Wednesday 27 January 2010

The single, once crisp tulip.

I am dying

From within. I don’t wish to,

But I think of this skin

That holds me


Back and I feel ill. I stare,

Glazed over, at all the happiness I have tried to

Capture in moments of grace,

And self contentment.


But this does not do me justice.

This hand does not do me justice.

It all falls short of feeling.


Now I write blankly, efficiently, capturing

What I feel because it is easy.


Do I long for you, or do I wish happiness

Would knock me dead?

Knock me down,

The earth upon my head.


I wait, I long, silently.

Suffering all, wishing nothing.

Nothing will come of nothing.

Or shall I become a sod

So as not to feel and rot,

But just rot, unaware.


I am dying, like a flower,

Whose time is limited.

But unlike a flower,

I see what’s coming.

Unlike the single, once crisp tulip

That hangs aside from the others still-fresh,

Falling from the boring vase

I see my fall

And contemplate it often.

And read poetry which seems both

To help and to hinder.

Like you, an enigma.


The feeling seeps through my nib

Through my heart, through my ribs

Gushing out onto a page, limited,

Tired but taking shape.

Hope leaves me, to be implanted

In a line

A seed,

Sewn. Waiting, longing, wishing quietly

To grow.


But not knowing that its time is limited.

Friday 22 January 2010

Thursday 21 January 2010

Light Fades.

Light fades. The sunset;
From electric purple, to a thin fleeting slash
Of amber just above the tree line.
I hold my cigarette up to the horizon –
No difference

An umbrella-tree shields me from the drizzle.
I try to distinguish the rain on leaves
From the rustling branches of gushing trees.
I peer out from under leafy-dreadlocks,
Across an abandoned meadow; it is calm,
But the sound of water tapping foliage is restless –
Its sound calling back to the storms of life.

It was merely a pause.

Dubai





Wednesday 20 January 2010

Flashbacks.

Sting you through the chest. Jar running thoughts.
Reach in like lightning, plunging a green hand
Into your heart, and squeezing tight -
Life-stopping, heart-wrenching,
Bulging between finger - a nightmare,
Stifling panic in a back room - in a black room.
Your mouth trapped behind an irrevocable, greasy paw.
Suffocating.

The paw grows nails, the nails gleam, lipstick red.
she moves across the room, you feel her presence. . .
She leaves, the darkness deepens.

Pulses race through tubes,
Out into the world in multi-colors.
Her green grip tightens around your soul -
Fireworks gouge your eyes from inside.
Ready to burst, helpless, breathless.

Familiar hands clutch a glowing breast.
You fall back to earth
back to where you were.
It all happens so fast.
In a flash, like lightning.

Dubai










The Tin Box

The floorboards have done their crying.
All the sticky flap-jack has been spent.
The sweetness, and energy of youth has run out
in the biscuit-tin we call our lives.

The times before this will always be missed.
But now is a time to freshen your face
with a cool, calm cloth.
Wipe off, those, your last of tears, and restock.

Now stand, the size of a cut on the tip of your finger,
in that vast empty tin.
Gaze up at the stars, and admire them
as they reflect around your box's silvery sides.

Or, at the witching hour, hear the flicker of a cigarette
burn in the silence of a leafy drive.
Keep that sound and let it echo, only for you,
in that spacious box.

And the next day, having worked hard, you will look upon the world with another sense of beauty
- not just seeing the trees and fields in the afternoon sun.
That afternoon, your cup of coffee will taste the same as that very first time.
Its smell fused into your lungs, luring you to try.

Put that in your box too, and close the lid. Tight.
Kabarega





Africa

I have thought you for five hundred and thirty one kilometers.
You have sat next to me, and passed me by the side of the track
In rich linen clothes, carrying water in yellow plastic bottles.
You have waved to me, smiled at me with bright flashing pearls,
And peered through wind tickled maize to meet my absorbing eyes.

Under shaded boughs, you have played the locals at their own game.
A game more ancient than trees,
As ancient as you.

I've seen the back of you, huddled in apathetic crowds
Standing round broken down jeeps.

Your essence flowed down the Nile towards me.
Your fragrance has breathed across townships,
Rattled past glass coke bottles on sun-kissed tables an hour before dusk,
Below ashen grills and above glowing hot coals,
Through my open window, as i race past an infinite world of senses.

You scream down dust-tracks and over sparse hills,
Chasing my soul, haunting my memory.

In my contentment, you pull me back,
Rushing through The Conditional, and all the Verbs -
Rushing- racing, loving- tasting, testing one another.

I have though about you for three thousand two hundred and eighty kilometers, but reality is daunting.
I ignore it. - we roll, instead, through long grass -
Between white sheets - through each other's hair,
In Equatorial Heat.

I lie on a faded green windowsill
And sweep eyes across lakes the size of oceans.
Kampala









Beastie


Creeping through its darkened rooms:
Creamy doors and forest-archways.

Washed, but unshaven, glowing skin in the black, on the windows.
Red wine and tobacco pass between lips,
As bare feet pass over cold flag-stones
From a brazen kitchen of flashing terra-cotta
Into it's depths... - a beast with a warm heart,
Hibernating in winter.

Sly drafts blow up blackened flights of stairs.
Up,
Up,
Up to the attic,
Past a broken trap-door
And up,
Up,
Out of the slumbering animal it gives life to.
Meeting with the evening air, it goes
Howling round the dusty orb of murky gold,
The heavy floating mass that is the moon
(As it slides silently and endlessly over silhouetted tree-tops.)

With the house too,
Shelves and cupboards
Bend silently under the weight
Of faded volumes and
Antiques.

Majestic paintings haunt long, frozen walls
And empty stairwells with bodies
And eyes that move with you
Along carpeted spaces.
And all the while,
Childish, abstract pieces bring balance to the eerie vacuum,
Rippling mirth out onto worn down furniture,
Even in Winter's shadowy grasp.

Single-glazed sash-windows fight off the frost from inside.
leafy figures cross the lawn outside,
As earthy rooms' sides
Reach out for other continents through wooden toys and tokens and candlesticks.

Cellas hide copper pans,
Hung like corpses from the noose, hours before dawn.
Shrouded in the sparse, misty breath of spider's webbing - clogging the beast's underbelly.

This building, this beast, is inhabited. - a gnarly group (not without their differences) reside within.
They endure the unwanted presence of Nature's iron grip,
For they know the beast annually disappears, -
Slinking off with sleep eyes
Beneath the feet of giant pines beginning to warm
In some musky woods.

Suspended in each icy room,
The hazy memory of glorious days gone by
Patiently wait to drive all the sharp drafts
Up-
Out of the cella - taking the cob-webs with them,
Through the hallway past gloomy artwork, on
Up,
Up through the cracks in the roof-hatch,
Sending them scuttling after the Wintery Beast
Like impudent schoolboys late for a field-day.

Behind is left a solitary air of radiating calm,
Which fuses merrily with the walls,
Reflecting the aspiring credo of one or two of the inhabitants...
But for now, the beast lies in rest.
Appearing for another year, only moments ago.


Fuerteventura