like a flaming guitar
sprinkled with lighter fluid,
four alarm fires roar
through Dark Ages on
synthesizers,
saxophones, trumpets,
pianos, drums, basses—
bari on bottom of
Interstellar swing—
Bebop blessings of
High Priests of Black Music
Time’s one dimensional
flying forward—
Fly Me To The Moon
let me loiter in the
Universe beyond
historical blips:
Above smoke stacks
spewing mushroom clouds;
Above wingtip-wearing
idiots poisoning our planet’s water;
like a flaming guitar
sprinkled with lighter fluid,
four alarm fires roar
through Dark Ages on
synthesizers,
saxophones, trumpets,
pianos, drums, basses—
bari on bottom of
Interstellar swing—
Bebop blessings of
High Priests of Black Music
Time’s one dimensional
flying forward—
Fly Me To The Moon
let me loiter in the
Universe beyond
historical blips:
Above smoke stacks
spewing mushroom clouds;
Above wingtip-wearing
idiots poisoning our planet’s water;
there is no evidence of a creator in man
neither biology
chemistry
nor physics reveal a hand
the human mind
is where the creator dwells
the designers dreamed
then etched their dreams in stone
What we think
With open eyes
Sometimes fools
Our tongue and nose
Where we walk
To stare not blink
We need our fingers
And our toes
From early years
We have been trained
In the tiny space
Between our ears
To find our brain
Yet if the whole world
We want to feel
We need the whole brain
From head to heel.
There is a painting beautiful
In my mind it sits
Comfortably laid as on canvas
It is a colouring of a rainbow,
Of freshness and hope
Comfortably laid as on canvas
In my mind it sits proud
It is a colouring of water sleeping in a cup,
Of serenity and clarity
And I give it to you, for you to complete
On Monday morning, I receive an updated version of
my handbook to freedom.
The spring is ready.
Without any fault, all of us hear the truth with a different voice,
as we continue the historic dispute over the body count.
The perfect war victims are lost
in an overwhelming testimony to the reality’s carnage.
Another century of fear unravels before Vivian Maier’s blunt apron,
like an atomic flower that grows overnight.
The collective memory has started rehearsals
for a prayer written on damaged bridges.
Is it a dogwood, looking so dogged
from where I sit behind a large pane of clear wisdom
protected here in an air conditioned autumn, not fall
and not out there beyond my comfort—
Not out where the dogged dogwood,
the one I think is maybe an ash
but anyway an ash that has failed
to grasp the meaning of its being,
out there in the confused fall so glassily opposed
to the autumn where I sit and stare
because its upper story of leaves is all brown,
all the post-equinox margin of fall.
Freedom is like a metro
Rushing through all stations
Leaving us all behind
In full speed
And our freedom is gone.
They found her in Victoria Gardens
at 7:30 in the morning.
Dressed in only a flimsy, loose nightie
and someone else’s slippers.
Clutching a little bunch of wildflowers
tightly to her chest…
whilst walking around and around
the same park bench.
It was where they used to sit together
and eat sandwiches of an afternoon
back when she was being courted
by her husband, or so her daughter says.
She’d walked out of the front doors
of the Care Home
about an hour and a half before,
Still I walk
through stray strands
of a spider’s web
hanging in the woods.
The silk is smooth
upon my skin,
easily slipping away
with one swipe of a hand
that remains ever open
to the practice
of keeping all slates clean.
I do not fear
the sting from a bite
because my soul
was prepared for life’s poison
before its accompanying flesh
took a first breath
on this earth.
Inoculated in the womb
with an antidote
of fresh air;
and so now
even if the sky
