Simon Peter Iredale - Poetry

History? I forget.

2011-10-30T08:11:00.001-07:00

Three o’clock in the morning
and I haven’t even a pulse.
Hour of suicides, the body’s
dark Sabbath, all systems down.

I hear voices tangling in conflict,
a woman, a man, his questions
sharpened by the Midland whine
rising step by querulous step.

The woman, cowed or cunning
waits for a chink in the tirade,
the point of vulnerability
to jab and wound with a word.

A second man, rising
out of the ground. Was he
silent till this moment?
Is he saviour or new tormentor?

A twister of ‘fook yews’ ascends,
gathering head like a typhoon, black
into the dawn light sky, but will
they fall as hammer blows?

It is over. The woman calls
them both off like dogs.
Stalking away coat held close
head furious, averted.

Only, now, the customary feints
to re-engage, the last bark at
the road end. Who said, “History
is a shout in the street?” I forget.

Aubade

2011-10-13T10:12:00.000-07:00

Dawn, and shambling house
eaves, sharply etched, seem
reluctant to appear on a
stage so stupendous.
Sky's sheer vault, perpetual
apocalypse, the drama for
which we have no lines.
How many faces, now, look up
as we scuttle abut our
insect heats and longings?
This sky will bathe all
with the same indifferent beauty.

Impassibility, not to feel
nothing, but feeling
everything at a remove so
absolute that the sufferings
of a snapped rose and the
saint are one; yet, unquenchable
Word, you have sat where I
sit, where Everyman sits, or
stands, or loves, or weeps.

Daily dying and corrupt as
I am, let my tobacco smoke
arise as a morning sacrifice.
In this lacuna of idleness let
me gather reaved peace, before
the glittering eyed cares
return with their harsh but
irrefutable edicts, this
my unrecollected but
penitent song.

At the grave of a broadcaster

2011-08-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

except
since air waves do
not confess
location, where
you lie is
placeless;
not that it matters
precisely
where we relinquish
this alchemist’s
juggling set we
call the body;
the radio
distant,
dispassionate,
informed me that
part of the fine
weave of my
known world had
snagged and parted;
a fleeting
sorrow
passed over me as
shadows over
field and hill
happen on
even the most
facile day
treacherous
with smiling clouds, that
your fastidious,
courtly voice, dredged
with the spice of wit, was,
at last, mute;
at least in the
ordinary, remarkable
way that one
heart speaks
to another;
death’s calm which
soothes every
fractious pulse will
not, with you, have
the last say, since
like some digital
purgatory, your
shade will
still whisper to
our O so
very english ears.

i am legend

2011-07-30T10:47:00.000-07:00

proclaims the tee shirt over
a belly whose folds like
the energizer bunny go
on and on and on.
crossed meaty arms display
a gallery of tattooed self-expression;
the first school-biro-scratched
again and again during maths
or one of the inhumanities,
baz and toni with a lop-sided
heart, gules on a putty
blue-veined field; others
present an unslayable
dragon rampant and a
weeping death’s head.
his eyes, buried in folds
like a basking lizard
traverse mall life with blank
impassibility, or is it
a philosophical reserve neither
to assent or reject but to
endure what the moment offers?

at what stage exactly does the boy
know he will never play for
england, the young woman just
put up with the bloke she’s got, or
the trader, bending over backwards to
scratch the itch of avarice say
enough, i have enough?
each of us reaches a high tide
and then begins the long ebb as
we clutch our rags about us and call
them robes: dignity, respect, street
fame, local legend, calling a
settled kind of hopelessness,
my life.

the lizard eyes catch me looking,
they say, ‘hello brother’,
a hiatus of understanding, then
we turn each to our solitary way
lost in the crowd of years.

Sea Saw

2011-07-27T01:09:00.000-07:00

1

Time is so deep
you can’t touch bottom.
I live on a shoal but
the sand is shifting.
The mermaids whose
element this is, sing “Let go
man of earth, our embrace
is your truth.” and every surge
sounds, like the whispers in a
shell, my eternal knell.

2.

I have watched the waves
rolling over over, my
eyes sea green with their
passage; from what dreaming
jewelled reefs, what
crystalline depths, shall my
meaning ascend, bubble
borne, fresh rinsed
as the first dawn?

3.

O plummet down, dark
down, beyond the reach of
light, where monsters blind
but deadly move scaly parts.
The eroding years dangle
before nightmare heads
the lure of hope, then snap!
their thin mouths grin as
icy teeth sink in.

4.

But I rise on your rainbow,
O joy bringer, yours also is
the death deep place, cold
clamped, where frozen lives
long for your touch.
No depths can hold you, no
heights contain, cosmos
compelling love, flood
this meagre tide, even my
meagre tide, again.

Snail

2010-10-06T08:29:00.001-07:00

I have felt rather than heard the sickening
crunch as my innocent step
has found you in the dank, morning grass.
An alien cosmos extinguished without
a modest by-your-leave.
If I can bear to look, your whorled shape
is messily effaced, mashed.

Other strongholds, tenantless, I have
turned in curious fingers wondering
whether need, age or violence
drove you incontinently abroad.
The cool sculptural curves are bleached
and scored dry by countless suns and winds,
your fate mute, uncooperative.

Uncurling tentatively your improbable
horns, you fastidiously contact
strangeness, ever only a shudder
away from cloistered safety.
Progressing with slimy circumspection,
you trail a glittering history.
I imagine following you,

down that marbled spiral.
With each turn the sounds of
the rude world retreat.
What tranquil fastness lives
at the centre of your mottled shell?
What warm and viscous Eden?

All safe. All hidden. Hushed
from the ugly jousts, those
unwinking Furies, the beaks
that plunge and pluck.
Until, that is, the indifferent boot,
incomprehensibly, descends
and cancels beauty.

Salmon

2010-08-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

Ever muscling against
the flow, my world is all liquid
hurtle and accident.

Πάντα ῥεῖ, here nothing
wears a constant face
except inconstancy.

With my every sinuous
turn, light coruscates
from my scales, but

I know my cold core is
dark, aching for the source.
So I am become a myriad

quivering runs, purity
of heart to will one thing,
seeking that moment of

fusing freedom when
there will be no stream,
no journey, no fish,

but only the pure
leap, perfect parabola,
completed in eternity.

Death's Midden

2010-08-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

I.

Mere dust, it is said, moulded
not with hands, the fair forms rising
peace-browed from their Procrustean
bed, the only image and likeness.
Or to fancy, a more composite mix
kenning the lesson of experience.
Rather shingle, root ends, baleful seeds
biding their chance to burst, ill
humors, all that is rough cast, flawed,
clawed up from the earth’s bowels.
Behold the mud man, arms drooping, fists
knotted, squint-eyed, blunt jaw set
obstinately against the heavens.
Yet, like some fell recompense, all must
resolve, fall away, sink, slide to
that which generated it, death’s
midden, mouth toothless and voracious.
Cronos devouring each his children
limb by bloodied limb.
Where matters not, whether
wind-scoured upland hillside, jungle clearing
where the heat sinks, or on northern plain.
In a myriad places we lie together
nameless as the wind, not waiting
but rotting, falling as one and at last
to the patient worm.

II.

Wordless, like an acolyte at a mystery
seeking the epiphany of the god, I
have waited on your inscrutability,
O death.
I have watched the shifting light
of faces, rally, fade, both dark and bright
tracing through the ageless, sullen night,
O breath.
Through alchemy or sleight of hand
the living being turned to sand,
brittle, life-like but a lie, and
O death
I was bereft, quite unmanned.

III.

You were not wrong to doubt
old man
for you had seen woe in plenty.
Not new for you the death
of hope,
the stark day mewling like
an abandoned child
and love lost.
You looked around their rapt faces
and a thorn pierced your heart.
To lose again is to lose
thrice, for the fresh wound still
smokes hurt.
So you doubted and caged your
love in reason’s fingers
like a struggling bird.

Yet, O
and yet, life
entered the locked room
as the earth trembled,
Thomas.

IV.

Is it a dream or a sense
of what has always been?
The place which is no-where
and at all times open, in sleep,
visions or moments when
the dullest mountain is transfigured
for no apparent reason.
What do the sleepers say who
dream on in the loam, their limbs
unloosened by the roots of the world?
They say death is a braggart, a loud
lout to some, but to others he comes
gently, blithely, as a courting maid.
His is the key
that turns each way, both to
lock and to release.
Kindly,
He merely means our peace.

Freeze Frame

2010-07-24T05:12:00.000-07:00

The fleeting glimpse

is the most telling.

What may not reveal itself

in hours of close

observation, is

present then, in fullness,

compelling, self

authenticating.

An effect of fragmentary

transits, the flash of lit

windows seen from a train,

revealing dim, private

interiors.

An abrupt gesture, for

all time a woman

turning away from a

man’s outspread hands.

Another’s face listless

canvas to the flicker of a screen.

Or today, through the

glass of a bus a young man

caught for an instant seated

on a wall, hands limply

folded, his face

brimming with unspoken

misery.

Before the heart could

ask what? why?

mere motion had stolen

him away, but

in the night I see those

eyes, and pray.

Pigeon

2010-07-14T01:47:00.001-07:00

Often, you draw our attention by

a clumsy commotion in the tree crown.

What does this battering of branches, this

tumbling down leaf stairs, mean?

Or we have watched your clownish

advances on the roof tiles, little hopeful bobbing

runs and waddling downcast retreats.

Once, while driving, one of your sottish number

flew above my car bonnet, fleeing in the direction

of travel, wings thrashing, a terrified mascot.

In the loopy bird world you seem only excelled

by the pheasant who waits stoically road side

until the precise moment to step into oblivion –

a feather-scatter shot over the hedge.

Nevertheless, I recognize the failing to linger

blithely in the very tread of catastrophe.

One can fancy oneself at peace just

before the smiling sky is due to fall.

And yet you have one trick that turns the

edge of contempt, one moment of grace.

That brief gliding flight – swooping up, half stall

and then the long equal descent. For an instant,

silhouetted against the sky, you seem a portent.

Zeus’ eagle stooping on a heavenly missive.

That impression abides, redeems, rescues,

even if, at the last, you land in a heap.

Odysseus at Ithaca

2010-04-26T07:44:00.001-07:00

With my fellows, faces

caked with the salt of our

own tears, I have stared

heart-stopped into the deep.

It’s agate walls flexed

like Poseidon’s sinews,

meanwhile the Nereids hid their

fair heads.

On plains where the distance

fluttered in the heat,

I have stood leather-

bound, iron-handed.

The sweat clouding from

our bodies, hearing

the sure slow tread

of death.

Pleasure, too, I have known.

The ripe grape upon the

mouth, the eager rhythms of love.

In Circe’s embrace who knew

where one love ended

and the other began?

Nerveless, ours hands

dropped.

Through the taunting maze

of the All Father’s will I have

unravelled my fate, losing

strength, heart, loves and luck.

Let me now drift, quiet

in the long shadows, as a dark

ship rocks in the cusp

of the sea.

Beauty

2010-01-07T00:34:00.000-08:00

I saw it once
heaven
once is enough.
Slouched, back
braced against a
friend's door, I saw
the night pool
around the street
lights.

But above, O
above, the stars
swam refulgent
before my eyes.
Opening, petal
by petal, the
celestial rose,
my heart drawn
to it's heart.

Beauty, the beginning
and the beginning and
the beginning, unending.

Here have I
sat down the echo
of the dwindling
years, rapt
to that first
annunciation.

Come
wordless, divine.
Come, beauty.
I seek no other face but
thine.

Showing the Instruments

2009-08-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

‘Come with us’, they
said, their smiles boded
well for those that are
not well. Uniforms bright
and cheery, fob watches
glinting with their walk,
with expansive gestures like
explorers proud of their
new found land we paced
the ward, full of polite
admiration – how convenient!
how fine!, one could almost
feel oneself at home!

Yet a shrinking inmate
clapped in the irons of my
heart whispered, ‘Now, O
craven, they are showing
you the instruments -
your hour is nigh.’

The Waiting Room

2009-08-01T06:36:00.000-07:00

This is where you come, nursing
your dearest fears.
Those that, once on a time, in
the country of the healthy, you
would have dismissed with a smile
turning to your latest love.
Yet, like an animal that follows you
home, they wheedled their way
into your sick affection.
Now, casting their speckled
skin they are revealed
for what they are – loathsome,
predatory, implacable - the
many faces of hurt.
Patient and passive, our
lives in parenthesis, we wait
for someone to call our name.
Though we sit side by
side, we are not companions, each
languishes in their own solitude,
our eyes do not meet.
No one’s file of words bears
exactly the same judgment, illness
is as distinctive as a laugh.
We shall return here like sad
comets every three months, until
some vagary of gravity spins
us off, out, onto a path from which
there is no return.

Whitley Bay

2009-07-26T03:51:00.000-07:00

The sea has withdrawn with
understandable squeamishness
from this tawdry shore,
gathering it’s wavelets about it
like a petticoat.

Hostile gulls rake along the
strand strafing the last vestige
of a summer dream.

What comes to mind, a foreign
place, caught helpless
between enemies where, with
Parthian spite, sea borne salvos
razed the hotels.

What civilians remain have the
hopeless gait of those who search
for a face they might recognize.

Decay has taken the town square.
Poverty has raised it’s ensign.
The shambling sea front proffers
meagre fare even to looters, they
have pushed south with the trippers.

In the darkening air is heard not
the laughter of children, but the sour
reverberation of a drunken shout.

Millennium Bridge, Gateshead

2009-07-26T03:48:00.000-07:00

A sustained gesture, poised
like a dancer over the fluttering
water sparks – grand jeté, bank
to bank, in one shimmering leap.

But this airy tracery and delightful
geometry only flatter the surface mind.
A visceral perturbation alerts
the heart to another voice.

Sliding into hearing, a fine alto
note is answered, momentarily,
de profundis – an octave drop
like lovers’ voices, or better

some congress of elements, for
the sea and wind are singing
through your harp- taut frame.
Sonorous, chordal, each

refrain points beyond human
time, like creation’s water clock
you count in aeons, while
we flit past ephemeral.

Yet, this hymning instrument
came from mortal hands, a
monument both to our fragility
and a timeless colloquy

commenced by those who so
soon will long be silent.
Your realized hope spans this
failing moment with eternity.

For us, you are become
a kind of immortality.

At the Bar

2009-07-21T04:43:00.000-07:00

First position comes naturally,
the body equipoised, tranquil.
The expression is one of unrelenting
surprise, eye fixed and gawking.
The corner of the mouth turned down
in disappointment, disapproval?
How can your world always fail
to live up to expectation?

Second position advances the thigh,
the knee bending backwards, ankle
extending each flexed toe tip.
Often the leg is held with a gesture
of suspense before with effortless
elegance, the foot is planted.
The body glides and the cocked
eye sweeps the matted earth.

Third and fourth positions are
accomplished in a swift lunge, the
body following the stabbing head.
Here, pursuing a hapless insect,
motion verges on an abrupt jeté.
Comb and wattles flutter red
warning as the beak snaps shut.
The glazed eye winks satisfaction.

Fifth and sixth positions are lost
in the straw, grand plié, the feathered
rump descends, neck ruffles raised.
Cruel beak in a gape, eye staring,
a primeval chatter wells up through
the lipless mouth, shriller and more
raucous, shaking the roost, until
a great calm – and an egg!

Sursum Corda

2009-07-06T03:11:00.001-07:00

Viol music brings
an atmosphere, close
yet festive, as if
winter-bound, a hearth-
lit room flickers mirth
convivially from smile
to fond smile.

Plangent and tawny
the bass holds forth,
while like frost-sparkle
on a web, the
alto weaves her lucent
and silvery line.

All, at first, appears
to be reserve, beating
due measure within
bounds, but a deeper passion
softly builds to a focus,
flashes from the singing
strings, a swift-
burning fuse of joy.

Rooks

2009-07-06T03:02:00.001-07:00

For no reason or
for one hidden

I look up
to a sky scrubbed raw
by a northerly wind

and see rooks flying
like soot flakes whisked in a glass.

Their flight makes no sense;
it seems helpless, yet
as they fly they croak out calls.

What do they say to their air-
tumbling mate or rival?

‘Help me, for I am afraid?’ ‘God
save us!’, or, ‘Damn, this is fun!’
-their croaks are indeterminate.

Given a choice, I would rather be
the tree they whirl around, the
indifferent centre to their tumult,
dreaming
that it is at rest, not dead.

But there is no-where to hide
in that drear frozen gesture, with it’s
twigs dwindling off

into the paler sky
like hair-fine cracks in ice,

and I can feel the wind prizing open
my cold hand’s grasp and it’s buffets
demand that, yes, I will dance

whether joy or whether fear
with my rack-reeling brothers in the air.

Pipistrelles

2009-07-06T02:51:00.001-07:00

The garden widowed
by the sun sinks
into inky washes.
Night eyes aimed like
gun sights blink open.
The cat, black in her alter
ego as in daylight self,
melts into the hedge.

In the tail of my eye a
vector of movement, tight
arcs described past the window
like tiny jet fighters beating
up the column of insects.
The pipistrelles have flung out
of their hidden hangars fuelled
by the edge of hunger.

I stand in the eye of their wheelings
with above the dry snap of their wings
and their bouncing faint cries.
They cannot see the moths
glowing like twisting motes
in the stream of summer air,
yet their other speaking senses
infallibly guide.

Faith, like the prey of the flitting
pipistrelles is that which, though
longed for, cannot be seen.
Whirling through the world’s gyres
it is the human’s speaking sense
that draws us and is
our first, last and
infallible guide.

Cicadas

2009-07-06T02:41:00.000-07:00

Spiralling out of memory’s lattice
the first sense speaks of
the sharp aroma of ghost gums,

then footfalls muffled by loam as
I weave into the bush’s heart.
In the feathery canopy I hear
the dropping liquid warble of rosellas.

I am very young – bare-armed
and –legged, fair hair blazed
by the leaf-filtered sun.

My sinewy steps and
bright predator’s eyes, arcing
forward, discover my prey.

Cicadas! Chocolate Soldiers, Green
Grocers, Black Princes – their
visceral hum rises in shimmering surges
just beyond my fingers’ grasp.

Except one – at eye level, close
to cheek, a perfect cicada! Yet,
translucent, shelled, like carved amber,
the sharp legs still spiked to a twig.

This lustrous jewel, home
through the secret growing months as
the king filled his palace,

until in season, it burst
the seam of this form and left
a prickly perfect image behind.

My old child’s eyes and the
cicada’s golden empty spheres regard
each other across the years.

They say, ‘The seam must split,
this jewel, though very jewel, must perish.
Come, child and man,
sing with us in the bush.’

The Subject King

2009-07-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

I am a subject king
impotent behind the windows
of a glass palace.
Rumours reach me from
provinces I have no name
to describe – something,
evidently, is very wrong.

Such words that do exist
in my counsellor’s mouths
are fusty Latin, choking
on their many syllables.
When questioned, their eyes
slink to their notes, clear
as mirror writing.

The palace gardens appear
peaceful, wearing their
habitual calm like a crown,
and neither does the sun
hide it’s warmth or the stars
nightly break their courses;
yet something is not right.

My conscience says
I have been a just king,
have not oppressed my own.
I should have looked, have
hoped, for more, for less,
of good, of evil – but
this gives scant ease.

Who can stem the treason
that seeps up with the sap?
Where your own limbs
will not consent to obey?
When the dissolution of polity
is inward and surreptitious
like a poisoned kiss?

I sit mute on reason’s throne
but my heart keens.
Beyond the wavering flambeaux
that circumscribe the known
I feel a great shadow growing,
or is it a greater light that my
mortal eyes may not admit?

The Ascent

2009-07-05T13:09:00.000-07:00

It would be craven
to skulk in my tent at
Base Camp, like some
discount Achilles.
Though I know, now,
I shall never reach
their summits, the
breathless peaks still
attract with their ancient,
indifferent beauty.

I make, with the fidgety
care of a life-long
spinster, my preparations.
Often I nag the details
with myself, upbraiding
forgetfulness.
The sky looks set for
the ascent, my will
is gathered to a point:
I depart.

Behind me now,
beyond reach of a cry,
I sense rather than
see, security.
For this place there
are no maps; the compass
is neither use nor ornament.
Each of my steps leaves
a question mark
answerless in the drift.

I traverse fathomless
deeps, a thinking
mote in the gale.
Alien hands of snow
soften and eclipse every
natural and human form.
Will I be found, perfect
yet petrified, hands
clasped in prayer?
Wilt Thou find me?

Memory II

2009-07-05T13:08:00.000-07:00

Glass, we call it,
turning wonder into
the mundane.
Squares of hanging
air, trysting places
for light.
Through them the
world presents it’s
faces, now sullen,
now smiling.
Beads of rain hang
in eerie stasis or,
collecting themselves,
runnel in gleaming
tributaries, each
drop racing it’s
fellow to the earth.
Watch! They pause
before each descent,
irresolute, unwilling to strike
out a new course.
Trickles become streams,
streams, deltas,
drawing in every
errant drop.
So, my thoughts
will not strike a new
course but ever
the same snatches
and fragments run
together like
frames viewed
from a hurtling train.
Trickles become streams,
streams, deltas.
Memory, we call it,
turning wonder
into the mundane.
Light fades, my sky
darkens, staring into
the void, regret
I call it.

Meditation

2009-07-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

In the shadowed room I lie,
my clothes unadjusted.
The curtains that promise scant
privacy are sustained
by gentle currents of air.

O Lord, thou hast searched me
and known me!
Thou knowest when I sit down
and when I rise up; thou
discernest my thoughts from afar.

The specialist arrives, she
is clothed in white raiment but
this is not the holy mountain.
We attempt to make the abnormal
normal with cursory, polite sounds.

Even before a word is on
my tongue, lo, O Lord, thou
knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and
before, and layest thy hand upon me.

The inspection begins.
Now, what before only God
has seen appears on her screen.
The deft hand moves, pauses,
reveals each hidden place.

Thy eyes beheld my unformed
substance; in thy book were
written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there were none of them.

My body is a book that many
have read, my margins are
black with annotations.
Yet who can truly understand
except my author?

How precious to me are
thy thoughts O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they
are more than sand.

Abruptly, we are done.
Silence - the uncreating word.
She turns to her machines
and I am forgotten.
I manage a feeble farewell.

Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me;
it is high, I cannot attain it.
I praise thee, for thou art
fearful and wonderful.

Making Fires

2009-07-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

Fires are as different
as people.
Disaster suggests
combustion is easy, flame
a willing and ardent
partner, seductive
head wagging.
Yet how many of my best
hours have I hung
over a smoking stump,
fingers fanned to a flame
bright but weak, more
light than heat, I retreat, eyes
smarting and hands blackened.

Your sparking glances needed
no coaxing, were I to heap on
green wood the blaze would deepen.
Snaking like lightning to the tree
tops, a runaway front, our love
overleapt all, an incandescent space
for creation, smouldering
under our outward forms.
For a score of years and more we
have banked up the ruby coals,
sometimes like wildfire on a
windy night, at others, a
slow burn of contentment,
hearts eased at hearth side.

We shall continue until the
two entwining elements separate.
One all charcoal, crumbling
in the hand, the other pure fire, star
stuff, unquenchable.
For then shall we two burn
with one living flame.

First Love

2009-07-05T13:03:00.000-07:00

Ours was an arranged marriage,
our cultural parents thought it best.
So, dutifully, I paid you court, sat
stiffly in formal rooms balancing the
perfect answer that would clinch my suit.

Dear dead friends sang of your beauty,
garbed you in antique splendour, but
like Cinders your midnight bell has
struck and the borrowed finery must
be returned to the clothes press,

I would not sit further in the shoddy of my
deception, my last guests had gone.
I have returned to my first love whose
voice, heard in stillness with regret,
has ever thrilled in my blood.

She comes with the desert wind
lifting her hair and the perfumes of
heaven move with her gestures.
Her clear eyes are all comprehending
and when she opens her mouth

she sweetly murmurs my truth:
what I have been, what I am
and who I yet shall be.

First Person Shooter

2009-07-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

I have never set my game
play on legendary,
hoping to scrape through
life’s mêlée on normal.
Once in a while, (was it skill
or merely chance?) there
was an heroic moment –
menace defeated,
horizons briefly clear.

Conflict, they tell me,
is somewhat like that –
clamour, confusion, striking
blindly out at shapes
that may become men,
and then, the dazed awareness
of still being alive, guilty
joyful relief, hurt retreating
like a scything tide.

What sequence eludes causes?
Could we restart a saved life
before calamity would we
fear to touch the console?
Up, down, left, right, circle,
triangle, pity, redemption?
By what code can we cheat
baleful consequence?
Time’s screen stays blank.

Heart's Unease

2009-07-05T12:59:00.000-07:00

For a young life of years I
scarcely gave you a thought.
At most, after labour, on
a close summer’s day you
commented with a brief
tom-tom, soon
glossed to repose.

Yours was the smallest
voice, heard only as a soft
tread approaching my pillowed head
- an angel, I thought as a child
journeying to meet my end –
“Still so far to go, leisurely
swing around the hour’s bends.”

Now I see what (primitive
awe) I should not see, your
form fluttering in bower like
a fleshy flower, and my pricked
senses are fierce sharpened to
your jigs and foxtrots.

Eschewing subtlety you must
stomp in water-filled boots
that make my reason reel and
your once diffident beatings
have turned to headlong
clatterings down anatomical stairs.

Do you threaten, black-browed or
merely wheedle caution?
I cannot tell.
The angel’s step is closer now,
even at the door, and
it’s bell sounds like an alarm.

Disturbed like a midnight
concierge I cry,
“Who can keep quiet house
with such a miscreant heart?”
To which the reply,
“Neither Adam’s science
nor Adam’s art.”