Untenable
Here’s a puzzle
for you she says
and throws the
pieces in his face
They flutter
like confetti
take their time
to settle
half his face
a ringed finger
on a woman’s hand
something out of
focus in the background
She turns around
and leaves
righteous with
his imagined grief
He tries to
unimagine her being unbereaved
Poem
… there on the branch just out of reach
branches as other hands fingers splayed
swayed by the current under the surface of sky
and stretching as if you could touch
and by touching know and knowing say
the words like water like air a breath a reprise
under the surface of sky swayed by the current
fingers splayed as other hands reach
just out of touch there on the branch
stretch as if you could say and by saying
touch and touching know the current
to breathe the water the air like words …
Simple machines
Let us imagine the machinery
the cogs the ratchets the pawls
laid out on the floor
then being meticulously assembled
and oiled the gauge calibrated …
Could Icarus take flight?
Forging the sky the weight of myth
the blue the white the colossal clouds
soft-limbed and below
the sea muscular sculpted
immense and breathing pulsing
against an iron-rimmed horizon …
Simple machines a lever a wedge
a bit of pushing and pulling
another turn of the screw
a tightening a loosening
a wheel within a wheel
an inclination
the Minotaur in the labyrinth
running scared hungry
running into walls
gone off the rails
another child on the loose
lost
What of the end, Pandora?
Pandora returns
to the kitchen late one night
unsure of what
has brought her there
perhaps some
troubled dream
that still
haunts the 40-watt gloom
the lazy shadows
that line the walls like maps
she leans on the
back of a high wooden chair
and surveys the
room the unwashed dishes
littering the
table piled in the sink
the toys strewn
across the floor
a naked doll in
a shoe box
the fruit bowl a
study in decay
but beyond the
surfaces
and on a high
shelf at the back
behind a bottle
of Tesco’s whisky
is the jar the
lid still screwed in tight.
The next day,
sometime after two
in the garden on
the rickety table
she sets down an
apple the jar the bottle
and sits down
throwing off her shoes
she lies back
closes her eyes
can hear her
daughter singing the blues
as she climbs
the steps to the slide
she stretches
out her hand to catch at the …
and as her sleeve
rises up her arm
she sees the
tattoo just below her wrist
“Gods’ Gift” her
fingers pause …
Halfway through
the whiskey the apple gone to core
she picks up the
jar and puts it to her ear
wonders if it
will purr like Schrödinger’s cat
she hears the
beat of wings things borne
all that is left
when all else escapes
takes flight
flees a prisoner all but released
the dregs the
lees there’s so little air to breathe …
What of the
end?
She wipes the
earth from her hands
but the dirt has
been ingrained
she rubs at a
spot but it won’t come out
the stain the
prophecy the reading of the banns
the spreading of
the pall
will these
hands never be clean?
She empties the
last of the whisky
over the grave
and as the rain
begins to fall
she calls her daughter
from a game
all too human
considers the
torment of hope
Check out the following links
http://mural.uv.es/spricas/pandora.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat
The house is fully furnished:
A mother, three kids and the TV;
The father is upstairs, attached to a guitar:
An intricate arrangement of strings and chords;
An intimate arrangement of bodies and words.
My hobby, he once declaimed,
Is not playing the guitar,
It’s learning to play the guitar.
Then he took himself off for a session.
A terse man, pithy under the skin.
Once, maybe twice,
He’d handed me the guitar
Like a baton, like a lesson.
I never learned. He never listened.
And so, only when the music stopped,
Was the poem written.
Now, sometimes, if I listen very hard
I can still hear the fingers at work:
The tiny metallic flowers blooming,
Filling the air; dandelion heads
Going to seed, wind-blown.
The time is always the same: too late.
Family Therapy
Tell me,
Were you ready for this?
Being asked to undress,
The tone polite but stern.
The folding of your clothes …
Was it tea or coffee
That you dunked the biscuit in?
I could, I suppose, agree
That when they asked who did it -
Who started the fight,
Who committed the theft -
That you looked up right,
Or that you looked up left.
Are you looking up now,
As if you’d know somehow?
It’s in a shoebox under the bed - still
She’s young here
a stranger to me
the photo
its moment of
happiness
excludes me
Young and happy
the picture captures
this
imprisons and endlessly
repeats it
still as Zeno’s
Arrow
Yet no one remembers
it
this deictic
moment this little death
It lives only in
the image
and what I now
bring to it
yet still the
wound
the piercing of
the heart
It’s all there is and then it’s gone.
