Splitting the Logos
Into a million
Concepts
Engenders pain
Through the semantics
Of Life:
Speak one Word
And create
The Universe.
______________________________
Mark 7:34 (King James Version):
And looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, 'Be opened'.
~It is that sigh which astounds me...
______________________________
EPHPHATHA!
PARASITES
Objects
become junk
as soon as they are
separated
from their owner
and their past
Our possessions
will outlast us -
we'll desert them
in the end
My ashes will still be
in their urn
at the charity shop.
BURDEN
Carry me home
to you
Carry my soul
to enter your heart
Carry me home
to you
Carry my heart
to merge with your mind
Carry me home
to you
Carry my body
to the grave of your loss
YES, POETRY
Even a first line
can produce
a tightness
behind the eyes
To do its noticing
and judging
Poetry
balances itself
on the pinprick
of the moment
JAMESIANISM
On forgetting a word or name
a tantalising
empty space
remains
almost but not quite
defining
the idea
it once contained
even as you struggle
against the numbness of poor recall
you know precisely
what the forgotten thing
is not
RETURN FROM THE DEAD
Lazarus, come forth!
Nobody
asked Lazarus
to speak of
his experience
while he was
dead
Why?
A missed
chance... Imagine
Lazarus, what was it like - being dead?
But on this great occasion
nobody asked - and he never said
What if
he was recalled
from Hell?
But he had
no burns
He traded secrets
with worms and stars,
he'd heard the harmony
of immortal souls,
the impossibly perfect
music
And he never said.
GOOD MOOD
Distorted euphoria,
a chemical accident
sustained somewhere
in me -
something like
a spilled tray of drinks,
prompting dopamine-like receptors
to initiate a kindly cascade
of intracellular events.
CREATION MYTH
An unimaginable sweep of time,
numberless generations
spawning by infinitesimal steps
complex living beauty
out of inert matter,
driven on by the blind furies
of random mutation,
natural selection
and environmental change,
with the tragedy of forms
continually dying,
and lately the wonder of minds
emerging
and with them morality,
love, art, cities -
and the novel bonus
of this story
happening to be
demonstrably true.
Evolution:
my god.
EVEN FISH FEEL PAIN
The growing complication
of the modern condition,
is the expanding
circle of
moral sympathy.
The trick,
as always,
the key to human success
and domination,
is to be selective
in your mercies.
For all the discerning talk,
it's the close at hand,
the visible
that exerts the overpowering
force.
And what you don't see...
WARM NIGHT AND DAY
Cellos
hundred of cellos
and I will glide
with them
in the moonlight,
pirouetting
in the black swan dance
and kiss her head
and nod to the willows
and bow to the night
and she will grace me
they will grace us
they will grace us
and the lake will grace us
and smile
and the moon will grace us
and the mountains will grace us
and the breeze will grace us
and the sun will gently rise
and its rays will stretch
and spread
and even the willows will lift their heads ever so slightly
and the snow will grow whiter
and the shadows will rise from the mountains
and it will be warm
yes, it will be warm
...the shadows will stay
but the moonlight will be warm
(dance now dance now dance now)
the moonlight will get warmer
hold me
love me
just dance and love me
just love me
but fields of flowers
are so lovely
in the sun
in the bright flooding sunlight
warm and brilliant
and the tall grasses flow and part
and the colours burst
and small drops of dew glisten
and it is all russet and violet and amarant
and green and white
...yes white
and gold and blue and pink, soft pink
primary hues
and see the fireflies
like flowers of the night
o yes, yes flowers of the night
soft little lights
lovely little lights you can snuff with two fingers
o I'm so cold
yes, yes my darling - so very cold
love you
your mouth, lips, are so warm
d'amor si muore
o see how the stars soften the sky
yes, like jewels
let's dance some more
how beautiful
as the moon follows us
see - for us
see, she sashays along to our melody
shimmering into daylight
the Queen of birds.
BANG SHUT
The door closed.
A hundred times.
Closed.
Even as it swung open
I heard it bang shut.
Closed.
Closed.
Dozen of doors
like many pictures
jerkily animated by a thumb,
tumbling mistily like shadows...
and the click,
click,
the goddamn click click click
of the latch
and it banged shut.
SHUT.
Again and again and again it
BANGED SHUT.
A thousand miserable times.
BANG BANG. BANG.
Always banging shut.
Never a knock.
Think it. Force it.
A knock. A knock. Please, please.
O Jesus a knock. Make it a knock.
Make it someone knocking.
To come in.
Why can't it be a knock.
To come in
into my life.
BEGOTTEN VISION
If I hold really still
and forget myself,
I feel the mist of my father's
seed
in my mother's pulse,
can sense myself passing bodiless
between them,
my face erupting out of
nothingness,
my tiny mouth hungry for a voice,
and I can see my first dream
shiver
through the veins
in my almost transparent eyelids.
The first dream -
that's what I want to know.
I want to remember the first dream
I ever had.
And then I'll use that
knowledge
to ransom my ghost
from the lightning.
MATERNITY
I look at the hill
and the little slice of rising moon.
I see the broad hump,
the more tempered ridges of the hills
in the background
telling me the story
of the slow and drowsy rousings
of my beloved Earth,
who stretches and yawns,
making and unmaking blue plains
in the dread flash of a hundred
volcanoes.
My Earth
just her yesterday
just million years past,
she turned in her sleep
and traded one surface for another.
Where ammonoids once fed,
diamonds.
Where diamonds once grew,
trees.
The logic of moraine,
of landslip, of avalanche.
Dislodge one pebble,
by chance,
it becomes restless,
rolls down,
in its descent leaves space,
another pebble falls on top of it,
and there's height.
Surfaces.
Surfaces upon surfaces.
The wisdom of the Earth,
my Earth.
When life,
surface upon surface,
has become completely encrusted
with experience,
you know everything,
the secret, the power, the glory,
why you were born,
why you are dying,
and how it all could have been
different.
So you are wise.
But the greatest wisdom,
at that moment,
is knowing that your wisdom
is too late.
You understand everything
when there is no longer anything
to understand.
The wisdom of the Earth,
the stirrings of my Mother.
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