Category: Uncategorized

Economy

Some people say my poems are too short
That they need stretching
That I should put them on the rack
But surely if I do that
My audience will be the ones tortured
Has anyone ever called a fifty stanza poem their favorite?
True I do torture my audience by degrees
By tossing out scraps and tidbits
It is all I can do to keep them hungry

Contrast

The contrast, the culture shock
Metal heads sitting next to grandmothers
A teacup surrounded by beers
And half smoked joins
A priest in a mosh pit
And liquid fire
And volcanoes underwater
And rising suns to wish upon
And you, my love, in my arms
As distant as the star
Whose light will only reach the earth
When the earth is no more
When there is only darkness to illuminate

God’s Silence

If God knows he isn’t saying

Mum is the holy word

With blank pages for scripture

At least he’s a good listener

One must give him that

Millennia have passed

Without a single interruption

And we all know how we can carry on

Especially when in need

But what is the silence God answers by?

Have you ever put your ear to it?

Have you ever felt it beneath

The whirlwind of thoughts

Under which it rests

As steady as the Earth?

Could it be a blank slate?

Or the space stars are born into?

Could it be the understanding

That no matter how much I know

I know nothing

And therefore am wise?

This is my quiet time

Now I hear you

Now that I am no longer

Waiting for an answer

Now that I am content

To let it be

A Kiss Between Strangers

I kissed her with my eyes

She kissed back

Our exchange sustained

In the space between us

The distance narrowed

To arm’s length

I opened my mouth

Words fell out

Popping as they hit the ground

She said something too

That felt like a lasso

Tightening around my neck

We should have left it at a kiss

The Sun Has Melted

The sun has melted

It moves now like lava

In a lava lamp through space

Earth and its inhabitants

Are subject to a trillion 

Variations of light

Noon has a strobe effect

Good for trance parties 

Bad for the epileptics

It is beautiful though

To watch the sun morph

Into endless globular forms

And bounce off worlds

Like a shape-shifting pinball  

In this universal arcade 

  

Flammable

 

Don’t shoot sparks at me now

I am flammable

My blood could ignite like petrol

Then I’d be a man on fire

Dressed in flames

Going from room to room

Burning everything

I would burn you too

When all I wanted

Was to embrace you

To tell you

‘Let’s turn the heat down’

Today I have kept my cool

I have swallowed fire

All day long and said nothing

To char anyone

But now that I am home

And you are rubbing sticks together

I can feel an explosion rising in my throat

And I know if I open my mouth

Fireballs will shoot out and strike at all I love

I try to speak water but even that boils away

And fails to come down as rain

 

I wish it were snowing

Right here in our kitchen

Right here on our feelings

So that the things we need to say

Could be said without leaving a mark

Too often it is only when we are on fire

That we voice and therefore burn each other

With what in cooler climates would enlighten