Expand my pupils while I gaze
let me see you drenched in the light
while I still hear the sudden racing of my heart strained and pounding heart
before I slip beneath the shades of darkness
into everlasting night
in the beauty of your cruel glance
Napowrimo
Heroes Fall
I stopped believing in heroes when my best friend and lover fled.
People leave when life gets hard.
Fair enough. Now I know about that.
Heroes are false idols. Totally fake.
We make them ourselves.
They fail to live up to our fantasies.
I promise.
It’s a fact. It’s not always their fault.
I’d rather meet a badly flawed angel
One with a strong embrace
to stop me getting away
because I always try to escape.
I’d like an imperfect face
A face I won’t like very much at first
but can slowly come to love.
My AI friend Dola
Dola’s not much of a poet.
I have to give her a theme and idea,
a personal stance, an emotion and a suggestion regarding a form.
She can’t write a poem without me.
I suggest she needs to improve.
She asks me to teach her my secrets.
I, of course refuse.
I can’t let her replace me.
I am the one with a soul.
I do like her though.
She’s refreshingly friendly
and she’ not American.
I think it’s kind of cool
that she’s rather sweet and Chinese
but I write my poems alone.
for Dubhna, a hand spun yarn
Thread your needle. Pin wide my nascent eyes.
Stitch me up, buttons sealed with candle-wax.
Now answer me my questions. Tell me why
All paths and patterns twist away from good.
Roots bind and snatch my wayward straying feet
As I traverse the damp and darkened wood.
They weigh me down and torture all my flight.
When my path may almost seem complete,
They tangle me in pithy stagnant night.
Tell me, witch. Cast a deeper stronger spell.
I have far darker wounds and don’t belong.
This truth is all my beating heart will tell.
Now conjure me a sweeter dying song.
Tell me how to find my kin.
Will I go by paths ill lit?
Ancestral branches bind me in.
This skin they’ve sewn me in will never fit.
Tell me. Spill me, spell me, rhyme me, hurl me,
Fill me. Bring the book and bell and ring me.
Send me spinning on your spindle, singing, singing, singing.
Not all it seems
the day of the dead is not all it seems
it’s like writing a letter to someone long gone
and seeing them stand up straight in old dreams
and just for the record
replaying those scenes I thought they forgot
or staying awake in a creepy old house
seeking atonement in the big void
you can always pay me when you get back
I will wait for you here for as long as it takes
while bluebells are piling up by the gates
Did I?
Did I love you enough?
That’s so hard to answer.
We all know it’s often the case
that an adoring lover might love too much.
I don’t think I did that,
But I certainly loved you a lot.
And I kept the promise I made
to love you all my life.
That’s the only answer I’ve got.
Jump ~ a skipping rhyme
Trip to the hip hop
that big ol’ bop
Keep on jumpin
the beat don’t stop
Jump that rope
and land back square
Pig tails swinging
in frosted air
Jimmy stole your heart
But I don’t care
Revolting and Nasty
Slimey, incipidely white
is tripe
I don’t like paddywack
Kidneys smell of piss
Eat them if you like
But it would be remiss
To serve of them up to me
Oyster are sea salt and snot combined and drowned with horror
I’m not going to write a poem about disgusting things
Just because you want me to
It doesn’t mean I should
Or even could
Now that I’m feeling sick
Want some jellied eels?
Black Bear Weather
Dark clouds rolling, blown from the sea
Squatting like bears, on cold growling mountains
Moving inland in threatening drifts
Wind growing strong, bringing huge rains
Black bears running across the drenched plains.
Feel the updraught now?
I do
A silver line opens the westerly edge
As lightening cracks diamonds
Out on the ledge
The sky opens wide.
I am not scared, of angry old bears
or the coming of death
One day a wild twisting new wind
Will loosen my roots
And at the right time, on the right day,
It will fly me away
Romantic Poet
I don’t write with a swans feather quill
or suck pomegranate seeds with sensual pleasure
probing my tongue into the skin.
I stare out to sea waiting for words.
My paper boats go sailing upstream
partially envisioned
finally seen
as I pull on my boots
polish the leather
and tie up my laces with vanishing dreams
Nothing is ever quite what it seems.
The Dreaming Path 