Speech

spitting on dirt to form 

words, those shallow graves 

in which we bury meaning

and mourn it in
epitaphs

When

when the mist settles -

a tower of playing cards collapses
in a flutter of painted faces against
the wind/ discourse dives, adjective-
first, down the tunnel at the end of
the truth/ dancing cave shadows die
into the light/ a wedding veil lifts for
the first time/ the last curtain torn
into two/ trumpets sound and finally

we see

illiterate

these words
(once breathed, now borrowed)

become in me
a gargled pulse -

the sputter
of a swollen heart
punctured

by poetry   

To be heard

like a child with tweezers -
  picking, plucking the seams -
clumsily jabbing at the stitches
  with a blunt needle, trying
to create that frayed effect -
  that gap in the fabric,
that lull in the sentence into
  which i could slot my words
like spare change down a well
  where rusty carcasses lie still,
barely polluting the water -
  in hopes of finding a fault,
freshly sprung, within that
  stagnant, unfading fullness
in which the world rests
  untouched

But something

something died in me
             yesterday

                     (and the day before)
and what it was
    before it died
      i cannot be sure

there

i am not
there,
where
my bones
break
and
become
air. no,
not there,
where i lose
my voice to the
wind and unearth the
hollow from beneath my
skin and i live without, i die
within and i would never begin
myself
again.

On the bus

there is a poem on this bus - something about the
collective sway of bodies as it hits the turn
and the studded whir of the motor's churn

there is no drum like the hum of steady breathing
and no beat that could compete with the seething
of passion and pulsing of pain, punctuating the silence

In-Between

Life comes in
  bursts; in gushes, violent
rushes of air, in
 flashes so fierce
they blind - as love does -
 eyes from seeing and jolt
black-cold blood
 into being.

It comes in a flood,
  ancient as birth, in
currents which shock
  and startle the earth,
and when
  the waters die down
into the land,
   the dry still remains
     in the desert sand.

But we, with our
linear lives live in the
   in-between, apart, and
unseen, in the great gaps
 of the great peaks -
and for hours, weeks,
  we wait
(and barely survive)
    for time to arrive
  in the wind.

Quietly

at times 

the awareness of words

is lost to meaning

but let the soul speak

silence into the clamor and
watch the world 

unfold -

into song

- quietly

There is no time for poetry

There is no time for poetry
in the mad rush of daylight through
the skies, weighted with suspense

For the night that has lost its depth is now
tense with the cumulative strain of eyelids
over a billion pairs of eyes

Lying more awake in the dark than anywhere
else, in beds, where the world retreats
into the body to rest from time

Where, just as the mind has begun to
compose it falls into sleep, and its stirrings
into the dusk of dusty dreams

Neon

The colour of the generation, it
Pronounces loudly all it touches,
And wailing, it tightly clutches
To the electric plastic of bright bar signs,
In jarring, jaded white-hot lines,
Glaring into the deep-set eyes of
Travellers in the lonely night
And illumines with artificial light
The empty pavements of a one-way street.

Necessity

"This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write?" 

- Rainer Maria Rilke

so i stretch inwards into myself, where,

   buried beyond understanding,

lies my heart 

    - but it gives no reply. i wonder:

has it grown mute from neglect
or fallen asleep in the broad daylight,

into a peaceful rest? should i wait idly
by for future pain to awaken it rudely, to
stir up passion that rises up like a swelling
wave at the high tide of the evening, against
the background of a dying sun, a protest against
the oncoming darkness? 

is now the time for searching, 

to store up, to be still -   

the pale period of hibernation before 

the creature emerges out of its cave 

into a bright new world that blinds 

and dazzles it with complexities

painfully wound around every experience,

inspiring the intensity that presses the pen
into paper and impresses meaning onto material -
before life?

but no, there is always a need -

for who knows when wonder will dry up and
leave the soil of the heart barren with indifference
and the gentle light by which infant eyes 

see the world is torn away by time, in its great envy
of youth, and they begin to adapt to the darkness?

In The City

Rain falls soft in the graphite night it
runs down the world and all
seems to melt:
traffic lights into pavement;
people into umbrellas;
cars into headlights;
even the body I call my
own assimilates into
the view is no
longer mine to have and
hold, my surroundings
slip right through me (with
rain as a lubricant) into
a scene.

Wanderers

We are wanderers in a world where
wonder lies waste, splayed thin across
digital screens and cheap paper like a
slight dab of butter across stale bread, where
all expression has been etched into the few
lines of the face with little left to form
a gasp, or even a sigh, but we wander in
search of an apt reply to the echo-cry encoded
within the vacant streaks of a dying light
silent remains of a star in space long exploded.

Words dissipate

words dissipate, wait

to watch them vapourize

before your eyes and know

there must be somewhere

that they go, where meaning

finds a place to thrive

where people speak 

to stay alive