NEW POEMS
Testaments
Toussaint
Closures
Complicity
Cavalcade
Canard
NEW PROSE
Schadenfreude
Pride of Place
Skyrrets
Higher Things
COMPLICITY
Philosophy as a Career
For Aengus
You can’t live on ideas alone.
It’s necessary to bring money home.
Philosophers must polish up their stone,
and coleporter it from door to door.
The unemployed have seen it all before.
Kellogs can’t alchemy into ore,
or or. The wise men explain it well.
Money in essence is conceptual.
Alas, householders tell them go to hell.
Fragments from the Garden of Madness
……… I speak on behalf of spurned flowers.
Overlook us and we’ll overgrow your bowers
and darken your path. You should have picked us
when the chance was yours. Suffocating thickets
offer no choice now. They’ve grown to hate you.
Begin again. What will exaggeration do
to mitigate, or not, the suffered slight
which all the world says was an oversight.
At least you didn’t uproot us, and leave a hole
for the kids to fall into.
I’m losing control
once more. What is it? Shrinking violets withdraw
their scent and fade. I’d rather dilate in war.
My cry - ‘Is it because I’m inconspicuous
you did not pick me?’ (It’s no longer ‘us’.
……… Spurned flowers are surplus
to requirements.)
……… To engage original sin,
is a losing battle. Innocence can’t win.
So I make a wilderness of your garden
by hosing it down with caustic carbon,
which eats away the soil, and what remains
is the lone stalk of a thousand untold shames,
shuddering at itself.
Where was I? Paradise
has been banished, but the rains will arrive
again to dilute the acid, and stir the seeds
that keep warm in winter under dead leaves,
and spring up when no one’s looking to bloom.
Take a deep breath of my poisonous perfume…
Jules, the Friendly Ghost
The dead pass through my mind not as strangers,
but as visitors from the past. Welcome
Jules, who knew the joys, but not the dangers,
in wine. Your evil smile, second to none
in complicity, could lead me astray.
And did, but not too far. You were the one
who didn’t know the difference between day
and night in the end. The moon was your sun.
Or was it the other way round? Angels
attend your walking siesta. The sway
of the earth on its axis challenges
our dream of irresponsibility. Ouai!
Your seven steps to heaven began to stum-
ble when your wee brown dog Jim ran away.
Figuring Marianne
Picasso knew what he was painting.
The true face of France is on the beach.
A woman’s figure of eight, facing
the sun which melts her Mont Blancs into
a pool of olive oil for omelettes.
Shame is in the face, not the bottom.
Philosophy as a Career
For Aengus
You can’t live on ideas alone.
It’s necessary to bring money home.
Philosophers must polish up their stone,
and coleporter it from door to door.
The unemployed have seen it all before.
Kellogs can’t alchemy into ore,
or or. The wise men explain it well.
Money in essence is conceptual.
Alas, householders tell them go to hell.
Fragments from the Garden of Madness
……… I speak on behalf of spurned flowers.
Overlook us and we’ll overgrow your bowers
and darken your path. You should have picked us
when the chance was yours. Suffocating thickets
offer no choice now. They’ve grown to hate you.
Begin again. What will exaggeration do
to mitigate, or not, the suffered slight
which all the world says was an oversight.
At least you didn’t uproot us, and leave a hole
for the kids to fall into.
I’m losing control
once more. What is it? Shrinking violets withdraw
their scent and fade. I’d rather dilate in war.
My cry - ‘Is it because I’m inconspicuous
you did not pick me?’ (It’s no longer ‘us’.
……… Spurned flowers are surplus
to requirements.)
……… To engage original sin,
is a losing battle. Innocence can’t win.
So I make a wilderness of your garden
by hosing it down with caustic carbon,
which eats away the soil, and what remains
is the lone stalk of a thousand untold shames,
shuddering at itself.
Where was I? Paradise
has been banished, but the rains will arrive
again to dilute the acid, and stir the seeds
that keep warm in winter under dead leaves,
and spring up when no one’s looking to bloom.
Take a deep breath of my poisonous perfume…
Jules, the Friendly Ghost
The dead pass through my mind not as strangers,
but as visitors from the past. Welcome
Jules, who knew the joys, but not the dangers,
in wine. Your evil smile, second to none
in complicity, could lead me astray.
And did, but not too far. You were the one
who didn’t know the difference between day
and night in the end. The moon was your sun.
Or was it the other way round? Angels
attend your walking siesta. The sway
of the earth on its axis challenges
our dream of irresponsibility. Ouai!
Your seven steps to heaven began to stum-
ble when your wee brown dog Jim ran away.
Figuring Marianne
Picasso knew what he was painting.
The true face of France is on the beach.
A woman’s figure of eight, facing
the sun which melts her Mont Blancs into
a pool of olive oil for omelettes.
Shame is in the face, not the bottom.