various poems

India by Chance.

India, Madras I think, our plane landed for refuelling, I was
member of a crew going to Japan to join a new ship, this was
seen as honour, although we were low paid, (it was easy to
fool us back then.) At a hotel near the airport we’re told to
stay in our air conditioned rooms that stank of air that had
gone through hundreds of travellers lungs. Wilful and bored
I broke rank, walked outside, got lost in the mêlée of poor
people and warm humanity. Drank tea in tiny shops and read
poetry I had hidden in my heart, away from sarcastic teachers
and mocking, giggling siblings. India has changed, so have I,
now it has the world biggest middle class, I read; but the poor
still sleep on pavements, drink tea and dream timidly of being
a part of new wondrous times, while half listening to the blind
storyteller’s yarn of yore.






















A Sonnet (San Suu Kyu)


Aung San Suu Kyu the fragrant daughter of a Burmese
general is a scented lovely lady. Four years ago when
she was 60 I wrote her a poem and it disappeared into
the www. It’s her dignity and silence I find compelling
I wouldn’t mind waking up in the morning and find her
face on the pillow beside me. Yes, I know call me what
ever you want, had she looked like Hillary Clinton, I
would have protested against 18 month house arrest
but my heart wouldn’t have been involved; now I feel
as I’m losing her forever and I will never meet her and
and say the three words I have waited so long to say.
She is a symbol of peace and democracy, ok so I leave
the politics up to you, all I want her to do is to see me
smile and recognize my love for her.
























Lost in Athens


Athens, confusing in August, what with the heat and pollution I had spent
the night sitting on a park bench, looking at a white wall lit up by moonlight,
waiting for a movie, any movie, to begin. Forenoon, staggered into a church,
joined a queue, a priest was handing out paper bags of sweet cakes, the old
lady behind got none since she had been in the line three times. I ate a cake
and gave the rest to the lady. Grateful she ate the cakes blew up the bag and
hit it against a tree and we were surrounded by an anti terrorist squad.
The lady, a known ,would be terrorist, had been blowing up paper bags all
over town, was arrested, they were going to arrest me too since I had supplied
the bag, but since I was a tourist they let me go with a warning.

Deep in the park I found a grotto, walked in and saw baby Jesus inside a small
aquarium, he appeared like a dead angel as painted by Caravaggio, his Jesus
opened his eyes smiled like, a street urchin selling himself to pederasts, and
began masturbating, chocked I took a step back and collided with two nuns who
laughed hysterically. Escaped, found a cellar bar drank ouzo served by a woman
who looked like a horse; she was a pony that had escaped from a Swedish circus.
We hit it off I have always been fond of horses, especially since according to an
Indian chief in, an Alice Walker’s poem I have forgotten the title of, who says
horses make the landscape more beautiful. Midnight she shut her bar, bareback
we rode through Athens mysterious night.












A Famous Garden


Montreal Gardens, tame nature we want it to be, a happy place
where nothing stings bees are friendly myopic insects.
How very nice it is, hedges cut to look like camels, animals made
of flowers, and ducks that forever are taking off as they too are
made of plant stuff and never crap on green grass.
I walk in a landscape untended by man, some trees are ugly and
some are beautiful; hedges are wild growing bushes with thorns
the size of tigers claws, rabbits, foxes and boars are made of flesh
and blood and many of them die come hunting time, but I would
not trade the Montreal Gardens or the Kew’s for the real thing,
a nature that makes no compromise; will not turn self into a sort
of middleclass gardeners’ dream of an adult’s Disney land.


























Dance Nocturne


August night is a hellhole, hot as the day and
wind that blows comes from a fiery furnace.
Open windows in dark interior primal the cry of
lovemaking, sounds like hate, and wrestling
sweaty, wriggling bodies produce a child that
soon will die, but first it has to go through the same
sick ritual as its parents, what we call love, but
is a primitive urge, copulation the planting of
a seedling before sinking back underground,
spent forgotten; in mass graves of boredom,
decorated with flowers that radiate the smell
of deaths to come. The Tasmanian tiger howls
to the moon, vanishes forever into an ancient
forest, but man dance and fuck the night away.


















Senryu

Armageddon has gone
When it arrived I slept
Did I miss much?






Tanka (without rules)

In US, the rich live long
The poor die young,
This is quite normal
Why should the haves feed
The not haves?

Tanka

White foam on azure sea
Spindrift, brother of the cloud
Spins a magic rug
On which we can forever fly
Till fairytales come true












September Rain (sonnet)


Most days, on my way to the bar or grocer`s
I walk past an old man who sits in the shade of
an oak, on a creaky sofa that has lost its place in
the lounge. I usually stop and talk to him, he can’t
remember me from one day to the next, tells me
the same story about his parents, and where he
grew up; Portugal of yore. He isn’t here today, only
the mantle, he wraps around himself when there
is a chill in the air, is flung on the old sofa; a zephyr
whispers that he will not be back. “Will I be that old?
I ask the waning sun. I sit on a sofa on the terrace,
a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, scan the sky,
in the vale where I live and my parents too lived,
we wait for September rain.






NHSIn Alexandria (US) I met a man by the docks
he had a grows in his stomach, belly full of
water, cancer, surgery acute. I tried to raise
some money managed only a lousy hundred
dollars in crumbled unwilling notes.

Saw the man again in a club, I was feeling
sorry for him. He hadn’t cheated me,
the money was not enough, so he spent them
drinking Ca champagne; died from an illness
he did, only money could cure.
















Erection

August heat I sent in a comment to an article in the Guardian,
dislike many of their readers, but it is a good paper, even if it
tends to lose its nerves and waffle a bit when the pressure is on.
I look to see if anything is written about lack of erection, not long
ago my member could carry a beach towel, a party trick for one
witness, now it will not even carry a paper napkin. I could write
and ask the woman who is married to a comedian and has a sexual
healing column in the Guardian, only I don`t like her much I think
she’s fraud; and the comedian she married stop being funny after
he dastardly divorced his first wife and married her. When working
class people are successful they tend to marry “up” that is because
they meet lots of new and well spoken people, who flatter them,
but they are wrong they will be sandpapered down lose their strength
to suit the middle class taste; rich they will be, so who cares?





















Lonely Is the Famous

Once I met Cliff Richard, he came into a newsagent’s
bought a paper, a broadsheet, perhaps that makes
him an intellectual, what do I know? He nodded my
way and smiled; mind, he smiled to everyone. He is
a professional showman for him smiling comes easy.
He had plenty of hair, slim, no unsightly beer belly like
me, and I felt a sense of envy till I noticed the cape of
loneliness he wore and wished I could help moderate
the desolation that dulled his eyes, when he briefly let
down his guard. Poor Cliff, sits at home, alone, sips his
own wine and dreams of happy holidays.






















August Tanka

Heat cracks the phone pole
Lost voices seep down as tears
But dries in the sun
White streaks of intense sorrow
A lover`s words go unheard.































The Successful Angler


By the river I sit a bamboo pole and wriggling
worms to thread on a hook, but I hadn’t got
around to it yet. I don’t like fishing, bloody trout.
why do they do they have to bite my hook?
I have to pull them out of the water wring their
neck and be a superman.

Others are amazed, wants to know my secret
But I have none. I let the wet worms escape in
the grass. Anglers are coming down to the brook,
I throw my bamboo into the water and escape;
fish eyes have been crowding my dreams too
long, I want to be free.






















Selling Poetry


Painting exhibition tonight a seven, I came before
the show they let me leave some poetry books
behind. “Just put them there”, a man said pointing
to a shelf, I will tend to your stuff later.” In the kitchen
a cook was making elegant canapés, hungry I left.

Next day`s paper said the exhibition it had been
a great success, I rang asked if any of my books had
been sold; they said some books had gone missing,
possible stolen, none had been sold though; grateful
for small mercies, I secretly thanked the thieves.























August Night


Black, starless late August sky, a sliver of moon,
golden scythe mowing down the old, harvest
time. They had forgotten to close windows and
chill will settle in old lungs, spitting of blood.

Church bells toll the day is hot and gives nothing
away, the old priest is still on holiday, the new
one is clumsy, hasn’t had a bath and a shave for
days; unspoken murmur of discontent.

The cleric sweats, there is a smell of brandy, one
of the church’s rejects? But they do take care of
their own. This isn’t swine flu, nothing to report,
just old people dying as they must.




















Tanka

Opened the curtain
Dawn’s light got stuck in my eyes
Intense brilliance
Furniture became the foe
Slept on the carpet till noon





Tanka (boredom?)

Lived in dad’s house
He had fled the August heat
I looked after it
Little to do, drank brandy
And dynamited his abode



















Friends

A black cat wears a fixed smile, watches
as an express train, that has no doors,
runs into a tunnel where concrete and
water fall from the ceiling.

It is very cold the cat wears a silk scarf
and its best friend is a tame shark, that
lives in a pond, is cold too; starves also
it has bitten off the hand of its feeder.

We, the smart people, avoid door-less
trains, we fly instead and, like donkeys,
suffer in silence the indignity of airports.
where stars are tinkling cell phones.

The black cat meows it sits in a shoe
made of tiger shark leather, feels comfy
since it is raining outside also a tad sad,
the shark used to be its best friend.



















Tanka

Because of love
I became an almond tree
Ugly in winters
Come spring I wear pink flowers
And strew them on your path