Muse

Silence is golden,

but I still can’t guess.

Tongues tied

beg answers from

a sleeping Muse;

an Oracle whose love

falls like dust

on our ears.

So speak

some nonsense of the heart;

your Midas touch

has dumbed

whatever passed

for language.

Journey

Who can name

a town

where fiction ends;

foretell, as credits fade,

their journey home?

Time preys

like some lost angel,

deceiving the voyager;

a scripted adventure

striving nowhere:

canvas without wind

disturbs the artist’s hand,

till truth comes

with sharpened words;

or hope,

like a bedtime story,

invents a world

where travellers survive

till morning.

Futures

For Norma

Thank you

For sticking around.

It must have cost

A fortune

In time travel.

From stars yet born

Why choose this one?

I sent no signal,

But lived in trust

That telepathy works;

And natures not our own

Can feel.

The crater where you landed

 Seems

Great enough to hide an ocean,

Yet infinitely small;

Foretelling all,

In words

Unknown to language.

Recall

On the thirty-ninth step,

Mr Memory (for it was he)

Realized that nothing mattered

Anymore,

And that Winnipeg

Was no longer a city

In Canada;

That Tokyo had taken off

And landed in Alaska;

Moscow had become Vienna

And London had flown.

Time lay abandoned,

Its future unknown.

He watched the gulls

Circling,

Or thought he did,

Because the sky had fled

Along with the land;

The wind had given up

The ghost;

Nature lay silent

And, in some freak collusion,

Poetry had become prose.

Mr Memory

Left the world naked,

Much as he’d entered it,

Leaving no epitaph

Or forwarding address;

Just one more enigma

In infinite space.

Spoof CV

Graduated from the school of misery;

Flunked hard knocks;

Took a stab at whingeing;

Ended up on the rocks.

Continuum

Was there life on earth?

Did ghosts in ancient times

Walk village greens

Thinking themselves eternal?

We, on other planets, know

Little of what they were

Or might have been;

Whether, like us, they sought

Enlightenment.

The silence that reigns

Through space

Might tell us more;

If only that

What we don’t understand

Is endless.

Camden Night

The moon has lost its way,
Meandering home,
Like the drunkard it is.

Pale outlaws wait
By Camden tube.
At bay in restless pubs,
Prophets ignore the hour.

On Camden Road, you can hear
Old men in bedsits
Berating the night.

The canal, which their ancestors dug,
Glints oddly, as if it understood:
Despair is the city’s fate,

Its heart of clay,
Beating back generations.

Future Thoughts

My favourite day of the week

Is tomorrow.

And, if I should find myself there,

One day,

Stepping from a time machine,

I won't wake up,

But walk on regardless.

Γέρωντος

for my Father

How must it have been for you,

Growing up all those years

When truth made sense,

Despite war, chaos, death,

The stuff you’d read at school;

The turning of the spheres,

Like some vast cinematic reel,

As time swept by;

And, later, love.

Gazing at the screen,

You saw the years implode

Into a storm of doubt,

Obscuring the past;

And soon the walls of certainty

Came tumbling down:

Truth, power, authority, respect.

You took your sword stick from its case

And marched the streets

Scowling at the young.

We scoffed at your vision then,

As you might gaze on ours:

Caught up in novelty, like tourists,

Clicking away at every world of choice,

As if photography

Will save us.



Odyssey

I long for an A-Z of darkness

Reason can’t sense;

Tales not found in brochures;

A land without memory,

Where real shadows meet.

Why wait

In this half-world,

Sifting caution for answers,

Flinging daydreams into a skip?

Let’s jet off to nowhere:

Tour nonsense; try on the hats;

Live as we mean to die, unknowing;

In some resort, where madmen pose as waiters.

Dream the impossible,

And wake up to breakfast,

Knowing love is absurd.

Meltdown

Global warming,  

Can you feel it?

That fire we lit

Is not yet cold.

In cities, passion burns

And temperature is all the rage.

Our nights ablaze,

We dream of yet more suns,

Basking in fire

As oceans rise

And glaciers cry their last.

Vast icebergs melt

As we approach;

And our Titanic sails gently on.