to write right

To find the right words without being absurd or obstuse or abstract;
To make an impact
without over-embellishing, painting and relishing in
metaphors dripping with gripping descriptions.
To ditch the pedantic, romantic, emotional crap; to honestly take a step back
and revalue the value of meaning and matter, erase ostentatious expression and chatter.
To utter it verbally leaving hyperbole out; to write about rather than flout
my particular, existentialist woes.
To reach out and grab,
through poem or prose,
the nit and the grit and the lickety split of humankind's mind before we combust.
To finally find
(as a bard often must),
The purpose behind this quintessence of dust.

Edinburgh (draft1)

The sky is closer in Edinburgh
than anywhere else in the world.
Clouds crowd ‘round in riots,
Fickly dripping with rain and then
Drying up, raisin-like.
Pigeons and gulls weave around
Bridges and hills
In chaotic feathered packs,
Cooing and squawking
In absurd bird anguish.
In secret, slippery nooks,
Supernatural spirits whisper and linger
Under dim-lit, age-old, stony stars.
The closeness of the sky breeds
Infinite life and eternal death,
Undistinguishable in the
Ghastly, grey greatness
Consuming the city.

purple pair

and the raindrops understood their pain
and declared them perfect in a world insane

untitled

Long legs

Orange eyes

That singe the dusk

Like fireflies,

That drink the sky

And toast to mine,

Get drunk on words

In lieu of wine.

Black coffee

Brewed in threes and

Putney bridge is

Drowned in trees,

So lend me your

Candy-coated kiss,

Repartee, and

Weightlessness.

(Whilst Trivial questions

Poised on a cloud

Plummet to earth to be

Spoken aloud.)

If I were a book

Would you break my spine?

And if I were French

Would you feed me a line?

I can’t cure like nicotine,

Painting your heart black,

Nor am I poetry

Scrawled on the tarmac.

Nevertheless

I’d cocoon you in rhyme

If this metre and stanza

Could cancel out time.

I’d freeze the Atlantic

In its current position;

To keep you I’d put on an

Antic disposition.

If dancing on a harpsichord

By the village green

Gives you as much of a

Kick as caffeine,

We could spend the day

Tripping the light fantastick,

Not caring if

Others see us as bombastic.

You’re a tall, tea-stained,

English rose,

Speaking in prose on your

Tippy toes,

Employing a diction that’s

Eloquent yet slurred,

Like dissonant chords mixed with

Biblical words.

Mumbling lover,

If I had my druthers,

We’d both end up in

Some city or other,

We’d roam every boulevard,

Smoking our cigarettes,

And you’d live forever in this

Rhyming couplet:

Like Mary, you are quite contrary;

Like breathing you are necessary.

stars

I heard the stars screaming tonight--
Above the racket and the hum of
the moon and the waves.
They stare like eyes but scream in alto agony.

lines written half-way between a lecture theatre and REM sleep

In the 9th row from the front, I might as well be on the ceiling,
or better yet, home in bed.
Peripheral profiteroles float around my cerebral orbit
in slow, creamy ellipses.
I am more than bored;
I am chronically, fatally restless,
semi-aware of the blue ink on my thumbs
inadvertently smudging across my nonplussed visage.
I confess,
while hearing this
banal, rambling, giggly, nodding lecturer speak
in broken French
about Rousseau's Confessions,
I'm hearing her voice echo but its monotone reverberations
are transformed at the eardrum into
tuneful hums of nothingness,
merely buzzing like bees
and
then
reced-
ing.
Only certain words and phrases stick long enough
to impact the brain...
death...la societe...yes?
The bumps in the floor seem to be rising
in gross, lime greenness;
the numerous coffee stains polkadotting the ceiling
become such a captivating distraction that they
almost make sense.
At my wit's absolute dire end,
I almost wish a panda hat would come bobbing in
to save me from drowning in my own inevitable drool