I think the truth has finally dawned,
this type of maturity should be outlawed.
Put away those burnt flags,
those wastes of age
that pretend to culture
and giving little, prey on your
lacking sensibilities
stand back
to let us be
alive.
The still thoughts are left
in distance wrought and reft
that bare stretch,
to halt the weave
and caress simplicity.
And it lingers
in unsteady hands.
Sometimes, even as I fumble my words, forget to shower or simply fall over both left feet, I can stand back and watch it all happening around me. It’s the strangest thing, this connected dis-connection. I hope it’s not just me who believes global warming is real, that religion has caused more suffering than good, that charity does not simply begin at home. I could continue with an almost limitless list of homilies we are fed daily as a gospel for life. I mean how on earth do politicians keep it straight. I suppose the reality is they don’t, hence the adoption of the word ‘misspoke’ when what they really mean is ‘lied’ (a far less charming motif).
We are supposedly intelligent, insightful, intuitive, we are at the very least human, so how could this mass of 6 billion get ourselves into such a sad state. Why is the highest lifeform on this planet, the people capable of creating such beauty, who can produce magical harmony in science or words or….I won’t go on, why are we in such a state of desolation? Perhaps Douglas Adams was right about mice and the question.
I think I need to paint in blue and yellow, cook a wastrels meal, drink happy wine and lay beside the woman I love.
It’s the unfortunate moments
the sad moments
and these are those.
and I will lay
asleep, not asleep, a-slumber
it being the less of us
to maybe
smile asleep.
She is my metaphor.
Sometimes I mis-take myself as I wander.
It was only a dream she says,
as I am awake, naked,
and dark to light.
dead of night.
And we wait.
for the nearest slight in leaves,
moaning aches in eaves as timbers curse
the broken stream.
(Too hot the sun, too harsh the sea).
grounded whorls, muffled splash
harbinger of whip and thrash and beating trees,
gun rattle in our chimney
And I wish this would petrify awake less sleeping dark
in all creatures, our blurred haste
drugged eyes.
Look at you
all puffed and stuffed
you reds and blues
you deafening few
you who slumber on hollow words,
the future was past before you spoke
the lives were lost before you woke.
look at you
you reds and blues,
you smug, as fools fool fools
and tell each other the ease of ‘No’
will protect yourselves as grandiose,
but near history will tell the truth
as icebergs pour north and south
and the lost lose their will to buy,
the forgotten will discover the lies.
pursue on moebius, an endless final scene
and despair this was all it could ever be.
wear trudge and a rictus smile,
resigned to not rest until our echos
are chased from this irregular path.
abject adjectives, circumlocutions
to prove insight to the narrow part,
the marianas of mind.
stumbling, foolishly over tripsy words
and worse rhymes
we raise ourselves up
and call ourselves
poetry.
