|
UNKNOWN PRIORITIES
pleading for time to think in the underpass
painted questions pained questions
shapely pockets of origami wonder
closed worlds squalls outside
fears encountered and abstract grief
body in the river memories to burn
stayed at home more this year
and felt the water in the well rise
NOT WHERE I SHOULD BE
Grey fog on the journey up,
silver dusk all the way home.
Glossolalia and piano urge me on
through the rain to where I am due
with fluid dynamics of the voice,
calm and eerie invented tunes.
The rain won't stop. It is far colder
up here, and there is nothing to do.
I can't concentrate in the empty office,
ignore all the books I brought along.
I head home a day early, driving in the dark,
following the lights, not sure where I should be.
AT HOME
To be at home in obituaries,
crematoria and car crashes is one thing.
To want for epiphanic endings, love,
desire and wet dreams is another.
I pile the personal archive high,
lay my moonstruck memories low.
Past my sell-by date, I sense a world
chirpily compact and semi-delirious,
full of the latest hopscotch rumours.
Diamond head exposed to the light,
mind a minefield of unravellings,
I count a billion possible regrets.
I lied in my first paragraph, and have
postponed the tentative exploration
to see if I still am. Your chuffedness
is contagious, though I can't bear
the thought of icy roads, all that
wear and tear before the start of day.
Messing with the gospel as given,
a deft equator reimagining rhyme,
the merry colours turn to grey, attracting
frou frou artifacts of a fringe subculture.
Adding mystery to mystery doesn't help,
confusion here goes all the way through.
'I AM NO LONGER WHO I WASN'T'
for David Michael / i.m. David Tibet
Manic ventriloquism, eloquent despair
and deception filled the imagination:
fault lines, key markers, polarities
everywhere, broken and spinning.
After the sound of a door creaking,
a quiet voice in the distant wind,
a man walking away from himself,
faint silhouette against the snow.
New life, new name, new beginning;
he has always been looking for this.
In the brilliant distance there is no dark,
only a clearing full of pure white light.
|
