Analysis

ANALYSIS

Deep night finds blossoming in dawn, where light
And shadow crystallise into a dream
Fit to enchant the dormant mind that might
Forever seek in vain to find a seam.

And is it with the day the mind begins,
Or is it that the mind begets the day
For light to rid the onion of its skins
And tinker with the clockwork in the clay?

Things change, things change beneath Eternity,
And when analysis shall have an end
What will remain? Beside a gallows-tree,
A victory banner floating on the wind.

Self-importance

SELF-IMPORTANCE

“Now I understand”
We say, but it is simply
An understanding

Masks Of The Crustacean (Republished)

MASKS OF THE CRUSTACEAN

I would say the secrets of my soul
Yet trust no one to their hearing
Some keep silence, some keep talking
When they find they have nothing to say
And the fulfilled don’t write

Lame excuses and sprung steel alibis
Meshed fast in the complexities of pain
(Only my pleasures are simple)
Masks of the crustacean
Designed to reveal what they disguise

Playing at love like a game of chess
Not well, not badly, just lazily
Without due regard to the consequences of my moves
Reading too many fairy tales
And kissing far too many frogs

The generous truth is a beggar to find
Buried deep among the unsuspected cruelties of the small print
(When God finished the world
He saw that it was perfect
… And then of course He began wondering what to do next … )

Security in a pound note, safety in a pin
The tired old trumpeting of Church and State
Magic is afoot but the world’s gone metric
(Electric) and Securicor scares
The light fades, the air is flat and stale

The rain beats against the glass
Nights and days an endless tapeloop
Of supermarket muzak
Brush its teeth and put it to bed
The well-oiled programs run

Asleep within the fractured eye of my attention
Life, well-travelled, opens and closes around me
Here and there embroidered with a flower
The footsteps I follow through the blizzard of my memories
Are my own

Holy Blasphemy, Batman (A Four By Six)

HOLY BLASPHEMY, BATMAN

If You are all this then
As You tell me I am
Then are You not me too
And I conversely You

Lexicography

LEXICOGRAPHY

Once contact
Replaces labels
– Like a costume
– Like a mask
Fall away

For why need
One name or other?

Ill-judged attempts
To define or
Describe

For shame: betrayal
Of such an intimacy
Or such unwarranted
Self-aggrandisement

Gratitude and mystery
Sprout soaring wings
Escape the net of words

The Plot

THE PLOT

So here’s the thing
The bones of the plot
Indentured – sent here to seek out
Some divinity’s golf ball
Lobbed ineptly into the rough
And lost the plot, dammit

What to do now then?
Make it up as you go along I s’pose
Keep up appearances
Develop the plot – obfuscate
Protagonist or antagonist?
Still working on that one

Nosing into who knows what
Nosily, noisily researching
Day by day, day after day
A gradually unfolding autobiography
Maybe already recorded elsewhere anyway
Plots within plots within plots

Move the goal posts – travel
Pick up a few subplots – partner, children
The odd sour note – bastards!
Relieve the monotone at least
Fandangle, froufrou, superfluity
At the end of the day

Still, no use complaining
Go check the codicil
Play the victim, all innocence
Perhaps in a sense I am
Though inner sense tells me
’twas I devised this plot in the first place

Speechlessly

SPEECHLESSLY

What about married people? – I beg to know.
My hands have withered and I am grey.
Hear what I have done – I have refused to sing.

There is more to music than sound;
More to dancing than movement.
What do these walls mean?

Why should we break them down?
Shadows, dust, caution – or freedom.
No longer an enemy,

I no longer squirm and punch
At that part of me I call the Watcher,
Having discovered that she is the Light.

I will grab your waist and shout in your face,
And then you will know me.
I will push you through desiring –

Food, sleep, people, gods –
Right to the deeps of despair.
Only then will you learn not to need them.

The wind brings me leaves;
I bring a lemon
To place before this tree.

Captivated

CAPTIVATED

Pesky boundaries
Are part of the illusion
If not the whole think

The Four Yugas

THE FOUR YUGAS

There once was, or is said
(Within that strict restriction
Born by some imagined time)
A Krita Yuga, a Golden Age

But time in time moved on
Having nowhere else to go
Puppets demanding rituals
So birthed the Treta Yuga

Empty rituals have their day
Then lose direction, pass on
Smothered in moss and ivy
Dvapara Yuga, Age of Doubt

Doubt, a castle built on sand
Spews conflict and confusion
Good job we now have words
Record the current Kali Yuga

Stop … step outside of time

Abandon ancient scriptures
Except the ones that declare
There’s but a single moment
And here it is once again …

One’s Name

ONE’S NAME

Light and dark couple
Identity a mind game
Question: Shall we play?