Five poems

Broadside

My words find themselves
In a coffin – in mud they flower
Like a lotus without an ego

I educe furtive patience
Through tolerable effigies
Put elbow grease into it

Like a furrier or impala
These concessions are donors
Of instrumental organs

Like a locked junction box
Impervious, doomed empires
Room here – in the jugular

I touch your maxillae – your
Golden skull cap with my tools
Spy this mattock in hand

As I fiercely nail this tooth
To my father’s namesake for
The keys to the nascent idea

Recant this rule – engage
The physique of narcissism,
Piccaninnies, jonquils on

A slope, the sky rufous
Narcosis takes a rum flight –
The galloping sea breeze

Salt in caves of mouths
Feels like a webbed pellicle
Doing a slap-bang runner

In rush hour – here is
Slashed phyla on my plate
Pert sleepers no more

Letters loved and lost
There is only this wood left
To pounce on – revenge.

The end.

Evening

Winged sleet is only
Sufficient in memory
Hinted at in atlas –

On maps; geography
Down came the rain –
Housed with you in

Its grasped picture
You came dying – shut
Out undone in streams

In wet rivers of dreams
You glide, flocked, awed
Pressed unaccompanied

Once flung into flight
Your arrival immortal
I envy you – the

Stars in your eyes
Like dew – your tears
Are the tears of a

Hero exhausted
From blows – a barren
Silence in which

Nothing fertile grows –
Weeping pours out of your
Heart as if you were

Soulless; moulded you
Effortlessly – gave your
Self worth although

It aged you – you
Brought me to a home
Cradled me as if

I were nothing just
Waiting to be rescued
Waiting to be saved.

The end.

You

You –
With the dark sorrel
Hair save me?

I’ve lost you –
And I only have
Myself to blame

Bookish now –
I’m alone and sad
This boomerang

Has kept me going
For the ladders of these
Past ten or so years

It’s been a waked boon – oh
It’s been a wild ride to get my
Ego from A to Zero

Monsters have come and
Gone – grown inside of me
With legs as strong as elk

Lazarus or a Pharisee
Gems, mother-of-pearl –
I’ve roused too late

I’ve come to the thawed
End of my bloody, damned fluke –
I wish, I wish, I wish

I could take it all back brick
By brick – but every time I hit
A wall, a monsoon, a mistake

What warrant of
Success is there that you will
Break – that you will speak

This waif wails –
But can you hear her?
The gift of her voice.

The end.

Something about the life of a writer

Words flock
Onto the page –
I am left numb

Like a wadi
Any cold, wet thing
It dissolves

Subtly – unseen
Into a host of wounds,
Depression

Invalids,
Deaf mutes – the gut
Of a wind

Like tiny hands
It reaches out for me
It coos straight

From the shell
Of a heart – a
Fragmented

Wakened state
Of dreaming –
Like an infant

It is gone, gone, done
Grown up in years –
Matured, ripened

Like the brick walls
Of a house by the sun’s
Summer heat or fruit

Even the very small ones
Their welfare is pure – and
Carry a gravid weight

Wedlocked to words –
This is something of the
Life of a writer.

The end.

The poet

Loosed – this gesture comes with
Maternal pride; ceremony across
The page, they are not strangers –

Instead they comfort: even the
Savage, alien beasts – their deaths
Breasts are magical, a temple of delight.