Bound
As the sun
slowly heals the night burns bright
Prometheus can
see far across the valley
can read the
smoke drifting dispersing
almost smell the singed fat and bone
watch the
figures in the landscape
ploughing building
toiling
note the shadows
of birds
skimming the
fields
a dove an eagle
umbrae of an
approaching
vulture
…
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The bends
Love is surely the same for some of us
the seemingly original addiction to touch
and being touched the anticipation
the seemingly endless gratification
how everything is too little and too much
the spiralling descent into paradise
only to find the oxygen thin the lack of sky
So begins the slow tortuous attenuation of desire
then the raging ascent rising for a breath of air
and towards the end surfacing into endless ocean
with nothing or no one to grasp or cling to and
the blood fizzing in the brain and the bends.
Bad Faith
The door of his life has been left open,
Just slightly, a leaving ajar to let in
The air, a little - a way in, a way out.
He might step outside, or he may not.
He feels the draught upon his neck,
Hopes he is right, for his own sake.
He wonders about absence, about choice;
Thinks about the silence, about the noise.
Trojan Horses
He took her for
a ride,
a ride across deserts
and seas.
She took him in,
into her head, into
her heart’s disease.
The rats got in, the rats and the
mice,
Into all that had been left behind:
The clothes, the toys, the unmade
bed.
They gnawed and chewed, nested and bred;
Birds too, starlings and sparrows,
And the shit everywhere, slimy and
greasy,
With the slow rot of time, the damp,
the heat …
The weather raged: the rain, the
snow, the wind,
The sun cooking up a dreadful stew.
The brickwork stove slumped and
collapsed,
And the chimney- once repaired -
relapsed.
The roof sagged, the woodwork
buckled and warped.
Indifferent, abandoned, forlorn, the
family long gone -
Gone to the city, with its parks, cinemas
and zoos,
With its work and distractions, the
culture, the church -
The house gave up, gave itself up,
with nothing to lose;
Jilted, denied, and left in the
lurch, it closed its eyes.
It would have moaned, creaked,
cracked and split,
Sounds almost human to the attentive
passer-by;
For a house needs people to keep
nature at bay.
And the garden? It surrendered unto
itself:
An uprising
of weeds and wild flowers, the trees bleeding
Sap, shedding leaves, shouldering the eaves aside.
The survival of the tenacious, of the rapacious,
In which small worlds collide -
The spiders, the beetles, the ants
and the bees.
From the road, the house became
forest,
Became invisible, not so much decay
As reclamation. Undisturbed.
The rats, the mice, the birds.
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 …
