I AM
iamb:
-the way
-the truth
&
-the life
DIVERSIONS
I was the body
That the blood let down
A steeplechase incomplete
Of treacle dream come to life.
I was specific aches
And colours dropped as clues
All along the track.
LAKE BUNYONYI
Lake Bunyonyi, Lake Bunyonyi, where I found my one and only
On an island heard her cry when young, defiled and left to
die.
Lake Bunyonyi, poor and lonely, went to find a bride who’d owe
me
Life at least and love at best, found her in the deep south
west
Of Uganda, God’s Uganda, leper’s stone throw from Rwanda,
On the lake I came to make a wife from any I could take.
I outmanned her, dear Uganda, let me state with manly candour
For her sake I had my cake and ate til she begged me to break.
Lake Bunyonyi, dark and holy, where I lost my one and only,
Watched her leap into the deep relief of solitary sleep.
Lake Bunyonyi came to know she’s better off so far below me –
Price too steep for life so cheap – Bunyonyi sowed what I must
reap.
MORGAN FREEMAN REVISITED
It was just
The nausea
Of fatal grace
a glowering glade
of gut unlined
and tested.
It was just
A watchman’s peace
His task fulfilled
The everyday
Nature of death
On these hills.
I’M WITH YOU BROTHER
I’m with you brother, the star in the darkness,
The half-hidden mountain, the charmed daemon-lover,
I’m with you forever, I’m Orpheus steadfastly
Marching to save you from being drawn under.
I’m with you brother, a beacon of sorrow,
The cross on an island where cruel ghosts hover.
I’ve loved you forever in quiet isolation,
hold my song close in your sorrowful honour.
I’m with you brother, in earnest compassion,
A fellow late traveller in search of a saviour,
An elegant guest unforeseen at the funeral
Chanting along with your wrecked Hallelujah.
BATHSHEBA BOLDWOOD
After he told me
life was the long game, love was the harvest,
that’s when it sunk in,
rat on a sunk ship,
Bathsheba Boldwood,
Wrapped in his flashbacks of unrealised yearnings,
Unspoken bon mots tumbling inwards
After the goldrush,
That’s when he told me,
Bathsheba Boldwood.
PHILOCTETES
I hold the heat
I wait with hate
I rot, forgot,
I’ll shoot the bow,
They’ll know, they’ll know.
POETRY? PLEASE…
Mr Someone taught us poetry with sheer contempt
For our forced efforts at attention and creation.
When we first entered his classroom cauldron he impressed
On us his photos of Veronica Lake, Montgomery Clift
And other icons telling us “Hey, this guy
He’s got pizzazz.” How furiously disappointed he was
That we were fairly ordinary eleven-year-olds
After all, and thought that Poetry Please was sad,
said Enid Blyton not Elizabeth Bowen.
“No scholarship for you” he’d literately spit
Ruining creativity for decades
If not for good. How manically disappointed he was
That we just wanted to do the work and go home,
If that; he wasn’t Robin Williams and we wouldn’t
Stand on tables, not for him, that nasty cunt.
I write poetry now, sir, despite your best efforts,
You’d call it fatuous, I’ve no doubt, and I’d be proud.
TRENTERPERCENTER
I have given my last per cent
I never reached above
106
I’m sorry
TOP GUNS
Never trust a man
Whose only signal of virtue
Is pictures of big game
Dead
And What animals did this?
They empathise with the top of the food chain
Only
And those are the cheapest brownie points going.
