Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,

without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
you blink and you seem to surprise them,

the crowd, all its separate faces at once,
coming out of solution like crystals,
like a rush of starlings
or the breeze that lifts the canvas awning
now and dents your cappuccino froth

with a crisp little sound. And that's it:
between breaths, just between you and me
as if; yes,
QED. You are received. This is
the freedom of the city, and the key

to the kingdom, and its borders ripple
outwards like a frill of breaking wave
onto flat sand,
a wavering line already fading leaving
spume-flecks high and dry,


...

Maiden-poet, come with me
To the heaped up cairn of Maeve,
And there we'll dance a fairy dance
Upon a fairy's grave.

In and out among the trees,
Filling all the night with sound,
The morning, strung upon her star,
Shall chase us round and round.


...

It's not too late to let it go,
All those times I had to sow,
But this time, I won't hide away,
I want to speak, come what may.
You may call me the monster, it's true,
But we all have secrets, me and you.
I realized it, now I know,
Time is short, and it steals the show.
Can you see it the way I do?
Or is it just the end coming through?
...

Pushing off on her back out
Into the fishpond's cold
Archaic glitter, my naked wife
Could not have guessed how

High she rode into the noon
Sky, a brightened polestar
Gliding out between nothing
And nothing, between a sun-

Lit vacancy and its ancient,
Reflected, weightless
Hour unrippling back
From the sedges. The just-

Cut grasses fumed around her
Like gasoline, a few
Spent bees dozed above
The compost, and in my arms

The steady thrum of the mower
Carried on, though I'd
Shut it off to sit down
And watch: but so fond of her,

The water parted to take
Her back from that aimless
Sky, where light-
Headed and slippery as a star


...

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat,
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,

...

And I'm again sitting here
with all these people around
and I don't know
how I finally ended up in this pink gown
How long it will take
to finally know who I am
how long it will last
'cause I don't want to be here now
I'm just thinking
thinking about me

...

I

All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.

How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.


II

Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.

Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,

...

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go

...

I was never perfect,
Always had my hair in a ponytail,
Always shouting at the people who love me,
I could never be perfect.

I'd always look at girls in movies,
Wondering how their hair is so blonde,
How their bodies are so perfect,
I would never be perfect.


...