Author: A. Gouedard

Size

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The mouse holds up his tiny paw
in measurement against the moon.
He’s still convinced the moon’s quite small.

An ant, upon a serving spoon,
is dwarfed and dwindles to a dot,
yet in proportion to his size,
is stronger than a man.

An elephant is twelve feet tall.
I strain my neck to meet his eye.
He’s looking down at me.

Here is man beneath the skies,
where he sees himself so large
and strong and in control of all.
This arrogance will be his fall.
Judgment can’t be based on size.
If it is, it isn’t wise;
another instance of those lies
we humans tell ourselves.

The Foolish Man

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Turn to the left and thrice about.
At the crossroad, by our hill,
he thinks that he can build his house.
Spin a spell and kick him out.
The path we walked so many years
now is shuttered by his door,
where we passed freely long before

His hens wont lay,
his milks turned sour,
he doesn’t understand a thing.
The accursed fellow cut our tree.
It was the favoured of our king.

He won’t be sleeping well again.
No dignity, no saving grace.
He won’t live in liberty
until his final resting place.
His book and candle cannot save
a wretch as foolish as he is.
We’ll be dancing on his grave.

Night Lines

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i don’t
like
the sound
i hear
in my
neck
swishing and pulsing
veins
it seems far too loud
i am sure
my heart
beat
is
speeding
each time i turn over it’s worse

this is the sleepless song of the night

at dawn
sweating
the slow
drift begins
into sleep
suspended between in a dream

wet
wet from the snow melt
out on the moors
the track
deep
in mud
the grass is a
s   l   i   d   e
we struggle
up
to
the
top
of
the
hill
the wide-open expanse of the world falls beneath
we all stand together
filling our lungs
catch
ing
our
breath

The Saddest Lines

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Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: ” La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a lo lejos”.

El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.

Tonight I can write the saddest of lines.
But these words above never were mine.

I encountered death as an infant.
I created myself as someone I’m not.
I wasted my gifts and took the wrong turnings.
All that I loved most faded away.
Sometimes it’s hard to put food on the table.
Each day is a struggle. I think I might break.
Are these tired words sad enough for you yet?

Let’s step up the horror, in case we forget.
Seven million people died of cancer last year.
Five thousand people sleep rough every night.
One hundred elephants are slaughtered each day
They hack out their jaws to trade in the ivory.
The ocean’s polluted and forests are dying.
The politicians are lying.
No one takes action.
Everyone’s looking for things they can’t have.

Don’t speak to me of her love you once had
or play with the thought of her infinite eyes
and the way that you lost her love and ask why.
Pablo Neruda I hear you complaining.
Pablo Neruda silence your cries.
Each moment of love is a gift. Don’t expect it.
There’s perspective above,
in those trembling blue stars.

 

dead-elephant_lznp-2776

~~~~~~~~~~~

The quote in Spanish is from “Poema 20” and is part of “Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada” (twenty love poems and a desperate song) from Pablo Neruda that was published in Santiago de Chile in 1924.

Happiness in Easter Park

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In the park,
by the lake,
loud geese clamor
to be fed.

Little girl
in new red shoes,
polished
to a gleaming shine,
gazes at her face reflected
in the mirror of her toes.

Sitting on a wooden bench
she swings her feet
in quiet pleasure
and spreads her fingers
wide apart.

The sticky chocolate
melted fast.

The swans
spread out
their wide,
white wings,
lifting up
in springs
rare flight.

On a branch
the blackbird sings.

Everything is full of light.

Digital Dreams

/ A. Gouedard / 5 Comments

In my digital dreams
of brutalised beauty
the last look loners
never look back
nostalgia is nothing
but an onslaught of senses
enigmatic eels fill up my screen
the rosie romantics
have lost their ideals
the violets are vanquished
by unseasonable change
i quietly quit
without yielding my self
to fanciful fractals ~
isn’t life strange

 

Levitate

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As the evening sun goes down
wild geese fly above the town,
a circling pattern in grey skies
with creaking wings and hooping cries.
As the darkening hour grows late
I feel that I could levitate

”Be careful there.
Don’t challenge fate.
Icarus made that dread mistake.
Hubris led him to a fall
and you may never rise at all.
Optimism is a clown ~
you may circle round the town
but then it all comes crashing down”

You are wrong.
As the evening hour grows late
I will rise, against my fate.
I hear a deep internal song.
The sun goes down, my spirits rise.
The sky is where I most belong

Old Timbers

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away from home
i think of old timbers
weathered by time
firelight reflects
on warm weathered wood

rattling windows
shelter lovers in tangled embrace
the old shutters tap
and swing back in the wind
in the blast of a storm outside
the weathercock spins
and turns twice about unhinged

this contrast of images
inside and out
where light does battle with dark
seems to sum up the world
where we cannot hide
and time is unfurled
but our hearts are well understood