourishes erecting inane or ignorant spit!
Go plant a tree! Save your save-the-world, save-my-soul diatribe,
and glue please. Stick it. And then may be, baby, I'll save mine.
Skidding useless shit all over the street, yelling, Look! I've no nappy!
Mother? Dear Earth! It's Insane! And over there: Where's my Daddy?

See? I'm really not so very happy - either,

so, dear venom spitting defecating bunch of adult turds
who pleasure themselves by taking sloppy aim,
I ask you to keep your St. inkiness pointed well away..

Grow up! Go get your train! Tell your story carefully!
Sensitively! Play nicely! I've 425 kids to tend to here already.
Don't you see? Dear grown ups – here's a curdled curd:
Frankly, I don't give a hoot - go tell it to the birds!



2008
'Go girl!' - Hulketta
'Where's my Crit?' - Hippo
'Oh dear oh dear' - Turtle

Waves

In the measured displacement of waves
a distant quasar is recorded
whispering in the swirling channel of the ear:
It's Love - love on the radio.

(An aside)

(Stepping out through gardens,
Mountains, rivers, oceans,
She sees gods and goddesses
Going about their everyday affairs;
Somedays, they say hello, and
Somedays she watches from a bench
Believing they can't see her there
Pondering how she's often like him,
How much she is so like her
And how she has never been)




08
ed.

As many words for orgasm

As many words
for orgasm as the Inuit
have for snow, and my old friend
tells me she’s never, so I offer
to take her out to eat, twice;
it doesn’t make sense, she
a sexy woman, me
a language teacher,
the world’s our oyster so to speak,
and not to go out for Paella, whatever,
to discuss The Orgasm in detail,
over a few jugs of fruity Sangria,
seems absurd, peculiar,
however, I never did discover,
if she ever learned to speak Inuit,
back with her partner
now, or not.



08?
noidea
file/properties/16/05/08

Shaking Jaw

Shaking Jaw jabbers
Glossed over trauma release,
Imprints, not all mine


1/1/10

Broken Teeth, by discopants and littleditty 2006

Monogamy doesn't laugh, polygamy's last words
Were promises breaking into a sprint
Down a damp alley, lamp-lit,
A cat choking on infidel moments in a corner.
Talk of remembered freedom brings
A jeweled scowl in the half-light,
With its shadowed edges only visible
To those who wish they could not see.
A taxi clocks last laughs from the curb,
Returning to exchanges in a corridor
As an opportunity not to be missed.
This ugly fur, down a damp alley, lamp-lit,
Clings grimly to fog-bound aspirations,
A siren sounds, stirring suppressed thoughts
Of cold hospital corridors and x-rays,
Of shadowed edges and monogamy’s broken teeth.

She died I think

She died I think, not on the trolley
in the corridor –it was later,
perhaps in a cubicle, or a bed,
I can’t remember –I can’t remember
anything before or after the trolley
except for a Christmas Cat
who had appeared
to die, with me, in spasms
on one of the few nights of the year
when there was no Vet working,
no shops, no people in the building,
no numbers to call, except yours;
just a cardboard box I made soft as possible
and this Christmas Cat, in spasms,
it must have gone on for ages,
nobody to help me, or her. I tried
to find a way to get her some water,
I can’t remember –I can’t remember
anything more, except phoning you
saying ‘I think she’s dieing...come quick’
and you were so disgraceful as usual, it felt cruel,
even though that’s just how some are
when they are ugly and hurting inside,
when they can’t easily see another exists,
so all I could do was rest my hand on her body,
listening to the throws of different languages,
pretending I could understand, Cat,
right there in the corridor, while she flailed
gracefully through darkness, light, and left.

Runner 93

This is the time when she looked up to say
“This is the time when most people do a runner...”
like she is not most people,
and is not going to do a runner,
except all she's ever wanted to be is
most people, to stop running from whatever it is,
just be most people enough to begin, like most people do,
to fall for the very next kindness she meets
because this one is a good person, and she
just wants to be intimate like most people,
to stop running from falling, and whatever it is,
except falling like most people do
into the arms of someone
who for some reason wants her too,
is also doing a runner, like most people do,
away from being alone.

haiku, satin shell

pearl satin shell curled
a nestling swan's drumming wings
opens fossil dreams

haiku kisses

the sweetest kisses
foreheads rest/lean together
hands in hands warm breath

Meditation

Rushing from one to the other
he was always far away from it
looking in the mirror of the other
understanding only this way
the blinding light of reflection
has something to do with the self,
searching in introspection
still comparing one with the other
he thought he was lost

Later the light
that doesn’t know itself
is where he is.
Still.
The mind
breathing without interpretation
until he thought he was found


06?

The Pale Horse

1

The Pale Horse,
Hooves of hard edges
Suppressed, muzzled
And expressionless,
Is dancing unseen
In the backwater,
Pounding her gavel
On other dreaming pavements,
Dampening down dark
Muffled announcements.

2

I heard it and did not,
Cantered on split decisions,
My three-beat gait too slow
For wisdom, fast enough
To take me far from you;
A carousel waltz,
A question of timing.

3

Today the mallet struck,
Gavel-to-gavel, dust to dust.
I wipe my hands of it.
And in an instant hammered home,
It is the end of us.


http://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/the-pale-horse
June 2006, Athens

waka, winter

Sky lanterns and stars
Church window stories ablaze
Passion plays the square

Sensuality dances
Taste the spices of mulled wine

Honey,

You came on reflections of light,
honeycomb angles, an inch of curve
spanning to hint of the forever flavour
of your taste...how longing exceeds itself,
leaping time, what is seen, what will be;
desire glides miles ahead magnifying, and chased,
a coquettish glance says, follow me -
will you ever capture the crescendo of wild honey
in the mouth of your last gasp? Again,
tease your hand across my skin,
feel a disappearing corner bend
an arch into a sweeter sigh of longing.
Gone! So long...your perfume lingers in absence.

dama de noche 08

Pungent night, no moon
arresting reverie's scent.
White flowers blooming.

Woods and Trees

Looking at a painted roof tile
we could speak about paths,
gnarled branches, disfigured fingers,
the beckoning of nails, leaves and breezes.
Instead, you say
I like to linger on the microcosm,
my 'myopic utopia', and you -
- you like to stick pins in bubbles
and watch the soap sting my bifocals.
In this age of self examination
you demand I look up, only
when I'm unable to.
If I don't see the wood for the trees
at least I know you do.





05

Cicada

Each word is a brick
obscuring my vision of you,
when I would use none
for this Cicada
on a string;
distilling
all
to the resounding hum
of knowing you are
there beyond
the wall I do not want
to be building,
whispering through
the chink, walking
through walls
weaving trees
climbing up through
a humid earth; flavouring
this cicada song
with breath,
knowing,
before words
and after
when I would use none.


08

Feral Child

05

Feral Child looked for wolves and found a fox
on the golf course - they both hiding, both seen,
she in her orange coat and she in Khaki green.

Both camped out in bushes of thorns, as bold
as ghosts who can't be caught, snapping the traps
layed by the hunters employed just the night before.

Feral Child, a scruffy dove with one wing on her
right shoulder and a swag bag of treasures on her left,
looked the swaggering golfer straight in the eye.

A whittled craft box in her hand, she would emerge,
cocking her head: Can't even carry your own bag Sir,
to escape your Sunday home? I'll sell you these...
and lifting the lid on all the bounty she had found:
...each for a quid, or these: two for a pound!

Her camps were legendary, never owned so never lost,
and so it was with irony that she saw them hunted down...
in others' dreams...she couldn't save the blind moles.

But the other creatures dying in the bush found her -
or the fox's grin - whichever first would quench her thirst;
as it should be, quick; an edible heart, a twist or rip of the neck.

Dead. She would watch the kill, collect the poison pellets left
that scattered her tracks with future cries...So civilised,
the hunter, the guest golfer -and they called her Feral Child.

Disturbance of Shen

Remember the first scream
taking stale breath
and breath not yet breath
from the cavities of memory
through the oval of an open mouth?

Unlike the daily exhale of a sigh
hurtling, hot down nasal tunnels,
heat enough to steam a window,
tears rolling in quantities
of homeopathic salts.

So unlike the comfort of a sigh,
air gurgling over the larynx,
drying teeth, the fluttering
reef slip over lip. There is a rip
and tear to it, an opening; there

in a birth or in the wail of grief
lives something more than expelled air;
when breath could slice a bauble of flesh
in two; scalpel tissue, scissor sinew,
and laser through the pores.

The throat chakra, opening
to a rocket jet tunnel of force,
a primal scream of spores to the sky.
A disturbance of Shen, perhaps making clouds
of rain to wash the skin of the body, the leaf
of a tree, where fuel toxins lie in limbo;
pathogens preparing - there to dust,
for a returning to the earth.


goa

Moth

Perhaps there is no closet
only the drum roll
and the opening
of door upon door
the act of moving thresholds
bringing light to another dark room.
A moth caught
porcelain on a windowpane
a translucency
once again framed.



06

Talking Pond

People come
with such a thirst
to drink, bathe, and ask
will they be richer,
will they be wise,
in this mythical place
by the sea,
where silver statuettes
fountain fresh ripples
on a talking pond;
they clap and it bubbles,
they speak and it replies,
answers are inked,
inkled selectively;
while Ganesha winks
from behind a garland of orange,
one burp of air
for a yes,
two for a no.

Are you leaving myself?

I shuffle, repack my bag,
Are you leaving myself?
lock the door, check it,
stand by the sofa in a trance
waiting for Epiphany to walk
through the door,
set me on my feet,
click her fingers, and say
'Let's go - have you got everything?'



07?

A Still Point

With a tendency to over compensate
for disruptive changes
she felt that a trip to the brain doctor
was imminent

It was Shavasana she wanted
a corpse pose
some metabolic equilibrium

mid tide long tide
cellular breath
homeostasis

so she phoned her

a maintenance call
booking a still point
at the earliest convenience

Delivered by his hand

Bamboo reeds knock glockenspiel notes
blown in by crests from the shoreline,
rocking flutes, climbing the hill of the wind chime wood,
to the dead doctor's agricultural museum,

where his silence wraps ancient tools,
fat gourds, and earthen pots, flowering from the dust.

A bed, a bookshelf; a lullaby
in the shade of photographs:
farming lives; generations of births,
delivered by his hand.

A canoe, a wicker box,
pistols on the wall,
lines of medicine phials filled with salts,
names for healing, names for killing pain;

safe in this oasis; where walls map
cultural, technological,
and pharmaceutical phases,

a place of history and his healing hand,
and a love feeling, spilling over,
of the man.

charcoal lines, sketch 2

8/09
charc2

Told

She needs you, the you
behind my eyelids,
she told me so
and wandered off
busying herself
with making things
from colours collected
in the garden; homespun string,
driftwood, old milk cartons;
fingers busy, looking up
occasionally to check
if I am thinking – I
told you, her eyes say,
don't say I didn't because I did,
glancing over the smoke rings
which might read my mind,
those eyes saying you're
going to get distracted,
and focused, or unfocused, you'll leave
and forget, like you always do,
the I need you, she told me.





08
Inkblot,
Carter Street Review

soft charcoal lines - sketch 1

7/09
charc1

'How now I missed to be with you...the fish, the river.'

Hi ho,

Yellow poppy, candle on the sea,
I am here catching your light on a sigh
to see you rocking, a candle, the window,
are you sleeping on your belly of waves
scanning pages of love creaking port side beams,
or wide eyed with shocks, starboard knocks
in salty wood stretched to the seams?

Pirate Girl, sticky fingers of palm sugar rum,
licked; eyes bright awake from loving
sweet, toffee, apple, frights; things that go bang!
Cannons – I could write of your tanned skin,
the stud on your tongue, your hi ho rings,
things which bite, of all of your might,
and on your pouting lips, always a question.

She dives like Geena Davis

She dives deep for pearls, shells,
anything - in warm water she is ancient
and always comes up with her knife
between her teeth, like
Geena Davis in those freezing scenes
on a waterwheel, except
she has a conch in one hand, an oyster
in the other, reaching up to you there, set
above the waist of the ocean, leaning over the deck,
smiling, whereas Geena Davis
came out of the water all guns blazing,
blew the killer away. She's diving again
and it's incompletely silent all of a sudden,
unlike the struggling scenes of twisted bubbles and blood
as Geena pulled on the ropes at her wrists;
it's still, you standing there, a pearl and conch
in your hands, waiting for her to surface,
and when she does, no knife between her teeth,
was it to tell you she loved you first?

Grace

There is no mercy, caritas, or thanks
In the everyday moments of a greedy life.
We would have to look for it
On a plate before we eat,
In the flesh of a tender fish,
In a fresh bread of wheat,
And afterwards, in a moment
Captured, well after the blessings given
For the honest way
Or the elegant way
We attempted to floss our teeth

Points of View

The slats, scenic backdrops a plenty for one life,
will lift or slide the moving panorama of moments,
marking each instant or occasion with importance.
The enormous artistry fixed in views, minute portions
of the transcendent, setting the scene.

These sublime slices will flick-book moments of eternity
whether outside on the pavement, treading the boards
or sat alone in a comfortable chair. She deviated,
a random variable to their fixed value,
and they thought she was mean.

When the momentum of her absence is felt in each scene,
and you cannot find her there or anywhere,
forget all other points of view;
who is running down colonnades, falling through squares,
smashing immense slats, warped enough to want you,

sat, red on a park bench, panning into insignificance,
the September rose garden, the fireworks on a blue sky.

Hope won't mind

Hope wont mind if she rests a little,
she wont mind, will she, if we Jazz
fingertips skimming along the cleft
of a taffeta dress, if we ease slightly
this way, a little to the right,
a little to the left, down
the slow drink notes
to the quick step chorus line,
drumming up the steady bass
piping syncopated tiptoes
to the drink me in skies, where she is, skirt -
hitched above her knees, stroking her weary feet,
looking down on her pedicure bed
from the starry, starry night.
Hope won't mind...will she?
If we take her daughters
pour wine to their puckered lips, soften
their robes, smooth the gathered pleats
at the meeting of their hips, and watch them dance
Jazz notes, a little this way, a little sway
that way, Hope won't mind, will she,
as she raises her eyes to the heavens, to the left,
to the right...Hope sighs, hums; switches
on the TV for News at Midnight,
and for dessert, her favourite Soap.

Daf is dreaming

Daf had been sitting there staring into space,
could have been hours, could have been days
meditating in the wicker chair, when she turns
to look at me and blinks; could have been an idea,
could have been wind, I’m really not sure, so I ask her
if she’s been wondering what life would be like with long eyelashes –
and she raises her eyes to the sky – like I should have known
she’s been wondering about the hypnotic eyes
of a peacock, and a hen; the hen wondering
what life would be like with long eyelashes.

Door in a Field

It’s not so dramatic, of course - the door was in a field,
the middle of a huge field, just there in its frame, slightly
ajar; and so unwelcome guests would leave quickly,
the broom tucked in the groove left for hinges
to feel their weight; creak, loosen,
and sense some movement in the breeze,
because there was a breeze in this particular field,
and I knew it was a field because it was green,
not black and white like in the dreams people have,
not in colour either, or there would have been sky, some trees,
- and cows would have appeared chewing the cud,
- and although this now has already happened,
- and other things too, people running around
from tree to cow, building things, having revolutions,
I left the door right there slightly ajar, and watched
from a wicker chair like Van Gogh's, upset
with how the field is so easily cluttered with trees,
cows, and people running round in circles
when I thought what I wanted was a clean frame
to imagine irises like he painted
by walking backwards away from canvas,
or seeing you walking through the door, looking just fine,
carrying some shopping bags from your favourite place
somewhere in the green field that I was on the very edge of,
wondering where the door had gone, and why I was
sitting by the banks of the same river watching the litter pass,
scuffing trainers on the brickwork, waiting for the ferryman,
trying to cats-cradle beams of light



©mar27/08

Daisy,

The other day, a complete stranger
ran up to me and said, ‘Let’s
get married! Let’s get married!
and hopped on to my tandem.
Naturally I replied, ‘Miss,
we’ve only just met. Please -
remove yourself from my bicycle,
that seat it reserved for Daisy.”
Mercifully, she obliged and wandered off,
just before Daisy appeared
carrying a shopping bag for her dad,
“Alright Ducks?” she said, “I’m knackered”
and placed her belongings into the basket,
hopped on board, buffed the chrome with her hanky,
and looked just fine, “You take it easy, my love,
I’m as fit as a fiddle to peddle the metal.
You freewheel a starfish.” and peddled off,
hard up the hill; easy-sailing all the way home.

Nostalgia in Bloom

Book me in to the best hotel you can imagine,
a real dive, somewhere special, it’s unimportant
because I’m coming to get you –
listen out for the gravel under the tyre
of my old Karman Ghia,
revived, for the purpose of this trip -
post-box red, 1965.
I’ll have polished the curves,
packed a picnic under the hood,
and she’ll purr along the open road,
stop, in those traditional neighbourhoods
where I am yours - and you,
you are mine. So book me in my love,
and we’ll go slow enough to see the bees kiss
the pink almond scent of springtime
blossom, slow enough
to remember each time we have felt
anything quite like this.

*

On Dreaming

Tonight there are petals along the corridors
to your room, yellow candlelight leads
an aching body through a world of scent,
and you are enchanted by all that is vanishing:
the bags in your hands have disappeared,
a jacket has been unhooked and peeled away,
there are no walls which shudder when you walk through,
only door frames becoming metaphor and simile.
There are no moths caught translucent on a window pane,
there are no panes - bookshelves have melted,
catalogues recycled, and forms have become an idea.
The same thing has happened with every electrical appliance,
batteries do not exist, soft furnishings evaporate
until all that remains is wood, linen, and feathers -
the only objects on the way to an absent window,
where you take my hand from under the covers,
curl around my back like a cape - and I wake,
to walk through the snowflakes with you.

Surfer's Winter Tonic

Well after riding the surf, when I wash up
on the shoreline of evening, drunk
on the refreshing keynotes in music,
you are like ice,
checking your watch, eyes to the starry sky,
your breath fanning a camp-fire burning
for the warmest brew of full bodied heat,
where you are all night my dream,
the esprit d’escalier of waves coming in.

We rise from the beach mat sheets,
your morning growl animating the verve
pulsing through the day
where you are all day my zing,
the esprit dancing in the waves coming in.

So élan vital you are – this freezing day
was an empty container, all for a full cup of you.
Your liquid thoughts spilt over last night’s blanket,
kick-starting my heart racing home
to warm my hands again around the hot pepper vigour
of your simmering medicinal wine.

She tracks an Orbit

Light years from you and me, her eye to a telescope,
she tracks an orbit and discovers a spiral galaxy.
We are going round in circles, so she begins
to determine the mass of objects, their weight
in relation to one another, while I see Mount
Clara, clear water, and rocks full of gems.
Adaptive optics, and see her waterfall,
a white arrow laser shower, chased by
jumping lunchtime boys arching their toes
over slated ledges. Her eye to a telescope,
she may imagine quietness on a lagoon's rocky bank,
a roaring storm at an energetic stem of a cliff,
and warmer waters, in shallow, gentle edges.
She may see the shade, swim through rainbows,
dip under thunder to the cave, rest on the wet
shelf of sofa rock and watch the light come in.


06

Covalent

Voice broken morning
takes the night home
to silk; where,
from the dew,
beaded dreams
mine diamond words, each one
to inlay a white gold necklace;
a smooth ancient turquoise stone
a dirty centrepiece; it might take
ethanol grain, or white spirit
to liven it up, leave it soundless,
clean, an empty surface touch;
though this would not
please her: she,
already flammable, C2H5 -
OH - intoxicating exhilarant,
fuckable, and...solvent;
for an evanescent woman, this gift
must sparkle
in the daylight of a million stars;
the steam, spit, and the polish
of a soft chamois, loosens the tourniquet
of grime on the stone's dusted veins,
and there, I am, to reveal strong charcoal river lines
bedding lush emerald meadows; slivery pathways
marshalling petal specks of coral,
spittle rimming the edges
to a delicate filigree clasp;
steam, grit, the power of breath,
and golden flecks abound;
I wake, the diamonds already inlayed
to catch the dark olive of her eye,
take volatile oil, essential,
to make the glitter for her thighs.
I am a jeweller of her arms, gold dust on my lips,
lucid, transient; and heralding C2H2 -
Oh...acetylene; intoxicated, explosive,
fuckable...and solvent;
vanishing......where I was,
covalent, a voice
broken, morning
taking the night home
to silk; where,
from the dew,
beaded dreams
mine diamonds from her hips,
each one to inlay
a white gold necklace.





28mar07

soft charcoal lines

Do you see my soft charcoal lines?
I was a stamp of ink, a fencepost letterbox,
I was territory - a blot on the landscape -
a shield mirror, a moat digger,
a straight line standing in a circle of steel.

I was iron, nickel, a face on a coin.

Do you see my soft charcoal lines?
I was mercury;
fluid, slippery

and untouchable;
I was encased;

measured and measuring.

Do you see my warm charcoal lines?
I was soft as silver in the moonlight
with the one I love,
I was her malleable gold.

Do you see me?
I am light, shade, a smudge...

I want your finger to trace
the vanishing outline you have made.

Do you see?
For I am soft -

flesh me out
and I am yours...

07
Voices from the Web 2008

Another Chardonnay

And you – my passion – breeze through
These orange curtains like you own the place,
Pad along the cool ceramic floor with fiery strides
To the bar, heating the marble, raiding cupboards,
Growling; and I’m here watching you pace;
Find the bottle, put it to your lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night,
Wipe your mouth, sigh through your teeth,
While here I am, smiling – fisherman’s trousers tied
Around my hips, sun blazing down on the sarong,
Skin listening to those warm sea breezes,
Listening - to a lusty blond called Chardonnay
Tell me my troubles over the rim of her glass eye.
You take another swig; slam the bottle on the bar,
Yawn, stretch like a bear, step onto the porch,
I hear you say - What a perfect name…
Strike a match on the doorframe,
Light a cigar; pick Tequila from the larder…
Chardonnay wants another spiked Pina Colada –
What a perfect name…“And you?”
I reach for the bottle, put it to my lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night, “Whatever
You’re having, Babe - I’ll have the same..

Loving the Potter

Loving she who takes the clay
deep from the mine and looms
great clods into fine porcelain cloth
for lace petal cups; her own delight,
and mine, to see her bloom.

This weave of sheer reflective glaze
is tapestry; if fired too long,
or cooled to quickly,
the loved up clay is doomed.

The shine is brightest
when simplicity,
endeavour, and careful eyes
spark away the gloom.

Twice fired, twice cooled; timing,
and sharing precious sips.

Mistiming
and I arrange flowers in a cracked vase,
sweep broken tears and china chips
into the basket of my arms

Tandoori under the Moon

Star of Stars –
Thank You for your Welcome.
Taj Mahal luminous on the wall,
hands hold roses around a heart
saying: Wish you Were Here
for okra and butter chicken
as ice cold Cobra beer slips easily
down the neat, tree-lined paths.
Wish You Were Here
before I jump into the picture
of Popadom and Lady’s finger,
meander the coriander
through the romance of mint,
mango, lime pickle, flagrant rice,
and the white mausoleum tragedy
of love stories.

Japanese under the Sun

It is red, this sun, and any other word
would be glaringly ostentatious, when
this poem ought reflect the Zen-like quality
of a pretty plate of dead sliced fish
on palm rolled balls of rice.

In which case - the waiter, waits,
the chopsticks lift lips of fish,
the bamboo knocks to point out stillness,
the bubbles lean on ice-cubes in the glass,

while the sun
.................... bleeds
................................ecstatic
..........................................colours to the sky

Brass Frottage

I, wrapped around your spoon,
Honeyed and warm, sheet hot
Milk running down your form
Don’t take the I from a poem
Of liquid gold, the amberling glow
Of touches, fingertip to toe.
It isn’t me in the spotlight,
Just in heat – from Mercury
Rising, from silvery shadows
Dancing the age it takes to trace
The top brass bronze of you.

The Spring

The Spring is all very well and everything,
but what am I to do with this love feeling?
I want to share the surplus all around in action,
and spare it; be lean, mean, and thriftily
savour the superfluous burgeoning swirl; save
scent for vital action, and I spin it all in butter-
cups, to a girl. Hey stranger! She's all twirl,
and swaggering wayward, a wayfaring ranger
is diagonally sashaying high, climbing ankles,
sliding calves, to the genius of your thighs. Strut it!
If only strength would allow me to..spend
sweet hours, right here dwelling, speculating
the plans I ought to be making, instead,
what am I to do - with this love feeling?
If not but dream..a long, slow seduction of you..

07

Harmonics

My polyphony butterflies your passing note.
There's my 7th - a needy hybrid - jazzy, unpredictable,
suspended; hovering over the wrong chord,
propagating like Coltrane overlapping;
cascading, bubbling volatile streams
and vulnerable, when I meant to take it slow.

The mystical quality of harmony pointed to the planets,
heavenly music, or a musical outpouring of love,
while I was busy wondering about chaos, structure,
and moments of perfect understanding. It is simple.
Primary triads are colourful progressions of chords
heading to the dominant, and back again.

You are my tonic; the bagpipe drone, and the voice.
I know refrains of parallel notes are the lines of our separation.
They say it is a fault of the eye to see lines converging,
as I say it is a fault of the ear, all along the bend of a harp.
How deaf are we to the magnetic aspect of notes,
leaning back into the music of another?

We chose chord progression, and searched
for the third melody note to hit two drones,
We became robust major three note chords, or fragile minor
triad tones, each dominant, each a tonic. We knew nothing,
wrote it down, and they say they hear Nature breathing,
augmented or diminished, in every breath. Play on, I say.

They say it is a fault of the eye to see parallel lines converging,
as I say it is a fault of the ear, all along the bend of a harp.

*

Timbre

A day of flaccid glances broken
by the timbre of your eye to eye.
Partial vibrations hum - seconds split,
You and I - in an instant pitch to pitch.
Fundamental tones sing animal harmonics
in the drive-by shooting of a look.
Overtones cross the columns of air
with a strike; bowed, blown, and shook
so, by this quiver tasty arrow wind.
Ten thick strings vibrate;
tones resonate long after
You have passed; I,
strung between two bridges,
an Aeolian Harp.