2017 January » Stunned by your words I have to write | Stunned by your words I have to write

One

generating power

the turbines tumble into action

images flicker

and watch each other comparing notes

Two

words reduced to to background rumble

but not one word in plain sight

nothing distinguished

solo you sail hoping for nothing

Three

poetry: a constitution for human life

animals and carnivores

we show our teeth

Four

gravitational oppositions

will you bounce into me

like an accident of some sort?

Five

yesterday is gone

and in the middle of today

there is the usual evaporation of time

Six

and then a way forward (or backward)

will emerge but I cannot

confirm the direction of travel until 2155

Seven

let’s say we did our best

in the face of stiff opposition

The fear of imagining that life has a purpose must be the fear that I won’t have the capacity to create the new anew renew the species: of course if the creative impulse is blocked, frustrated, repressed … then all one can do is destroy. Thus patriarchal man in his rage of need (a deep and pressing need) to control the creative in others must invent new wars to blood soak the precious earth.

How they tremble when I strut around; their heads might fall at any moment; this day might be their last; my dreams will come to them as nightmares.

Old man who were you in my dream last night? A rough sleeper, there seemed to be smoke coming from your mouth, from your body, seeping out from you clothing. Were you on fire? And you sang a song, a dirge, a love song. Must I envy you your ancient freedom. The freedom of minstrel and bard, the freedom of the old roads, feeding the earth with your song.