The Ship

Billows of fabric gulp Odyssian breezes in the
Sails’ unfurling gasp – thrusting taught;
The pregnant air nourishing like the
Womb, and a motherly hand – buoyant;
Fingers soft-entwining ours like the
Petalled water-vines of countries oriental.

We’re an island bound,
An isle full of noises sweet murmuring on horizons,
And should we get lost in the journey’s froth –
Choking in currents, flailing in tides –
We need but to sail where the sands breath
Alive:
Trillion caramel-set diamonds crunching
Under our toes and seafaring heels;
Equilibriums levelling to the steadiness
Of Utopian sands.

And while limitless imaginings torch our way
We’ll lie flat on our backs on the
Sea-softened oak, staring beyond infinity,
As the ship follows onwards the
Constellations’ course.

The Stage

This is a place of actors
Exploring their roles;
It is a theatre where
Memory is dust:
Whatever the spotlight
Chooses to throw upon.

Her stage is that world
Between light and dark,
Where the blur cuts across
Her face; and, trying to
Connect, you venture into that
Half-way state – wading in the
Mist.

Come back to the light.

And so we become
Passengers on her train,
Chugging to a coast,
Accepting that the
Vermillion wall sign
Tells us our travelling speed –
We are not going fast.

One wouldn’t want to spend
One’s life waiting at a station –
It would get terribly dull.

Immersed in the scene
We serve up verbal images
Like hot ribenas
Or photos on a mantlepiece.

Many are lost to the fog
But a few resonate her face
Like rays of dawn.
Madrid and Ireland still stand there
Like dust, and I can feel the warmth
And rain.

UBL

“There’s been a party going on all night”.
US RAID KILLS UBL
In the bottom left ‘Fox News’ rotates like a globe;
White, yellow and red throbs a putrid frame, as
ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT streams like electric and
Cascades forever from the edges of the earth.
“Too bad we’re not gonna see him thrown off a building”.
5:27 AM ET
UBL IS KILLED AT COMPOUND
The minutes drip blood, and images circle in their
dizzying revolutions, words painting themselves on the
Ecstatic treadmill.
THE HUNT IS OVER
“They bum-rushed the White House”, beam his teeth.
OBAMA 1
OSAMA 0
And the screen clunks like a cassette
between a triumphant sea of humanity
and a charcoaled Abbotabad.
“There’s no closure from this as my son’s not gonna walk through the door”.

Reconciliation

Like the shimmering of gorse
behind evening flames,
Existence fraying like
childhood memory.

I’m pouring my eyes
upon the sea,
Painting a salt-ridge
around my boots

of gnarling leather;
Summoning the vastness
to reconcile what he
did – beneath the waves,

against the battered
sediment. It’s nice
to know the world is
soft at the edges.