5 New Poems

And Fate

The call of blessed emerald,

casting spell of salted sea,

first tipsy-drawn mood of the fishing boat

captain in rosewater supple,

shades of graceless gods, lore of

ticking clock face ever-believed for its

boldness, how you find your heart again

between the Thames banks, beneath

suit-cut clatter of City call-men and

silent disco goers subtle flicks of

wrist.

What some say to sagebrush sapling,

the just-bloomed bud of restless connection

greening this way, that, root-tapped,

is smothered in the coal fire of knowing

better than belief, better than constellation maps,

better an horoscopes and untamed incantations:

that theirs is no destiny,

only the bricks of Highgate.

One Week That Summer

I never knew I was a dancer

until Lebanese liqueur and loud places

between the canals showed me just how
time can spill, tendril in ink sky as

stamping shoes give way to nervous

sock feet in kitchen chairs.

Still, in the bleary whir of electric

musicians, ghosts casting presence,

hoping for sure-spoken magic,

something more secure than this

rippling of flesh in low-light.

It frees from duller hours,

from places of silence where

minds can run free as steppe,

chase own tails in lifelong spiral,

but throb dull as dishwater

brackish, course with headache

crimson, confuse with genuine

shoulders to deem worthy of

gilded lily cry, that I never

knew myself to be.

Someone's Conquest

I was never a challenge,

in slumping pound shop dress shirts,

not some untouched citadel slippery

with vine cover, shape of ancient deities

imposing.

Was that the problem: you longed for

climbing hooks, false footing, the traps

and pleasures of new world overcome?

When it was only the ever-smooth steel

motion of Rideau Chapters escalators

I had on offer?

No, no, too wallowed in the realm

of sections in bookstores we never

went: Harlequins and self-help?

But, then, what is Rosa Luxemburg

to Sunday morning's lovers?

Only a memory of things

left away.

Conversing With Shadows

On those days the sky was wine-dark,

oozing blackened blood in the flaying cut;

it preoccupied wire-crackle sparks

the notion of infinite harms,

milestones of sheet bedding taken with

tear-filled eyes, but at least taken.

Talk through tea time and 2AM,

of how broken heritage was to come

down to smashed compass pocket watches,

how none of everything makes you real

some cosmic sense of its everlong embrace:

untouched, unknown as first sunlight's touch.

But more how to immolate ever-pledged freedom,

the glories of oaken flame setting stage,

bringing a Northern snowfall's certainty,

making ourselves into shadowboxers, and

perfectly matched.