Three Poems from Three Years
A selection from the daily poems May 28th 2022 to May 28th 2025
A selection from the daily poems May 28th 2022 to May 28th 2025
i.
Leaving Quarteira
Shafts of morning light
pierce the dark cloud
huddled over Faro
Tatiana laughs
with the despair
gathering in her country
I am leaving
the numbed existence
for hope
warming, yellowed, elusive
it almost rhymes
with home
ii.
My wisdom has been rubble for years
some say its the age, others, my age
which given what you read in that old book
where women are still sprouting children
at ninety six I could rival Hercules
for an afternoon if I’ve already had my nap
the age then where we whittle away a day
in gerunds, googling, linking in, scrolling
where we only want to weigh something
like a gram, a feather for every tsunami
that rips the roof of houses and tosses
us into the air like that picture by that madman
the deaf Spaniard with his soft blanket
held for a fool’s landing, coming back to earth
a yellow dummy which the god’s suck green
in their gummy mouths as the dribble and laughter fall
My wisdom has been rubble for years
some say its the age, others, my age
which given what you read in that old book
where women are still sprouting children
at ninety six I could rival Hercules
for an afternoon if I’ve already had my nap
the age then where we whittle away a day
in gerunds, googling, linking in, scrolling
where we only want to weigh something
like a gram, a feather for every tsunami
that rips the roof of houses and tosses
us into the air like that picture by that madman
the deaf Spaniard with his soft blanket
held for a fool’s landing, coming back to earth
a yellow dummy which the god’s suck green
in their gummy mouths as the dribble and laughter fall
iii.
After reading Percival Everett’s So Much Blue
Where to place all that sadness
before it suffocates the heart
the whisky well gurgles in honeyed notes
but cannot drown the severed hand
unblemished love chaperones suffering
into lusting flesh, the skin prickles
the seared scars burn still, dark blood, night spilled
hardens to blistering pink, touch tough
to fingertips unabsolved press, hands hang
alone in his history of remorse
the door is shut on those he might love
light locked into himself, into work
a clear sky carries his haunting and creeps
through breath’s pause, small ill regarded gaps
bringing the hue he cannot bear to new light
in the shadow of bruised ideas
uncomfortable with the colour
he could not control, it comes, the outpouring of
sapphire, cerulean, cornflower, indigo, ultramarine, arctic powder
blue blue blue blue blue blue blue blue blue