#1706 - annoyingly joyous (a man and his whiskers)

 

1706

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a man and his whiskers

annoyingly joyous

(on winning the 2024 Newcastle Poetry Prize)

 

on the up up up

and swing

I’m the monkey

invent the bars as well

 

as with a shell for luck

and to the trophy room!

 

in my change pocket

a thumb fit shell of acorn

 

thing and another

could think it all distraction

 

so many poems to get here!

 

no one could picture the way

we have come

 

to the universe parallel

elsewhere same old

 

it’s like that birthday you’ll get, goes on –

number 2, number 10 –

for as long as you can, would like, to remember

 

cast about – who’ll suppose?

bull’s eye

 

little jig

swig of life

 

one keeps such a sea in mind

 

stairs of the heart’s ladder leg up

 

still don’t believe it’s so

pinch self

 

I am

infallible deity

 

make time endless

 

when it’s good its destiny

and when it’s bad it’s fate

 

pinch again

 

keep at it

just believe!

 

buy enough tickets

you’ll win

 

#1705 - after the flood

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after the flood

(submarineway)

or

NY postdiluvian

a dystopic

 

still the riding the rust

grey rock

and in your face as well

 

a deep dive

space walk almost

downstairs cloud

 

because they rose against us

 

the algae, green lines

bright fish if lit

from all the seas

 

and after the electric moment

that’s everybody in the chair

the city up a puff

 

those bones of the event still there

of the tipping time it was

a Halloween for the ages

 

for downtown take the stairs

 

snorkel and goggles

great works from museum basements afloat

or as in amber verdigris

 

still the capital of the world

these skyscrapers are piers

 

under Wall Street

aquabulls, aquabears

the crocodiles and the sharks still screening

 

some of us sign with a bubble

most of us go down

and further in the Davey Jones’

 

wouldn’t come up from this maze

you’d get the bends

 

I’m telling you this

but it’s really you had to be there

 

that’s prophecy!

one must see by one’s own light

 

the next stop is

stand clear

doors are closing now

 

the ask me what stroke

 

I say ‘freestyle’

then add for the sake of translation –

‘a little Australian crawl’ 

#1704 - in the face to face

 

1704

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29.ix.24

in the face to face

ekphrastic for Marc Chagall’s 1911 ‘I and the village’

 

only the absolutely other can instruct us

        – Levinas

 

we were head to tail

fields lit

 

all were horned

 

in the eye to eye

 

the first word was not yet

 

there was beast in the milk

of the day that was

 

houses were signs

 

a question to labour

lank field

 

there was this rough geometry

we’d now call desire

 

clouds were a face

a glance cast

 

scythe behind

 

ways on

needs must

 

it was our time

when in this presence

from a window

 

houses trail away

 

we’d make the tree

of one to come

 

it was this bright decoration

it was this empty eye

 

not heaven shining

but someone looking out of this

sees us for who we are 

#1703 - horses of different colours

 

1703

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horses of different colours

peasant idyll

ekphrastic for Kandinsky’s 1908-9 ‘Blue Mountain’

in the Guggenheim

 

from world to mind

the mountain lit

 

sun cast as to eye

 

they are from deep

a carousel prance up motley

 

magic, one takes tail

 

one thing could be another

and must

 

the cloud for a river told

 

no face

but defy geometry

 

we are made from these strokes

 

the tree is all the colours there are

 

bright to be with

the very place

 

it’s from colour we come to be

 

there is no other day  

#1702 - eyes of an accusation

 

1702

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27.ix.24

eyes of an accusation

ekphrastic for Thomas Hart Benton’s ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’

at the Whitney

 

the under thumb, nor owned

hard core

middling

 

hard yards

acres cleared

of tree, of soul

 

hard day goes down

 

the spoon

the cup

the bowl

all empty

 

forget the gone

they live the grief

 

hard hearts

and elsewhere heads

 

have arrested time here

 

all sturdy with the what must be

 

the making great again

 

upright

straight

well gnarled

hard

 

‘when will you?’

they seem to say

 

time’s well past

 

the dark that is coming

is here