The magpie is, if we go by appearance,
the orca of the family of larks.
The one I watch is tuning his ground clearance
while telling me the etiquette of parks
is not improved, and I won’t win endearance,
by slanging him, suggesting ‘feathered sharks’
and more pejoratives that cast his kin
as predators. He soars to do me in.
When the purest of blank verse is only that:
blank, and a strong and better man would be
out mending walls, or tending reputation,
or reading from his work to paying folk,
I sit here, scribbling out a heart. Not mine,
but one I conjure, thinking it is real,
and mine. The wishing makes it nearly so,
or close enough for semblances I seek.
I once was real, but wryly gave that up,
to sample dreams and synthesise them in
a mythic past, a future that still comes,
and presents noted for their absent joys.
The wanting that I hankered for was real
and almost satisfying, in the way
it stifled action those productive years.
It stuck like cotton candy two days on.
The action-packed adventure we call life
is but one option, poorest of the three
that we receive on being born on Earth.
The better, middle, option is to dream,
to fly by reading, stealing no one’s turf:
to witness without comment or emotion.
I lived the middle option twenty years
and suffered less than in the active ten.
When drugs succeeded pressing symptoms flat
the medics disinterred me and I left.
I climbed the ladders of a corporation.
I joined clubs that served my fellow man
I never met; the best clubs work that way.
The exploitations that I organised
brought profits to my country and the stocks
appreciated. Some of us grew rich.
One time, when I was overworked and tired,
a virus struck me. Once again I dreamed.
The doctors clocked electroshocks for weeks,
and bosses hid my children in a cave
till promises extracted (I’d not dream)
had satisfied all parties (I don’t vote).
My family reunited (we’re a team);
I doubled my own quota, won a raise.
I had three cars, and thus was four hands short,
till chauffeurs hired to drive the other two
arrived in tasteful livery (I chose blue).
I chose, those days, the all-important ways
to earn, invest, rechurn, divest the shares
of this grand world we dominate by thought.
We think it’s ours. Such thinking means it is.
A good outlook if one’s to live a thousand years.
Yesterday, accepting one more prize,
I fell against the podium. Fell hard.
The doctors tell themselves there’s something wrong,
but they are wrong. The third, forgotten, way
has ripped and tipped its way into my head
and spread throughout my body. I am free.
The lower ways, of action and reflection,
lose their empty lustre. I am free.
No words, no threats, no deed can occupy
the private places I have learned to fly.
You see, you think, that I am sitting here,
but I ride down to glory, or I sleep.
Worlds collide, and somewhere robins chirp.
It’s all the same, and different. It’s a dance.
My lady holds my hands. I think we weep.
A starving hedgehog’s nostrils gleam with fire.
A moon or two disintegrate in sound.
You watch me. I’m immobile if I’m here.
A bass guitar sounds new chords that I know.
I hug my lady. Dust assumes new forms
we knew of old when myth awaited birth.
The thinnest light a mortal ever sees
is wide enough to ride on. We depart.
We are the suns, the moons. We are the earth.
This cannot be the blues. There’s no guitar,
just a rinky-dink piano, and someone crying,
and driveway gravel ploughed up by a car
that’s scratching off. There’s always someone dying.
Is today my turn? I’m standing tall at bat:
strike two, ball three, two out, the bases loaded
and a pitcher with no face beneath his hat.
He throws down like a Gatling gun’s exploded.
I don’t even see which ball home runs my head.
Lights flash and vaporise, go slowly out.
I try to walk to first but fall instead.
I see — I cannot hear — the umpire shout
as the pitcher drives up in a silent car,
its hood ornament a stringless steel guitar.
‘At the time it seemed important.’
‘I’m sure it was.’
‘Her song. Grace Slick. Search for that sly white rabbit.’
‘A Lewis Carroll stroll. Updated Oz.’
‘Our lines, like then, keep rhyming.’
‘An old habit.’
Their conversation pauses. Pops.
Rewinds.
Songs bridge the gaps between the two old friends.
Remembering Grace and remembered grace entwine.
They keep on, keeping time.
The music ends.
Apathy is a developing response.
Ask the young what should be done about some ‘X’
and they will answer with a certainty admired
by falling rocks which don’t so straightly plumb
the depths as do the certainties of youth.
In middle age, amongst their bouts of rage,
the folk, perplexed by living the long riddle
they call their lives, will entertain first doubts
about positions they once firmly held.
And then they’ll hold them tighter, fear letting loose
and a fall into ‘senescence’ — as we call
that acceptance Buddha lauds and Calvin hates,
where the answer to what one’s required to do
engenders daily less hot animo
and more and more a careless ‘I don’t know.’
There had been tears enough last night. Now, breakfast settling
and the blood clotting darkly on his wounded arm,
he pulls his wet coat on. Stands up. And walks.
There had been tears enough last night. Her smartphone charged
up in the station where they’d tried to sleep,
she stands. She pulls her wet coat on. She walks.
October shade thins out what’s left of sun,
reminding us who notice life is short.
I order Tarwebok and choose a table.
Out in this weather, half of them are free.
Slim mothers flaunt spring babies in blue prams.
The artist owing me pretends to blindness.
He edges past, eyes fixed upon the boats
that queue along the quay and out of sight.
A couple and their casual guests stand up.
He cranks, the motor coughs, the guests fall in
the open cockpit. She gives a salty wave
to us ashore, singles up the lines, and hops
upon the bow so slightly, lightly, well
the boats don’t even waddle by the quay
and she and they and sun and boat depart
and I salute another ’t Smalle day.
We, Homo sapiens sapiens, met them, Sus scrofa,
and having met, we can confirm they’re good.
Good to look upon, both fierce and fleet.
Good, because their twenty, to our eight,
could have, had they fought us, surely won
and we would not be writing but be et.
Good as the breakfast bacon that we ate.
We licked their chops, although we lack their tusks.
Earth Tourist 