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.

Borrowed Light

Borrowed light

It’ll be dark soon and time to go.

Could you pass the dice,

I’d like another throw?

Oh, I understand.  Club rules:

Just the once, never twice.

Yes, you’ve got to be kind to be cruel.

Well, a present, long in the unwrapping

And the children like animals,

Not knowing then warping,

Bending with the truth of it;

The knowledge of an unsteady sentinel

Watching over an illness that is implicit,

With happiness a symptom that reckons a cost:

All too brief a candle,

All too much found then lost,

But a gift all the same;

One we bestow, simply, as a mantle

For the igniting and sheltering of our flame;

As if the heat carried a living debt,

Paid tomorrow so to honour us;

For what shines is a currency yet.

The moon has risen, the darkness at its back -

Its mountains shadows, its deserts dust,

With somewhere on its conquered land a flag.

And the moon, oh why is it so cold, so bright?

Such a false god robed in borrowed light.

Year of the Rat: a New Year poem for 2020

2020

This New Year’s Eve

brings an acuity of vision,

sharp as a bat’s echo:

the birth of a decade that

might likely see me crowned dead;

the simplicity of staring ahead

into the future,

with its simple lines,

its constructed disambiguation,

its sudden benign presence,

watching the past metastasized.

Is that the clarity I dread?

Some unstained happiness

shaken out and hung on the line,

a flailing dance in the breeze

of unhindered revision -

the words to a song

that spoke of sap

rising in a tree,

that speaks with the rasp

of leaves uncurling,

of the crisp dry leaves underfoot,

the unfurling of the hand

from around the throat?

And yet,

a last intake of breath

for a leave-taking

that no longer speaks

in wheezy Chinese whispers

but with the bitter-sweet tang

of longing and laughter,

a carousel, a carousal, a recital
of drunken midnight-death happiness

from the drunk and disorderly bards

wrestling with the squared circle,
for all joys want eternity;

not without a bang,

this New Year's song was sung. 

Listen to Zhou Long here