Engineers

Engineers

Their life together has been spent

Like the digging of the Fréjus Tunnel:

Two separate countries boring into a mountain,

Removing rubble, to meet in the middle -

Their wholes perfectly matched.

Blood, sweet with tears, spilt;

Hard labour, planning and years funnelled

Through an ill-lit half-darkness to maintain

A vision -both troubled and riddled -

The holes selectively patched.

Imagine the joy;

The detritus.

Refraction and Reflection

Refraction

A thought resolves itself – surprising and cruel -

Into something clear and hard and perfect:

This is it; this is all there is: you are a fool.

Hold the image for a moment – hope for defects –

Turn it over, study its sintered clarity,

Its sharp-edged and brutal simplicity.

But light is refracted and the truth held this way

Or that takes on other colours, other shapes,

Something added, something taken away.

The mirror in which we live our escapes

Is haunted, like the ghosting on a TV set:

We watch ourselves as ourselves … yet …

Deeper feelings happen quietly; they seep.

It’s the petty emotions that busy and fuss

Our lives. So, like children surrendering to sleep,

We give in to a darkness to which our eyes adjust,

Wake to a past gone stale and a future skimmed,

                   (While you feel the light is sharp, the light is focussed ...)

Our shadows paler, and our substance thinned.

                           (You sense the light has bent, the light has dimmed.)

This Life

This Life, Dear

This is a small thing - this life -

That fits into the palm of the hand,

That we turn over, poke with a stick,

And then parse with a dull knife

So that we can think we can understand

What it is that makes us tick;

                                                 But,

Listen carefully, dear, for this is all I’ve got:

Though you hear the heart still beating,

It’s a stopped clock.

Silence and Spillage, a poem

A Libation ... A Toast

To

This silence that has settled

Upon him like dust ...

To

This silence that has corroded

The skin of him like rust ...

This silence isn’t praying,

Though the hands mimic

A slow applause, or the paying

Out of rope –

Enough to hang himself –

A trick, a gimmick,

A sawing in half,

A laugh a minute,

A grope in the dark.

Mind the gap.

His voice a slur,

As he draws on a cigarette,

Sips a wine turned sour.

It’s a question begged

Of the lees, the dregs,

Not formed, not spoken yet;

He has his own way of betraying

What is bait in a trap.

This silence isn’t praying;

The hands don’t grasp or flap.

He takes another gulp, another drag.

The smoke from his mouth

Is kissed heavenward, a moue,

A whisper scented half grape, half-truth

That drifts like mist, misheard

Amongst the cavilling and gainsaying

Of the delusions he has peopled.

This silence isn’t praying,

Though the hands are steepled,

Though the hands are a crucible for tears.

This silence isn’t praying;

There’s nothing left worth saying:

The hands cup an empty glass.

Cheers ...

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.

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.

Sundial: a birthday poem

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.