Escaped Again, Dammit!

ESCAPED AGAIN, DAMMIT!

In that instant of intimate time
(“glorious instant”?)
(“infinite moment”?)
when love is truly manifest
the last thing anyone thinks of
(“about?”)
is bothering to write anything down.
(“anyway?”)

This Is Too Amusing Not To Share

We just had a phone call and learnt that our grandson, who is 5, is writing a series of books based on Star Wars called “Space Wars”. He is writing books 4, 5 and 6 now, and he says he will write books 1, 2 and 3 when he is 30. The characters are drawn in different colours to show whether they are good or bad. (A shame that doesn’t happen in real life. It would make things so much easier. ) The characters’ names are all based on those of characters from Star Wars. But the bit I found really funny is that he has a character called Obi Two, which just cracks me up!

It’s The Wine Talking

IT’S THE WINE TALKING

The scum rises to the top
The dregs sink to the bottom
I’d point this out more pointedly
But my mum always said
It’s rude to stir (or point)

She also said
There are three things you should never discuss
Politics, sex and religion
Unfortunately
Nothing else has ever interested me much

Except
Of course

Writing

… She’d be appalled

With My Tongue

WITH MY TONGUE

With my tongue
I explored
Day after day
The progress of my wisdom tooth

Too Paranoid

TOO PARANOID

He started whispering to me one night
From the wall beside my bed
Said he needed my help

That the secret police
Were controlling his thoughts
With microwave radiation

So that he wrote poems
Which they could use if they ever needed
Evidence of his insanity

And this is one of them
Which he was too paranoid to write down
So he got me to do it for him

After all, he says
I live in a democracy
And it’s quite safe here

IIn Veery Baad Taastee

IIN VEERY BAAD TAASTEE

II haad aa leetteer
Froom my dooctoor toodaay
IIt waas baad neews
EEspeeciiaally foor aa wriiteer
Thee teests caamee baack
IIt’s coonfiirmeed
II haave vooweel caanceer

Poem For The Last Days

POEM FOR THE LAST DAYS

So that’s what this is for then, this writing,
she discloses – without hesitation -
when, at last, finally, I think to ask
(wondering, unbelievably almost,
why I never thought to wonder before);
this complex histrionic roundelay.

We love to perform this conjuring trick,
the musey lady and I, hand in glove,
again and again, whenever we choose.
A sprinkling of magic words and Presto!
The exhausted familiar transformed
to à la carte resplendent effulgence.

No fear of lapsing into hoggishness;
rather we’d have even willing strangers
share in helping us celebrate again
the birth and rebirth of our wayward child,
this fantastical origination of ours;
another dissembling layer pared free.

Will you, won’t you, dear mobsters, join the dance?
Sense has yet to ever become common;
it is marking time still till the moment
you slow your madcap barely human race.
Disabuse yourselves; the final frontier’s
not outer space but rather inner time.

You’ve managed to plant a flag on the moon
yet seem unable to feed the starving.
Pigs at the trough and lambs to the slaughter.
Stop, stop, you can’t take us here. There are rules.
We know what we like. We like what we know.
We don’t want it spoilt with this sort of thing.

Another pistol whipping. Who’s counting?
Play on! The perfect pair flex their muscles.
So take your partners and not your bearings.
Let’s be done with avoiding avoidance.
Fiddles away! Drab Hamelin is boring.
Let’s dance on. Nearer my Nero to thee.
——————————————————————

We live in a time and place where seriously worrying things are happening. What is the place of poetry in that world?

A Muse Opens Her Heart

A MUSE OPENS HER HEART

Where is my mind?
Where oh where
is that place we’re all,
all of us, all of us,
my sisters and brothers,
seeking – unfulfilled?

Where we can vomit forth
our polluted essence,
our poisoned heritage,
into that accepting lap
at last. At last. Oh yes,
even Calliope herself.

Perhaps her most of all.
What did I, her lowly herald,
earn to merit this though,
that she might honour mine
when I am still searching,
still unfulfilled?

Love Of My Life

LOVE OF MY LIFE

She watches the idiot boy tinkering.
Muttering, mumbling, worrying at the cud,
stuttering through the fog, clutching at limp scraps,
floundering in discarded redundancies.

She recalls that piece of paper on which he
scrawled “Words are the pegs on which experience
is hung out to dry.” Inconsistent or what?
The image bristles with frustration, contempt.

Is he completely disenchanted by words?
Yet it was words neatly condemning themselves
satisfied him so deeply as he wrote them.
He loves paradox, adores ambivalence.

They’re like two long wedded lovers, him and words.
A profound affection for one another,
but also resenting the chains of habit
and codependence that tie them together.

She is happy to be his occult bedmate;
mistress also of that realm where sounds are born,
she knows how to set them coursing through his veins:
a great deluge; a mighty niagara.

Essence of being and experiencing
thunders through the flume, sparks flecks of vocal spume.
Words once again stand agape, untongued, dumbstruck.
For this is the mistress of his heart, true

love of his life.

——————————————————————

The relationships between the poet, his wife (words) and his mistress (the Muse – gateway to the Essence).