#6 - the poets

6^th of January

6

the poets

put on their glasses

expecting to be read

and yet they interrupt, the fools

to pass their laws without debate

they are the last word

poets expect

to be shot out of cannons

and make a picture of the world

to hold the mirror high

now smash

with hammer, tickle

you do know, don’t you

fire are lit

mostly to music these days

slaves of fashion, preen them

they are always in two minds

at once, and maybe more

such is their sorry lot

the shackles fall, the penny drops

light shines in

while it lasts

bring me flaming chariot

arrows and post-its

poets cling like death to opinion

put on their rhythms, set up their rhymes

catch meaning

will it catch on?

call up the images

they burst with mirth

touch the world they turn

see where the machine falls apart?

poets confirm themselves

in worst suspicions

atrocities against commonsense

and every cliché has its day

poets take off their pants

and some sky falls

they’re precious

and no accounting for taste

the fervour of applause

there is a land where this

syntax?  have you seen it?

this is all imagined

drunk, on the ropes,

they’ll dance

stick out tongues

say ‘ah’

go singing to the grave

mere chrysalis

‘innocent bystander’

their t-shirts say

under the thunder roll

there is a land

where the poets are loved

go there myself sometimes

vista of armies!

good and bad teeth!

and no, that’s not the audience

but in the dictionary

all choice

the glamour specs

their haruspex

poets make best entrails

unsaintly their poverty

and from such bodies fly

pismire

the journeywork

flesh earthly on

name the music no one knows

en plein air  

but a bookwhiff to them

pyramids, statues rise

to fall

they fix selves in stone

tin too

read, ye mighty here

the desert through the hourglass toenail

still more stars than sand

imagine a voice

I can take you there

poets expect to spiral out of control

but swallow hard on hope

the better place

the gone forever

is daylight

in their dream