Poetry

Friday, 30 March 2018

This kind of love


I don't believe in this kind of love
The kind that starts with a kiss
You are like a blue bottled fly
Buzzing around in a bottle of piss

I don't believe in organized religion
Nor the voice’s call from above
What if I did? I would fall into Oblivion
No, I don't believe in this kind of love

I don't have hours to waste in the bedroom
To spend on the desk or the ironing board
I don't have days to paste in your gloom
Or to paint white varnish over vampire hoards

I am a sick man of heaven
I am pirate of certain death
I have eleven tigers in the basement
And they are all raging holding their breath

I am a giant of Germanic literature
Fooling my guardian angel in step
She is a giant of cemetery censure
She will not allow me to see my own death

There are two fuses broken in the basement
One is the love of everything ordinary
The other is ordinance of every kind of love
And if you leave me I will fix the circuitry
But that still won't light up all of heaven above

I am a sick man full of pestilence and war
I hold in my hands the keys to the poor
I have locked them from riches and gold
I'm sorry they never told me the time to let go

I have a fire truck spitting its fire
I have a lake full of burning desire
I walk right through it, even on the water
Just to get a glimpse of Moses' daughter

Thursday, 22 March 2018

Desire

If I could say what I really wanted
Oh what a world that would be
One in which nobody wanted to pressurize me
One in which it is clear to see
What is important and what is just
The flotsam floating on the sea

If only such life sucking corals didn't tear
At my knee
When I try the shallow waters and wade into the beach
Into the inner lands of uncertainty

Where it is safer you might have thought
To be on dry land
Crossing my Ts
Dotting my 'i's
And drawing up noughts

Than out, out in the treachery of the wide open ocean
Where freedom hails the sharks from their homes
In caves beneath the surface emotions

Where jellyfish stingers of regret or guilt
Can pull down into the sinkhole
The very galleons they have built

That slow turtles of a mild day's cares
Come drifting by without hurry
Without trouble just the joy of being there
And then you ask me
Is this what you want??

Do I want life on an ocean of calm
Or one of boiling tumult?
I can tell you I want neither
Neither if they either cause you harm
But mostly I see no way out
Of such suffering
We are the pigs or the chickens
on Animal Farm

It is as inevitable as death and taxes
And sometimes it seems such is the weight of this
And yet we both are free are we not?
Both free to choose,
But not to love
Because that is paramount
Of top most concern
That I love you, you and, and you do not scorn
No I believe in the potential of this love
It is just I do not believe in the current flow between us
Sometimes it is DC, Sometimes AC and I must
Confess I turn off the power
When you blow a fuse in the basement
I can't find the fuse box, I'm looking in the medicine cabinet
Search for something to heal the ailment
In my soul or your soul
But sometimes I get confused which fuse is blown
Who I need to fix you or I
When you lose control
And let the house plants fly

I wonder what nether land of unearthly desire
I have stumbled upon
Or cut my hand
I watch it bleed in to your fire
And blood burns bitter not sweet
When it feels the unnatural heat
And sometimes it can no longer flow
Like a candle gone out
After the last blow
After all the screams and shouts
I cannot know
Which side of Eden I am about
Or whether to hold on
Or just let go
But I can't

Saturday, 17 March 2018

The city lights

All of these mysteries come circling like vultures
Trying to braid art into our many cultures
Seeing what the vibrato voice can really do
Try looking down the wishing well
You will see myself with you

Even when the weather's holy
As a sacred cow
And the brown paper bag
Is tethered to the crow
Even then my monopoly
On you is far from swift
I can hold you in my hands
But you cannot be my gift

Even when I see you together
With that other man
I fall between the pavement cracks
And my legs won't stand
Even when I hurt so bad
I can barely tell
One side of Trinidad from the other side of hell

This place is making me a little sick in the head
Like a feather from the crow flying from the land of the dead
Even when the weather's bad I remember the words you said
That we would be together through the nights
Through the streets
Through all the nights and streets
And the city lights that sped

Friday, 16 March 2018

up to you

Dead weights
In islands of my mind
Songs listing
Like Galleons in a storm
An armada of choices
Awash with indiscretion
Garlands of hubris
To crown myself in

The Fs and Rs
Are Happy Gs
Jest, it is Just
Ket, cat
Caterine, the rine
Of the cat

Nice Sky

Its a nice sky
What colour is it?
A kind of pinky orange, like a fish's scales
It hangs there like a tapestry over
the flats of a certain destiny
High rise in intensity
The dreams of Gherkins brought to courgettes
Ghengus Khan's children
Inadvertently under-esteemed
Until the Empire is just
This painted cloud castle
Where he rides his chariot
Drawing the sun, like he
Drew the close of day
On an age of magic

Sunday, 11 March 2018

All the Spring Flowers

All of us, all of us everyone
The seeds in the field
Growing in the Sun
All of us reaching to be closer to the one

All the silly sunflowers
Bobbing up their heads
Reminding us it is spring's hours
We need not be dead

Come alive in March
And fall into April
Like a tree with a broken branch
Whose height topples its alma mater - ial

Where can the cuckoo sit, when he comes to call?
The flowers with his cuckoo spit
Are grown against the wall
The shadow of the wall casts long in the afternoon
But I can yet hear his song way into the month of June

I need a lasoo or a whip
To keep the cattle rolling
I need a steamer or a ship
To keep the river strolling

Keep on going down the valley
The cowboys sing their song
Of all the yard girls at aunt Sally's
Yearning the whole day long


Saturday, 10 March 2018

Green ice

Green ice, green ice watching you
The Balaton has green ice

Walking along its circumference
Close to the Cathedral of Tihany
It gives its gentle crush to the ice
Green ice watching you

Moving on now like a ferry
We perambulate up and down
The promenade like dancers of the night
It is a nice place for the ducks I think
They toddle like babies but never quite sink

The swans are even pretty in pink
Wise in white, with their legs pulled up
Green ice, green ice watching you

Crows in a pair come down and tap
Poking the green ice with their beaks
Asking it questions, but like a captive agent
The green ice never breaks, never speaks

Its folding up near the pier though
Its edges are beginning to flake
Its made of some stuff very queer
I think it is metal, think it is real then fake

Its holding on to the winter
Like it doesn't want to let it go
Hold on green ice, no just let your ice melt
Because gone is the cold winter snow

Let your green ice flow Mrs Balaton
Let the tears come running down your face
The crows feet are already at your corners
They're dancing the new dance in your place

Green ice, green ice watching you
Fasting the whole day through
How can you live, with a twig, with a fig
With a green leaf covering you

I tried my luck upon your green ice
You held my body in tow
My foot steps left tentative tracks on your ice
But in the end I had to go

I am sure you could have held me
for longer
I'm certain you had the strength
But I was afraid that the new spring curtain
would come down, and I'd
fall right through

Green ice if I could keep you
Green ice if you were true
I would leave the shore side
And walk out into the lake with you