Poems – Existential

The Letting go of Crow

Crow sits across from me in the courtroom
Black feathers litter the ground, float
Upon the mahogany boards.

Arraigned by the universe, he is bound
To try some of the old tricks – but Dove
His opposite and cancellation, now

Stands and with a sigh, coos and points
On the projector the dead body of a horse
Whose beautiful and terrible hooves

Are tied. “Did you create this nightmare?”
Crow’s mouth opens, and out pour stars
Books, portents. Series of things fleeing.

Crows feathers bunch up into fists
Little tight handfuls of blackness.
He parrots back “Nightmare, nightmare”

Dove sighs again, changes the slide.
A schedule for housework – “are these
Your claw marks but I see…

Crow your name does not appear.
Do you think a horse deserves
This kind of torture” Oh bright dove.

By this point all Crow’s feathers
Are out. He’s a plucked little terror.
Dove just looks sad. “Sweep that up please.”

They begin working. While Crow is croaking
“I’m god’s nightmare. god’s. I am violent…”
But it’s too late. I’m leaving,

Walking past the curled up
Wormlike bird on the stand, and out,
I drop my copy of the book in the dullness,

hold open the door and Dove walks with.
Her feathers’ pearlescence gallops across.
We talk about her day, and I make her tea.

Jedi

In her thoughts the sword takes the place of light.
Through each shining corridor of plastic – flows
this thing we call our movement but is one;
the blueness and the redness cancel out here
and everything bathes in sparks and faint pastel
glow. Years of training, tribulation has led
to the point where each prediction unfolds
hyperdriven stars of prediction. And she knows
all coordinates in the force indicate this one point.
Where time moves and vanishes. It is life.
Or an end if you want to call it that. This light
side her opponent cannot grasp. Snapped in
on the moment too much and the feel of sword
cutting through metal and skin. There is more
to a fight than winning it. That is the dull phrase
but more. Gaining from this loss all the power
by choosing to elevate choice into its finale.
To a watcher this fight is not spectacular unless
you know each feint, each test contains millennia.
This is the secret the ones in black cannot grasp
confined to the red lights of this world by greed
fear, anger, hate, suffering. The light side has this
but not just this. Watch as the robe hits the floor.
And a million new hopes unfold from it.

Nuptial Flight

We talked for a while and then
I breathed you in, by accident
and like an insect you got lodged
in my throat – I had to swallow
repeatedly to even take stock
of the situation – how your oil
black hair was limp in the heat
and its one colour rainbow sheen
of sun coated me with a sweat.
I digested your little carapace
and now I twitch like a dry
and dying wasp in the porch…
Frankly, my dear, I would most love
to sting you but I am waxy –
look what you’ve brought us to
with your callow disregard
of how you fill the air, and land
in droves on my shirt – cracked
and uneven paving stones are no
solace – get off me, get off, get off.

Push

You wouldn’t perhaps have thought it,
but when the world ran out of fuel
there was a beautiful moment –
when, like bluebells emerging
from behind a rotten log
in the sunlight, skateboards, bikes
scooters, wheelchairs, wheels
of a different kind could be seen
enjoying a bright discovery
feeling the wind in their shirts, skirts
and the sweat, cold on the back;
Where the snap of wheels on tarmac
was like applause for a spent era.
They sped down natural speedways
and the flatland, their adopted birth
right, was finally theirs, they ran
from here to there never touching
the floor, and to the footbound were
the world they never quite could see –
something flashing in the daylight
amongst a quiet field. They bled speed
until electric hums seeded and the world
wasn’t quite as theirs as before;
Still they travelled, and never forgot
the days that had been their sport
hurtling along in the faint breeze
feeling the beach beneath their street
shedding a tear at quiet music.

The Wasp-dream

The kind wasp woke me
It knew that I had dreamt
So its wings began to hit the glass
Til, bruised of life, it went

To a mouldy corner
Of the velux blind
And walked along the window sill
Until it left my mind.

It must have had a seance
Amongst the piling tread
As I later found it curling there
Dried out and dead

Republican

The deep-house beats fall
From the window – hit
sunbeams combing the heat
Fall down simmering streets

It’s royal wedding day – but I
Can only focus on this
bunch of dead flowers
Strapped to a lamp-post

The cellophane wrap flutters
Around the dry remnants
Framed by estates and hills
And glints from windscreens

I’m not saying something,
Shocked by the light’s irradiacy
The faintly dissonant organ
Of which echoes softly pour

Another Waterfall Poem From Last Year

3, 6×6, Waterfall

I got a cold last night
crept up on, I crumbled
fell in hot and coldness
under the sheets – time crawled
now, I sit on the wall
and watch the first lacewing

The light – diffused through cloud
low, heavy, though not damp –
stutters off its wings, fast
so it looks, to ill mind
and its machinations
to flutter in and out

of existence, an x
drifting from stone, to flow
blinking. Variables
sparking from the lack-dark
of a barely there head
and crackling eye-nerve knots.