The Map

(the 26th of March, 2012)

Don’t force the handle
Or confuse span and depth
Open the bundle
Of within and without
The Spirit slumbers
Unfolding, enfolding
Sacred numbers
Etched on the wall
A cave of experiments
Staring at shadows
Makes it not so hard to believe
That the world is propped up
On a turtle’s back
It’s the occasional stare
Into Death’s toothless mouth
That teaches you to read the Map
Sea/Wave
Part/whole
North/South

In-between and digress

In-between
(London, October 2011)

The world begins
Days roundabout
Staring at trees
The hour of glory
Cow-bells danga-langa
Haloed heads, eyes ablaze
Cruel scientists
Probe into nature’s flesh
With knives and catapults
Experiment cat
Chases a tin tied to its tail
Chickens hatch
And when they sprout feathers
We recoil at the grey ugliness
Of the in-between
It doesn’t wash off
So we shove one down the latrine
Hanging onto the window sill
On the edge of a ten-inch precipice
Hovering above deep water
In the living-room armchair
One push and you drop
In the sharks’ lair
The moon
A light-bug trapped in a matchbox
Queens of the night bloom
Scent buzzes
And we wake from dreams to earth’s quake
Standing in the door frame
Still against the wave
Fresh towels and candles
The cupboards are heaving
For the dead must leave gifts for the living
And a death feast suits rice
Seasoned with sugar not spice
To drink Christ’s blood
Cut with gas water
Large syphoned bottles
Are balanced in each hand
If I drop one will it go “bang”?
And so childhood ends in hormonal boom
Long before the sun recedes
To dwarfish doom.

Digress
(London, 2011)

I am late for a meeting
I decide on a fiddly blouse
I force sixteen buttons
Through sixteen minute holes
The organza folds onto itself
Mille feuille
Blundering fingers dig
Into the delicate fabric like moles
I race for the last wagon
I curse the legged crowd
I hurl my bulging bag across town
Shrunken in my seat,
Compressed to my slightest
Oh, F*** it
I’ve got the day wrong
Put me down now
(Or get me an eye test)
U-turn sequence gets tied up in knots
My thoughts spin at the speed of automated bots
Outside Brixton station
I’m oblivious to the sweet fragrance of dope
Until I witness the woman’s encounter
With the undercover cop
Her eyes bulge up into a plea of stupidity
His are greedy for validity
Under the arches I’m a captive
To gaudy Technicolor neck-laced roses
But the sale-woman only has eyes
For the girl who suffers from
Word trichinosis
I let the young man
With bleached eyebrows
Powder my cheek
I buy my little relief compressed in a tin
I can afford to walk past the crying woman
Clutching a baby with Downs
But on the bus I’m pinned down
To her private hell
Her sadness strips me of my shell
On the pavement
A robin’s orange breast
Lies arrested in death
An unturned postcard
That says: “To live is to digress”

Idus Martii

(London, the 14th of March, 2012)

She dreamed of purity
Death, a coy child,
Was watching us from behind
Words wonderful,
Loose, rolling, rolling mandarins
Perfumed fruit that
Tasted bitter in my mouth
I could not hear her laughter
For the toll bells’ strident ringing
And please don’t ask – don’t ask who
They were ringing for
We tap-danced on a coffin
She dared me not to look down
But I saw her true face under the paper mask
Beware the Ides of March!
I preached – lunatic prophet of doom
Beware the Ides of March!
But she was the Labyrinth,
The Sacrifice
And the Minotaur