Tuesday 24 September 2013

2 New Poems

Two Cents

Take my word for it, it's not worth it
the laceration scars and ink blot bruises
never sit quite right on your skin, they are
forever unwelcome guests to your cathedral dinner party.

Challenge-clash between reason's disaffection, and
the faintest half-twinkle of two specks of exploded
stardust that could have been meant to touch,
in that contest, it's best to take the first bet.

You'll be tempted to stray and sway upon the vastness
of Anatolia's plains where you look for a left-on
porch lamp carved in the shape of your father's
arm, in the shape of your mother's lips.

And sometimes you'll think you see a film reel
in your lover's eyes, of secret names and
moon-washed Croatian beaches where your feet
feel six-feet-sunk in white pebble sand, but

Take my word, for what it's worth.


How Do You Feel About Europe?

I thought about kissing you in the Sandinista rain,
grey sky storming reflected in revolutionary sunglass,
trains carrying our tender skin, milk-white in shade
from Beirut to Buenos Aries and back, and
never had I known your touch from the opposite
side of a kitchen table.

I thought about you at a rooftop party in Brooklyn,
the dusk of August breezes dancing through strands
of your hair as hitchhikers and squeegee men through
a Don Valley traffic jam; you'd make the round,
red wine glass in hand and talk to me just the
same as the others.

My life seemed so bland to compare, colourless, eating
Tesco bread and jelly snakes in a County Tipperary
coroner's office, the sun tick-tapered behind about
six layers of concrete and piping, double that
for clouds and clinging indifference coming on
tight as turning hairpins.

I thought about your many-coloured coats streaming through
Prague's November snows and the breweries of Plzen,
standing still as Cubist lampposts on the side-street,
my legs shivered bone-deep beneath thin polyester pant,
reaching limit, stepped into the bar with the pivo place-mats,
neon flicked a second

off.

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