The New Year

There is a boat on the river.
A spaceship, circling a sun.
We know this in the way of miracles,
in feeding ourselves dead diseases,
in believing germs are demons
too small to see. The boat is on the river
(without songs, no one singing
rowing songs anymore, not even
the children: in the end, even
skipping rhymes die, and hope with)
and we are standing on it, not two by two,
but huddled together, billions of us
crowding the boat, though someone says
from the back (there is one, always)
that the boat seems to get bigger,
though the river never does, yet it does
from uncertain angles. A drunken man
christens it Schrödinger's Boat.
And no one laughs.

The spaceship, too, with free journeys
around a star, wheeling through finity
like a children's toy: this is real.
This is true, here, now: but on it,
the people send out cries, radio smoke signals
to the heavens, to other worlds,
hoping someone is out there. Hoping
someone will help them.
Speaking stories about silicon skulls
and pyramids and vanishing people,
hunting down morals and killing the tale.
Hoping for salvation, because it is easy.
Hoping to be saved, not to save themselves.
The spaceship moves, slow, like the boat.

From a distance, it seems a UFO.
And even closer, a thing unidentified,
never given to form, just there.
Quiet. Waiting. Moving. Here.
From a distance, it could be a star sign,
part of a boat, but that is a story,
and too simple and too neat.
There is the world, and distances
growing between that words never bridge
and silence.

Winter

The child flits under eaves
underworld breath jack-frosting
leaves into windows, one pant
and then another, face a pleading
eyes do not utter

It is too cold here
There is frostbite for mittens
A silence devoid of cries, hope
Wasted expense of energy --

It is
too
real here.

Met By Moonlight

The last time we met you were not in a cage,
Each pace of rage like an anchor careless set --
Your mother explains, claiming it's just a faze,
Tied to moon phases, voice filled with shame.
Is love, after all, tied so deeply to form?
I try not to mourn -- you lick your genitals.

That Moment

The dreaming moments
Between traffic light dance
All amber-hue washed, paled
To sickly milk.

Waiting for movement
Your steps from dream to life.
The colours keep on fading;
Your smile withers.

Speaking from silence
I try to hold you here, now,
But tears have no binding power.
The moment fades
And is gone.

Manufacturing Glamour

Paparazzi creations, frozen celebs given meaning, desperation driving
The artist to explain captured images false as the real of oil painting,
The need for publicity or perish pushing from one remove to another:
-- Hop, skip. Jump!
All publicity is good, feeding goals of being seen, being admired;
Remembered in the brief moment stretched, strung out into sightbytes.

Dance By Night

Dreamstruck, dancing through white
Fields flecked with gold,
Artistic sacrifice of frostbitten toes,
Licence dancing clothed, pulling on layers
Before gods hidden in the wood like voyeurs.

Arsonist

Waving through the smoke,
I wonder if you are free, too, if the fire
really purified you, or
if it just lies, like my ex, burning
with you -- I want to say
I love you, but you shamble through smoke
like a horror movie monster
and I laugh and laugh
instead.

Creation

The praise of the reader bright damning,
Writer cringing under love of old words;
Past novels named, hailed as wonders.
But
"I've surely done better since.
I did not bloom but once,"
Lingers, unsaid --
and never quite believed as truth.

The Door

I tell you not to open up the door
The only thing that I'm waiting for
Is a wife I can adore.

I don't care if the food is seared
If you love me, don't mock my beard
Or think me at all weird.

Behind the door are secrets, true,
But it's also true I love you,
True as my beard is blue.

Waiting For Santa Claus

Every year, mom and dad wait for Santa, waking
from slumber at midnight to greet the new day.
Once we were old enough they'd wake us as well,
telling us: this year Santa will come, this year
we might get gifts, and we'd all stare at the empty tree
come the dawn, listening to my father's debates
with himself during the night, if Santa delivered
past midnight or not, and my mother saying no,
wanting to get to bed; we had red eyes, not noses
(unless we caught a cold), but Santa has never come.
I am hoping he comes to my children, because I
intend to be a better parent than my father ever was.
I will sneak gifts to my neighbours, having them write
messages from Santa -- I only hope I won't be shunned
for telling them without words that Santa hates us.

On Santa Claus

On Santa Claus

Nailed to a tree, as "art" only saying
Things we already knew, nothing shocking
To move the mind, uproot the heart or soul.
It is just more commercialized pablum,
Like signing urinals, post modern shocks
That cause no dialogue, only crude laughter.

And yet kids (still thinking art has meaning)
Will want answers to their many questions.
We can tell them Santa is hanging there
On the world tree, seasonal sacrifice
Of consumer kitsch to itself once more.
We can say Santa will eternal lie
Hibernating beneath the arctic ice
Never sleeping, eternally lying
Until the next Christmas season, waking,
Giving gifts to the good, whipping the bad
(having Black Peter whip them in his stead,
for legal reasons -- and he likes to watch).

And if the children, confused, then wonder
About Christian symbolism, we tell
Them Christ was a revolutionary
And not an artist, leaving it at that.

Mountains

In the high peaks there are places
That will ever know the sun,
The last dancing sites of snowmen
Where science hides its face.

In the whistling of the winds
Are fragments of the dances
Heard only by happenstance
Underneath the human din.

Trust

I've shared so many dreams with you
Sometimes I forget not a single one was true:
But I never regret all the things I never say,
Hoping for tomorrow's like today.

Simplicity of Advice

If only we could solve our lives as easily as we another's.
We'd tell them truths, first one thing and then another.
Each problem we'd too clearly see as simple as day
And each solution would b e the perfect one to say.
We'd know X is done because of W, and further back
We'd understand how to keep everything on track.
It's so obvious here from the outside looking in,
So simple that we can tell our answers with a grin
And pretend like shrinks that we know the brain
And how people work though it's all in vain --
Underneath understanding likes the human heart
And accepting that one fact is a damn good start
As we try to act on the advice we give to others
And eat words we from high places preach another.

What We Saw, there.

      10: Fieldtrip

My daughter runs, shod,
Through the reliquary laughing
At giant bones and stories.
My wife tells her about dinosaurs,
Lecture mingled with bloody facts
To captivate and thrall her mind.
I just stare from off, sideways
Glances at skeletons, remembering leathery flesh,
Eyes as pools of drowning water.
I want to ask: "Where did they come from?
Where did they go?" But,
Silent, I watch: seeing among the blind,
Sober at the party, wishing only
For the release of laughter, but
That belongs only to the innocent.

What We Saw, there.

      9: The Burning Night.

Calm before wingbeats, sky
splitting open like judgement day;
screams a failure of imagination
finding only wordless notes to say.

There was awe and terrible wonder
and the gliding of sure wings
but even creatures that seem magic
die as easily as other things.

What We Saw, there.

      8: Lies

Conspiracies make people feel better,
Finding their own place in the world.
I've yet to hear one approaching truth:
All signal and no noises made:

Flagging down keywords in a common tongue
Trying to find meaning outside the sharing
Of experience and foolish dreams of youth.

Sometimes I'm so very tired.

What We Saw, there.

      7: The Place.

Roswell, they call it. A name, a mantra, hot air balloon
lies and stupid hicks unable to believe their own eyes.
Hell is trying to enjoy in evening what we did in the afternoon.

There are always those who will not believe in them:
overhead, air planes, only reminding me of who is dead, and
where we were and how shrill are those who condemn.

We sold our souls to save a world from the thunder
Of wings, from them coming from ground, below to above,
Seeing in their majesty only fear and never wonder.

What We Saw, there.

      6: To catch falling brain matter ....

Photo memories, flashes, pictures taken staining
consciousness, unchanging as mountains -- unless
old age robs even that terrible thing away, a gift from its pain.
Henderson died last week, a form notice in the mail
saying nothing, even between lines; but he used to boast
with highest marks that there was nothing forgot, all attic-
scented in his brain waiting to come out fresh, new,
smelling of lavender.
                  We are great in that we live if we
do not die; to edit the world into us as the hero, fight reality,
but for those without deception-as-weapon, it must be
cold nights, triggered memories that never fade, and
every falling star a wound to a heart thought broken so long ago.

What We Saw, there.

      5: Revelation

Rivers hold deep secrets, truth
tugging us below conspiracies
in towards the darkest currents.

Theories are laughter of many
mocking gods, hunger for truth
turning into desperate answers.

I could say they were no greys,
go from oaths and promises to
the darkness of a word.

Dragons.

What We Saw, there.

      4: Dissolution, the pulling away.

It's the scientists who ask, white
garbed, the dark questions:
did we kill the parents, then, or
some children lost in a storm,
finding our unfriendly world?

We have no answers, just
armaments and fear, building
to crescendos of lost funds
funnelled into secrets that
we can never speak of.

Every night, when I tell her
"Nothing", about my day,
or "Same old, same old",
I can feel my wife pulling
away from me, hearing
the lies underneath.

They made us sign oaths,
I want to say, just once!
Vows about what we'd seen,
more binding than any
marriage contracts, deeper
than love or law: threats
and promises. And I'd say:
I could not bear to see
you hurt, but I never
say a single word.

What We Saw, there.

      3: Drugs as false salvations.

There are things we never forget, escaping from
The life we lived before, but to what do we end?
Saved from ourselves with drugs - the new religion,
Psychiatrists the new pushers - stumbling zombies
Into a newer world.

But they could not give a quiet heard nor freedom
From dreaming and fears, the ground giving way
World veined azure as we fly into the sun, embalmed
And swallowed -- we were not wolves, not hard enough
To swallow it at all.

What We Saw, there.

      2: Debriefing

There were inquests and inquires, judgement by committee,
Psychiatric examinations conducted with terrible patience
Saying until faces were pitched blue that what we saw wasn't true.
We had pictures and the truth but it wasn't seen as proof
There were brain drains and tests and no time for play or rest.
They asked us what we thought we'd done but didn't see
We'd only followed orders to keep aliens from our borders.

What We Saw, there.

      1: Flight.

This was before it was 51, just an area on a map,
desert lands and tumbleweeds and whispers of old dances.
The dry lake was a door, though closed long and before
mankind had risen to walk the world, to make
steps upon the sands. They came out of it that day,
groomed by alien hands and eyes, forged by gods
too inhuman for our minds to comprehend.

This was before they had gps and many other things,
when what we saw wasn't cgi, when eyes
could still believe things seen were real.
They flew south for warmer climes, with planes
following close behind, our thunder in the air.
To this day I don't know how we did the things we did.
But orders were given and we obeyed, to do
what must be done
            (we who are about to die
             inside salute you.)
We banked and flew, not natural, but terrible for all that.
They had only nature, alien though it was,
and we had guns and bombs and fear and hate,
the things that make war grand.

Each one died and fell, and I'd like to say we wept,
but we had no time to spare for such,
and flew and flew and killed. They had fire
and claws and tails but numbers do not fail.
Where a few failed many followed, learning
from the dead: we fired and banked and twisted
turned and one by one they died, to fall
from the sky as meteors.
      (angels falling down,
       embrace unforgiving earth)
They crashed and burned, consumed by selves,
And we circled overhead, prepared for magic
and for wonders but seeing only scale and bones
as lifeblood leaked through shattered wings.

To The New Messiah

I was trying to write a story, about all the things you've done:
The wonders and the miracles, the terrible things you've won,
But the words kept getting shackled and I couldn't find the way
To tell the world a story that's still being played out this day.

I remember all the parables you told, the teachings and sly winks,
How you'd never say a single thing not designed to make us think.
But I wonder if there was anything that prepared you for your fame:
I think you were not able because no one lives who recalls your name.

News

The tyrant comes as a protector first,
Doling out laws to tame unquiet beasts.
Talking TV heads do not desist, worst
Still thinking they number above the least.

A Notice

Due to a trip, I won't have net access for the rest of the month. So I'm posting thre (yes, three!) poems for each other day in compensation. Or as torture: you decide. The rest of the poems written during the year will be posted during the new year, and then I shall unveil the plans for the blog in 2007.

EDITED TO ADD: Well, I didn't have enough poems done to pull that off, so some days got 2 poems, some 3, some just one. The poems written from the 20th and on will be added in the new year.

We

The madness of innocence, innocent
      of madness,
We come together, break apart;
No falling but dancing,
No chasm but within.

I hold tightly onto names whispered
Under bedsheets    in your sleep
Talking about falling out of windows
To drown in puddled water
      like the moon.

"Loving hating, hating loving," soft,
To someone I never see; I dollop salt
And angel's dust just for glue
      enough
To hold our love together.

Rooks

Rock faces bejeweled by moss,
In seeking patterns we make
Meaning.
The stars must feel lost above
Alien skies, not crabs nor fish,
Snakes or dragons
                 (ladders)
Living in the world, clouds
Must always have shapes, the moon
Always a face.
Needing thing to hold onto
(Reaching)
We shy away from mystery, and
Lost language.

Three Poems

     .i

As the rose has thorns
So my smile has a barb,
For you I bloom a new name
And done a newer garb.

     .ii

As the kept flower realizes
       it's fragrance
So too it withers and dies.
The willow bends but does not break,
I close my eyes and sigh.

     .iii

The whisper of your parting
Like an itch upon my skin,
My blush a faintest sigh
Of our sweet, sad sins.

But what if the trees are cut down?

Interpreting extrapolation, collusion collusion of metaphor
Moulded to sight by a wishing never washed away --
The hunger for Real a slippery slope
Of insisting where it must be found
As if forests had only one tree, a terrible simplicity,
Like a world where we see in the same way all others know.

After the end...

I never did do a post-nano post, did I? So....

"New Fires" ended up as 50K and change, and I successfully resisted the urges of people who wanted me to try for a THIRD nanowrimo for the month. I might have been able to, but it wouldn't have been that much fun.

Am getting back into the Trilogy, posting poems on the other blog, and mostly relaxing for the rest of the year. Next year, I plan to finish the trilogy and probably do another modernish novel. Nanowrimo may well be the detective mystery in haiku, but I'm not sure yet.

The poetry blog is going to change to me posting a short story there every couple of weeks rather than being a poem a day. I'll still post some poems there, of course, but for 2007 it's going to be a short story blog. I have no idea what it will be the year after that :)

Haiku

I said your name, once --
Marsh crickets covering I
Never spoke aloud.

Here/Now

The end of days a whisper,
Last note of a song
Trailing into silence
We pretend we belong.

The start of life a sleeping
From waking that we knew:
Love and hope and wishes
And seldom anything true.

The time between a yearning
And pedestrian today's,
Always lost and never
Following pathless ways.

Tides

The king sat on a corral throne
Long time swallowed by the waves,
Fingers clenched bleach-white as bone
For the dream he could not save.

The seas are silent always now,
The ships pass by unharmed,
The salt spray of the ocean crows
For it no more is harmed.

About him ruins of the ages;
Queen and court decomposed
In the rustle of history's pages,
And why he stays no man may know.

Confession After Parole

The days grow long and I remember
Fragments of old songs;
For all that I've done I'm not sorry,
Still say it was kind of fun.
It's hard to remember just why I
Had those bodies dismembered.
You say I should feel sorry and then I
Smile and you worry.
It won't be long now, don't you see?
These fragments of songs
Whispering to me, telling only me
Things still to be done.

[Posted on Sat, retroactive, due to power outage]

Vampire's Night

The lights of cities cushion from
wildreaming, broken wonders clear
under moonlight.

Saving coins for a sunny day
dead currencies rust-red under fingertips,
we are all too hollow here.

Voices we never hear are
Speaking what we can't ignore --
The trees are, soft, dying.

What we hold to slips away:
Ashes on tongue, dust on a hand;
Promises of summer.

Guruophobia

Seeking answers we will
       approve of,
Devouring self help manuals
       like fibre-enriched cereals
We ask the Master
       for street cred,
Reliable references and
       a web site.
The Master asks us
       what we want
We wait, quiet, to be told.

Search

Making allowances for meaning
Rushes whispering in the wind
When the master speaks, words are
Not used     And we are named
Until divested, nameless, seeking
Yearning for the Real.

Hrm

Post nano burnout is
No desire to do a poem,
Thoughts on the novel

Left behind, forging anew,
Wondering what is left
For poetry.

Not Sleepies Much

The world shift slides to
Hallucination blue, verdigris flickers;
Ground rolls underfoot,
Motion sickness an extended blink
as
Time meanders windershins.

Post It Note On The Soul You Don't Believe In

Finding something to believe in.
The dance between being
And belonging you must join.

I wouldn't think less of you
If you avoid making a choice,
Hiding from dreams behind tests
And smiled tinged with our regrets.

Broken Arrows

We, here, following Time's broken arrow
Pointing north-south on the sundial,
Everything new is old again, rising twilights
Outpacing setting suns as we
Hide here beyond death awhile.

Starlight flickers, death dreams of fairies
and the clap of clappers on, and off.
Everything is just as it was last night
Before we took a step too far
And fell, but found it oddly soft.

Eternity is silence stretched like rubber,
Soft sound like nails on chalk scraping
The only noise, never a delight,
And dead we have only this, here,
Mouth's open, lost and full to gaping.

Work

Open every day including Sunday
Until the Rapture,
Until Ragnarok's final days,
End of the fifth sun,
Rebirth of the Rainbow Serpent,
Arrival of the aliens --
Do our saved hours never spent
Count, now, as sick days?

The Days

The days grow longer, ever so,
And age is looking inward to
Golden times, wondrous places
Filled with sad smiling faces.

The days grow short, as ever,
The deep bargain of "forever"
Not long enough it seems;
Getting old's the death of dreams.

The nights are lonely, always this,
Longing for one last final kiss,
Wishing no one had to die
And never say good bye.

The nights remain quiet, and yet
There are things to not forget,
"Children are our souls", and
Only dreams can make us whole.

Serendipity

Toast up, never toasted,
Kettle not plugged in, looking
like a metaphor misplaced.

Milked coffee, untasted,
Flaked with white, souring
At a morning face.

Orgone

A four beat orgasm,
Pauses in consciousness,
the pulse
of
religion experience --
Ohm to ommm
to orgone

Query

Dancing on pinheads
Two million hydrogen atoms
But how many angels?

Quisitioning

Said I could have their bodies but I'd rather have their dreams,
Said I could have their souls but not the sweet delicious screams,
Said I could have their ideals but then they'd turn over new leafs,
You said I could have their words but never their devout beliefs.

Being OK

It'll be all right tomorrow
All the pain that would not end
The wounds that could not heal
And your tears for sorrow.

If not tomorrow, next week
Free from the pain you feel
That's when the worlds ends
We just have to wait for next week

Just a few days past tomorrow
We'll all get the rest we seek.

Silences

Place where we can't
    find them
breaking apart   no leaves
    on the trees
twilight between things,
    neither day
    neither night
suspended; the words we
cannot find choking off
anything true.

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First Friends

We remain, like promises
made never broken,
vows in the silence of children's hearts.

Every time you forget us
Is a lie stained grey from white.
You used to think we
were imaginary, until
there was silence without voices
but -- what isn't?

I was real for you once when
you had nothing else to hold to.
Then you turned to the TV, to your gods,
to other friends not your first, and you
are lost enough in that world to wonder
how I could hate you now
even a little? You broke my heart
before I was aware I had
one to break.

Better, a poem never finished

For better it is to try
than let our dreams
fail softly, die.

S's

Sceptred sickness snakes sunward -
Seeing, singled, starshorn
Singing sweet softly:
Snickering surmounts
Sundreamers slow stop.

Flu

The long march, to
exhaustion, from health,
a battle we can never win.
Each soldier a carrier,
each weapon a blade, loss
in the war against sickness.
Falling into death we
light fires in the caverns
of our souls, but fire
consumes never enough.

Cyborg Porn VR Poems

          .i

Sex with void forms, bodiless movement
Neural nets decoding virii emoticons.
We cannot write code for souls.
Forms without form, mechanic motion
Bits and bytes and ram --
Nothing real:  not me
                          not you.
Data read, written, exchanged; was
                          it good for you too?


          .ii

This is not love, you
Me, all we did was make
A hybrid of ourselves.

Love is learning to let you;
Never holding on
All I can offer.


          .iii

We keep sharing
                   each other
         but
                   remain strangers.
I don't know what this is,
                   there is
         here a
                   wealth of empty promises
.
Hiding behind avatars we are
         gods and sinners
                   beautiful lovers
         made more than
Hacked together codes.

Enough?

That today is enough,
Can be enough ---
If today is enough that
Is miracle enough.
Too, that today
Is not yesterday
And the gift of tomorrow
Is to be different than both.
Surely it's enough?

After Closing Time

Museum become one --
Particle board bones
Dust flakes decorating the air
Cobweb consecration,
and dead water, conservation
of moulded books.

To A Famous Poet

Remembers I, tear-jerked stung
First time I wanted to hurt someyou,
Late to the party bringing with
A Hallmark, too damn lazy
To spare of yourself, and make
Him, dying, even one memory
Of you to call his own. Bastard.

Light

Morning comes, and we wonder who we've been.
Another night of lost memories waking to false dawn.
If we could only know, if we could only see
Look down on you and me, eyes and thunder in the skies:
Another cheap light show they say and we say: "Hey!"
Loud as we can be: "Our gods a pretty swell guy."

Evening comes, brining night and promising sins
Saying it'll be all right, a brothel is an inn.
If we could only try it might be safe to cry
But the god can always see, knowing when we lie
And their cheap delights don't mask an STD or three.
We know it can't be right but we're so very lonely.
Judgement comes tonight and I wonder who we've been
And pray our god's sight won't look too far within.

New Gods

Johnnies come late, domesticated
Offers of forgiveness incense scented
Prayers of forgetfulness uttered, begging
Never quite out-remembering blood and
Sacrifices, the terror of the gods tamed
But never owned, nor castrated.

Fragment

Through bars we've left behind
Of a cage too well designed
Trapped - in silence resigned
To this last, in being kind.