Disagreement

We sat down with little wisdom

talked it through in mother sun.

I clamped my eyes onto your face

to prove myself right, to prove myself hot.

Brand your story, blaze it out,

words are logs on ruddy fires,

sentences snake around in knots;

ravel or travel them – I don’t care.

It all will pass, it will decline

but now we fan a mighty breeze,

radiate strife between two faces:

story, story, settle down.

Firestalks blaze, then they fall,

connected longing, love and heat:

time collapses soul to soul

mindsets melt when fire is burning.

What's left?

Andrew defies

any teacher, family, friend, professor

who tries to teach him left and right.

You see he knows that when we point out to his left,

it’s to his right – he’s certain, sure, - no use

to fight belief because we all become confused

and so we start to side with him, agree,

deranged, that left is right and right is left.

But if left were right, what would be left,

would blue be red and grey be white

and up be down if left were right?

Hokey Cokey, left arm in. All right?

View of a Biro

From above,

the pen is unmoving, turquoise and pointed,

an arrow unflown with a clip to connect.

From above,

the point is right at me, accusing, unfaithful,

brassy and linked to a sauce deep within.

From above,

the far end’s a button, a little snow pillar

or a cigarette butt-end that longs to be licked.

From above,

the colour is ocean, a dazzle, a dayglo,

so bright that a seagull or finger attacks.

From above,

when I get closer, inside is a capsule,

chilly as cuttlefish, sugar or salt.

When I take hold,

the pen is a river, silently swerving

divisions of potency, power full stop.

The party

It was a party like no other,

a one man show, ‘Red Peter’

custom-built from a Kafka

tour-de-force, with cage, bananas, music.

All about a captured monkey transforming

to a music hall performer

mimicking humans, aping, with a

glimpse of human history, of our animal nature.

Way-too-close for comfort, reaching into

mucus, excrement, hair and fleas,

primate torture, tension, change, adaption:

the very smell of ‘human’.

I guess quite close to monkey business

and, though the guests applauded loudly,

they muttered ‘Not right for a party!’,

‘Quite unsuitable when you’re sober!’

but Kafka turned and looked steadfast

into a mirror, reckoned to attack

his beard, his tresses, neck, by shaving

here and there, down there, out there and back.