when you could see it coming
coming at you like a giant
giant ball of lead or something
something heavy cold & dead
death contained a hint of fear
fear faded & quickly passed
passed to an even higher plane
planet heavy cold & gone;
going to some future island
island where the lonely go
go further & "find yr feelings"
feelings heavy dead & grey
greying like a knitted jumper
jumper of some football player
player watch the football flying
diving cold dead gone & wet
wetter than a rain-cold kitten
kitten washed up on a beach
beach bereft of calypso music
music heavy, wet & wild
wilder than a lover's tongue
tongue it warms you up like fire
fire clinging to yr dim youth
young face ringing hot & loud
louder than the cries of years
years that rippled like a pool
pool it only sought to fill you
you're the feeling after fear
Category: Poems (page 8 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.
Tjena.
Hejsan.
Har du fem kronor?
Nej, Karlskrona.
Oj! Ser jag.
Vill du ha ett kvitto?
Nej, vill jag fem kronor.
Ehm, vad?
Bara ge mig fem kronor.
Fem kronor?
Ja, precis.
Så, vårsagod.
Tack.
Fem kronor.
Okej … vad sa du?
Fem kronor.
Karls—
Nej. Fem kronor.
Ah, precis. Fem kronor.
Tio kronor?
Nej, fem kronor.
Varför?
Varför vad?
Fem kronor?
Ja, precis.
Nej, varför fem kronor?
Fem kronor, ja.
Vårsagod.
Tack.
Hej då.
for Choi Sung Hee i remember jeju-do: that living eye, a candy-coloured sky that was remote- controlled by halla-san, or lord muck, a lady mountain gathering her skirts around her as a cloud sucks up rain. i remember 제주 4·3 사건, although we were not there, bullets like a maze, weeping in secluded lanes, wounds as big as tangerines & the green moulds all over the dead (the reds, the red i remember gangjeong peace zone, cute as a postcard, & its anti-nuke murals (white wall with that painted-on tree whose outline mirrored that of a real tree (its leaves greener than my hopes i remember kang dong kyun, the mayor, was arrested for protesting too much - and for eating too little in his cell, his hunger strike embarrassing some, while electrifying the people's media i remember "Touch not one flower, not one stone!", a great mantra for daily living, just like mayor kang's letters, each beginning with the line: dear mr. noam chomsky! dear mr. chomsky! i remember seogwipo, quiet six pm city on the island's south side, the flowers in boxes lining the steep path down to the marina, & the harbour, & the wooden restaurant where the mosquitoes ate us i remember u-do, tiny postage stamp of an island, where the haenyo plied their trade, sleek as seals in black diving suits, surfacing with buckets full of sea anemones & sea's salt-water tears but i forgot you, funny dol hareubang, like manwha characters playing dead, frozen into stone on the mountainside. there'll be no memorial service for you who can't remember, let alone regret.
down here in the dead ideas office
we mark all your thoughts as read
don’t be alarm’d it’s just routine
most people’s are a waste of space
& friday’s pay day so we slack off
just a bit (long enough for a wink
long enough for you to emote a hit
or a telepathic experience of ‘snow
inside a glass jar’ thinking (o tack
for th’ emergency radiohead anorak
only forty quid & left here today
by someone who refused to give
their number or even leave a name
which was a pity as you’ll probably
be needing something big & yellow
to hide your big empty head under!
hooray, no spam here! (tho notions
that’ve been here more than thirty
days will be automatically deleted
then marked as dead all over again
incantations iv:
I feel all my childood & its dreams
in this video
my father
& his brothers
& their seventies stereos:
born into the space age
watching all the menus collapse
like when you plonk a person
somewhere
deep
IN SPAAAAAACE!
well, what does that make
synthesisers, then - pop?
billions of commenters
on the new tube [heya ... ]
& still you think
that's nothing special?
get this into yr thick skull:
it's all about the fucking comments
- all of them!
& when the melody collapses into now,
you'll know it!
you'll believe it, then:
crystal clear,
a memory of childood & its dreams,
the melody's menu shattered
& deep space empty except for
the one person in it!
o keyboard warriors!
sentimental new age jazz hearts!
interstellar phenomena reduced to saucepans & seas!
time-lapsed breathing
& our curled spoons of sleep ...
i'd cry GIVE IT TO ME, NOW!
were the sounds not already trapped
inside the machine;
we're just waiting
for the lights to go dim:
Another Aussie here
wiping away tears -
chil
dood.