Poetry

The Night Birds

The flutter of nearby cuckoos
merging into swarms,
streets echoing with their cackle:
coarse, rough banter,
a pumice stone
against sleeping skin
turned into sound;
noisy scribbles
against urban papyrus.

There’s the shriek of the female
battling it out
with the woof of the male;
mating calls, battle cries,
whooping and looping
past traffic lights at green
and poorly situated town apartments.

There is no sleep
in the hunting hours
of the night birds.


Pipped

You may jest and mock
but I quite like the smell
of rotting apples,
although I have to choose
when to eat and half-eat
these globes of the earth.
and where to place
the ever-browning cores
around my person.

I shall not wish for apples
dispensed by another,
or find any pleasure
in preserving their decomposition.
My teeth have torn at the fibrin
and I am satisfied to leave
exposed flesh to the air
of nature’s kiss.

The fruit is ageing
and no one longer seeks to taste,
but I have ate my fill
and watch this statue of teeth-marks
leave its scent upon my world.


Abhorring The Vacuum

I am Tantulus
drowning in his pool of thirst,
unreachable vines
weighed down with sisyphean fruits of lust.

You have been elevated to God
inside my epistemic loneliness,
where love is meaning
flung far from the Ithacan shore.

I have no strength to sail and explore
the isles of Calypso or Circe;
the Siren’s song, a driftwood dirge
carried to me on waxing waves.

Now I sail to the Land of the Dead,
to dig my dry trench and wait
for your legendary spirit
to fill me with fresh epiphanies.

 
No Words To Eat

Silence can kill a man,
and I cannot tell if her arrows
are poison-tipped
or torn from the quiver of Eros.

The day is empty
as a man’s stomach.
a man used to feasting
on her flesh;
no god beholds this sacrifice.
She is milk and honey
with kisses, a sweet libation,
while I am left
as a locust,
after having dined
in the land
of the Lotus Eaters.

The night does not hide my hunger;
like some lupine slave
I become ravenous
in the dark,
no one to claw at
but myself;
young man with empty plate,
dining alone.

I am
too self-aware
of my quest.
If only she were.
too.

Poem for the Masses

Let’s watch pictures
of people sleeping;
what could be more appropriate
at 3a.m.?

The crease of bed sheets
in night vision,
torn Renaissance canvases
cleansing your mind of colour charts.

No ladder, no windows,
no binoculars too.
Bless our state of modern entertainment.

It’s not that everyone is a voyeur,
it’s that everyone wants to be seen and heard.
The majority is no longer silent,
queuing up for the shooting gallery.


As Seen On TV

You don’t look good,
despite the diet pills
and new dress.

Yes, black is suppose to be slimming,
and yes, I’m suppose to smile
and tell you all the lovely
chocolate-coated persiflage
that should drip easily out of friends’ mouths
but the words that find my tongue
are not melliferous;
they are wrapped with the cold, dawning barbs of truth.

So reach for the coal sack,
the paper bag, the nurses’ screen:
you are not glamorous in your presentation,
but God bless you for trying.
Yet you are prettier
than the ugly mouth I carry round
flattening your desires.


Missed Connection

I am a missed connection
on your itinerary,
a rest stop passed over
for the purpose of efficient flight;
though land and sun implored you to pause
and rest your tanned wings on the
little grains of sand
I produced as a beach,
you pounded on, not with relent:
you have to notice something
before you can ignore it.

Now I’m listening to Fleet Foxes
and the text message pings in extra percussion:
it isn’t you, it’s isn’t a breath of summer air
come to blow everything away,
my want to dance in your howling rain.

A friend will come and dry me off,
saying I should stay out of the sun
and dress more appropriately.
I’ll strip down and throw myself
into the storm again
and laugh at those who stay indoors.


Let’s meet for sex

Let's meet for sex
then be celibate
and talk about poetry instead.

We won't 'discuss' poetry,
more we will take it in turn
to tell each other little fascinations,
and then with the inevitability of people
who still consider themselves to be 'young',
we'll talk about sex,
minus the joy of any practical demonstrations.

Conversation is something we do in-between drinks.
This is what passes for a romantic life:
we write about love and sex and passion
instead of living it,
but as long as we are POETICISING about it,
we can call ourselves 'okay',
pass ourselves off as one of the living
and console vapid,
limpid,
insipid,
flaccid hearts and cocks
with the occasional fumble
of beer-swollen mouths,
clear in their lustful intentions,
that we kiss in-between writing poems,
that we write in-between having conversations
that we speak in-between piling drinks,
that we swallow while waiting for the loneliness to come.