THESE BIRDS

The birds flutter between brick and tress

I’m all palms for their disinterest –

I know the birds, I don’t know the Name

I bend the brick dangerously in influence

But they’re there and I’m here, so nearby

The dappled beams they register not

I’m so close to blindness and enough

Of wanting to seek, reach, handle

Their security, they all call

But not for me

But I never stand

To address

Their borders stronger than mine

POEMS AND PARANOIA

You tease me about poems and paranoia,

unaware that we are always on guard

with our favourite toys, prepared

to reach the thatched ladder

over the black hole.

The one we are certain

we did not dig.

When you can be fat and happy

hunched over machinery sans guilt,

then you are one rich man falling.

Gift-giving makes such a man nervous

and she has included you childlike

in her great big-hearted basket.

The polishing of pride,

and the lending of contentment

are all swallowed by her good intentions

saved for unity and motherhood.

She kick-starts the leather and merry-go-round

without knowing what she has spun.

COCKTAILS MISSED

don’t be disappointed

by the lady’s inevitability

no point is ever unseen

they’re all so airy thin

but you want to offer

a business card, limb

just in case of grace

they’ll curl-up to sleep

with their dresses attached

for drinks under the doona

SPOTTED CHARITY

Spotted Charity dwells on low

Not keeping time, unaware

Of five-finger discounts

She is bound by blindness

And feels joy and fatigue

At $20 given to a definite junkie

She dwells where Beauty seldom does

But when together, there is a riot

Of peace and cameos

Aureoles vacant

DIMESTORE ANGEL

She said, “you just

needed an angel.”

I needed several,

of the arterial kind,

in most probable

ranging.

But then,

of course,

one I had.

As ever,

flown.

MY FATHER TAUGHT ME

My father taught me this:

the unknowing of beings

from historical perspectives

and how to return volumes

A monumental silence at unit

where disallowances scream

from the soil of male-sweat

that pollutes the air and beds

Leaving us just this:

the apish calm of father

and the son

No rest

FORWARD

like lying down knowing

that you’ll have to rise

for some trivial task

as a backsliding heifer

twitches in mud-soaked joy

the world still turns

BEHIND AND BEFORE THE DAY

I think I’m losing a day here

The furniture is no longer shifting

There’s no girl to fill the room so completely

The dust on the windowsill are not particles

For spasms of the sun to crown perceptions

But the non-historical texts are cracked

Split bricks, not for knowledge

But aphesis

When you’re balancing on the spines

You long for the sun o'er

Even so the yellow moon

Is way too bright

O BODY

O body, leave me cold and dry

the light in the puddle

is not the moon

Else the cold warmth tried

of an old man’s face, askance

in the knowing

BLANK

I seize for the victories

and the tic tac spoils

of these blank line blues,

ranked inconsiderately.

Ready for a strong arm

with the gnashing of arteries,

or exiting to receive the weak one

in what was once called contemplation.

Ending what neither of us have not.

CRUSHED TO COOLY

You cannot walk

Your head hits your chest

You’re not asleep

No guilt of pill

No directive call

But there’s this light

That’s breaking through

The sky your head

Your head the sky

And you know you’re not asleep

Your flesh left aside

But it’s still out there

And you know you’re not awake

You feel the salt

That’s in the breeze

And the waves you hear

Curling through this light

As a mirrored cup drinking-up

All that light sets between

And you’re not asleep

And you’re not awake

And it culminates amid

PIETÀ

It was you entirely.

You who taught

the singular mansion

of love, to me: your child,

your boy who nervously

sat still in a sea of convention.

Your Basilica beads were not

for Mary’s crushed child alone.

There was a foetus in that womb,

as you glanced at the Immaculate.

His breathless marble pin-ribs lanced

our muting love in teary-rued cheeks

for what should’ve been high horns.

O mother of earthly care,

how will I heal the doctor

that heals with a heart?

How will I assure the poor

and the rich alike for all

your general and licensed

good?

I ACHED FOR HIM

Jeremiah was chaffing on

about wheat and how

God got him drunk again

I had sipped cheap blood

I had cuffed my hands

for the first time since figurines

I broke for Him

I ached for Him

I rested my eyes

on a woman’s conduct

that was between business

and causality, coitus longitude

I broke for Him

I ached for her

I ached for Him