Category: Poems (page 7 of 73)

As of October 2011, I’d posted over three hundred poems on this site, including many sonnets and search poems, as well as numerous poems that didn’t make it into chapbooks such as Abendland and Morgenland. I then ceased posting poems here, choosing instead to distribute them via my poem of the week newsletter. Then I stopped doing that too. Every now and then I post a poem here … but not as often as I’d like.

A New Career In A New Town

Call me Kid A, capitalising on 
my foreign-power language,
breezily erasing any thoughts 
of running aside to land here, 
finally, in this new town. Way
below zero I go, plunging into
a new career just as the Metro
escalators do, with no thought
or choice, only a strange drive 
to run, and run again, north. 

Call me Bowie, or at least his 
knife, cutting through forms, 
bureaucratic mazes, wintery 
shopping malls, towards a real
future packed tight as snow in
a drainpipe, or between rails. 
My plans to map the vortices 
of the city’s public transport 
take a backseat to idle wine,
to Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972).

Call me Yesterday, the prosody
of Vreten Tunnelbana station
piercing my southern naivete 
with its sharp blue cubes, its
friendly, if cold, silence. Here 
is a place I could sit for hours,
I think, looping through Low
(1977) towards another place, 
where non-descript bars hide
agonies, their private dreams. 

Call me An Economic Asset,
working my way through this
crowd of extras sent here to
test my resolve. Outside, all 
the trains are full of snow, or
maybe fluffy clouds. I wanted
to send you a photograph of
the view from behind my eyes
but the light, by then, was dim
and the daze had disappeared.  

Hey, Moon!

apocalypse? miaow! ima jussa 
gonna chk chk chk (it's awwn!
laydeeez miming pretty woman
walking down the huh-streeet

satellites are all in orbison lol!
baaaaaaaaayyyyyyyybeeeeee
hey seuss no wait, hey venus!
"hello, world!" mkay, try again

watchin' dead roy's black face
mime a moon; so we go 'hey'
@ black francis on tha moon 
GIT OUTTA MAI 'HAI' TIE BAI

you wanna sonnet you wanna
say 'allo, moon?? ( #andimout

björkholmen snö

one year ago today
i arrived in sweden
on a slow snow train
to winter’s nevermind
& to black mornings
deathly afternoons
& mile deep blizzards

people did not smile
at each other in town
& the pub was like
an extra from LOTR:
littered with snugs &
corner tables hiding
mysterious drunks

today, one year older,
i’m wearing pajamas
again, a woolen scarf
& thermal leggings –
the windows are open
only for an hour or so
just to let in some air

i don’t look at the faces
of the old people lining
up at the systembolaget
for cut-price alcohol
nor at the homeless
man who sleeps every
night in the railway stn

four seasons have now
attacked the old admiral’s
house with little success,
flinging ice, water & air
plus the occasional TV
aerial at us & hating us,
seemingly, at random

we taped shopping bags
over our windows last
summer just to get some
sleep; then autumn came
& went without the winds
& hail that everyone spoke
of with frozen inevitability

& last night it snowed,
finally, for the first time
in a year – but the snow
was just like dandruff
on the still-warm earth
& by this afternoon it
will be gone away again

i worry about the rabbits
who live somewhere in
the park near our house
& how they will survive
should it really snow …
& whether their warren
will freeze or close up

& come spring will they
be back out in the open
air, their little white tails
bobbing like in real life,
skipping over the path
as if we weren’t ever even
here, in sweden, at all?

(On the Tomb of) Noah Ray

when REM recruited you 
to be in "it's the end of the world ..."

did they stop to think 
what effect that might have had on you

stop to think about 
high school pressure or petty jealousy

the ostracisation
of so-called high achievers by dimwits

with no future or hope
& no sense of solidarity or generosity

dead-legs at assembly
the casual punch in the face at recess

& always with the names
a stream of names like bubbler water 

or vitamin-yellow piss 
aimed in your direction hourly, daily?

& yet i like the fact 
that you've now formed your own band

possibly a metal band
& probably sans a recording contract;

it's the ultimate FU:
to use the music as yr only comeback 

& drown their brains 
in pools of simple georgian feedback

Levelling

1.
returning from the graveyard to rise a level
like william faulkner said i made it on a bevel

2.
we first met near a pixel in eversong woods  
jo, our avatars dealt out some serious blows!

3.
oh we fought for hours against the ironic orcs
my sinister strike & your magnificent stealth 

4. 
/whisper: i have been teleported to fairbreeze
/whisper: okay i'll wait here until you return

5. 
/clintolas dances with the undead anok'suten 
/clintolas dies as anok'suten calls for help

6. 
clintolas shouldn't be meeting anok'suten yet
clintolas has not levelled up sufficiently yet 

7. 
i run swiftly across the water when i'm dead 
when i'm alive it's 100% stealth mode for me

8. 
jou spik dansk? asks some suspect blood elf
/enemyfan whispers: let's meet somewhere else

9.
not enough energy! sit down & drink, refresh
/clintolas gnaws on a hunk of mouldy bread

10. 
cheerful blood elf spirit level nine is dead!
return to graveyard (six minute resurrection