Saturday 27 June 2020

Evolution: an anniversary poem















Evolution

How much time does it take,
Love dying like that,
Giving away its heat
In exchange for hate?
Slowly; but how to measure,
How to calibrate for each erasure?

Do feelings simply evaporate?
A compound turning into air,
Disappearing, but ever there:
Elements adhere and separate -
Something finned cleaved in birth;
Something feathered cleft in death.

So how to configure one and one
Where we used to speak of two?
A pair, a couple, both, a duo
With voices soaring out of tune,
With hearts racing not keeping pace;
Those swans in flight becoming a brace.





Sunday 21 June 2020

Feast



Cannibals

Love demands its pound of flesh -
The body teased of muscle and fat,
The sinews, the glands, the organs:
A feast - without the letting of blood.

Remember now when it was fresh,
How need and desire together sat,
How the hunger was an emotion
Neither controlled nor understood,

With nothing sought, no redress,
Just that this was right and that,
That this went deeper than our skin.
But then this was just a prelude

To the flaying we could not but relish
With an avidity that hissed and spat;
Eating each other down to the bone:
Cannibals just playing with their food;


Loss of blood controlled and understood.



Tuesday 9 June 2020

Sundial: a birthday poem


man's shadow



















Sundial

Life is waiting;
It’s looking forward,
Staring into the sun,
A kind of hopeful blindness
Leading you on
Until,
At some point,
When the sun has somehow
Moved about the sky,
You find yourself looking away,
Looking backwards
Towards the better prospect,
Or looking down at that inkblot,
That personalized Rorshach test,
Your slope-shouldered gnomon
Has cast at your feet, knowing
That if you block the light
You will see the shadow,
Wondering when pareidolia
Slipped into apophenia.

And you’re waiting still,
For an eternal everywhere,
For an eternal nowhere, 
Beginning to understand 
What only too soon will come
Like a gathering cloud
To eclipse your sun.