Protected: words word words
Emergency Power
Photo: J. R. Eyerman, LIFE.
If my joy is depleted –
from wondering if I ought to be wondering,
and getting ready to wait again –
there is still a backup,
like in A&E.Eyes, ears, dusty solar panels to collect:
The music released from a cabbage,
when split with a large kitchen knife;
Sunset light shone low through a cock’s comb,
radiating at x lumens per wattle;
And glassy, blue light,
exploded by the chaff of suspended dust particles in my room,
where the telephone won’t ring.
the first winter whisper
I spent two of the summer months in the States, mostly in Texas, where they experienced the hottest heat they’ve had in years. My trip coincided with the end of an era for me personally and I’m left contemplating what of myself I am left with.
The first winter whisper,
harsh and real,
finds my wounds,
undresses me; knows me.
No shame here.
Off with that
American attire –
loose t-shirt,
baggy shorts —
take this old cardigan.
It looks right;
it suits you.
Richard Burton won’t mind;
he’s dead now.
No shame there.A child is not born with words in his breath.
He tries on many hand-me-down garments.Friend, look at my jeans:
Our favourite food
is stained in them fast.
Dad, hear my accent:
It’s mine and it’s not.
Teacher, I owe you;
I like to read poems.
Look in my wardrobe:
Nothing in it’s mine.
a pint on tap
Here’s the second of my five poems on leaving Dublin, where I’ve lived for the past 11 years. Sort of.
Two days ago now,
I left the tap on.
After half an hour
I discovered this.Yesterday, bad too:
I burnt a pan black –
I’d forgot that too.Last night, drunk and blue,
“forgot” to say “bye”
or “I’m leaving now”.
Feeling selfish, I,
not digging the tunes,
stole to a taxi –
asocial baboon.Now that time is here:
Groceries have dates,
usually on top,
that are redundant
(I’ll be gone by then).
For example: beer.But a pint on tap
is for drinking now,
or for drinking then.
“Goodbye Dublin town!”,
I might burp and say,
if I’d know that pint
were the last I may.But, instead, I’m dumb;
It’s become my way.
Lidl, Thomas Street
This is one of five poems I’ll write as a farewell to Dublin (doctor’s orders).
I stand
for Lidl Quality,
more and more each month.I am
sitting now on their shelves in boxes,
waiting to exist:
Brown bread,
Bebida Soja, tinned tomatoes.Gladly
I picture myself at my last meal,
before I go off
(abroad).
Protected: Gelukstraat
In the absence of a lover
A poem late for Valentine’s day.
In the absence of a lover,
that man creates:
In want of wet lips,
a cocktail;
in emptiness,
a sandwich;
in love,
muddy memories;
and in singular loneliness,
man was created, becauseIn the beginning,
there was love —
the science of attraction
and unity –
and in the nonexistence of a single cell,
that love created.And in the unification of the disparate,
so began a four billion year tradition
of love on Earth.
Protected: Dirt Song
20 Questions
Who am I?
Or if life’s a matter of fact,
what?I am vegetable
if I am what I eat,
and perhaps only animal
if that it were meat.Which am I,
if ape is in image
and man is in action?
Is man not defined by his wit worn detraction
from that which makes apes
evolution’s contraption?We hide in the city
perhaps to keep from admitting
that which does not really need a committee,
that which need not be ensconced in a rhyme,
that which is no more a riddle than a comfortable guilt,
laid on like hands in ceremony.
What are we
if ‘inhuman’ is too ugly a word
and twenty questions are too many?
I like your shoes.
I like your shoes,
I might have said.
Colourful, new, exciting.
Unlike everything else
I know about you.Physically you repulse me,
I could have revealed.
And it weakens me
and my heart
to think that if it weren’t you
it would have been someone equally vile.Sexually
and geographically
I am frustrated.
And you
are the final straw. But
“Excuse me”, I said,
instead of so much bile,
“This is my stop. Thank you.”For it doesn’t do
to pick fights with strangers.