Steve Jobs and Your Death

(the 6th of October, 2011, London)

In my dream you were dead.
I touched the gray stubble
You were a pierced membrane and the exposed core
Reminded me of that
Frog I had to pin down and cut open
In Biology class
Of my surprise to find no blood - just the
Gray nerve threads. I do not know what I was looking for.
I was looking for an offering, an experiment
A rehearsal.It was neat.
Yes, your skin was like the bleached shell of an egg
I lied. I didn’t touch you. I got up as I couldn’t de-tangle you
From sheets and duvet, from your own body heat.
I wasn’t surprised to be alone. It was as if the morning
was a page torn from a book and I was missing some sentences.
When does the panic set in – the feeling of being wrapped up in loneliness as in a new skin.
At what point do you suppose you feel your fingers shrink as the delta of blood abandons extremities, to pool inside,
in response to some invisible thermostat set on "cold"
I had an urge to bounce on the bed,
to land hard on your chest,
to let the daylight in and slam the toilet seat.
Maybe provoke you with some pungent smell of bleach or shout in your ear.
But I stood still, imagining the foolishness of shouting into the receiver of a cut-off telephone.
You’ll forgive my hovering around the bed -
how do you not stare in the afterglow of a supernova.
And then you got up, but hang on it doesn’t end there.
I needed to know – the exact date.
I had it stored on my computer, but I couldn’t remember the password. And Steve Jobs himself turned up dressed in his trademark blue jeans and black polo turtleneck to hack it. And days later I tripped over his death on the internet and they buried him in his trademark blue jeans and black polo turtleneck, and do you suppose he knew?

Mennen to Menin

(By Sil, the 31st of August, 2011, Ypres, Belgium)

The road to Menin
A tongue of tarmac
Lashing out
From the jaws of a town
Hiding old scars
With new brick

Gub is looking for graves
I am looking for poppies
But they do not grow
As the poet had promised
Instead corn plants
Frozen in the sun
Huddle together
Proud soldiers
Cradling unripe grenades

We get lost in this La Mancha
Of farms yielding men
Unknown in death
They say God knows who they are
As if He was the
Score-sheet keeper
In a child’s game of strategy
The silent reaper
Of souls

History hides
In the fat man’s back garden
Hoarder of contorted metal
Peep-show ringmaster
We pay to enter
What others prayed to exit
On Hill 62 the earth
Is a wound not allowed to heal
A specimen displayed
For specialized appeal

Back in the fields
Flemish farmers seed for winter
They spray with muck
Turn on the track
And leave the dead to feed
The crops of the living

The Red House With Angels of Stone

(By Sil, La Roche, Belgium)

The snow in La Roche
Tastes of lead
It falls in chunks
The size of shredded paper planes
Six men meet
At the corner of the red house
With stone angels
A short squint in the blizzard
To read allegience in the shape of a hat
And duty on lapels
For good and bad is camouflaged
In similar shades of green
Men sent to play at survival
With mess-tins and half fork/half spoons
They plunge at each other
Incredulous and relieved
To find someone on their side
So far from home
At the junction where death meets victory
At the corner of the red house
With angels of stone

Late Arrival

(By Gub, Smaland, Sweden, the 20th of August)

The measurer is time.

Time to recall;
To catch the feather’s drift
Downward –

The child’s call
A bell – so sonorous – in the dark,
Making light work of weight

The voice that lifts the shroud
And unveils the dawn

The bedraggled guest arriving late
For August’s dusk – too
Early for Autumn’s glory

The harvest cheer
Luminous and incandescent
The humungous moon

And the man, with the child’s face,
Drowns in unspent history, in a world
Weary with thought, deeds dedicated to;
He knows not what.

The lake – still in the wildernes
That sunlight settles,
Cloudless

A beam of nothing
Falls like a heavenly laser

On single
Breathless
Reed.

Lessons

(By Sil, Smaland, Sweden)

Don't march
Through the Kingdom of Glass
You are a companion of childhood
Not child
Even if you climb the porch
On the shores of heaven
The fall is just as hard

Wants and Needs

(By Sil, Oland, Sweden, the 19th of August)

The child wants
The father needs
The mother influences the odds
With a clinched jaw
Divorced from want or need
Moments of bliss
Aimless pinball
Played with not enough coins
And we sink into silence
A plush curtain pulled over the world
Not even curiosity
Can break a good game of Withhold

We Cannot Read

(By Sil, Halens, Sweden, the 18th of August, 2011)

God’s summer cottage
Is ablaze this evening
Clouds kiss their impressions
On rusted water
Beauty delivered at high voltage
Mushrooms blister in the shadow
So much to harvest
Torn leaves from the
Book of nature
Lie now scattered in the meadow
And we cannot read
These woods have long been deserted
By fairies and dwarves
For under Sense’s
Monkish robe
One cannot dress Spirit
In bright silk scarves