The delicate treble falters uneasily Above the empty acres of an endless chasm Where we know some low end should be. It finally falls flat on the ears Of sharp listeners Who see the damp back of the bass player As he frantically fiddles with knobs and switches. We see a void beside flimsy cymbals In the absence of a tom tom, Hear a whole mess of hi-hats; kept open By a broken pedal, And watch the guitar player Lay down his craft and make for stage Left to help out with that finicky amp. In such circumstances, Some of us forgive the singer With the sickly figure For wrenching his head back and away From his microphone and spotlight. A switch of filter spreads the walls with red. Two shadow arms behind the amps Hammer hard against the earth. One stage right limb gets sucked Into a torso at stage left. At a rest, Three shadows Look like ageless stags caught in the gaze Of some ancient archers we are becoming. And to s how them that we love this We slap our meaty parts against each other.
poetry
A Portrait of a Lady
I've been sitting on this leather bench in this cold, sterile room for a half-hour or so, just looking at you. You're leaning forward in your chair, wearing a single pearl that hangs straight down on a thin, silver necklace in front of your chest, clad in some funny colour scheme. And you're looking at me: your forearms stacked, and hands delicately cupping your elbows, finger nails left bare, showing nail beds that share a hue with your skin, thinking of some article in the Daily Mail on the socio-economic ramifications of our culture's quinoa craze, lamenting the state of the Bolivian farmer (who can't afford to keep a grain to feed his kids), and probably the state of your love life. And it's true, the softness of your expression does well to keep such thoughts on this and that between the two of us. Most others get red in the face, arguing about what it is you're "doing" or "saying," with your hands positioned as they are, or with that pearl around your neck falling as it does. Who cares about all that? You're thinking of a woman in the next room, herself a subject of this sort of gaze that commonly falls on your well-groomed, well-lit members of our history's upper crust. Quickly, my thoughts of you move to thoughts of your owner's: a well-groomed, well-dress, well-bred parliament of collectors of the fine stock. You and I both question their taste as we ponder that gaudy frame they've got you in. I think I'd change that.
It’s True (I Saw It on the Internet)
"Do the math, it's a false flag And don't even get me Started on the moon landing," He spits, alongside clots of chew, His mesh-backed trucker hat Sideways. (it's how he does his thinkin') Conspiracy theories elevated to Gravity or evolution, He says he's learned his ABC's, 1-2-3's and Ben-gha-zi's No— It's your theory. You do the math.
Business Sense
Next level company bonding At the annual retreat— This year, they have a Red Tent and childbirth simulation For the male employees. Don't like the direction the Company is taking? Maybe you just can't handle The pain of labour I hear they're forcing everyone to be Wholesome and whole-grain Because last year they hogtied Hodgson as a "trust" activity and He popped a tent that wasn't for sleeping. Back under fluorescent lights With syncing cycles, Conversation drifts and shifts from The dangers of high fructose corn syrup To which Uncle Ben's Tastes the best to even The most seasoned vet.
Intimations of Age (1970)
Their older sisters bolted from my timid torch on legs as lithe; and now these fawns, these flowers in my dream- pasture of lust, glowing more fiercely as my sun declines, they nestle close without fear, their brittle fingers liberated on my distanced flesh, and call me Uncle. And the sisters, el dorado’s dancehall nymphs ten years ago, now heave into the station of the mind trailing children and talking quite openly of intra-uterine devices. (The days are fingers, turning me to their own blank eyes. My tongue exaggerates the memory, and then the stone’s sound shakes the well.) And at the barricades the Afro- printed rebels, discovering by rote (a quickening treason of self-knowledge) 300 years of misplaced blackness, vicariously warm against each other in their chain- gang chants of Africa and anarchy; while I retreat to verandahs and rum, and turn to other roots, which grow like morning details to myopic urgency: a father, never close, now slipping through the gaps of silence into testiness and recollection, as I assume his role and watch my son’s fierce love batten on my terror of the road that darkens into dream; a mother-in-law, warming herself at the flame of my last gift to her, whose twelvemonth legs amaze themselves with puppet steps. Like a chrysalis despairing of the light I turn again, to find my woman naked between dresses, belly breasts and limbs two harvests old, pouting at the mirror’s indifference. My cosmos pivots on the fulcrum of her deeply furrowed groin. Oyster- tight, her gum-chewed nipple is the only granule in this swelling darkness.
Chineyman (1968)
He moves haphazardly, blown along the pavement in uneven gusts, like ricepaper. The oldest man in the world. Not for him, beneath that mask of grey enamelled hair, dried dreams of palaces floating on their pools of silken poetry or orchideous concubines in rites of silk. More likely a drab exchange of servitude Eastern soil for saltfish and the crudely offered tithes paid daily on the mackerel counters by us lazy blacks who’d rather spend than sell: the necessary sacrifice of language and the timeless shame of burial in this uncultured soil. Yet in the intricate embroidery of that face are all the possibilities of legend— Kublai Khan in rags. Loud-limbed and less ancient I defer the pavement to this parchment schooner with no port, this ivory chorale of semitones.