september 2018

                              (i)

...why is it silent poets

are the only ones worth listening to

every fire has its heart

every stone its gleam of justice

and in every drop of rain

there is some ineffable creature

screaming for its right to exist

why then do so, so many gurus

still insist on spinning the world

on the tips of their erections

for the earth’s course was set

with neither passion nor clairvoyance

just the cold stupidity of equilibrium

a silence so massive

it swallows these black tears

crushing both the eyes and lungs

where then will ye bide

for there is no inalienable right to scream

and the face of such a world

spins far, far too fast to be seen...

                       (ii)

...we, surely, are a touchstone

refugees at the very heart of tyranny

an empire diving into dreams

overrun by some vast, erotic fulfilment

and this surely is no coincidence

this transubstantiation of passion into power

of virtue moulded to sit nicely in the pocket

no, no my love, I have not forsaken you

it’s just that our world

has become a shameless predator

and although outwardly free

yet always I am here littering the darkness

hiding my feelings in caves

afraid that this menacing fulfilment

will surely let the tyrants seize the underworld

and make fugitives of us all

and ‘though the heart’s empire

may be lost in its dreams

and virtue in ashes

I will never forsake you, never...

                            (iii)

...so what, if a thousand suns go down in the west

 and thousands more rise again in the east

it is only a repetitive placebo

a rough, uncut forgery

reality, it seems, has always been somewhere else

a dreamy epic just below the skin

and so here we are

throwing our misery across space

forever exposing ourselves to eternity

praying that we too possess some immeasurable beauty

some immeasurable, intense future

that promises to rise in the east

while the song of songs

and all ancient lullabies

go down in the west

dragged by nostalgia

the dreamy skin

the dreamy, exposed truth

which, it seems, has always pretended

to be something else...

            (iv)

...I know when the ink must flow

it’s when the mirror turns away in disgust

and the hands of some inconsolable doom

rip into my stomach

this torrent of foul graffiti

so-called sonnets

that disguise themselves as ecstasy

as midnight cockroaches

crawling from my throat

in truth, they are all uncertainties

conceits transforming mountains into air

masks that pretend anything is possible

even the squeezing of rainbows from my breasts

the blue-red milk of the why and the wherefore

two words, three syllables

that have always sent people crashing

against the ignorance of a million years

every ode and feeling etched into stone

the one flesh where everything is possible...