Poetry
The loneliest poem in the world
There is the wind in the trees
and the ripples in the river
and I am
the loneliest poem in the world.
How I long to be spoken
on gilded tongues
the kind that whisper mellifluously on the open air
yet carry to the furthest corner.
How I long to fill your mind’s eye
with the wonder of dappled sunlight
and fill your sight with visions
of eternity unbroken,
O, how I long to be read.
But I am hidden in these dark pages,
shelved and forgotten
and remembered only when the fancy
comes upon my master –
that shiver of remembrance of me.
And then the light…
How glorious to be:
spoken on open air,
read in open mind,
freed from the binding
of my spirit
to echo in eternity.
But always I return
unto the page, the dark, the shelf
and I am
the loneliest poem in the world.
Elegy after Ariel
(In memory of Sylvia Plath)
Through the darkness of blue distances
I watch the lioness grow.
I watch her brow furrow to catch an arc,
one of the many hooks
binding her to that dark black eye
where in gasping mouthfuls of shadows
she is swallowed
(Who else?)
by the eclipse.
Her hair is drawn upward into air
and her unsettled heels begin to shake;
all her desires unpeel inside white stringencies
and I cry, I beg for the weight of seas,
I beg for a simple arrow to pierce,
to bind her to the wall
but she floats off into the red tinge,
into the ginger stubble of the moon
and I must watch her drive off
into the false dawn of a false morning.
Enuma Elish
See now how far you’ve come
since that day
when on high you proclaimed
to remake yourself
in the image
of a thousand wild horses
charging on a ridge.
See now how quickly
rolling thunder fades
as your hooves are cracked
upon the blades
of ghouls you thought
were merely shades,
but crashed upon
as rocks amid
breaking waves.
See now the fall of every
failed dice thrown
and hesitate before you throw next.
Keep running.
Keep running or you’ll one day find
the only immortal gift you leave –
your name in sand
carved by the sea.
Little Bird
Little bird you never knew
that I held no hate for you,
when I burst your little head
through the cascading
shades of red you bled.
At 100 K’s I charged,
At 100 K’s I fled,
At 100 K’s I drained you dead.
All that’s left now, all that remains;
a little perch that you may claim,
is the pigment change to hands now stained
the deeper red of witless blame.
The Great War Pantoum
Given peace the bleak sun slips into hue
but here in war our lives are grades of grey.
I see my brothers bathed in black on black grass
where no conflict from the scene ensues.
Out here in war our lives are grades of grey
as all of red and green have gone away.
Where no conflict from the scene ensues,
a shade of blue is breaking through.
As all of red and green have gone away,
grey skies have dried the morning dew,
perhaps a shade of blue is breaking through.
The fog of war lifts and we are
volleyed, but this is not tennis;
thundered, but the blue sky;
stumped, but this is not cricket;
flattened, and we are aware.
. . .
Thundered, but the blue sky.
I see my brothers bathed in black on black grass.
Flattened, and we are aware
that given peace the bleak sun slips into hue.
Movement of my mind
The movement of my mind
like the flicker of the flame
appears and is not in the least
known by other names.
Change un-eternal
stifled now gone lame;
cause to be
contingently
extinguishing our shame.
This flame rests;
the mind stills
its movement slow and plain;
I feel the thought
before it forms:
I choose another game.
They walked with Her too
She found me in the wilderness.
I was not looking for her; she was not looking for me.
She had dolphin’s eyes and the weight of a beached whale.
She was more like the trees than me.
So we walked.
She showed me the world: its straight roads and round-a-bouts;
its cul-de-sacs,
and we walked.
Valleys led to ridges, ridges to mountain tops
and, when on high, I circled Her
like sparrows round seed,
like stars around the southern sky –
beneath which we lie –
and what She knew, I knew;
and i forgot.
We walked long into the night;
she cast peace upon the waters.
The moon and stars were hooked fish she drew
across the glassy surface.
Rivers flowed where rivers flow
and an ocean did receive –
at last –
the bodies of my ancestors.
They walked here too.
They who knew the hardness of the rock;
who slept among soft fragrant grasses;
who yearned, as I yearn, for another world;
for they had forgotten:
They walked with Her too.
Technophilia
Her father nearly cried
but like every other time
he buried his tears,
more used tickets than dollars,
screwed them up and thrust them into
the oblivion of his back pocket.
Then he tried to catch
the memory of her singing
but it too was gone,
hidden now behind the road block of her eyes –
a stare as dull and unsuspecting
as cattle descending
upon the freezing works.
I was there the night it happened;
I was watching the television
and didn’t notice that she had fallen in.
He tried to revive her and swore,
“Damn it man, she’s a technophiliac!”
I just stared blankly back at him,
“Technophilia, damn it man, she’s a tweeter!”
But it was too late. She was only fifteen.
Bleeding mind into the glass of times,
her image unreflected is absorbed.
A tragedy of thought
Finity
I see him fading.
Days pass
in the absence of loneliness:
in its anticipation.
The white hairs grow
as he sleeps
deep in sunlight,
deep into the days
still unnumbered
but finite
that no longer stretch into eternity
(as when he was young)
and unlike them
I am aware of death.
He breathes, he eats,
he walks in painful, determined strides.
he sleeps,
he keeps me
as close as a father,
and even when
he does none of these things,
I will love him.
A kind of death
They say
parting is a kind of death,
but you just took
your final breath,
and now you walk
where I can’t follow,
in darkness own
what I can’t borrow;
and now you know,
now you have seen
what lies beyond
this mortal dream.
so I hope
the fields
in which you dwell,
caress you
and that you will swell
and fill my heart
in reverie
and rock me
on this mortal sea,
for I knew you
and I let you go –
before the winter’s
falling snow
gathered on
your autumn leaves,
my desiccating
memories…
and now I lay you
in the ground,
neither of us
can make a sound.
I held his paw as the last light left
his eyes
and cried a single, bulbous tear.
On top of the world (A prose poem)
As I emerge from the tree line, the green expanse of the mountain reveals itself. No white cap here. But basalt, basalt for bloody miles. I am climbing a steep file among nameless grasses. I once knew their native names; I cared. I step on rocks that bear my weight as easily as if I were a butterfly then shrug me off.
. . .
“Water off a duck’s back,” says Daniel. He is my father’s best friend and I think of him as an uncle; you know, the fun one. He doesn’t worry about anything. Last weekend his wife brought home her lesbian lover and now he sleeps in the shed with the dogs. But he isn’t worried. He still plays golf and drinks beer with the boys. “Water off a duck’s back” says Daniel, and shakes his back as he shivers.
. . .
The wind eclipses every other sound. Here there are no birds singing; their memory is blanked out. Even though I strain there are no traces. Everything is forgotten apart from the wind. I am exposed and I know I cannot stay here long, but the white capped alps stretch beyond the horizon. I swear I can see all the way to Christchurch, but here there is nothing but the rough sound of wind on rocks, and its swirl in the long grasses. Like Daniel I am on my way home.
Special thanks to Catherine Chidgey for her critique of this poem.
Hydrophobia
It was warm,
warm like the exposed bone of my tibia
when I fell off the roof.
The doctor shivered when he touched it,
thought I was numb
but it burned me black like frostbite,
burned me blue
till I shook right through his paralysis,
until the tremor of recognition
resonated through the cruel bells of morning
and awoke a quaking horror in his eyes.
It was warm,
warm like wetting the bed and waiting for morning.