starlings: November 2008

The Spider

Spider, Spider hanging right
in the centre of the night,
what empty hand and empty brain
keeps your web whole in the rain?

Who spun your web you spin all day
to catch the world that flies away
on wings that never want to land?
Who spun your web by loom and hand?

Who cupped your silk, made your spinner,
urged the threads now thinner, thinner?
Who made your patterns, web-like, growing
spiral-wise with genius showing?

You did, Spider, no-one else
formed your spider-silken pulse.
You grew yourself out from the silk
passed down the years like mother’s milk.

You planned designs, perfected them
as faultless as a faultless gem –
hanging dewdrops in the sunrise
dazzle all onlookers’ eyes.

Spider, Spider hanging right
in the centre of the night,
no empty hand and empty brain
keeps your web whole in the rain!

(with thanks to Billy Blake)

Crossing Sydney Harbour Bridge by night

You cannot step twice into the same rivers;
for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.
- Heraclitus 41,42

We made a noise above the water,
sang a song down to the harbour
and made our throats hurt.

A quite sober racket underneath
the rainbow dark above us
and water washing by below

and pulling out five-hundred miles
to the Pacific, five hundred more
to burning mountains behind.

Crossing rivers is an easy task:
bridges make it so that now
our feet don’t touch

this water even once.
We haven’t time, are not in time,
to cross this harbour once.

On the occult nature of atheism, I and II

On the occult nature of atheism, I

A patch of blue in the grey
with a kestrel hovering
its lazy wings away north

to Draffan by and further
down where the mountains
rise some sixty miles away

like so many jagged clouds
with their patches of blue
suspended in their grey.

On the occult nature of atheism, II – Job 9:17

If God is Wonder
I am no atheist.
But if Wonder is of itself
keep me

Godless
Empty
of the Void
of Vacuity
and Hollow

struck blind
by the blast of Wonder.
The sirocco of the world
and the cosmos it contains.

The atheist mis-types “good good”

"Good God?! I dropped an 'o'... good good...”

And then the atheist understood
that God was just a missing zero
from the great, the public, the social Good.

That God was just the lost ring in the circus,
the one where women sing
to the bare necks of the crowd.
They look up to the flyer
beneath his canvas cloud.

That God was just a way-laid circle
with centre somewhere
circumference final
not infinite as supposed.

That God was just the collapse of surprise.
Remove the “oh...” you mouthed,
lower the eyes and see it like it is.

“Good God? Good, good. Take God.
You should. And insert the absent zero.”

I dreamt Iona on my doorstep

The abbey stood where the shop still stands:
down the incline, old solid, above water
but grass similar__ likewise similar green
and water-softness washing over.

And in place of shelves, the skelfs of pews
and where fluorescence was, just a shadow
the shadow-light of stonewalls climbing
forming crosses high and bibles kneeling.

And where the Nethan washes down
a beach cut out as white replacement –
red-veined black-stones exchanged
for others just as black and red.

And Ben More there, Mull there,
transformed in summer light and air
to the windfarm by Carluke blowing
the same wind through hill and blade.

***

I took you there and presented
the cloisters, beach and mountains
presented each site as my home.

You walked beside me and religion
flew through the cooling arches,
becoming that shop there unnamed.

We climbed above to look to
the Atlantic and saw East Ayrshire
as desolation each identical.

Grass as grass of Iona and home
my doorstep thud a rock of Iona
a pebble kicked from sea to river.

I dreamt Iona on that doorstep
and Scotland shrank within itself
and exploded all parts within itself.

Wind breathed as wind of the Nethan
and Hebrides, both flapping out forgotten
and both dissolving completely

like water in water.

The non-conversion of the Pictish King

In his Life of St Columba (late 7th Century), Adomnan tells us that the saint converted Bridei, the King of the Picts, to Christianity.

However, John Howie in The Scots Worthies (1775) suggests: “Another and more probable account is, that during the persecution raised by Domitian, the twelfth and last Caesar, about A.D. 96, some the disciples of the Apostle John fled into our island, and there taught the religion of Jesus.”

Columba:
This day I come, this short day
to save your week, to save you
and take your barbarous eyes
and lick them clean to save you.

Bridei:
Right, visitor. They tell me
you’ve come so far – from Ireland –
across the seas, from islands –
Iona-far and Jura?

Columba:
It’s true, Your Highness, truthful
are my words, my seal, my soul
is in my chest, my sword arm
lies by my side, my heart though

lies there upon those islands…
But I have come to see you
and convert you to the Truth
that I shall raise before you.

Bridei:
So you say there, Sir Abbot,
but conversion is so sad
to a land that has no need
to corrupt the hearts of folk

who farm the fields and water
the stones from which they summon
the feed from seeds they planted
four hundred years before you.

Columba:
Four hundred years of pagan
thoughts and acts and wicked rites
bring nothing from the stones, Lord,
but wickedness, damnation

and barren fields quite empty
of the feast I’ll set before
you and your set-upon Picts.
You see, Lord, I can save you.

I can save you from yourselves,
introduce a greater life,
a greater purpose all grand,
all free of pagan pebbles__

Bridei:
Wait, now just a moment there.
Now, Abbot, you haven’t heard:
we need none of your speeches
and none of your conversions.

No, I think I know, looking
at that cross around your neck,
that you come to offer Christ
and the Christian way of life.

But some four centuries past
we were visited by saints
who brought the life you offer.
We have that life you offer…

***

Columba looked to Bridei
and looked up at the ceiling
and looking down was Jesus
painted blue just as the Picts.

***

Columba:
Right. You say so, Lord, but how
can I trust these words you say.
Your man up there, he may be
the sky-blue Devil himself.

Or maybe he’s your demon
and soon I’m to be possessed
by you and your Pictish thoughts
by you and your thoughts from dreams

of some kind of past in Christ.
What do you know about Him?
Have you lived His life like me?
One Lord, one God within me.

Bridei:
Now take care, Colum, take care,
mind that you are a guest here.
I am the lord of this hall
save for the Good Lord above.

And He is Lord of us all
here and in the future life.
Our fields will grow abundant,
our bellies ‘til satisfied,

our hearts like your Iona
will grow with our religion
and cover all of Scotland.
I say: we need no changing.

Columba:
No, I cannot believe you.
No, you are telling me lies.
Be out you devil of Picts,
up there, you demon of skies.

I cast you out of this land,
and wish our Lord upon it.
King, you are a blasphemer.
Renounce your demon and pray__

Bridei:
Columba! Close your yapper,
move your arse straight out of here
and never come back again.
I don’t like you Gaelic-man,

I don’t like your way with words.
I don’t like your choice of faith,
one that looks to change us all
and can’t recognise itself.

Columba:
You are no Christian at all.
You have no hope of heaven
just the burning of the flesh
in which you heathen-Picts crawl.

Bridei:
I said go and leave this hall.
Take your ignorance with you,
take Iona off with you.
You are no Christian at all.

Two poems about light

one. Rainy morning with head- and streetlights

Like science writ large
those experiments
of truck and rain and sloping road
the gravity, the mirror, struck and scattering
and the eye of the observer
the startled experimenter
gazing moonlike to the light
performing chaos and simplicity.

two. A line of Glasgow tower blocks from Canderside Toll

Picked up from sun-risen mist and cloud
as canvas displacing the Campsies as Magritte.
This is not reality – this view unreal
with golden towers falling from forty thousand feet
above a surface painted from light, from behind
the viewer viewing one drab daubbled sheet
the viewer viewing one dull dirtied mirror –
less reflection of less light, more gathered heat.

Dead swimming pool

Here lies the Ghost of Summer, 1973.
Sunk in a hole of its own creation.
See how the flaked and painted blue
replicates the wave and rippled mirror
of John's plunge there thirty-years ago
and the air poured into it bodily mimics
the deathliness of chlorinated water
Susan waded through, afraid of depths.
Four thousand strands of seeded grass
imitate in their windy haze
the four thousand strands of Father's hair
as he swam upon the bottom,
the bald spot redder than the brown around.
Here lies the Ghost of Summer, blue.
Look up and see transparent balls
launched up from grass to hit poor Mother
upon the head with a splash!
The sheep walk through the Summer dry
spectre on this rainy day all dreech
and drizzled on while the Ghost shines through.
You, family: this Ghost of Summer is made of you.

Creation Myth

Flash firework and the summit
of the Star blazed away.
This was the first day.

The Water and the Earth
stood up out of the Clay
and this was the second day.

Chant-beautiful
contemplations on the third.
The Wind and Rain wondered aloud
and wandered away.

Water and Earth recombined.
All the creatures of the planet
were formed from the Clay.
This was the fourth day.

Wind and Rain recombined.
All the creatures of the planet
were eroded away.
This day was perhaps a mess.
So formed a slurried nucleus of clay.

So scrap it all.
Start again on the sixth day.
Time is better spent with less.

Autobiography

South Africa spilt onto my skull
at an early age, quite early but not
enough to wash me Afrikaans
but left me Scottish;

South Africa sliced paper thorns
into my soles while barefoot
I walked the veldt and roads
with Scottish feet;

South Africa broke my leg
and left a scar a piece
of Afrikaaner metal lodged
in Scottish bones;

and South Africa followed me
home to Scotland
which had followed me
home to the Sun.

I measure her

I measure her in days,
on a good day weeks
and, really, that’s how
we measure lives of folks.
***
Her smiles:
I know them finitely.
Her frowns, similarly.
I have never seen her tears
but can imagine them infinitely.
***
I watched her fingers
touch the mirror
tip-touching, each ignoring
that other self
but no stranger to herself.
***
I am a thought thinking itself
a song singing itself
a book writing itself
and she was that too
but only was –
those parts are through.

Children Running

Trees in arctic wind that wave
two branches, low, then high, and blown
across the ice to imitate
the rootlessness of childhood.

Moon fight

The Moon, angry, raged at me –
took me, threw me, broke my bones
and laughed one sad apology
then spat on my remains.

Don’t kill me, Moon, don’t kill
the one who seeks most from you.
Your rocks and valleys are paradise,
your lunar night, unearthly ways.

The Moon, raging, angered me –
how dare you, could you, fly from me
and leave my bones and life in silence?
Leave it left in perfect balance?

I’ll kill you, Moon, I’ll kill
the threats you make on me.
Your light in sky, I’ll ration
your lantern, will diminish.

View over Newton

Arctic sun low
is hidden by cloud
by net of haze
and haze of light.

It cannot show
the jagged crowd
of patient trees
in doctor night.

It cannot throw
the shapes aloud
on silent days
without a fight.

Arctic sun below
the higher world
that darker grows
on starlight.

Moor

I was central and the curlew
was my satellite, my wanderer
was the curlew and the loop
of flight around me sent me
staring to the nothing, to the ground
and the moor all empty was all
the universe I could claim
winning through the curlew’s call.

Cotoneaster

Its hungry hand grasping
its position failing
and its rhythm in situ
a waste, invader, an enemy.

What is taken from
us in its presence?
When here, who accepts
the vicious dropping
of the plant?

Its hungry hand
grabbing the air,
the view, the contentment
of the garden.

Heron

A pattern on nature –
each feather an iteration fed
to itself to move
the back, always the back,
of the head.
Who has seen the heron’s eyes?
Just itself in river
feeding unfocussed and placing
kiss on the face
of its repeating self.

Nethan Valley Watercolour

A sun now disappearing
leaves crumble brown to foot
and air fills with light
fills hazed with fallen light
over hills, slopes – Auchrobert,
the ‘Gow, to Tillietudlem
and the sparrowhawk kews
a line through the land
calls to the buzzard painted
villain by the crows.

The Empty Lands

Rucksack worn
we came to find
the empty lands
together hand
in lover’s hand –
my hand of warmth,
hers cold.

The road broken
to potholes, spotted
by buzzard above
in cracks between sky
and mountain, glen
and loch and military road,
we marched.

And ceiling clouds
stretched over peaks
stretched over the land –
an interruption of hill
we laughed, we walked
the potted tracks
we moved in a landscape
empty, still.

Some empty land
she whispered, all space
all packed with all
the makings of a scene
each mountain a toppled face
each silence the pause
between footfall
and buzzard call.
Some empty land…
no emptiness at all.

Quite empty land,
I whispered back,
nothing between me
and the coastal track
two thousand miles off.

Rough road, explode
the passengers on you,
erupt the travellers,
repulse, reject them.
Take the rabblers,
unfill them.

He reads Beowulf

His middle-aged manner,
his corduroy, reads Beowulf
in Heaney’s translation.

His leather bag expensively,
his hooded top in mulberry,
reads the words of scribes
scribbled down from the rabble.

His iPod finds attention,
his stubble neatly removed,
hair trained to submission,
hair trimmed as standard.

He reads Beowulf
as standard as his standard,
not his flag, allows.

He reads Beowulf
as music allows.

Folktale of the witch and the river

Catch me a river, contain it in a jar,
the witch said.
I travelled on, ulcered, having lost my car
my feet bled.

I came to a river, easily captured
and caught it.
I placed it in a jar, earthenware, ruptured
by one faucet.

Here witch, take it, the river you wanted
it’s here.
This jar contains the river you wanted
do you hear?

I hear, but do not see it, cannot hear
the river.
You have a jar of water, a glassful, a tear,
you are a giver

of water only, not the river I demanded.
You have failed.
A river is not carried single-handed
but is sailed.

The Moon means

The Moon means
more, or less,
in a cloudy country
where it is hidden from view
on most nights and afternoons.
It shines rarely on the slab
of the countryside and city
mores the pity say some
more spittle say others
more whore-like say a few
at the Moon shining her best
on wet city streets at midnight.

Quite slutty, little Moon.

But most often the Moon
means more, or less,
to the people of a country
always smothered by cloud
never allowed to take an innocent view.
Always voyeurs, half-hidden by the thrill
of some new peek at her curves
in the closet of the landscape
still and eager waiting as they look
at the dirty book of the Moon.

One built-up, broken thing

We can see it all as
one long slow, universal thing –
a world beneath the light of moon.
A tinyness of reflection
holed by shadow, invisible
to the moon blind above.

That moon above, that moon
looking down on one slow
creeping thunder; one long
lifestyle under one universal;
one named but unnamed
built-up, broken thing.

Time, Sun and Moon

If choice were there
Time would choose
the path that follows
the Moon –

thief of its light,
maker of a path
less simple than that
of the Sun.

Time would choose
less simple light
dull, stolen light
- the light, the light

of day and night
vanished often
clearly sighted
when never wanted.

But Time you hitch
your hooks to Sun
- what a boring one
you’ve come to be.

A song for all the homes I’ll have

For the winter windmill stalled
decommissioned and decorative;
for the spring phonebox accepting
coins and cards and free of charge;
for the summer lighthouse brightened
by rubber days and eruptive nights;
and for the autumn railway carriage
stationary steeped in a fallen silence

This is a song for all these homes
in dreams and realities and waiting seasons,
all waiting their time again
from each of their mountains –
this is a song which equates
all as highest, each lowest, all equal
but differenced in name and experience.
Each different, but same. And nothing else.

Three extracts from the Waterlog Bestiary

… this creature takes its skin
and halves it widthwise
then the swarms begin
to eat the half that knew no sun …

… a trunk, with tail then joy
that all the swarms arrive
to play with this their dullest toy
in its nest and hiding place …

… eaten, rattled, out it roars
and attempts to cover-up the swarms
with the anger spiking from its pores
and death an almost certainty.

Sparrow on my windowsill

Its judder head
tick-tocks,

broken battery wing
flaps dust off,

and one eye torches
its atom sun at me.

But its suspicion hammer
nails the air

and tweek-tweek bird
song up, accuses me…

Then, look:
gone.

Review: Ružové papirovy - “The Pink Slip” (1965)

Largely silent, the harpsichord
takes most words from the characters.
The lead is Václav Dzurinda.

We follow him, his Kafkaesque
traipse around the offices
with his pink slip in his hands
and his quest to pass it on.

The tone is humorous at times,
but mainly flat – the harpsichord
creates dull dancehalls from corridors
as Dzurinda’s steps waltz into doors
with glassy silhouettes.

Slávka (played by Ema Kittel,
marvellous and beautiful)
is carried along to help him dance
the paper from his nervous hands.

A worthy winner – watch it
when happy to be sobered,
when sobered to be joyed.

World tour in search of Uncle Mimpi

SOUTH AMERICA
I had missed him, there, ahead
in the fog – the cloud a frame
and frame in all avalanching him –
him never seen, nor kissed by my
too cruel anticipation.
You see him? they asked,
the mountain, look,
it eats the mister
in the cloud, the faster
clouds surround him.
And through the continent
the Andes, Atacama,
the Amazon darkened all by mud,
through each repeated land
I missed him, always
ten steps behind – behinding him
and carrying my need
to meet before me.

AUSTRALASIA
Tablelands and Emptylands
and rocks the bigger
for being forgotten – the rain
a rain on edges only, the lakes
a salted crust reliant
on memory, perhaps geography,
or maybe searchingly a kangaroo
could discover lakehood upon the land –
the lakes no more visible in time
than he was – the wildlife
ahead of time where searchingly
invisible for being ten days ahead
in some storm where I stood under
some sun in hope of finding him,
my uncle, king of all-I’m-wanting
and all-this-hating in this travel.

AFRICA
Slow days, sub-Saharan, on boats
where rivers fashion a path,
on foot where veldt paths a fashion
for lines on maps from all points past
the animals – which are surely all
the continent contains – and the people
suffering an abundance of unlikelihood.
This emptier land, of a newer sort,
this neighbourhood of where to hide
and be unnamed, unhinged,
unlooked for in negative –
the sky a white surround
with sparks of black on
inverted grass and ground.

EUROPE
A piazza, square, one rooftop terrace
and in all umbrellas shading, unraining,
and in all I gather receipts from his passing –
he ate lunch here, drank coffee,
a croissant with Keats, the waiter recollects,
a lunchtime with Shelley – the facts,
sir, the facts, the evidence confirms
the simplicity of his passing
through halcyon cities of empires.
He ate always within eyeshot
of a Gothic cathedral, reneged on his travel.
And I gather receipts and can place him
in all ways in time and space
where table number is given
with unbroken view to cathedral.

ASIA
I shouted
and my voice was the deserts, the refineries
that poked the earth, the oil pumps
that clawed their names to their footprints,
and my voice was cities and snow
and mountains topped with a dozen
languages less than a total amount
and topped with people.
And my voice, I felt it shake my throat
first and landmass second, my voice
was a fountain, was the pities raised
by sad women’s voices, the joys
erupted by children’s shrieks and clatters.
I shouted and was not heard –
my uncle had passed here some weeks
before the voice was shouted
and industriously ignored.

NORTH AMERICA
The peoples of all lands –
they helped, scraped the sweat
from my brow and explained to me,
yes spelt out how I should find the man
this uncle I sought – all available
to the man who has what we offer.
I laughed, declined – no barter to tempt me,
no temptation to my holy self on holy orders
to seek the man who, in jumping borders,
lands always away in days and in miles.

ANTARCTICA
A glacier a ladder to realisation
a snowfield a blanket to mountains
keeping warm the goal, stoking the coals
of journey in ice and hope.
I sang through the white, my goggles
bewhited, ennobled by the Lord of Weather
who swam the winds like a star the sky.
I was four months in the ice –
Mimpi beside me – we spoke little, sang
the way two relatives can
as they march and trump their frozen way
standing as required, sleeping on trek.
Mimpi, I asked, where are you
my uncle, my companion and ghost in time
and space, where do you come?
And he smiled then, challenging me to run.

Throwing a leaf on the water to see its shadow on the riverbed

Not dead calm but a living drift so smooth
on rusted water, peated brook
of brown and gold
with light suggesting from behind.

The five-point leaf transformed
one foot below with darkness
and an aura surrounding
brighter than the sun around
and burning the riverbed

branding it sycamore, tattooing five
pointing downstream engulfed in light.

Beside it drift froth-and-bubbles
from an extra inch drop
ten feet away

and each bubble-froth
sends no shadow
to the riverbed but a bending
of light, of rainbow star,
a constellated base, of astral.

All thoughts unoriginal

I have nothing to think:
all thoughts unoriginal
and thought before__
the kitchen sink
at tht high window
with a form unreachable
scrubbing at the dishes
with flashes of light
while I move past
in this train night__
their thoughts like mine
the same as the last:
all thoughts unoriginal
every time.

An open letter concerning Meghann

Dear Sirs,

when does it stop?
At what point, when
does the other drop
to the ground like
a curtain, so sure,
so steady, certain
in its gravity?
At what point,
indeed, does gravity
take over and leave her
weighted? As solid
as the girl who lies
by the harbour side
waiting for the wave
of solid tide to make
her smile, her act,
her mask of laugh-
false-levity wash
off the outer to reveal
true Meghann?
Perhaps never; say, yes,
seen to be never
as any other.

Signed DMcK,
Meghann’s brother.

A snake on the path at Uluru

The snake grasps the air
tries to launch itself
to the cliffs on either side

sliding scared, running on,
its youth unable
to hold air and climb

to lift itself onto
those cliffs on either side,
and so runs away

from the black form behind
it, sweating a shadow
and chasing it on.

The Bird War

I am Starling, I killed the sparrow
sucked the remains having fired his marrow
and feasted on him.

I am Sparrow, I killed the blackbird
with my arsenal, pinned him on the board
and displayed him.

I am Blackbird, I killed the rook
stretched wings, beak and claws on the rack
and tortured him.

I am Rook, I killed the magpie
by aiming beak at each unlucky eye
and overthrew him.

I am Magpie, I killed the chaffinch
with one sharp blow, one murderous punch
and un-skied him.

I am Chaffinch, I killed the stonechat
with my song, left him grounded flat
and laughed at him.

I am Stonechat, I killed the starling
removed him from his feathered darling
and un-loved him.

Notes on the ideal woman

She will be in her twenties,
her thirties – it will be
the Sixties and her hair
will carry a philosophy.

She will wear stripes,
read Hergé and Faulkner,
smoke unfortunately
at actions from numb words.

She will speak clear
fluid to the dam,
her face will move around
the eyes that rule it.

She will smile when
a smile is unasked for,
blank when a smile is
summoned and mastered.

She will have a neck
to be an idol, her bare
back a map to the universe
each atom to be studied.

She will love unclearly
hate undearly, rhyme
with ease at the world
which is hers to please.

Review: Stranger Song (1973)

A tale told in shadows
of cities of enormous size –
attune your eyes to the enviable darkness.

And drips, the pipes and gutters sing
some song of water as protagonist
walks and skulks the City
silent as the plot.

But man and woman meet and love
is felt and lost and flung along
the pavement where the gutters lie
and tell their song and sing
their lie, their shape of City.

A hymn to City, City is all
above the man and woman, lovers
who silent walk underneath the song
of City and its dwellers.

Attune your eyes to dark and take
your heart along to view and lose
the will to see, to love and choose.

Beetle

Run – hide your black
your shine in grass
be obvious, be seen.

Be scared and take
your fear as flags
attention waving.
But if fear is watchword
in failed camouflage
you lie, beetle, lie.
You take the world
as challenge and hide
only wishing to be found.
Run – hide in ambush,
take fright in waiting
and attack in falling back.

Be scared, then take
the fear of watcher
and throw it back.

Kelvinbridge

A leaf slip-slicing on the sunrise;
gold, not gold, but red
and old, old leaves
flake down like slate
made orange silver by the sunrise.

And a river boil-lancer down below;
sweep, hear it fry and sizzle
this new morning breakfast
of a river here bubbling,
dull shadowed down below.

His face marches towards;
eyes dart sparrow and blackbird,
a hand clutching head
a finger slipper through the hair
he tip-toe lurches towards.

Six stories from a photograph

one.
We were proving some jokes
by showing our eyes were
never needed to meet –
telepathy proved it,
transferred the comedy
between us, quite discrete.

two.
I am running for you
and the roof is open
to cold suggestion where
you stand still statuesque
and waiting for my hands
to hide you from the air.

three.
You silenced me – silence
was the weapon – you stole
my voice leaving quiet.
But remember the truth:
one third one caused the noise
to die – don’t deny it.

four.
We have been waiting here
the years a thousand times
a moment in passing.
The sky bleached, face solid
and the support standing
between us and laughing.

five.
I held the secret you
and I regarding it
held it as a riddle –
and my hands holding it
were a way of fighting
some truth in some cradle.

six.
You are the photograph.
You hold image in air
of light received – no more
than photographs can be.
Past and future are deaf
playing no music, no score.

Little Word

Little Word.
You hop from tongue-tree to tongue tree
and whisper yourself
pulling noise from around you,
Little Word.

Little Word,
you run across the mouth-land dryly
and shout yourself
pounding sound from what you are
Little Word.

Little Word,
you pace from ear-hole to ear-hole
and say yourself
presenting rumbles from your own
little word.

And Little Word you are silent.

Professions of poets

one.

Profession: finance, since birth
in the money and the worth
of all the prizes and losses
every man can see.

Since birth in money
in desire of more
of all the world
so blind to wanting
their wanting is blind.

two.

Profession: engineering
building their world of
components constructing even
those components of their world.

Constructing their foetus
in the confines, constructing
threaded lines tying –
as a science –
their life to lives of others
and lives of others
to their life.

three.

Profession: farming, digging
cultivation and evolving
a happiness and a miseriness
from the botanics they worship.

And worship and praise
the weeds and glories they raise
from the black earth, the red
earth the mud and dust
they plant in.

four.

Profession: waiter, more patient
to the world that wants
that asks, receives and dissects,
that takes and gives.

Waiting with a silence
the rain drips rocks away
the stone drips geography
and the waiter waits so blind
in waiting the wait is blinded.

Song for the unrequited

We are the ones dull-brained, dull-hearted.
Dumb to feeling, dumb to sense.

We are the ones released to fly and sink.
Pigeon shot on pull, the dead fish rising.

We are the ones made mad by care.
Our care that altered by the other’s care.

(What do they care?)

We are the ones who see the other forming –
a face in foam of cloud, in collapse of dune.

We are the ones half-risen, half-slaughtered.
Alive in memory, quite dead in living.

And we are the ones ridiculous, we clown-foot –
we parade around the big top gurning.

Hell, love

Hell, love is not for me.
Each day it shrinks away –
a wave sent outwards
to the shore from my small boat.
How can I convince you my love,
error-laden, was no such thing?
Reduce it, please, to a failing.

What I know now, though, is this:
a river carries
light and life within it.
Love is carried in air.

Full moon on Candlemas Day

Full moon over
her face in profile.
Hair eclipsing
the surface of the moon.
One eye diffracting
what stolen light remains
after the shine I’ve stolen
sinks into me, then lost.

Which to look at,
which to see and hold
in a lazy memory
that darkens, lightly
blown to the past
by an inability
to choose –
which to choose?

Full moon in morning
a crown above her.
Some glow above
her attractor face.
All thoughts on each
of the beauties before me.
All thoughts lost
by choosing neither face.

Sheila

I would imagine she
is more beautiful when
she is angry, raging
out at men with a fist
of curled hair and black kick
of high heel at their throats
and a backwards shatter
of elbow; her Latin
eyes piercing diamonds
of fired carbon, burnt
into souls of those fools
who dare throw their empty
ridicules upon her.

Dead man in desert

Leaving the bus, we walked out to
the dead man lying there.
He lay four miles long and we stood
fifty feet from his hair
as thick as ropes and tangled up
in knots without a care
or comb in at least fifty years.
The dead man lay dead there.

And Jennifer suggested he
was bigger than a whale
and we nodded in agreement
with her thoughts on his scale
and asked if he had, some two
miles down the line, a tail
to splash in the sea of desert
and upset ships in sail.

We talked and gossiped about him,
how he came to lie here
in the desert and how he died
with nobody else near
to bury his four mile body
and cry at least one tear
because the death of any man
should cause a little fear.

But we soon grew bored of watching
him lie there, after a while,
we jumped back on the bus and went
on in our tourist style
and saved our curiosity
for those men in a pile
laid out naked in the desert
lying mile upon mile.

A whale beached near Mardin

Its carcass dust upon the pavement,
we sidestepped anticipating
eruption
explosion of the beast
in firework display of itself
in lightning strike of whale.

We took ourselves further, the water
waved a hand to us
calling us
announcing explosion of the beast;
but the water lied a falsehood
sinking blue plains to itself.

Six South Lanarkshire Birds

1.
The blackbird
is a country boy alone
in the city facing a crossing and worrying.
The flicking of the green man sets
a ticking flinch staccato;
makes him flap at an angle
and fly over the road to the pavement.

2.
The sparrow
is a greyhound chasing
hares when the gate crashes up
and clicks its four legs into sprint;
sliding out the cramped darkness
and cupboard in fear
of what’s in the trap behind.

3.
The magpie
is Casanova early afternoon
readying each finger for love.
Spraying some scent on cuffs
and frills, and clipping nasal hair
for his variety of fifteen discrete
women waiting
by balconies and brushes.

4.
The pigeon
is a book by a broken author;
discredited,
weeping each morning at the reviews;
and picking up a fork, spears
another rind of bacon
and chews away
through the tears.

5.
The swift
is an athlete pole-vaulting
hopscotching, steeple chasing like crazy;
tumbling on the gym floor
for a doddery ten and then hurdling
up the track for medals and for whoops
and first-placed eyes to amaze.

6.
The crow
is a monk waiting, waiting, waiting.
Always waiting for some signal;
moodily as a grump.
Each twitch of the head asks
for some explanation,
something to be said
by the clouds or the road
or the monastery wall.

Two poems about a hare

one.
A field of iced summer
and an edgeways sliding
of motion arcing
and shadow flying
and both repeating
their monotone chord,
no chord at all.

two.
What can you bring me,
Hare, but your names
in multiple? what names
can you speak me
with lip-split lasping
and grasping for sense?
what sense can you mean me
in your eyes, firm heart,
your legs and litter,
your widening arc?

Songs

Some songs are blasted
weather beaten and blown

like paper boats on puddles
like an face unknown through tangled hair.

Some songs don’t last
this attack of air.

Some fail to hover; sink; sunk by wind,
by despair. And some crash to rocks

left carelessly there by gales.
Some lift off like tiles and smash to waves.

But some survive.
Some enjoy just being alive.

John 1:5

We saw the shadow rise –
it was real, was solid –
and the distance and the sun
and myself – did not understand
the shadow standing over
breathing on us.

We could not understand
that the light had gone
to the darkness too dark
to show through it.

The scorpion’s modest song of himself

Be gentle with him, careful,
resist his charms__ he has none
spare to share amongst you all
between the Earth and Lion Sun.

He is the tailed-one
and the one-to-sting,
his-claws-a-balance,
the blackened-judge.

He is the truth-to-scurry
and spider-cousin.
The rock-hidden
and strike-resounding;

a plain nip-the-bud.
The wall-walker,
the hide-from-view,
the sun-stalker.

He is caught-by-the-moon
and flashed-under-foot.
He is arms-and-legs-of-the-tree-root.
Tail-a’wander,

eyes-confounded,
shadowed-lawyer,
steel-tip-bannered.

The one who treats him
with respect be honoured
by a parade in the town
of the sick and scunnered.

While the one who grabs
to crush the beast
will lose his hair
and pass, deceased.

Geppetto in his whale

All is waiting, not idling.
Here within this cavern
I approach, by the second,
one second closer to the goal -
all those who wait and do not idle.

We all wait and do not idle.

If I had an axe I'd strike
the stomach of the whale
and the girder ribcage
of the whale's survival
and draw back to my cell
one whale bone to carve
and carve a new boy, -
a whale boy - to grow
and carry news of my survival
to the world, of how
I waited for my goal
and did not idle.

Alan of Balnakeil

All grain, all texture,
all tree-ring – this woodman
of nature, of the north.
This wooden man.

This wondrous man
whose every word grows
ready carved into some beauty
set out before me.

And his memory composed
of all the carvings done before
he stood in Durness light
to greet me.

And his body composed
of every object brought forth
from the wood he chose
to alter and fashion.

And his manner composed
of the woodland his spirit
flies in; his spirit the cellulose
his soul resides in.

Carver of wood, by wood carved
into the image before me.

The Gold Scientists’ Song

This scientist, shines like lead.
takes gold paper and shuffles it.
takes gold numbers and buries them.
summons heat like a demonologist
and wipes his pale brow as a puritan.
Gold scientist, gold scientist
whistle as you examine,
experiment and repudiate
the stomach of the salmon.
This scientist, prays to silver.
takes a plate and presents his findings.
takes a fork and eats them.
swirls the face of what he knows
into the shape of the puritan.
Gold scientist, gold scientist
roar as you study,
enumerate and classify
the calm, the storm, the bloody.
This scientist, angry as mercury.
rages at the jasper and malachite
rages at the skin and nerve endings.
erupts like a gannet in flight
attacking the body of the puritan.
Gold scientist, gold scientist
harmonise with measuring,
weighing up and pondering
the puritan and fatalist.

On the complexity of mazes

From the simple corridor
add hedges, walls or mirrors

and build up turning complexities
arising with each other

exponentially to confuse
and hide the destination, the goal.

The more walls the better hidden!
shout out the bed-ridden travellers on paper.

But tell them No.

The maze is most complex
where there are no barriers at all.

Knights of Malta

Brother Tomás took to weighing up
what he had done, what she had done
and found she had deserved to die –
he hid her body badly.

Brother Raymond stole two weights of gold
equal to life, equivalent
to what he asked for from the Church –
he sold his treasure badly.

Two monks at loss, two left to their lightness,
bright faced, they stole from Life and Church
a weight from each, a weight they kept –
we judged them both gladly.

Philip and I led them away bright faced,
placed a sack upon them, hiding
faces, making weights of them –
we dropped them overboard, gladly.

Scotia Andaluz

A splash of rain on Moorish door
push open, show the warmth within
throw forth the gathered joy within
and be in sun beneath a moon
of Scotia night.

The olive tree, drop fruit on floors
make bread and take the sunlight in
make speech and take the moonlight in
and be in Spain within the north
of Scotia night.

A shrunken world, to conversation
the voice of other sinking in
the ear of Spanish, Scottish, in
the sun and moon, rain star and sun
of Scotia night.

Stoat

Its face
a finger poked in air
to point
at a general view
a look
of being aware, of shyness,
surprise
at being confronted,
a pause
in every movement until
moving on.

I was raised on the trunk of a tree

I was raised on the trunk of a tree
pure simplicity of birth
gave me wooden teeth
and an urge to bite through
and chew at wooden flesh.

And looking up: the web,
the mesh of all the branches
fed me thoughts of rising-up
chomping on free lunches
and filling-up and climbing-up.

I ate on all the paths
of twigs and sticks and rifts
between stem and restaurant stem
as, born on them, I ate on them
and ate until I burst

and passed a million bits of me
down on the tree and then the worst
was that my wooden soul fell last –
got caught on by the wind
and drag-drifted to the flat lands.

And landed – lost and sinned-
upon, and landed to be found
and landed with so many others
away from treeless grounds.

A good tale finds its level

Sitting down, or standing up,
he told into a paper cup

a story from historical times
in battered rhymes

all hackneyed, clichéd, clad in tartan,
at attention on the end, all Spartan

and naked in their charm.
He lifted up an arm

and drained the words back in his mouth
and, with one last rough, tuberculoid cough,

spat out a vomit of storytelling.
A vomit of stories sent far off.

Falling.

Franz Josef Graupner, mapmaker to the Emperor, on the eve of his execution

Simplicity; reducing
the lines to little more
than guides – fancy
is anathema – precision
is all, and if obscurity
is required, well damn you
your Majesty, I make
maps for you, not
the maps you want to see.

Simplicity; it should
show as close to nothing
as can reasonably be allowed.
When close to nothing,
the something stands out more.

Following Graupner's execution, the Emperor sought out a new cartographer, one he thought much more suitable to the Imperial Court. Michael Thalberg lasted a year before the Emperor let him go (waiving any execution on this occasion) with the statement: "I want maps, not paintings - you would have me cross a dragon's tail to get to my bed! "

My shadow falls on Beatrice

My hair on her face, her face
ignores the hair that strokes
itself across her face.

My chest pressed down upon
her back oblivious, what weight
a weight of dark on light.

My mouth against her ear, a name
initialled in ink, initials approaching
the suggestion of my mouth.

My shadow upon her, on high
falling down and shading her,
shading her from her own eyes.

About Me

All poems