Wedding Song

Originally written on January 30th, 2013

On our wedding day
I would let you dance
with your ex,
and I wouldn't bite my lip.

You're the one for me,
free bird, no leash
for you, no cage -
to not put all Heaven in a rage.

I love you:
here's to safety, and a latch key;
here's to radiator bleeding, child
feeding, and a love never to go 

unfeeling.

Get Your Bite

You blinkard fool,
no bloody God made you;
your body's there to find you.
You swim out to your body's truth.

You do not own yourself:
your self is lost, most
never find theirs;
children swell with pain, nerves flare.

That's how you know you're real:
the pain, the heal. Your self
is floating out there, buoyed in infinite ocean. 
Your spirit is your compass. Love the potion.

So fix your fickle fragments to your frame:
your body yours to discover, yours to tame.
Tigers stroll gallantly in your soul's night.
Find your stripes, light your eye. Get your bite.

Deepest Shade of Green (500th poem!)

the days are long and clean

                    and hot.

they skip a bright blue plane.

the evenings unfurl for hours

with tongue of lavender flame.

     and after this is said

                                                    and done

 would I repeat it again?

to simply have been here with you

is the volta, the refrain.

but that is not enough for me,

and, baby, it never will be;

for how can I possibly go on

                                                   without you

                                            here with me?

I want to fold you up in me

                             and give you time to sleep.

I want to be your sun, your moon,

                    your deepest shade of green.

My Friend Mohammed

My friend Mohammed
is the loveliest guy:
he once told me that Bambi
always makes him cry.

He works at a fruit stand
in the market, the palaver's
one he really enjoys. It's just off the Strand.
And every Sunday he helps out his father.

My friend Mohammed follows
the Five Pillars: faith, dedication,
charity, fasting - a pilgrim; he knows
he'd always be happy, even on a ration.

He often makes jokes, his keen sense
of humour: at the market, he says,
'What will it be? Two pannets for
a pound? Don't Mecca fool outta me...'

But his Uncles in Luton
are very unhappy: they don't
speak good English, and
the whole town's quite crappy.

He says, 'They'd leave if they could
but everyone's there: their wives,
their daughters, their friends. They would,
but try moving on forty years - their heavy lives.'

My friend Mohammed likes to pray
at the Mosque, whenever he's not busy.
He says, 'Come see for yourself, come lay
your assumptions before God - or is that too easy?

'Allah is all mighty and all good -
it's just a few morons left in the Dark Ages.
Your people had their crusades, this
is the same. Nothing bad lasts. But I'm no sage.'

My friend Mohammed has lovely parents:
they're not Pakis or towel-heads or niggers or blacks.
But they cook for me no longer. They're holding remembrance:
their boy died last week in an arson attack.

British Columbia, 2006

I remember it,
luminous as yesterday.
We'd seen the Buick
in the garage
and then we sat outside.

Total darkness.
The fire pit was kicking out its heat,
the eight of us
painted by the fluid glow
of warm orange flame.

The stars were beating down
so gently, beaming down
from history. A coyote sang 
from somewhere in the distance,
the firs were watching us, silent.

In the darkness
of a moment's light,
in the lightness
of a moment's dark,
this memory's inside my heart.

This memory's inside my bones,
distilled to marrow, in my rings.
The starlight, the fire; time zones
melt away: just one patch of the earth.
I sing, take it under my wings. Soar the surf.

Social Network

Note: I wrote this poem almost exactly two years ago, but I found it randomly today!

I don't want to 'like' your comments,
witticisms, tweets, et cetera:

heartstrings are not digital,
hands are not
digital; mouths 
are not digital.

I'd rather not view 
your photos of Alaska -

but tell me how you imagined
being down there
in the water
amongst the whales;

tell me about the peaks, the caps
the bears, the beauty,
the waste...

Or don't tell me
at all.

I don't want to make a connection;
I want to feel it.

I could sit with you all day,
and we could do nothing
but feel everything,
and chuck
our computer screens

into the deep
blue
ocean.

Modern Shakespeare

I'm a
Renaissance man:

I'll be
at the Renaissance Fayre

getting
pissed as a gnat,

horny
as a hare.

Love in a Later Time

'If you go clinging to love's spine,
she'll shake you off her back, dear boy.'
And so I wait for love in a later time.

'Love is a slippery thing, its slime
turns predators to prey, makes a killer coy.'
I count the vertebrae, clinging to love's spine.

'You can polish love, but it won't shine:
it's the dirtiest and most worn coin. You'll toil.'
And so I wait for love in a later time.

'Love's a pike swallowing poetry, line by line;
it'll only try to pull you in and under. You'll be its toy.'
I shan't go clinging to that love's spine,

for love like that's romantic crime.
'Ah, so be careful. Keep love's cogs oiled:
treat her well in love's later time.'

I will, I will. I'll speak it and not mime.
These lips shall spume forth geysers of joy.
I'll take these hands from off love's spine.
In light or shadow, I wait for love in a later time.

You are the Sun

An empty cache of light

feasting, engorging on itself,

you are a scintillation of a wave-length

compressed to an empty point

and an empty point and an empty point

agglomerated into the dense and

beautiful you.

But you are not empty in my eyes:

your insolation feeds me.

You are the sun.

You are a quantum trick:

you are a goddess

to make disbelievers question their
certainties.

I am Paul of Tarsus
on the road to Damascus.
I am Jesus

before you. You are Horus,

you are all that ever was

or will be

to me.

You are the sun.

Jigsaws

You always said I
was a 10,000 piecer.
I always maintained
I was 10:
something
a child could fathom.
A smiling face
or a country wren.

You were the one
all a-jumble;
I just kept mine
out of sight.
But there's nothing wrong
with a crumble,
your possibilities twinkling
part-way in the light.

But I could see them.
And you could see mine.
All except for one:
maybe you took it.
Maybe I did the same.
Will I ever be complete
with a missing piece?

Put me together
but don't frame me.
There's nothing wrong
with boxes. A little dust
can't hurt.
But I wonder of
my missing -

where is it?
What's the word?
But I'm okay not knowing.
Love, don't give it back:
your piece fits mine
far better.

And there it is:
peace.

We Are Here

Isn't it time
to do all the things
you always wanted to do?

Now the waves no longer
lap at you, at
your feet: you're
one with the water;
you're one with the street.

The book in your hand,
now it melts into you.
The sadness, it 
falls away
blue.

And the words 
on your tongue,
they petal out.

You are everything, 
perfect,  
whole.

Rose buds burst red
from your 
mouth.  

Song for an Angel (When the Lights Go Out)

My love, in your tired feet,
in your robes of tattered fleece,
what will you do when the sun goes down?
What will you do when the lights go out?

When we're left in this afterbite
of the bitter world, joy a-fright,
where will you turn to make no sound?
What will you do when the lights go out?

In whose hand will you place yours?
And where to safety, on which shores?
Whom will you see when hell breaks out?
Will it be me, when the lights go out?

My love as powerful as the crunch of gears
that halt, the inertia of two thousand years
coming fast and big, not slowing down;
I'll hold you close when the lights go out.

The Keeper

Turn towards the inner light:
star bright, sun bright.
Black-eyed angels holding on,
a rippled rhubarb raspberry throng
of summer birds chanting song,
chanting on,
a pomegranate in my hand
like a smile from God's face.

Turn into the inner light,
it shines forth now like a lake at night
and it ripples with your eye's delight
and crushes you, but you'll win the fight.
When my love walks, she treads on
the ground. O! but she floats, to me.
The wind of home blows freshly.
Irish child, where are you? Come home to me.

Turn outwards your inner light,
let the world see it.
But keep its source for me.
I'll find you in the darkness:
I'll be the only one who sees.

The You in Me

Jeez, why don't he
chill out?
Jeez, why don't he
step back?
He's always cracking jokes;
he's always on
the attack.

It's like he puts us all
before himself;
where's his own
happiness?
Surely it's
affecting his health...

And what is it
with him
anyway?
It's like he's 
empty,
like a dried pea in a can
making too much noise -
what a fucking sham.

But, baby, they forget:
ain't no empty sun be shine.
Ain't no good thing
not a whole.

I ring because you
set me off:
that note of me
that chimes away,
it's you.

It's you,
shining in my soul.

Stay Wild

We both came
from different angles of hurt,
with different shades of burn.
I'd never held true love,
hot and panicked fire;
you'd felt it heated in your turn.

Turning first fires' ashes
with sticks to get an ember
and holding things
you wanted lost, and yet
you still remembered.

We both came 
from different angles of hurt.
But what if I said,
'I promise never
to give you unfelt words:

if I were ever insincere
I'd blunt my blade and off my ear....'

And if you said,
'Don't be naïve
- it's bound
to lead to somewhere
dark: wilderness, trees-'

I'd stop you there
and simply say,
'We'll start out wild,
and there we'll stay.'