1 New Poem

 Dancing in Kali Yuga

You say bread and salt greetings
to the morning, dull sun on
the damp flatpack flats of Dublin –

Remembering the trapse through
Javanese back fields, acting
pith helmet past,

Marching with
IMF retirees, teak furniture
executives: observed exotic creatures

From motorbike perches,
from cross-wise wooden windows
set over streams, between rice stalks.

How everything grand seemed greener,
eyes sharper, less bittered
by years after falling,

than now with rain in the teacup,
how things would have moved
so different, had it all been

leading back to this stuck-on
place,  where trees bare bitter
fruit, chemical exports,

that soon drift like black fleet
sails, over all skies.

1 New Poem

Star Transmissions

I remember days when
you flowed like a river around
me, arms dangling through
Thames and Seine,

Out to oceans, seas beyond,
horizons we could tell
from each other in mystic mist,
would be severed one day.

Soon, you’d say, we’ll go on
journeys separate, taking twenty-three
grams with us, as much old film,
phonograph recordings as we can carry.

I looked back to calm when
we traced, paddled all this way to
arrive at the cross station,

Soaked and ragged to bone,
marveling, still mouthing
the winter white hymnal,

Holding you against the pitch sky
as sparks faded.

1 New Poem

 Flora and Fauna Act

It is not so bad to be
starring out the gray window,
as leaves cast shade
on November ground,
and fences stand silent
against creeping frost.

In these days,
missing a clear head
before all the world in gold
intruded, that I sing
“Al-amdulillāh” to sky waters,
river banks, tracing veins
in hungry roots,
in weeping willows.

They answer back, alarming tone:

“What did you take in every step,
things lost in daily bonfires
you set off with unthinking words,
tongue held tight until
crimson leaked on bleached tooth?”

I spin on the black, no noises
left to make in justification.

I know I have cut cloth
too close to bone;

screams still echo about.

1 New Poem

Sand Castles

When I was young I drew

sculptures on the beach,

holding tight against reckoning

waves,

In bold ignorance of all to come.

They stood, loom weaving a

hope some day they would

come true:

The fantastic scenes of monsters

slain under bed clothes before

frights could reach me

sleeping sound,

Of lovers conquering the grand

canyons that tore them asunder,

heedless the cost in gold,

in bloody bruise.

****

They wash away.

Like hearts, broken each

morning in screen glass.

They wash away.

Like loving words, silenced

by callous hallway echoes.

They wash away.

1 New Poem

 A Child’s Toys

First you gave me the
rocking horse to practice,

Then the compass to
find my way.

Two in such balance
I could barely sustain

Illusions of meaning
in façade,

Illusion of peace on
shipwrecked shore
in tent-filled underpass,

Illusions of the serene
when all things washed out

Faded paint in high sun.

1 New Poem

Wallpaper (Blue)

In Stockholm, ’67, I left
you on the train platform,
going East, falling away,
from lives we had known
bound us to windowpanes,
flower boxes on porch;

You knew of the daylight
nightmares, curious figments
that crossed my eyes:
the fire rains, blood stains,
aftershocks on hard concrete,
I never forgot despite curiosity

getting a better part
of the film reels in mind,
marked up on acid paper,
burning through dawn.

I was stuck, breathless
to the four poster points
in this room where days pass
silent, forlorn, ignorant of
all beyond:

the bombs, the Belsens,
tragic cells for what remained
of ourselves in honour, once
smoke had cleared from
building ash.

You had pinned me, plastered up
to dry and crack, curl at corners,
go jaundice in summer sun.

And there I was remaining,
until a first step forward,
a last gasp of city air.

Book Launch!

 

Very happy to announce that I will be officially having a book launch for my debut novel, Smaller Animals, in Ottawa at Octopus Books this November!

If you are in town, please consider stopping by for an evening of literary discussion and me (hopefully) not making a complete fool of myself. Copies will be available for purchase at the event but if you would like to pre-order, just provide the title and ISBN number from the publisher below to your preferred bookseller:

https://lnkd.in/e8_AZMw4

If you're interested in learning more, just shoot me a message! Hope to see you there!