Eagle-Eyed Lion Bird Downgraded
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Night Naughts
‘You ought to be sleeping,’ my muse says. ‘Not reading the news.
That abets your insomnia and lets your tired dendrites confuse
your immortal whatever with a raft load of facts you can’t use
and the futile illusion that you could fall asleep if you choose.’
Saturated Saturday
A susurration of incoming rain provokes the jackdaws’ caws.
The darkening clouds blank off the sun that shone so bright at dawn.
The summer day fades right away and Calvinistic laws
of climate here make weekends drear. Fog rolls across the lawn.
Monday was a sunny day. From Tuesday on it was hot
while we were locked in offices without a chance to shirk
our duties and enjoy outside. Vacationers we’re not.
On weekdays we pursue one thing: we live to go to work.
The weekend is ours. Two entire days to do just what we will.
We can swim and surf and sunbathe if we can survive the chill.
Closed System
We live and breathe inside our gunnysack.
A fusion lamp illuminates our days.
It hides at night behind a paper moon.
Plants grow in our rich loam. Sometimes we’re happy.
A lifetime of denial leads downhill.
Our young at heart live like they were immortal.
They look away when we are eating dirt.
I sing of birds, remembering how they looked.
I might as well be whistling. Memories mix me
a toxic cocktail topped up with regret.
We need palliative care. Caretakers turn their backs.
They turn their minds, pretending they are good,
into echo chambers. They hear what they shout.
On the verge of morning, diving boards collapse.
Ambrose Variations
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Yet More Killings
Can I be frightened? Yes. Shocked? Every day.
Each hour brings news I don’t want to know.
It’s not the knowing but the happenings I hate.
Murderers ruin survivors’ lives and leave
Earth worse off than they found it. There’s no Why.
The good among us vacillate and grieve.
We ask each other why must children die
for madmen’s twisted searches for the power.
The power eludes us all. Thank gods for that.
Each minute that we mourn takes us an hour
further away from Heaven. Lives go flat.
Bright colours fade, reduce to black and white.
We follow demagogues who bring the night.
Ridings
1.
We the also sentient salute you, foreign child.
We watch you take our reins.
We listen to your impatience.
The whip falls. We start.
You drive us down long roads
bereft
of any life you don’t maintain.
You kill what doesn’t please you,
flatter you, yield profit.
You decide.
2.
My brother’s skull surveys your trophy room.
My sister’s pleas
preserved under clouding amber
amuse your child.
You open up empire
in homes we used to have.
3.
There was memory
in that skull.
4.
There was promise
in those pleas.
5.
You drive us
those of us you keep
through meadows
of concrete.
We pretend you have reasons
to do this.
6.
The last bird of summer
has joined the bees that died
this spring.
Hobo Oracle
I sit in Boston Common contemplating.
A large policeman speaks to me: Move on.
On a Universal City sound lot I watch clouds.
A security guard addresses me: Move off.
Get. Move off. Move on. Man, go away.
Conversations with power aren’t serendipitous
when you are down and out, and old, middle-aged or young,
ageism not a point when you’re destitute.
When I’m addressed this way, I flash The Smile
that Jack Nicholson bought his roles with. I unwind
from whatever position I’m in until I’m standing
on my hands, my T-shirt torn, showing rock-hard abs.
Suddenly people cluster, want to know my thoughts.
They ask me questions, write my answers down
to live by: what I think about the wars
in Congress, about new cures, about how much
they should invest in futures, and in love.
I answer for a while until reporters
from the networks set their mikes on, then I flip
upright. I stow the smile. I disappear.
Earth Tourist 