Zanni

The painted mouth, lock tied and bound with blue bunting crown.

A voice wishes to waver from wall to white wall with a bright idea,

A shining moment for the harlequin.

Yet before the move of lips and an assertive point of hand can reach:

His suit of balanced folds erupts;  grey threads part ways;

 retching from close knit company, birthing over grown shoulders and arms.

And the brightness quickly stumbles down the stairs, falling out heavy like a rock from his chest.

Our Ragman, a happy fool to follow once, is now frustrated.

His back churns into angles,

A wrong key stuck in a door.

We stand there – on the outside looking in

Men in chrome suits, spitting coin and hot pursuits, tapping rhythms at the door,

Militant boots,

Ladies with taste and iron in their face

Bejewelled scarabs in their hair stolen from distant heirs;

Press their face up to the glass, tongues desperate to laugh.

Just one more dance, please! Give me a rush, Zanni.

But the director walked out, and Zanni has no part to play,

Yet does he care, I wonder? His dirt-crossed fingers rush up to his face.

Or is it best to give of all you have? ‘Give it legs to walk away’.

Or, tucked inside a learn-ed mouth, (I see Zanni fast to use it now)

can one keep,  retain the power

to demolish in a hush?

This poem was a reaction to an ingenius pop-up art gallery. The artist, Joseph Long, and the curator, Woolcott, asked me to create a reactionary piece to their exhibit 'Denim Harliquin'. http://www.rowingpresents.com

Untitled

Ah, the summertime
When things grow back and
flower to the rhyme
ordered out one Romantic
afternoon, by Keats and Byron and Misses K,
as grass grows to their knees
a cupcake frieze, as we
drink cold tea and old
mulled wine
a fairy ring, a lantern cloud,
that quietly swings
to hum-bird sound
and praise to above all: the unfinished line ....


My love thank you for summertime.

Every Man Is Not An Island

Every man is not an island, but a world
With each one a single setting sun
That sweats and burns his skin
(An ocean hangs from hooks in the air)
One wager goes untested
with each breath I draw back in.

Lone wanderer. Author of my own steps.
Glimpsing at visions that only here consent to seem.
(Founding on ruins, culture twisted for our mirth)
Till I am called, crawl back into unwritten dream,
and a desert wind blows up the mark that I had ever been.

Cousin

I remember you.
How strange it is that we should meet
here, after all those many years.
I remember that moment I followed you up the
cellar stairs.
Lifted from the cellar floor – I, we
crossed the mark and boundary-door –
then light eclipsed a childhood.
You were a catalyst to the half-broken
chewed up toys; the scum and foam
left by a tricky sea – that would
often salt-rake, wreck, and fill in
the belly of the cellar.
Crawling on hands and knees,
Bawling out our fantasy –
as if we made the world,
(but reality has thicker skin
and waits, so patient, to let us in
up there at the top of the stairs.
Breathing heavily.)
I wish upon those confused days,
when we would scrape rocks on our
skin; and turn, with joy, our innards
into toys – to squeeze, and spin,
coil around, often our own mouths
- to silence our minds infernal
din.
The green seaweed in your hair, the
black, oiled strands in mine.
Combing gently – eyes forgotten now
for touch, legs quietly lapped and hacked by water
Groomed by the bitches of imagination
- furies ripe for birthing.
Cruel ritual never felt so worthy.

I remember you – your eyes, now
here in this warm, unthreatening,
room – so far beyond the reach
of salt-cuts and earth.
I wonder if in your dreams still lie
there – drip through your ear, to
crust and die here - like me.
Touching the scar left by a wounding
sea. A hand snagged on a door.
A small red shoe left on a cellar
floor.
But you are shinning: a glory to society; a public song-bird to our
family: we just talk practicality, of
commodity – reality.
And I think you killed the heart
of me: when we walked through that door.

MONEY-MORALITY

Today I found out, I am a
believer
I could be no further from
the realMoney is my food and is
my shelter

As it turns out I am a
pope
just of the crisp, unholy
kind
A cardinal of all things
cash
I kneel, to kiss and fold my
saviour
baptised, I sleep rough, in a
bed of paper
dreaming of raining fake
planes

circling, slowly they fall
around my ears
Tillich, in the distance, blows
the ivory horn, calling

Yet, where is this capital God I long for?