More Work Needed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revision, and revision, and revision
clots on this putrid piece from page to page,
to each blasted syllable refusing to rhyme;
and all my time is spent where blighted bits
drag on to fusty death. Flop, flop, short scribble!
You’re but a whining whisper, a saddo squiggle
that mopes and pouts a path along these lines
and then becomes a blot. Such is your life,
an inked-on folly, full of rot and slop,
implying not a lot.

To a Poet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If, in walks on poesy’s paths, you see
a hinterland that’s clogged with tangles, which you’ll
unravel, don’t push past brambles, blackthorn or more
matter that pricks. Stop at the edge of the flush
and eye the easy; that you trust. Start there -

a rhyming couplet, even upstart epigrams
or free verse, provided the latter’s not cluttered
with hearts or plodding prose hauled from thickets
guised as rosy growth. There’re spikes enough
without bristling, falling for the first fair you spy,

as you’ll notice above. But do I care?
Blank verse can be a bore. It flops along
its footed way, all iambs when I am not
hooked on stresses for ‘if’ or ‘be’ or ‘that.’
First learn the rules, we’re told, before you find

a way to rebel. I’m not so sure it’s true.
A briar or three will leave you bloodied, sure,
but bloody iambs will get you down at last.
Rebel as you will. It’s your verse, after all.
For me, it’s always buggeruppance time.

End Game

 

 

 

 

 

Attention!
Revision!

Some tension?
Prevention.

Retension?
Distension!

Extension?
Dissention.

Pretension?
Detention.

Convention?
Contention.

Ascension?
Suspension.

Sans vision.
Invention!

Fuck! Gimme
my pension.

Life

 

 

I found myself in a bit of a pother,
mazed, frazzled when thinking
about existence, a lifetime bother
that has brief moods sinking,

so turned to others to help me out
of the dither and panic and flap.
A number are guides, well out of doubt,
and some provided a map.

One says she feels a single notion,
answer, faith will lead
to harming mankind’s forward motion:
freedom’s a critical need.

Another advises making a choice –
evolution or faith or chance.
Will the best option give me a voice
or end in a merry dance?

A further adds that building awareness,
it’s fumbling, stumbling, tumbling,
is part of striving, but seeming unfairness
sometimes leaves me crumbling.

Yet one more says existence rose
from me, from you, the living
and non-living. Her pointer shows
what multitudes are giving.

There’s much wisdom to mull over here
from this worthy band.
It’s to end, cease, finish, I fear,
tramping around the theme, and

my conclusion about existence?
I’ve too much time on hand.
It’s better by far to go life’s distance
than writing on the strand.

Failed

 

 

Anac’luthon’s nowt but pain
my knee’s all achery just now
it’s enough to drive you sane.
The cure is tea. I make it how

my mother did - there I lie;
I never teapot it and sleep
but mug a bag miss the high
it’s time for up I need to steep.

Titania Corleone

 

 

 

 

 

Alack! Alas!
Here’s Bottom’s arse
and I wish his head
weren’t in my bed.

Concierge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those who enter here
need fear no judgement
I may make.
I sit here ageless,
though ages pass,
moving past the reach
of each new thought
sprung at their request.

There is a way
that some minds’ manners
fall outside the known:
blank faces outer,
universes build, flash,
creator-conscious,
next plunged starwards
to destruction.

There is its telling,
back in the sold
world, in stories
for the old.
Such a shape
may be seen
in the tick
of a slim minute,
by those whose hands
beat steel or idiots.

There is another way
to hold a world
by those who mine
a way beneath the rocks
where magma wells
from where they walk
across the crusted road
as birds croak from trees,
roots upward forced,
from rooves of ice-cracked
igloos built beneath
a heavy-bellied sun
as cold as iron
and as old as hell.

There is no way back,
let alone the telling,
locked in space,
shared with self-creation.
This one form
is never seen
except in dreams so deep
they’ve died by day.

There is a way to weep
for worlds and weeping brings
a cosmic calm where dancing
stars thread slowly through the
wind between the worlds
that can create,
but, subtly so, destroys
the human toys laid
neatly out in rows before
the watcher of the worlds.

The telling of that
is to myself alone
where I sit immobile on
age-stripped stones
beside the door whose
hinges groan under rust
and no wide opening.
Such a shape is formless
To those who enter here.

I throw a thousand years’
long curses at the black
backdrop to the stars
where time beats echoes
of wailing still outside,
yearning long and pleading
unfulfilled, to cross
this pitted step. Unstoppable,
the cry. It rises,
dies unheard.

The door moans
from nothing to nothing.