peace

V.134

I sit at the graduation
courtyard outside the function tent
drinking a red velvet latte,
and eating two halved eggs, just think.

I hover over the dry grass
and there was quiet in the shop
where I chose my sandwich. I eat
and others join me in the square

where poetry seems a stand in
for certainty – a red brick wall
a landscape of reds, wires and vines.
It’s the philosophy building.

I take a mint from a blue tin
with 50 mints in. Lunch poem.
It was onion, and cheese – the kind
which has no name. In my podcast

academics speak of poets.
I take another mint. My, my,
so many things call for worry,
don’t they. It puts me on notice

and I press my index fingers
together and against my lips.
All this. Let these celebrations,
I freshen by breath, let them in

Charms for Defence of the City

In the name of the night
may all your bullets strike true
throwing clueless belligerent men
into soft beds of nettles or the pond

So they may immediately limp home
to their mothers, or to see their dog

*

In the name of the wind
may all bombs that fall find
they are caught in spider-webs
spun round and tightly held

So that you may take them down
disassemble them and bury them

*

In the name of thunder
may all their machines fail
to bring them any closer
May their wheels fall off

Roll down the hill, and splash
into the river, heading to sea

*

In the name of the sun
may the tyrant find himself
lost among people
unable to speak

Cold and dark
screaming for his father.

*

In the name of an angel
may all your children be wrapped
in invincible spheres of gold
to deliver them from evil

So they may someday speak
and we may someday listen

Heaven

In this place rain has fallen forever – a mist, the monsoon downpour and white noise. Then the forest, the edge of a forest where blackbirds call meekly and woodpigeons shelter on the curved branch.

Lightning cracks through everything in vanishingly small moments. And thunder unites.

Spaced along the eternal border are houses, backing on to the woods and in each, the back door is open and swings slowly since the wind is slow. Raindrops fleck the glass, and wet the mat.

In the centre of each garden, one of the risen stands, staring into the swaying woods which shifts with the intensity of the rain. It is warm, and their clothes are wet. They never look away. They want nothing except to continue to look. This they are granted.

The lord’s prayer dances on their lips, but it changes nothing, and means nothing. Still they call it, whisper it, softly. Its sound is completely lost in the rain.

They seem still, and at peace. And they might be

Two Sea Poems

You’re the Shark Eating my Heart (A Love Poem)

You’re the shark eating my heart
slowly and with little care
while seagulls watch most bemused
and the bored sea smashes on
against sharp rocks, boringly
meanwhile the wind has died down
and the pool surface is glass

so the only noise is chomping.
looking across the bay sound
I think I see whales spouting
but no – that red is blood red,
not sunset. Splashes from where
you’re the shark eating my heart
slowly and with little care and I like it?

Sea Memory

I do not remember
as if it has sunk deep
or diffused within me –
my first visit to sand
and sea – ever – as if
my genesis is now –

as if I were born out
of my sea memory –
as the long horizons
shone in the sea’s tearings
I materialised
crashed in, filling this space

We talk of this later
our feet are hot and sand
rubs off them in our socks.
I turn back and see it;
the dark grey portion sinks
leaving a blank white sky

V.49

We are not built to think of space
of true beginnings and endings
when the book becomes less and more
when cups and paths and horses fall

off the registry of items –
yet we do and it brings a break
in thought to the page. The blue roar
of water as I’m arriving

at work, draws back concepts like a
curtain / The sun on the water
is scintillating like a proud
child. Light blue eyes encapsulate

me and the red waters rise. Rain
on the air after a storm, rain’s
ghost captures small insects on its
silk. Far off a head of thunder

attempts to drag itself out of
the blue. As I’m leaving work, I
become tangled in the silver
linings. The car is hot, I put

Takk by Sigur Rós into the
CD slot and feel antiquate.
The end of things is far from me
and the cool breeze. The sun blinking