Sestina

Among these browning blossoms, a revolution 

stirs the surface of this stagnant water.

Or is it just the circle of my eyes?             

There is no touch or whisper of a wind,

there is no movement in these dying leaves,

their stillness - weighted.            

Every seep and current weighted            

in weekly, monthly, yearly revolutions.

Can such prisoners ever leave, 

or are they floaters, drowned by water

their flicker snuffed out by the wind?    

Who can read these eyes?         

Brimming with a multitude of eyes,        

water with their whiteness weighted,   

their stillness calls for the wind,                

their pulchritude for revolutions.                          

None should fear to sink beneath the water      

though their skin be thinner than leaves.            

A blanket generation of dead leaves      

rustles its crinkled lack of eyes  

and hems around the very water

which fattened them till fully weighted,

then pried them off with a half revolution           

as each stem snapped in the wind.         

Fury of an autumn wind                               

shake these empty, helpless leaves,      

rouse them in ghostly revolution,            

a delight to every burning eye, 

else they will stay forever weighted       

and clog the brackish water.      

Rumbling tumult of distant water            

carried in the approaching wind.                            

We can’t have long to wait         

for the bursting of banks and ripping of leaves,                 

when electric fires open their eyes         

in the rain’s lash and the cyclone’s revolution.     

Under the dead leaves,

beneath the stagnant water of your eyes,

is there a revolution?

Memories of Margaret

Drizzle at the bus stop

Agro from a man in a cap
Pink trainers brush past

snickering

Major savings at the office furniture warehouse
A bike locked in a pool of amber
Its white helmet bobs along Homebase's brick shadow

Across the road, small Rooneys mull over

3D collectors’ cards

News agent’s giving me grief

over Walkers crisps and a posh voice

‘Nah, daylight’s been privatised since Thatcher mate.

Dontchoo know that?

S’pose your mum and dad voted for ‘er.

Init?’

The sign is neon but the step is stone

Dark, lopsided, abrased

I promise myself, this is the last time

I ever come back.

We Leave

We leave these boxes of the mind

your circles and your triangles

Your matrices and graphs we find

as bankrupt as financials

Your spreadsheet mesh is shutting down

Your currencies are paper thin

Your boundaries are banished now

They vanished in a blink

Your sharp lapels are fading fast

The earth shook out your gridlines

Regard your buildings washing past

the lilting twisted pylons

Your chessboard mind recedes from view,

Your cubicles have crumpled

Your margins slipped away from you,

your lines of thought all jumbled

The sunlight’s warped your frame of mind

The stucco’s rent with wrinkles

Your cornerstones and paradigms

are sinking into shingle

Your numbers fail to match the count

You’ve lost the beat, your rhythm’s late

The infinite has looped you round

and tightens like a ratsnake

We leave you in your office blocks

We’re off to see the trees

Goodbye to your atomic clocks

and death to all geometry!

A threat

There’s no indication

no rhyme and no reason

for the unease you’re feeling.

We’re coming to getchya.

How will you know

the time or the place?

When the sense of your doom

is less than a whisper

Just the deeper chord rumbling

‘We’re coming to getchya’.

In your waking unconscious

you’re running like mad

But you know that we’re faster

We’re coming to getchya

On page or on foot?

the terror progressing

Could be totally abstract

the way that we’re coming.

But of one thing be sure

We’re coming to getchya.

Leaping and bounding,

vertical heights

mean nothing to us.

We’re coming to getchya.

Frantically checking the chessboard scores,

the CO₂ and the weather report.

Is it the pharaoh’s curse or the frankenfoods?

Time’s nearly up but if only you knew

our identity. When, where, why and who?

All the better for us.

We’re coming to getchya.

Double entendres or frightened dogs’ whimpers?

Where are the warnings of the dread you can feel?

Which should one fear? The noise or the silence?

Hurry up fast

We’re coming to getchya.

 

Racking your brain

for the devils you know…

Sorry, too late

Face us

We’re here

I open windows

Forgotten attachments cloud

over my outlook

Nature’s Way

Your rose is withered and forlorn

Can nothing save its blackened thorn?

I recommend a cure that will -

Selected works of Kim Jong Il!

A reading every noon and night

Will radically change its plight

And where before the petals fell

New buds will soon begin to swell

Iranian Uranium

Is best for your geranium

And if it’s still a little sad

An hour of Ahmedinajad

Recorded live in Isfahan

And via Turkish Kurdistan,

Is guaranteed to bring it round

And make a difference most profound

But for an even healthier glow

Try ‘Hizbollah’s Magic Multigrow’

Resist the gardener’s common urge

To fault each autocratic purge

In countries whose political slants

Will likely cheer your garden plants

For nature is, beneath the sun

At root, totalitarian

To those who loathe the scorpions whip

And criticise dictatorship

In Pyongyang, Burma or Khartoum

I say…‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’!

Go

Go

This is no womb

And you are

no cherished issue

Your only future lies

out there

To join your brethren

the Sirocco, the Pampero

and the great Typhoon

Be under no illusion

You were never welcome here

And your continued presence

will not long be tolerated

Yet even in your going you must

show caution

For in this crowded city there are some

who would resent your passing

Like thoughtful Telemachus you must

leave quietly!

You have the power

to fuel a conflagration

Yet, I ask you: let go completely

No petty lingering whines

No thundering explosion

You need not make a scene

Hot air is quickly gone

But you have the pneuma

the destiny

if you will only grasp it

to reach the highest heavens

Here in this tense confinement

they show you nothing but contempt

Look at their wrinkled noses

when they notice

just a hint of your presence.

Go

Speed on to distant altitudes

For in swift currents

you can at last be one

with the very furies of the skies.