Wednesday 25 September 2013

2 New Poems

It's Not Me

How many refusals, how many half-actions, apologies, in
a month, a year, a lifetime's era, were made
under sullen grandeur's pretext, under illusions of
morality superior, under some vain belief of
oncoming love?

It's uncountable, the wasted night notes in back pockets
with jar change, with gum wrappers and scribbled phone
digits we never received from faces we never spoke
to, all because we thought it better after all to
be a heathered bull.

Whoever I'm supposed to be would not abide this,
he'd turn up tender nostril to the very question
of spirit casks left out in the rain, of swaying body dance,
he'd cast odd-angled judgments about as protective fly-fish hooks,
with excuse of,

“it's just not me.”


Middle River

As we were watching the suds of river foam
flow past in Sunday's naptime current beneath
the overcast clarity, the gushing tone of rotted weather
gate to keep us company, hidden wishing coins,
drunkenly-hurled cellulars and Bavarian beer cans
lining the dug-in rock below depth's visions,

you said we'd both grow old one day, but
that didn't mean we should grow old together,
the pairing swans would lose feather flight,
bodies plucked ruddy to the midship mud, and
even the leaves on the maple trees grow
tired of the place they came from.

In time, the circular placing's logic would be
known as the eastward sunrise, would be as
well-welcomed as midnoon's saucer and teacup;
I could see the appeal, but not the complacent
stammer, not the river-lazy objections to
some statement so grand as that, and

you said people were always changing, but
they aren't always changing for the better.

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