Water goes running
As steadily as a coveyor belt
Over the chasm,
Into the chasm, which is home and shelter
To numerous frogs, green frogs, sleek frogs, frogs,
Lovers of murk, blurred edges, slime and bog.
We are the frogs. Come join our club.
Hide out with us, they always call.
The power of the waterfall
Gains nothing from their guttural hubbub.

Swallows wheel fleeting
Like crystals around a kaleidoscope
Down through the chasm,
Into the chasm, effervescent opals
Skipping along the surface of the water,
As if to fly must be the greatest sport.
We are the frogs. Come join our club.
Hide out with us, croaks the dank choir.
What cares a water-haunting flyer
For frogs and all their humdrum jabber!

Hikers pass thinking
Of nature’s marvels and the truth they sense
Within the chasm,
Into the chasm, that in ages hence
Their memory and the memory of this place
Will have been lost forever without trace.
We are the frogs. Come join our club.
Hide out with us, the squat ones chime.
Does eternity keep time
With frogs and all their damp, drab blabber?

Snakes wind slithering
Darting like rivulets of molten metal
Around the chasm,
Into the chasm, under leaf and petal,
Over the rocks, through shadow and full light,
Dragging a stomach along as dark as night.
We are the frogs. Come join our club.
Hide out with us, the fat amphibeans
Mutter. This lazy tribe of flabby ones
Is born to bulge, throats stuffed with blubber.

****************************************

Frogs are cute but they attract snakes. There are people like that – compliant and ignoble groups that are preyed upon by the devious. That’s how evil gets to be a force in the world. But peace to real snakes! I have to live with them and I don’t want to give out bad vibes.

Stars mirrored in the water are
Themselves completely still;
They seem to twinkle from afar,
It seems they always will

Until we touch the surface and
They all just disappear
Being as mortal as the hand
That scattters them, My Dear.

Goodnight then to the stars above!
Our stars are here below.
Touch me, hold me, kiss me, love
And never let me go.

*

Light pulsing from the candle flame
Breathes life into the air
And no two spasms are the same,
As if a mind burned there.

Quickly, before the darkness steals
Its warmth, you must allow
That everything around us feels
The ecstasy of now.

Must we now hurry our goodbyes
Before we are quite done?
Why must two lovers close their eyes
Before the light has gone?

*
What is to live if not to die
Whenever we must part?
What is the truth if not a lie
Unless felt in the heart?

Oh tell me what I want to hear
And not what I should know!
Just tell me that you love me, Dear,
And then I’ll let you go.

But if you go and love goes too,
That moment snaps my heart,
My mind, my life, my soul in two:
The true one stays one half.

 

---

 

 

Bound to the mast, I stand with ears unplugged,
Eyes rolling in my skull, on sagging knees,
In the grip of a movement not the sea’s,
Brain-bleeding, mucous-snivelling man, mugged
By music from an island wild and rugged.
Those dissonances and those harmonies,
Those slamming doors, the gaolers’ jangling keys!
I cannot think. I am utterly fagged.

This was not in the holiday brochures.
I had been told it was a ferry ride,
The island famous for its scenic tours
And charming hotels by the harbourside.

This is some other person’s life, not mine.
Where is a refund or an exit sign?

.

---

Life is full of voyages and sometimes they are not at all what we were expecting. We are the actors and the audience and sometimes we watch on with horror as we act out the part we are given to play.

Current edit:

26 August 2015

They soar above the shove-and-suck commotion
And the sand-smashing manners of the shore
Like seagulls eyeing from on high their quotient
Of beach and flesh, all straining to see more.

Their world is built from unrepentant greed
Since nothing else survives the shifting sands.
Either the castle melts into the sea
Or dries like water dribbling through cupped hands.

We could do worse than take towers for our gods.
Their dizzying stature, their remorseless gaze,
Their rigid postures under massive loads,
Their endless hunger – these define this space.

And yet such worship comes at a high price:
The anonymity of endless stairs,
Steep interest on a mortgage and long hours
At work count out the human sacrifice.

---

This poem is motivated by the towering apartments that frown over many beaches, great symbols of the way property can dominate people. Actually I wouldn’t mind living in one myself, with a great view over the ocean. Life is full of self-contradictions and poetry isn’t just the work of the poet. Words generate ideas, ideas generate feelings, feelings inspire words in a self-feeding cycle that resembles a process of discovery. Not knowing how a poem ends is a great reason to begin. Some time after I finished the first four stanzas, I realized that an apartment tower, as depicted here, would make the ideal home for some Wikipedian admins. They are above the crowd. They are not really interested in the human dimension. They love anonymity. They work hard. They are on the path to self-destruction. In that case, the following verses can be added:

Here the high priest, a Wikipedia admin,
Sits on a balcony in just his jocks,
Juggling a laptop, playing verbal badmin-
ton with a smile, soft serves and sudden blocks.

At last, quite mad, the poor man stuffs his paunch’s
Girth into a tight constume like a hero,
Balances on the rail, breathes deep then launches
Into the air and hurtles to ground zero.

Current draft:

16 June 2014

26 August 2015

There is a windmill in the park next door
That once no doubt drew water through the bore.
It doesn’t any more.

The sails still turn; the head still swivels round
To catch the breeze, but this is all mere sound
And fury without grounds:

The pump is disconnected. We might learn
From this wise windmill when it is our turn
To be uncoupled or spurned,

For by its very idleness it gains
In beauty. The old movement still remains.
All it lost was its chains.

**************************************

I love windmills. I love their standing poetry. I’m talking old windmills used to draw water. The new-fangled windmills used to generate electricity I don’t like. Is that because they come in herds or because they are new? I don’t know.