Wednesday, June 22, 2016

nectar for food

a rabbit speaks:

he wrote poems about me
before i was kitten-born
black ink, no taste, smell
on paper, tree-like, thin
rustles beneath feet.

i did not hear them.
i lived, green fields
slopes
field banks
burrows dark, warm.

but i sensed what he said
he gave us names, lives
singled us to
within our kind.

now i am alone
live lone life.
myxie, he calls me
poem words
rabbits sniff, smell
butt blind, sickened
rabbit from my home.

i will die.
i eat bright colours
garden dark, dawn
petal flavoured scent
i am king, god
nectar for food.

Friday, June 17, 2016

I sing to the air



A bird speaks:

I slouch, some beggar starved of hope,
Feasted on the stale discards of past,
Towards dawn. I am wing-tired, slow,
A body, prime-passed, not now dead,
Long dying. I think morning thought,
What birds do, their always living,
Being, since the hour birth begins.
And other thoughts come, as thoughts must:
"Remember soon!" I do not know
As day arrives what this day is.

'Round me - again I do not know -
I live it now - it is just there -
Are roof-tops, grey, acute, spartan,
Dense, green bush, barbed as dwellings are,
My dwelling, my unwelcome hearth.
And then wires, black, unearthed wires
Hum beneath feet, chanting on, on.

Others stand as well - I know this.
No need for thought as I awake.
They wait. I wait. There is stillness.
We watch the ever-present night.
It is tense now, alert, frozen,
The movements of creatures, studied,
Preyed upon. And it is soon dead -
Night must know this - the lamb of dark -
Night risen, always daily dead.

And without a sound, new doom falls,
Rises with seeing, sight of things.
The sun comes from the east, jewelled
Like Juliet - a star of day.
It slaughters what it finds, rest's sleep,
Scavenges the corpse it kills, dark.
And night, recently gloried, fat
Is gone. All dreams, shivering, pass.

And then the song. Others sing first.
I wait. I will remember. Day.
Until a voice - I know that voice.
There is a sweet, butterfly sound,
And notes, bright-coloured, gambolling,
Caressing thoughts as new lambs do.
And there is joy-ordinary
All about. The very air breathes
Delicious life, speaks memories,
High shrilling, not now forgotten.
And I reply, gladly reply,
Remember the known, always known,
And I sing to the air, loudly,
I sing day's coming to the air.

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Jerusalem Maybe

Jerusalem Maybe

I made Britain from what I saw,
Sanding paint, breathing toxic dust.
It shaped before me by chance hand,
Stubborn remains of what had been.
And its edges, coloured and ragged,
Jutted from land into a sea
Of cold, clean, sand-smooth, grey plaster.

And then the island shape was gone,
Cleansed from sight, like imaginings.
And I painted anew, slow, white,
Deliberate strokes, spread even,
Equally flat, smooth edge to smooth.
And what I created as God,
King, painter, was a plain, white wall.

I wondered then, my labours done,
If this new land, formed above dust,
Perfect, Jerusalem Maybe,
Was the space we might occupy,
If one day, all that makes us real,
Different and original,
Is allowed forever to pass.