Perpetual Twilight

(New Year’s Eve 2014/2015)

Your poem lays unwritten
Words scatter
This voluptuous snow
Will not settle
We argue about
The special arithmetic
Of lost daylight
Not much of a plight if we lived
Beyond the North Pole Circle
Where the sun just won't bother
To spell "dawn"
And unknown beasts
Shrink to a shadow
I’d rather count the
Blooms of wild myrtle
With you, my dear
I’ll nest inside
This winter’s abattoir
I won’t mind the bite
As long as we can still fly our kite
In the soft shades
Of life in perpetual twilight

Precious Toast

By Gub, (1st of January 2015)

I wish I had more more time
I wish, I wish
that the hours that passed
were less wakening dreams
spent arguing the syllables of time zones
the moments stolen by ill feeling,
by resentments and anger, could be
spent in grace, enfolded in harmony

the miracle of that first laugh
when your filament eyes burned
light into my heart
and I knew
the colour of my universe
would forever then
be that particular
green and blue

the beat strong,
a Mariners drum -- pulsing, a shanty
rhyme --

all ardour, a vigour known only
by those whom necessity has made short work
on delivery

the reapers
time share stamping an unwelcome
return on each post..

Precious toast

Share of Grace

By Gub (1st of January 2015)


So life is hard
The distance between here
And the next place
Unpredictable, shallow.

Where will we lie?
In land deep
Where hours and days
Face off an eternity
As dull bones drum
A monotonous cortège from this soil.

Why stand we
Why run against the tide ?
All the trilling and cursing
The churning ride
Peaked and bumped
Tossed automata
By unspent gods.

Our lives decried
Tiny toys - quickly broken
Discarded, tired.

Why stand we
Why?

The glass of the fallen clock face
Is blackened,
The hallway has no door
The wall we emerge through
Naked, barefooted and cold
Is brittle
Behind lies only history,
Before: consequence,
unseen by us 

And yet we cannot be
Un-been
For our measure is not in time
Which yields nothing but more of itself.
Our meaning pointless
Yes, except in a continuum
In which no conclusion yet resides...

But accept the journey is not over
And every conscious moment
Relevant, every breath - however short, shallow, resonates with effect.

Close the door; the light.
The butterfly wing. Impacts.

And we?
Reduced, transgressive and mortally shapeless,
may yet breathe
some share of grace into the infinite plan.

Hayat Baumediene

by Gub, (10th of January, 2015)

The world wants to know You now
Your 26 year old face Cast
Like a net into the waters of w.w.w Notorious enough?
Yesterday a blank space 

Now blood fills the headlines your brotherhood wrote
Deaths that cannot be unwritten,
Nor lives redeemed against lies told.
What belief or faith could ever sanctify
Such theft...
Vandalise victims of their right to life;
Yourself, your youth, beauty, your choices
All stolen.

November

By Gub, 10th of November 2014

Through fallen leaves,
November bares the darkest scars.
Two generations felled by war and
The drum of pomp that led them underground,
Silent and broken.

How be unmoved by an ocean of blood,
And un-pumped volumes of life and love in human veins?
A loss that left a century of children
Bereft of comfort and a legacy 

Of survivors crazed by grief.

Hope can recover, just,
But some tide must turn.
Moral progress not falter
Fear of each other, vanquish,
Trust rule this new domain.

Easy to forget what precious truth
Human Sacrifice brought:
That consciousness
Remains both a gift
And a curse

If we could break the trance
Uphold a beacon - find
A masthead on which to hang
The brightest sail -
Then the unfelt pain of future
Struggles would not entirely pass
But a belief in peace
Unbroken - might be regained.

E Pericoloso Spongersi! (Nu va aplecati in afara)

(the 12th of December)

The game is to catch the tail of the beast
As it sinews East
Along the tracks
Clack, clack
And this is happiness:
Chewing the strands of my whiplash hair
As hot summer air
Kneads my face
That first glimpse of the sea:

A collapsed kite
Drying its putrescent lace
In the moonlight

A Walk With Frost

From up here

The world seems

A ripe, un-plucked apple

I step ahead, I step aside

I cannot step too far

We walk

With aeroplanes,

With hunters

With Frost

It was the road that chose us.

Job Description

(the 12th of January 2014)

I pull black birds
Out of the tar pot
Deformed bodies
I live
In overspill
Ripped bandage in one hand
And salt in the other
I scrape walls
Reclaim the unclaimed

I watch
Happiness
Play knives with the kids
And shame
Eat its stale bread alone

Love Crescent

(the 24th of December 2013, HBC)

Winter’s bent spoon
Feeds
Rambling pheasants
Moths swoon
Against cold windows
Dark owls
Salute
Venus and the Moon.
Night casts its last frock,
Light
Writes a new days’ blog
Where mud meets sky
Our dreams
Blunt the spear
Of Tomorrow
Awash with feeling,
Weighted in the mire,
I limp
on a cobbled street
Called “Love Crescent”.