The Smoke & The Sunshine



The musicians have lost their ambition
Mohammad the mover of the mountain
He has gone to find the water mark
However the canal is in flood
With eels being washed up on foreign sand
And the weeds all dry out along the road
The cowboy emperor dies with thunder above him
Unexpected and forgotten
Except by the American Buddhist
And what of the young Wonhyo?
Who still sacrifices to him?
Drinking from skulls to master the thirst of knowledge
Waking and walking from friend and adventure
Marrying the princess and siring Dylan Thomas
The great ritualist of Ireland
He who went mad trying to scrape away gold flake
From the catholic panelling
With the wind in the fist you can punch this language
With the reflection of the last war
You can make the sunshine smoky
And the fresh water pools are heated by nature
Here animals of the great English Songbook drink
No longer searching for ambition
Nor scared of their colleagues or classes
Greek myths pull at my skirts
As I get filthy with the dust of collapsing roofs
Greek lovers pull at my pants
As I get filthy with the water and the bare path
I notice the big man reaching around
The ghost who kisses the perineums of saints
He had found his peace living amongst the cattle
Avoiding the scorpions and wild dogs
Throwing new constellations into the sky's kingdom
And watching for me with his sad, wild, ambitious eyes

Comments

  1. Pier Roberto GiannelliSeptember 5, 2015 at 12:49 PM

    Another challenging poem. I looked up Wonhyo and see how you worked out the allusion. I think that in the past I have probably missed a lot of your meanings. Impressive.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE RIDDLE, THE FLAW, AND THE PUNISHMENT

Image
If I am beautiful am I real? Like the boys on the 24th floor They are beautiful I don't know how to reach them I don't know how they got there Are they real? Are they the small book of poems Left beneath Sebastian's tree A page for each face A sonnet for each precious, beautiful, life of the boys on the 24th floor Each pulling at the others clothes baring chests and thighs some smooth like stone Some coarse with hair like velvet If I am beautiful Do I exist Do these boys on the 24th floor exist? Are they merely the temperature, the weather? The blush across my cheeks? How do I find this hidden floor? Where the bed is a sacred alter Holding those Beautiful fellows Are the words of the bible A book for each? Or merely strains of Liliaceae Showing their holy strength in the force of their stalk and colour They are the beautiful Those boys on the 24th We artist and poets we search for ever And what of us? Are we not beautiful? Are we not real? Why is it we never find the 24th...
Read more

The Moon is a Transvestite

The Moon is the greatest of Transvestites She holds the bruises of school bullies Her makeup is better than any lady you will meet Better than my bullish sister Better than the painted prostitutes of media Better than the young men of music The Moon she gets up on stage once a month Puts on her sequinned show Parading and dancing and showing us the theatre or romance and space And then she will slowly draw her blinds Closes her door Allows herself to rest Sitting on her favourite lounge Wearing her favourite satin gown Watching reruns of an old detective show I love The Moon
Read more

An Ode To Pain

Image
You just drink to get drunk to dance And you just dance to have a brief taste of myth You don't shave sometimes to feel criminal And when you do you feel exceptionally last century The music you listen to was written by a man with woolly hair His cock was large and his genius was broad He found he could run fast when the rock fences were falling As you found were decidedly slow But the punches and the kicks felt alright Something to write to Frederico about An ode to pain perhaps, an ode to Sadism And where will the return address be? What land, city, bridge? Are you to dwell in the orchard all your life Pissing against the same trees as the other artists? Sleeping on top of the shadows, trying to slow the light Did you ever hear the myth of the Frenchman and the sailor? The Sailor fucked the Frenchman upon a ship that was carrying peaches From America to the port of Lamoux The more they fucked the more peaches were destroyed Until by the time they were hit b...
Read more