REINCARNATION
In the final moments
between a previous life
and a new one
I hold your hand
across the centuries
as if to let go
would bring extinction
The seatbelt sign goes on
someone is cutting away the window
with a sharp instrument
a gray light filters in
through rushing clouds
As we land
into this bumping braking effort
memories erased
eyes full of blood
somewhere within knows
the mystery and comfort
of your fingers
touching mine
an ancient echo
from mountain tops
and in songs of birds
COMPOSITIONS AFTER MIDNIGHT
beyond echo of folded bells
comes midnight’s apothecary
crooked as candle wax, his finger
creeps along your neural paths, nimbly
he twists the volume button back
to zero as batwing and nightingale now
fade your ears to padded cotton cells
he jabs his mellow needle through
your drum and you awaken joined
by shimmered silken wire to his concerto
of forgotten souls, octaves and potions
bubble sonic incandescence as you
strive to understand the cadences, hear the beat
of starlit castanets, the sulfur fumes
of Jupiter, Neptune’s net of wintergreen
and candlegleam, all melodies and song
stringing, ringing, singing in your night
and as you fumble for your notebook
fingers scuffling pencil tight
you click the light, the curtain drops
your eyes blink walls and wardrobes
dream regret and tears and all remains
the echo of his bells, soap bubbles in your ears
FORTUNE TELLER
there’s a certain disfigurement
about her
she’s sharp yet
the planes of her face
don’t line
up
in proper triangles or tetrahedrons
the outlines of her S m i L e s and
g r i M a c e s
end off in space
hatchet strokes
like cracks in a glacier
more like safetyglass after a blow
hanging together but distorted
as if she doesn’t belong
to herself,
to this generation
hologram eyes looking out at you
from the barrel of a kaleidoscope
your secret thoughts
that you never revealed
even to yourself
and then she’s tracing blunt fingertips
across the lines of your palm: counting, explaining—
your life, loves, the number of your unborn children—
widening fissures under a clouded magnifying glass—
cracks in the caked floor of a lake that dried up
incarnations ago
all interlaced under her probing forefinger
and suddenly
you don’t want any more
of this scalpel scraping
this semi-private disfigurement and as you
pull your hand from her grasp
she s h a t t e r s into a thousand pieces
of flying glass, razor sharp, shrapnel cutting you
layer inside layer and you know
that if you ever survive
you will hear the cackle of her mirth
dissecting you tomorrow and next year
until the time that all your raw edges
like her’s
end off sharply pointing into
empty space
MESSAGE FROM A STOWAWAY
To sink inside a book is like
stowing away on a ship
down in the hold —a cubby place
between tea chests and memoirs
Pages, some tear stained, recollections
of far ago conversations and places,
excitements and joys, hours spent
in cramped positions reading
others’ solitudes or tribulations
captivated, crenellated, by the light
of a flickering candle
Upstairs, all the characters
in their cabins, preparing for sleep,
straightening their bedclothes,
chatting about the day’s events
in droll or cynical paragraphs, each
inside their own inclinations
and quotation marks
Often I feel like a voyeur, spying
on them. After sunset I wander around
ghost-like and peep in on them. One
moonless night I stood beside the
captain filling in his log. He’s the
author really, the captain —guider
of all these lives as he steers his ship
by his own star to a destination that
sometimes he himself is not aware exists
Don’t worry about me, I’m quite comfortable
here. I have a large stock of candles, a keg
of water and sufficient dried biscuit to
see me through this voyage. Sometimes
one of the crew members slips down and
tells me an anecdote, reveals a hidden meaning,
an explanation of a point I’ve missed
And to cap all the wonder of this trip—
delight of delights—yesterday I found,
between the tea chests, a notebook and
a yellow pencil. With these I am writing
to you dear Reader. Who knows? Perhaps
I shall seal this page inside a bottle, throw
it overboard to reach you, somehow
Bobbing away somewhere across a sea of words.
CLAIRVOYANT
she resembles now a gargoyle
now a picador, a buffoon
her gestures, hints, imitating
this one or that, always a hint
away from recognition, almost
reminiscent of a scarecrow
pointing at an obelisk, perhaps
some dark pattern revealed–
the grand procession of primes
towards the zenith, they hold
a secret, a clue, sockets for eyes
an incantation ending with
a rag tail curtsey – you can’t
outguess them, puppet performers
all, while she, gipsy mother
front teeth missing, gazes deep
into our hearts, turns her tarots,
wipes a coffee stain, pronounces
her pronouncement, detailed
deceptive, intricately designed
but always a hint away
from recognition
GLASS PHOENIX
Today at last
she knows that she will die
molten glimmer deep in her gut
fading, calcifying
in porous clusters of bone
rockfalls, dinosaur skulls
captured in glass
fused forever
Heartbeat slowed
to a moan, whipped
by the wind into grayness
too tired to dodge meteorites
hunks of impudent missiles
slap her rusty hide
Watching her slope in orbit
the last crows flap over
empty desert shells
searching for moisture
in her wrinkled wastes
parched relics of seas and waves
Glass planet
transparent and dying
veins of dusty river beds
ridge her ancient skin
blind eyeballs, extinct volcanoes
gaze through dust of past millenniums,
socketed in hollow core
of nameless girders
gaunt and buckled
Now she wobbles grimly
in her final orbit
shuddering land masses begin to break
come apart, jigsaw in the gashes
glass bird, dying planet
shrieks a final cry
and plunges into the crucible
glass blowing furnace of the sun
Glass into glass
a transparent sub-atomic dance
fireflies of glass
explode and collapse,
explode
and collapse
ten billion years of glass history
light the universe in one
exhilarating moment
life from death emerges from the flames
GINGER TEA CEREMONY
A brewing storm outside rumbled
like a headache in the sky
Sonya was pouring tea, laughing at a joke
the heavens opened like a burst dam,
bucket loads, horizons of it
Let it rain for forty days and forty nights
she laughed, wash the pollution out
of our rivers. Our eyes washed
to see clear again. No more war,
party politics, cigarette stubs, traffic
jams, no more investigators, spies,
secret police, customs duties on marihuana
- all washed away.
Do we have enough tea and ginger biscuits
for forty days and forty nights? I snuggled
into Sonyas’s arms. We were so young, already
legions of gum booted rescue workers were
sloshing through the rising water to
salvage us. Helicopters whirled overhead,
sharp headlights jabbed through the
sleeting rain. Throw your books down,
come out with your hands up.
And the tea was cold, the ginger biscuits
waterlogged
BEWARE THE COLORS ARE CHANGING
I am a soap bubble. Wave froth. Impermeable.
I am hardness. Black light. A countdown
of flashing digits, blinking off.
I am a candle. Extinguished. I cling
under rocks. In crevices.
I am an anvil. An iron mountain. Lightning
discloses the scar across my face.
I am a prophecy. Tomorrow’s shadow. Smug.
Time stretched to its thinnest membrane. Nothing
about me returns.
I’m metamorphosing. Red into red into red.
Don’t wait for me.
BEHIND THE WATERFALL
Once, when the word amorphous was a good way
to depict mind, and waterfall
was a good way of describing inspiration,
when every conglomerate of pumice held a face,
when clouds were zoos, when dreams were consultations,
she met a rock, cold and glossy black,
the way rocks are behind waterfalls, those who
in their gleaming immobility refuse to admit
that ten thousand years ago they might have been
perhaps slightly more pliable and that even theoretically
there could exist a smidgen of free floating beauty
in the world.
For a long while they stood there regarding each other
she of gossamer, he of sneer; look she said, I see
a face behind the waterfall, that cave a mouth
and inside lurks a demon. The cave laughed, a rumbling.
Brave into the curtain if you dare, behind lie tree trunks,
creepers, crystalline formations are buried deep
within a tunnel that slopes down to a chamber
full of animals made of ice, palaces and spires, where
drop by drop over a million years you may observe
the wonders of the world as they are formed. Come,
brave the curtain, spend a moment of eternity’s clock
and I will show you how air turns into vapor,
breath into liquid, water into ice, how all solidifies
seemingly quiescent as if it always was.
I’d love that, she replied but unfortunately I cannot.
I have clouds to decipher, dreams to interpret, Jupiter is
in my fifth house – and the griffins need to be fed.
The demon laughed again. Go then he rumbled. Return if
doubts distress you, should you feel the need for bedrock.
I’ll still be here behind the curtain, writing eternity’s
history drop by frozen drop.
EVENT IN A SPIRAL GALAXY
Who are you?
That when you arrive
eyes headlight, chairs scrape,
heads turn, hush flattens conversation
you pull folio from tunic, speak
words that spell change
from this day onwards—
yesterday a closed door—
all passes.
Who are you?
Spawn of dynasties in silence
yet when you speak
continents shift, rearrange,
words inscribed on rock
buried for millennia, emerge
as shining as the day
they were inscribed.
still all passes
Are you a flash that rips open
the mask of history, a sword raised
as hordes crash across borders
filling worlds with blood?
Are you a secret whispered down
from father to son, a mystery which
only on the day when sunlight penetrates
a hidden chamber, becomes clear?
Are you forbidden fruit, a motherless legend,
a virus raised in a laboratory of shattered glass,
are you a notice pinned to a tree on an airless
planet revolving around a distant sun?
Are you a baby crying under rubble, intact
unscarred, are you all of these?
all passing
Who are you?
Never before observed
yet instantly recognized
king for a shard of time
BLUE RIBBON NIGHT
The sky was burnt raisin,
lightning flashed thin vermicelli trails
like marbled chocolate mix she thought
pulling on her grease proof paper coat
Not a night to be out in
hurrying down path awash
with floating grape leaf shadows
wrenching open door of her
tiny sardine can car, pushing
Key in slot, no response, a silent
prayer, a half swallowed plea, then
engine turns over once, twice, a rusty
food mixer in stubborn dough
left too long in the bowl, finally
catching in a whirring egg whisk sound
Thunder crashes, pudding bowl heavens
open pour their contents on to
her world: road lamps blurring, house
windows pea-soup then splitting again
in scrape-scrape of wipers across
whirling cookbook vista recipes,
traffic lights, intersections, directions
all merging into menus of unintelligible
instructions, confusing as a sushi bar
conveyor belt spinning faster, faster
out of control
Unbelievably she was there, storm over,
pavements steaming appetizing gurgles.
She ran up steps drying off in perfect
vanilla cocoa layers, stripping off her
foil protection, pausing, applying caramel
icing make-up, raspberry lipstick, then
fragrant, triumphant opening door, stepping
in to a dusting of applause
Cordon bleu lady strikes again she sings
to herself as they all hurry to have a taste
END GAME OR BEGINNING
it was end game
between man and computer
battlefield strewn with corpses
failed strategies, beheadings
behind them hop skip
and pounce, thrust
and foil of cannon fodder
he had been bred for this task
genes selected from
sperm banks of grand masters
with intergalactic sounding names
the robot was a forest of entangled
wires, laser pod eye stalks
chromium bracketed finger joints
quadrillion terabyte memory
they were down to two kings
two pawns a bishop and a knight
stalemates carefully avoided
they both wanted clear cut victory
it was time for psychological warfare
the robot grew a million bloodshot eyes
spread vanadium vaned wings
over sixty four light years, it was
stretched to its thin hinged limits
the chess genius grimaced
a gnat had just flown into his nostril
and was tickling him uncontrollably
the grandmaster sneezed - the hugest
sneeze in history, the robot stretched
to its limits exploded, flew apart
in billions of flying particles
gases, quanta, electrons, building block
nuts and bolts spreading through
the space of time
future students would scoff in disbelief
but some called it the big bang theory
IMPERSONATIONS AND IMPROVISATIONS
i’m learning new languages
every day otherpeoplesconversations strewn
all around like jackasses
blog sounds comments
dog sounds high tails unmentionable sniffing leg lifting
language that curses use when they scuff
up against one another shoe-leather creaking
language that speaks for itself — replacements
cut and paste contrivances
some days i can hear the smell of grass
swimming its way through waistcoats of script
feel the anger in the embrace of superstition
the assonance of fortitude in the undergrowth
i sleepwalk the promenade of ambiguities
touching the syllables as they dribble
from taut piano strings, inventions and fugues
i’m learning new languages
balanced like a pigeon on a humming cable
THE LAST DAY IN AUGUST
It has taken many names
aha, déjà vu,
remembrance of future,
this is it —
an August afternoon
cloudless, a steam powered,
automobile, summer light beating
through its spokes,
tree trunks flashing past
shimmering into other places,
buried in other clothes
a long black dress perhaps,
that she had bought herself
a high powered vehicle,
tunnel walls, no barrier
above, the sky cloudless
yes that’s it – cloudless!
Transistor radio, tinny
in handlebar wire basket
fragrance of wild fig, a bird
breaks from its branch, the news
exactly as I heard it - Royal Society
‘regrets to announce, at half
past two this afternoon’, spokes
cloudless, car accident,
moment torn from a history book
alone in a world captured
in a second that spans centuries
this is it —
an August afternoon
a voice from somewhere
sky full of voices
echoing over an England
suddenly silenced
the prayer for the dead ascending
from a million throats
beneath a cloudless afternoon
regrets to announce, regrets
to announce, regrets
to announce
Mary Ward – the first motor vehicle accident fatality died August 31st 1869
Diana, Princess of Wales – killed in an automobile accident August 31st 1997