This foal
I shall keep this foal
beside me
not used up
like women prone to love
I shall let the
midnight of its fur
hide me
the way this house does
wrapped tight in
the walls of my own medina
I shall walk alone
and walk at
night time only
And then it comes
Then it comes
I am the insane mouth
you kiss at night
between pillows
and moths
as we pretend
we are not waiting
You are the chase of cars
the shoots in snow
and a chandelier less sinister
than the stairs
drawn with graffiti
on which I am told
I must stand
And these leaves of skin
wiping the undertow
of love
about your ankles
and me here
asking why
Imagine the universe
As a giant brain
Imagining you
Imagining it …
If it wasn’t for those cutthroat priests
the flip side would have been the right side: the
last escapee from Pablo Escobar’s zoo not caught
in the foyer of the Excelsior, a rhino if
I remember correctly, or was it a leopard? Pray God
about creatures, that Creation let them roam free, not
caged for gawking at.
Looking down
on us: the collective eye of ten thousand chattering
starlings getting ready to roost on the roof
of the Lucknow train station. Which reminds me: have
you seen the new Bollywood hit Love King Murder? – that
scene where they’re listening to Death’s ting-a-ling? Bring
it on, whatever it is – another seven minute war with
its big air where quick-smart you get told don’t
Bogart that joint (rifle barrel), consideration
for others. If I had my druthers I’d dodge these
kill fellows & run with the cowards.
Not
get emergency? – for time, for portion of, dusk
yields prayer emanating from correct posture in
no-harm place, never too late for the start of making
sweet sleep, a bed that makes clothes mock.
Thrown off
for body worship? At last a healing place? – Radio Noir’s
chattering to settle us? No, this is a war place, healing’s
(hearing’s) over yonder on platform 10 where, wild & blue,
they’re tuning in to Death’s ting-a-ling.
Woodford
February 7, 2014
When I was 14 I truanted school
With my friend & a .22
His bicycle had a puncture
(but he had the .22)
I rode ahead & leaned on a pole
Gave him the finger
Then a bullet sighed between me
& the pole –
I crawled along a creek bed
Dragged my bike
Years later I met him in a bar
He was living off the earnings
We got drunk we were mates
Woke in a lane with a pocket of notes
Don’t know where they came from
Gave it to a derro
He died ten years ago I heard tonight
Still that bullet grazes the pole
Stop with me now, in this moment.
Here we are, you and I, writer and reader
bound together in an eternal timeless embrace.
It doesn’t matter if you are reading this in faded handwriting
on the wall of some historical exhibition about poets long dead
or on a technological device that allows the words
to float like a hologram in the space in front of you.
It doesn’t matter how the poem is reaching you –
if it is reaching you, I have you in my arms
and you have me in yours and for this eternal moment
we are dancing together.
Only in the distance can we hear
the soft sad music of time reminding us that
this waltz, though timeless, cannot last forever.
(new Flying Islands Pocketbook launched in Hong Kong last night)
