Poems
tango nuevo
'Tyrants always want a language and literature that is easily understood'
Theodor Haecker (1889-1945)
hold up a naked hand
in its palm spotlit a tight dance
the orquesta tipica strikes an archetypal beat
known colours tugged by the whirl
we glory in it dip breath clasped blood frill
as he performs a sacada shift of sure feet
but the legato returns
no subplot steals from his tinsel eyes
music hung like a familiar wreath
we are spun
tango-cheeks
toes in shit
only the wallflowers have lucid stares
an anatomy of birds
You found it in the humus
of emergent things, it's
feather skull one hundredth
of its skyborne weight, grey
treasure gone, keel clung to
its breast no longer obliged
to guide and pitch, your fingers,
still with their flesh, decadent
against this picked white, your
density fondling its hollowness,
the cavities that once dissected
light, one feather fixed to its
ladder spine, Jurassic toes coiled
to their fate, your hand defies the
giant's requisite to crush, this fragile
survey of the possibility of flight.
babel
'while your lust is smiling and your reason weeping...'
Rumi
eyes inhaled like an opiate
I imbibe the rough ephemera of possibility's flame
humanity in a wink dark brow a moment's grace
ill-fated by a millennia of tales
loose tongues menace our ocular dialect
I would touch your hand across the schism
of this foreign place
apples or wheat our worlds split on the taxonomy of illicit fruit
but not its fate
we will not live a thousand myths
I kiss an appetite for your mouth
shahryar
as faith gapes
chorus
'someone among us will sing tonight'
Tom Joyce, Traversing the Storm
I
there are waves and there are waves
all at sea
II
run your finger round the rim
it is the emptiness that sings
III
when it happens
standing beside you
will be your first memory
IV
Principium individuatioris:
toss me over
let me drown in a Kantian glimpse
V
wind appellation:
which bears the name of the purest song
borne by it?
VI
I have seen the sky
and though it belongs to birds and things of whim
I know the love of astronauts
VII
tempest / tempête / tempus
time rages through the confused throng
there's a book to be drowned
if vengeance is to be waylaid
VIII
struck by lightning
her body tenses
into the bow of a harp
IX
despite rapid movement
it always hailed on the philosopher's hat
X
don't make me choose between
the eye and the roar
of storm
XII
we are the people we've been waiting for