Poetry
My first collection, titled The Orientation Of Clouds, will be published in 2013.
THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR
I was never a courageous kid,
the chances others took were not for me,
my life was safe and mostly indoors
out of trouble, out of danger
mostly in my head in fact
where anything was possible
and no-one could get hurt.
So when my mother died
and the nurse in the intensive care
said that I was brave,
I was confused...
because it was not me who died;
it was not my adventure.
ESMET'S SOLILOQUY
( The speaker is female, the name Esmet pronounced the same as Esmé )
To be chosen and abandoned
is far worse than never being chosen.
Being overlooked was my fate;
I had embraced it
and she challenged me only on a whim,
of that I am quite sure.
She set me on an unfamiliar path,
furnished me with all of her devices
but what was I to her?
Was I a muse, a figment of her vain imagination?
Was I a project, an experimental affair?
Or was I just a bolster for her vanity, an easy option,
an excuse for her absent mind?
Whatever I was, my heart began to sing,
though with a far from confident voice,
and her attentions soon became as the action
of the waves upon a stone,
and her hand upon my own
conducted an entire symphony of need
that was repressed, and unexpressed.
I felt it though, as sure as I feel death approach me now.
It: her weakness,
her need for me a fatal flaw.
Her kiss, her touch, her uncomplicated smile:
these things were my undoing,
the complex but intoxicating taste of something forbidden
(for I was never truly worthy)
and divine, for who but the gods
could craft such an exquisite beauty
or define such an absurd romance?
Her body had became my temple;
her parted lips, my altar;
her affluent affection, my wine;
her desire for me, the foundation of my faith;
her leaving me, my fall from grace.
But I, unmade, am not forgotten here.
And my heart will be the cold, cold place
upon which her last breath may be condensed.
HUSH
Hush,
and if you breathe,
breathe softly on the face of death.
The pathway you have chosen
is strewn with vagrant analogies.
Each step is a prescient blunder,
each pause a reminiscence,
a vacant scatological absurdity.
Each voice is a waste of sound,
each name a waste of sense,
each sense attuned to just one memory.
Thus it is that silence offers
the most profound reflection of our selves.
Hush,
the terrified linguists
revoke all licence to speak.
Each letter is removed from the air
until none remain in suspense.
Bound words hide their sacred meanings
in dark and featureless walls,
but the plaster cracks,
and the plasterer hears their lament.
FISH LIPS
I made fish lips today
while staring in the mirror.
It made me think of evolution
and how, many years ago,
I used to be a fish.
THE NATURE OF ART
It isn't the soft focussing,
or atmospheric side-lighting
or the fact that it's in monochrome.
It isn't even the composition, the pose,
the facial expression,
or the shallow depth of field
but something more profound
that makes this picture art.
It is something that eludes
all but the artist
who recognises, early on,
that art is so much more
than the ingredients;
who achives it
but is never sure
how it came to be;
who sometimes looks,
in puzzlement,
at pictures he took years ago
that move him now
more than they ever did.
THE BETTER PART OF VALOUR
I was never a courageous kid,
the chances others took were not for me,
my life was safe and mostly indoors
out of trouble, out of danger
mostly in my head in fact
where anything was possible
and no-one could get hurt.
So when my mother died
and the nurse in the intensive care
said that I was brave,
I was confused...
because it was not me who died;
it was not my adventure.
ESMET'S SOLILOQUY
( The speaker is female, the name Esmet pronounced the same as Esmé )
To be chosen and abandoned
is far worse than never being chosen.
Being overlooked was my fate;
I had embraced it
and she challenged me only on a whim,
of that I am quite sure.
She set me on an unfamiliar path,
furnished me with all of her devices
but what was I to her?
Was I a muse, a figment of her vain imagination?
Was I a project, an experimental affair?
Or was I just a bolster for her vanity, an easy option,
an excuse for her absent mind?
Whatever I was, my heart began to sing,
though with a far from confident voice,
and her attentions soon became as the action
of the waves upon a stone,
and her hand upon my own
conducted an entire symphony of need
that was repressed, and unexpressed.
I felt it though, as sure as I feel death approach me now.
It: her weakness,
her need for me a fatal flaw.
Her kiss, her touch, her uncomplicated smile:
these things were my undoing,
the complex but intoxicating taste of something forbidden
(for I was never truly worthy)
and divine, for who but the gods
could craft such an exquisite beauty
or define such an absurd romance?
Her body had became my temple;
her parted lips, my altar;
her affluent affection, my wine;
her desire for me, the foundation of my faith;
her leaving me, my fall from grace.
But I, unmade, am not forgotten here.
And my heart will be the cold, cold place
upon which her last breath may be condensed.
HUSH
Hush,
and if you breathe,
breathe softly on the face of death.
The pathway you have chosen
is strewn with vagrant analogies.
Each step is a prescient blunder,
each pause a reminiscence,
a vacant scatological absurdity.
Each voice is a waste of sound,
each name a waste of sense,
each sense attuned to just one memory.
Thus it is that silence offers
the most profound reflection of our selves.
Hush,
the terrified linguists
revoke all licence to speak.
Each letter is removed from the air
until none remain in suspense.
Bound words hide their sacred meanings
in dark and featureless walls,
but the plaster cracks,
and the plasterer hears their lament.
FISH LIPS
I made fish lips today
while staring in the mirror.
It made me think of evolution
and how, many years ago,
I used to be a fish.
THE NATURE OF ART
It isn't the soft focussing,
or atmospheric side-lighting
or the fact that it's in monochrome.
It isn't even the composition, the pose,
the facial expression,
or the shallow depth of field
but something more profound
that makes this picture art.
It is something that eludes
all but the artist
who recognises, early on,
that art is so much more
than the ingredients;
who achives it
but is never sure
how it came to be;
who sometimes looks,
in puzzlement,
at pictures he took years ago
that move him now
more than they ever did.
