Lucky Ones
We hashed out
life over
quarter-beers in the Hamburg bars,
over the foosball din and
the tap of shoe soles on pavement.
We knew how all
things would go,
from the patterns of planets to
the flutter of sparrow winds,
how all of it was one circle,
Ourselves at
the centre;
Two wet-soaking
amateurs,
their backs bruised from
pressing against invisible walls
So tight for
warmth we
never flew, beyond the hazed
windows, weeping for the fires
That burned
across the alley corner.
Summer Skin
When I
slipped out of
old clothes for the new century,
the tired rags coming off
in great display,
I took the
last half of it laughing,
luminous against backdrops of
half-filled water glasses sitting on
kitchen counters, sticky atop Formica,
sweating in lakeside heat.
I was the
imaginary boy, a
boundless whirring of pregnant possibility;
all chanting in soft voice how
great the wings would grow
despite their bent angles.
Until I
dropped robes of old time,
the light box of arcade plastic
and screen reflection dulling me,
As I take timepieces,
calendars,
silver dollars, baby spoons,
All down to
a penny pawn shop,
Pine Tinder
In the stolen wonderland
of interlocked train cars, crisscross
traffic between stowaway kisses
off concrete paths,
We burn bright,
white phosphorus and corner store whiskey,
in ragged-end dress and worn elbow coat.
We are wonderous against a thousand
microphones held searching
for explanation, for the why/how
of it all.
We brush past,
unbothered in the acid glow,
cast by bent street lamps,
cast by quarter-shade phones boxes
with copper and change
long since stripped.
Until we round corners,
catch faces against motor oil pools
in blear-eyed dawn light;
How weary, how extinguished,
how like the spectacles-and-watch crowd,
we look in afterparty haze.
A Sunset in Shenzhen
Nights in the city settle graceless,
metallic, shimmering pavement
glass of the new, recycled tins
making sturdy struts, thrust
into indifferent airspace.
In a different life I loved
school carnival fireworks,
noon tea, marching in formation
and tying ribbons on old oak.
In those lives I remember
days of thrift store couches
in three room apartments,
and Blue on hi-fi,
The days of reckless whimsy,
faced against worth of
fallen things, brutal math
of loan files and above-guideline
increases.
I remember ways things shone
in moonlit silver, before
a veil dropped, revealing
butcher’s blade beneath,
Our holy words.
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.
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.
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.
