Love Song of the May Bug #1

So here I am, vaulting up into the dusk

of this lovely summered realm, or

rather sitting here in my lonely bedroom, sussed

out by my heart, beating faintly like wings.

I think of you, how I'd like to settle

into your air, down to your wet ringlet rings,

get tangled in you, as if in your hair, sore

to lay this brood, and not be cut down like a nettle.

I don't want to come back yearly

to this same annual point, pinged 

into this blind night abuzz, yet merely

moved on like an unloved pest, and racquet-torn.

I sit here by this window, the hills lovely and vast,

hearing wings buzzing faintly - into your future; into my past.

Let Poetry Save Your Life

Come neglected, come dejected
come lay down your strife.

Lay down
at your mother's feet:
let poetry save your life.

You think it a thing of one dimension
full of words like 'metre' and 'scansion'

but come and feed, 
and satiate your needs;
let poetry save your life.

Your eyes are blue, but full of tears
like a sky anticipating rain;
rain and rain, again and again.

But rush out to your moonlit street;
let poetry save your life.

When you can see they aren't merely words
but glowing hearts, passed on like embers,
blown on like lit feathers of coal,

then poetry will save your life: you'll remember
for ever; you will build yourself whole.

Deep Love, Deep Time

Our love could be deep time, 
glacial time. 
Lodged as a rock. 

We could embed ourselves, 
seamlessly
as kaolinite;

I could hold you through
time's long and
lonely night.

Our love could be deep love,
deep as the speckle
that flecks the above.

A glint of quartz,
a refracted love.

I could hold you -
we could hold each other -
against a vein.

Our love could be infinite,
infinite as the first rocks
of the Earth.

Our love could be
pure presence: present,
but gone unknown;

not a fossil, not a relic,
not calcified bone.

Another Poem

          - for Vladimir Holan


Another poem worth memorising

                for everyday situations,

                          on the train

                                      in an elevator

                         on a plane.

The conductor comes

       Ticketing

           and I’ve glanced

           over

                                    at you

                         several times

thoughts mixed

                between

                           the poetically noble

                           and

                                      lustful

                           infancy.

A fancy, indeed.

                 A moment to me

                            held in the morning

                            sunshine,

                                       perfectly quiet,

                            perfectly abandoned.

But forever there.

Choose a Better God

When amazing’s what you’re after

                But it’s always out of reach

I’ll make amazing second-nature;

                It will be a small feat.

When hope to you is citrus fruit

                Growing on Spanish trees

I’ll claim for you that rugged hue,

                And hope for you shall ripen with ease.

The gods you choose are yours to pick,

                Don’t stay the church out of respect

To childhood, fidelity or candle wick

                When there are gods abroad with love to spend.

Come, choose a better God;

                Take me, my love, for protection.

Come guidance, come now, come good,

                And I’ll take from you sacred direction.

Let me live between your thighs

                Like a hermit struck blind with sense.

Only innocence, love, behind my eyes.

                Behind my eyes, my love, only innocence.

Just Poetry

His life reduced
to the sum of his words:
a febrile patchwork
of repetitions
and revisions:

this, Africa's brow
or I'm more bristled
than a toothbrush tip,
every time she mints
new tender with her lips.

No, his life was never
the brink of breathlessness,
a kitchen sink,
plunged, whirling down
to depthlessness.

His is only poetry.
Just poetry. Merely words.
But you're impressed
with what you've heard, when
it's more what you haven't
that's nearer the truth.