Monday, April 20, 2009

In Transition (Poem 365)

At the airport
Waiting
For an arrival
A departure
A chance
A chance to arrive
A chance to depart
To be somewhere else
To stay
Watching
Myself
Others
Hopes and fears
Dreams and realities
Desires and depressions
Disgust and empathy
Come and go
Live and die
In an uncomfortable skin
Waiting
At the airport
Just...

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Bye

A breathless ending
Deftly monopolising
The moment with small, softly
Fading footsteps and
A half hearted wave.

Saturday, April 18, 2009

A Celestial Insect

Lying
In a windowless room
Without a light switch
Or any other switches
Or electricity
Made of cardboard
So, technically
A box
Watching Heaven
In a cockroach
Climb a wall
Cross the ceiling
Descend a wall
Cross the floor
My torso
The floor
And do it all again
While waiting
For life to right itself
Kind of sucks.
Oh well,
At least there's entertainment.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Squished Distended

Towards the front end
Upside down
And
Backwards
The frog hops
And
Hops
And
Hops
But always ends up
Facing
The wrong way
At the start.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

The Talent that Wasn't There

I lie an entity
Without hands
Weaving a tapestry
Without limbs
Pressing pedals
Without eyes
Choosing colours
Demonstrating
Without ego
My greatest creation
The child of my
Imaginings
Presented
Without pretense
Described
Without words
Conceptualised
Without mind
Displayed
Without affect.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Paper

The sapling leans
Towards the grey
Sun frightened
And parched 
From drowning;
A sudden downpour
Swept away.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Caged Zoo

Tiger
Sitting
Pacing
Sitting
Staring
Sitting
Lunging
Prey.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Getting Nowhere

Grey matter
Is swept away
By the sweepers
Driving sweeping cars
Until the masses stand lobotomised
Hitchhiking in a circle, spinning wheels round
Back to the start again, more grey matter on the ground.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Fertility Party

Towards dawn
Birds sing
But it's too early
Towards dawn
Cockroaches scuttle
And hide
Towards dawn
Couples stop romancing
Laying in awkward  silence
Towards dawn
A noise wakes me
There's someone in my room.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Audition

An air of song
Lilting
Slightly stuck
Just behind the larynx
The thing of beauty
Emerges scraped
And torn:
A travesty
An embarrassment
Humbling.
A time machine
Is in order.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Too Old and Too Young, A Modern Car

The darkness languishes
Cold logic falters
Fear remains
But not so much
To provide the
Thrill of adrenalyne
Not so much
To stop the heart
My cloaks and trappings
Are stripped away
Milestone upon milestone
New ones are taken
But they never fit right
And I am left naked
To the ravages
And circumspect wisdom
Of age.
My years gallop away
So fast I never saw them
A decade passes in a single step
I try to stand still
As the subsequent decades rise up
Threatening to follow all the more quickly
I dare not blink.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Lips Twitch

Smiling words
Redirected
Into a pig's ear.
Smiling voices
Offered lightly
Uttered meaninglessly
Smiling eyes
Cast away
To some preferred shore
Smiles falter.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Not Knowing Where it all Went Wrong

A finger pressed to lips
No words
Without a word
Just a smile
Then nothing.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

Ravenous Sign Post

The raven eats a flag pole
The whole thing swallowed
In one long pull.
The raven totters and reels
Made heavy and unbalanced
Stretched diagonal by the metal.
The raven caws and caws
But the calls are trapped inside
Echoing and absorbed, metal and flesh.
The raven spins and swoons
Ejecting the feast as upon hitting the ground
There it dies, as is to be expected.
The raven ate a flag pole.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Quickly Before I Can't Feel My Hands!

The fuzzy lights of
Pain pills are more disturbing
Than the injury.

Sunday, April 05, 2009

Imperfect Numbers

Ten.
Ten fingers to count
All the tens of ways
Of pressing ten keys
Ten times
On ten keyboards
Which is ten less than enough
To compose one, much less ten
Letters, and ten fewer symphonies.
You tend to disappoint that way.
And I with the ten things
I never intended to do
Ten things I did anyway
Ten ways I disappointed myself.
Ten.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Cyclical

Towards an end left
Behind, nearly forgotten,
Remembered and left.

Friday, April 03, 2009

Lose a game that's been Lost

Utterly lost
At a loss
For where lost
Is found to lose
The loss
Of the lost.

Thursday, April 02, 2009

With Everything Explored

Strolling along
One jaunting day
I came to the end of the road
I stopped and stood
I stared agog
And pranced in place
Utterly dumbfounded
There was no reason here
Birds flew west
Clocks travelled north
And only chimed on the quarter hour
But never the same quarter
In any given hour
And somehow managed to fit
More than four quarters
Into one whole.
The road did not slow
Nor slope
Nor decay
In its descent
Some warning of the end
It simply stopped
As though
A giant pair of shears
Had cut it clean through
Along with the rest
Of time and space and reason
And hidden it all in a drawer
Locked in some long forgotten desk
Where all the best secrets are kept
And forgotten
God is hidden in their too I bet
Or at least the answer to which
Is the right and which are superfluous.
As for me
Finally I just sit
And wait
Whiling away each
Northbound, bisected hour
Since, you see
The way back
Has been cut away
As well.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Chemical Tea

April snowfalls and
Other paradoxical
Weather perplexes.