Fitting Words
Waiting room
Here we are again,
Come to see the man,
The new-age practioner of a mediæval art
Holding out new roses for a neuroscience.
The phtt-phutt-phizz (this is not rocket science) of al-samoud music,
No afternoon delight, this:
Shooting stars, cascades of sub-atomic decay,
Making super-novae hollandaise sauce
Gleaming with Australian dyes.
Not so headstrong as a boy, he were
But look at him go now!
Bursting on the unscene
Like blobs-of-protoplasm-baked-in-a-matrix-of-long-chain-carbohydrates
(Raisin bread).
He's part staff of life, part stuff.
Animism, as isso often-said,
Needs a spark of liff,
A spirited off-license,
A life sentence, a place
Where they sell you lard for your ill-ensheathed nerves.
Perhaps it's prions, or pre-ons, or postons, or peons
Or post-it notes what lost their gum.
He's insensed about a life unsensed.
But we were talking about the man
And the space between our ears.
Like a Van der Graaf generator.
Can this sooth soothe the music of the spheres and these fears?
For brief years yet what do they really know?
One might practice phrenology on a bowling ball with a bat,
Save it's his turn now with the alchemist.
Six months since and he wants to talk about work.
- It was pretty bad, wasn't it? In the news, I mean.
- Oh, so-so.
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Nocturne
Where is the morning gone,
Who is the one undone,
Why is the sun so high,
What is the reason why,
How is the night to come,
When is the day forlorn
And
the compact with the light is torn.
These are the fellows of doubt.
When the fruit grow on the tree,
The beetled flowers deploy
Their sticky scent upon the air;
The nascent fruit unaware
Of their odour that will cloy
When in turn the beetles see
Them bejewel the trunk indelicately.
Ovaries swell with pulp and sap.
Of what account is the day
When the fruit have fled to the ground;
Fled the light that swelled their flesh;
Repaid the debt with a pulpy mess.
Will the night abide the fruit that is found
When the light has passed away?
Or deny the fruit of the day.
Such is the fate of the tree.
Night creatures abhor the light
And shun the ones that wake by day.
Night creatures are not spied
By day as in their lairs they hide.
In the darkness they join the fray
Ready to flee or fight
When treachery they sight.
Leafmold press upon footfall.
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Elephantiasis
Can elephants fly?
It's well nigh
Impossible, I
Suppose, but why,
Since a butterfly
Has a proboscis, can't I
See an elephant fly?
...
Anniversary
Rwanda rhymes with Panda
But that is not a good rhyme;
Pandas come from China
And Rwanda hasn't the time
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Rain
On a rainy Sunday.
Lying on my bed, the books of poets arrayed all around,
The writers of books and letters; the know-it-alls long dead and alive,
With something to say, some things to say.
Mythical, trav-lit, meditations on a tree: beehives of verse pendant.
Speak to me; speak of some truth to console my self-doubt.
My guitar propped beside speaks to me.
It mocks me. Its hour-glass figure-of-eight tells me how long ago it was.
I strung it along - along with a library of self-improvement.
The remove of time, I long since learnt to stop learning;
To dabble and dawdle and dwindle my outlook and interests.
A million un-read books, testament to futile investment in the mind and soul
I left behind in youth.
I lost my chance to redeem truth and beauty.
It rains steadily.
The ceiling fan oscillates with robot mechanicity,
Bathing me in damp air when I could be outside,
Cleansed in the wash from the grey-washed sky,
Awash in the present; desiring a fresh start.
I'm aghast at the little time I have left.
It drains away like the rain on the street outside. I lie.
This travesty of a life spent in pursuit of a dream,
This fools gold of a goal in life, this self-delusion, this lie.
What is it for? Nothing? There has to be something
Or nothing makes sense anymore.
I lie here and defy the odds and defy the gods.
Who makes and unmakes me, I sly-suggest
A motif to make me secure in my self belief.
No relief from the rain yet.
Perhaps it's an augury of untold wealth.
Of truth untold. Pluvius, pennies from heaven,
Pounds, shillings and pence for your thoughts.
Speak to me (desperate now) speak, dead poets.
For what does your wisdom count, now that you are dead?
Give me an excuse, a reasonable doubt, a season of hope, a supplied text that
I might redeem my past, find a future.
I seek solace in rain.
If it is not to be found in the here and now, I'll pencil in a date,
A now but not here: a week from today; a date
For the weak to awake and make this dream real, this reality a dream.
Castigate myself all I will: when I leave my bed, all will be mine.
I think it best to end on this moot point:
The rain has stopped and I've reached the bottom of the page.
10 November 2002
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