Friday 20 May 2016

Latest samson edit; SAMSON:




"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Hands, famed across the lands,
centuries later still—
though more for the final act performed in darkness,
than anything ever carried out in the light—
are embedded with minute
fragments of splintered bone,
a tribute
to the jaw of the jackass—
should have seen,
when eyes could still see,
the warning implicit in that weapon.

Hands swung
that beleaguered bone,
crunched the helmeted heads
of harassing Philistine soldiers,
who swung their iron swords
and dared attack in the narrow pass;
giving little thought to irony, I suppose,
as death greeted them in that dead bone.

Hands with flesh
that covers the renowned fingers,
warm even now, ridiculed as you are,
chained and kept far below, severed from
the yellow ball. The shadows capture
your shadowed thoughts,
memories of the light; burnished sun,
fire in muscles, firm earth beneath feet,
trapped in this place of darkness,
of dead soil and lost eyes; her hands,
the fever coursing regardless of betrayal.

Hands that have touched
spear and breast,
flicked nipple, drawn blood, crushed a hand,
fired a crop, caressed a cheek,
touch now
what eyes can no longer; in the trappings of the mind
images, mere echoes, flash, flicked by a god’s nimble fingers,
the ravaged mind, more rat than human,
repeatedly explains to itself,
as only a ravaged mind can,
how hazel eyes, while still able to be admired,
have led you to this place; in the dark, lost and mired.

Do you understand you forsook yourself,
followed the fallacy of the moon
whose weight is nothing
compared to the suns and whose light
is but a reflection, like the lake
that reveals
but has no reality?

Despite the sun
and the strength it willingly bestowed,
you gave the moon all your secrets,
standing proud in the swaying-curtained room,
the candle and the moon
dancing in the evening breeze,
allowing the blood-fed sickle
to shear your strands
and remove your strength

and now…

two hands, that once held, caressed and fought,
rest upon the pillars of the temple
and strive to bring everything down—

yourself
the persistent scent of the moon
duplicity—

seek to bury beneath the building’s rubble,
the shame of being blind when
the sun gave your eyes
all the light they ever required.

Tuesday 17 May 2016

Samson (edited)




"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Samson,
your hands, once famed across the Land,
and still now these centuries later,
though more for the final act performed in darkness,
than anything you ever carried out in the light…

Samson,
your hands, still embedded, minutely,
with fragments of splintered bone
from the jaw of the jackass—the rest of that body,
its flesh having long since rotted away,
the rib cage exposed as if grinning, daring Fate,
and losing the dare, obviously, rests in the desert,
a signpost to all life’s direction.

Samson,
how clearly you should have seen then,
when you still had eyes to see,
the warning implicit in your weapon,
but as you swung that beleaguered bone
and crunched the helmeted heads of the harassing
Philistine soldiers, who swung their iron swords
and dared attack you in the narrow pass,
you gave little thought to irony, I suppose.

Samson,
the flesh that covers your renowned fingers,
warm even now, ridiculed as you are,
chained and kept far from the yellow ball—
the shadows capturing your shadowed thoughts,
your memories of the light; the burnished sun,
the fire in your muscles, the firm earth beneath your feet,
not this place of darkness, of dead soil and lost eyes,
Delilah’s hands, a fever coursing still regardless
of her betrayal—flesh that has touched lips and breast,
flicked nipple, drawn blood, crushed a hand,
fired a crop, caressed a cheek, touch now
what your eyes can no longer see though you can still recall;
the images mere echoes, images that flash passed
as if flicked by a god’s nimble fingers,
and your ravaged mind, more rat now than human,
repeatedly explains to itself, as only a ravaged mind can,
how your hazel eyes, while they were still yours to admire,
have led you to this place; for in the dark, lost and mired,
you understand you forsook yourself, followed
instead the fallacy of the moon whose weight is nothing
compared to yours and whose light
is but a reflection, like the lake that reveals
but has no reality.

Yet Samson,
despite the sun and the strength it gave,
willingly, you gave the moon all your secrets,
stood proud in the darkened room, the candle dancing
in the evening breeze, and allowed the moon
to remove your strength and now
your two hands, hands that once held, caressed and fought,
rest upon the pillars of the temple
as you strive to bring everything down…

yourself, the moon
Delilah’s lingering scent and
most of all

Samson,
you seek to bury beneath the building’s rubble,
the shame of being blind when
the sun gave you all the light you ever needed.

Saturday 14 May 2016

The Burning Bush speaks to Moses and his lover

 
If you believe then
when you come together
your hearts will part, two
red seas shifting allegiance,
leaving the space between where your words,
your hopes, can enter and be swamped
by the years; drowning in shared moments,
the traversed desert gone now…
those cavernous nights spent alone, prowling
for meaning, for a light other
than the moon’s false reflection of possibility
finally buried beneath the deluge
of this experience.

And if you believe then
when you lay down your words, your experiences,
your fears, your hearts will merge from the river
and carry you together as if the you two
might be babes born in the basket
not knowing where you head,
only that at some point your journey
will free you from all that has gone before;
so that like migratory birds you might
fly across the unnamed oceans
and find shores distant from your humble beginnings.

And in your ears, as you soar
your merged hearts
sound like trumpets loud enough
to tumble the proud walls of Jericho.

Friday 13 May 2016

The Ripples of Separation - edit 1



I think sometimes of that baby in the basket,
set loose from the bank, cast adrift
upon the life-bestowing Nile, its blue water,
the tall reeds along it high banks, the sacred Ibis
flying low, curious to see the crying child
all while the hot sun beat
(to the tune of the babe’s heart)
down upon his swaddled flesh
as his arms and his legs kicked and clutched
empty air where moments before
had been the warmth and security
of his mother’s breast.


The baby too young to understand
anything except being lost to the current,
little ripples of events joined
like voices in a crowd to create the whole,
of events he does not comprehend,
loss as heavy as a stone, though he does not understand,
the way I never did, standing in church
listening to sermons delivered in ancient Latin, he can only
feel the change in circumstances the way the basket
beneath him, shifts with the river’s alterations,
threatening to drag him
beneath;

never to know that his mother is lost
so that he might be saved, and this unknowing—
what knots were tied, mooring him
like a ship, tied and left to bob on the ocean,
hitting the pier, hearing gulls cry
and wishing to be soar with them
but trapped to remain tied to the one spot;
and what what lost to him?
The events that might have changed him if only
to save him his mother had not lost him
and he was never to know except in its absence?

and I wonder if later, finding himself
 in arms that embraced him, the breasts
pushed close, the warm of breath, of pulse neck,
he, unsettled by that water’s uncertain trip,
does not believe, not ever really –
and perhaps this is why as Moses
he could cast aside so much and chance
the words of a burning bush, the separation of the river
and the wandering in the desert –

that he deserves those arms and the love held within.

Wednesday 11 May 2016

The Prodigal Son (a third edit)



The force that drew you home — each sunrise
you stood at a foreign window and watched
the returning sun, its rays hitting the sand,
as if the desert skin were a blind worm
wriggling its pink segments, slowly burrowing
into your heart and you emerge without expectation,
travel towards you father’s eager hand —was it stronger
than that which drove you to choose emigration?

And your brother, whose smile was lost
in the distant childhood that severed you both,
whose eyes stayed closed because he saw too clearly
your mother’s hand, how it lingered on your shoulder,
did he ever forgive you, who took for granted
all that he had not—forget your father’s words spoken
upon your return, what else could he utter to justify
his excitement as he spied you wandering up the road?

Did your mother’s eyes ever lose their sheen

of pain? Did cousins, once co-conspirators,
and family friends, always visiting, ever cease
that curious sideways glance in your direction?
And in the cloying heat of the many summer nights,
surrounded by familiar sounds, laying in your tossed bed,
as if a mariner trapped by contrary wind,
every time you exhale do you wish to again escape?

Friday 6 May 2016

Abraham's Consequence:



Carry this wood for me son,
On your back, a burden
For I am so old now, born down
By Time and though I can still walk,
Yet my back permanently is stooped
And I cannot carry the weight of my youth.

Come my son, we have far to walk
And my footsteps have shrunk and fall
In the creases of your large strides.
Across the blighted terrain we must journey
Into the day and through the night
Until we reach the mountain’s crowning.

There we will burn a lamb (hush son
Don’t ask where the creature is now, anon
All will be revealed) innocent
As the day’s breaking of night
So that our sons and their son’s sons
Will spread across this empty planet.

…And here is the punch in my guts
I feel when I read this ancient text —
What did the son feel? oh we know about Abraham,
How he withstood the test
Ready to burn his only son at God’s behest —
But it’s the child’s mind I wonder about…

How must it have been…laying there
On that pile of gathered wood (that he himself had carried –
And here think of that other son and his carried wood)?
Wood drenched with a flammable liquid,
The father with a lighted torch, madness in Abraham’s eyes
For surely the test would bring us to that point —

What did Isaac think of God
As he lay upon his back
On the wood stack, the torch already alight,
The fire ready to leap across the gap;
What did he think of his father, Abraham,
Of himself cast as sacrificial lamb?

And did Isaac ever forgive—is it possible to have a choice,
Can a son can forgive his father
When his father listened to The Voice;
Took the son to the mountain peak
And prepared to set the son’s flesh to burn,
In the name of faith, a sacrifice?

Now imagine the tears shed on that walk home
Flowing freely down the crevasses of ancient Abraham—
He understood the damage done,
The reverberation to be felt through all the centuries;
Fathers and sons ceaselessly engaged
In the conflict between the lamb and the beast.

And this brings me to my point—
Nations make the same selection
And we call it war
The god of our nations, calling us to send
Our uniformed and lumbered children out into the world
And sacrifice them for the common good.

Abraham must surely have known
What his actions had set in motion;
And Isaac, was he filled now with an unexplainable angst,
A desire to lose the lamb and become a wolf,
Rend the father limb from limb
And replace the old order with the new?

Then there is the mother, left behind,
(And all this time it is still an immoveable fact),
Standing there at the opened door,
Her eyes drained from the day spent
Staring into a distance greater
Than any male god ever understood.

And in that face I see Mary
As Christ carried his wood
And the face of every mother
As their son marches off to war,
Lambs all of them caught in the fates
Of the old men’s making.

In that face I see my mother,
Standing as she so often did;
Her hands crinkling the venetian blinds,
Her teary eyes staring out
Into the darkest of night, waiting for her son
To return safely home once again.

Thursday 5 May 2016

Moses Displaced (edit 1)

 
This desert will entomb me.
Each grain of sand will consume me;
A feast of decay, a burial by decree.

This desert will not let me escape.
It will hold me in its grasp
While in the sun my waters evaporate.

I have carried my people far, as if
On a river we travelled, in a reed basket ,
Seeking the promised land —

The swaying tree, the white-tipped river
Winding between the shadows of the valley, the dreams
Prophets have handed down like swaddled babes.

But now I know.
This desert is the end for me.
It whispers; it sings
The desert’s words are my unravelling.

This will be the home of my bones until I
Am desert too, unrecognizable even by God,
Blown across the sands as sand myself.

This desert’s rising and falling bosom undoes me,
Drinking me into the expanse so uniform
I will be forever displaced.

Wednesday 4 May 2016

Moses Displaced:



This desert will entomb me.
Each grain of sand will consume me;
A feast of decay, a burial by decree.

This desert will not let me escape.
It will hold me in its grasp
While in the sun my waters evaporate.

I have journeyed far and thought
I might see the promised land; see the green valley,
The swaying tree, the white-tipped river I have dreamt of
Winding between the shadows of the valley
I had imagined…

But now I know.

This desert is the end for me.
It whispers each evening; In the morning it sings
And the words are my unravelling—I will never leave.

This desert will be the home of my bones until my bones
Are desert too, unrecognizable even by the eyes of God,
Blown across the sands as sand themselves.

This desert undoes me, seeks to hold on to me, to bring me
into its rising and falling bosom and hug me eternally,
Drinking me into the expanse so uniform I will be forever displaced.


Tuesday 3 May 2016

The Poet is an albatross (III)


 
No matter how prodigious the wings,
No matter how resilient their feathers,
No matter how far they extend…

At some point

The poet’s wings will falter.

Words and thoughts plunge into the big still
And the poet must endure the minutes,
Hours and days as if strung up on the tree,
Blind to events, severed
From the pulsing heart, the poet’s lungs
Laboring to inflate and the poet’s sacred voice silent.

At such times the poet must then be patient;
Let the tiredness settle, let it weigh down the words
Until the curving words and all their possible connotations,
The flowing sentences and their musical enraptures,
sink into oblivion — dare them to be gone forever!

And in that moment the poet’s strength returns,
The feathers flutter as words and rhythms return
Like green leaves and the albatross takes flight once more;
Heads into the great trajectory across the globe, migrating
Across the lines of other poets, other thoughts, other rhymes
Remaking everything, recreating and soaring into the blue.

Monday 2 May 2016

Two Women, One Child and The Judgement:



On the marbled floor, perhaps a mosaic, the tree
Spreading branches like burgeoning humanity,
Both women collapse, their hands beseech,
Their eyes wet with tears; they each tell their story,
Call for Solomon the Wise to grant them leave to claim
The squalling child as their very own son (and that babe,
Innocent of crime, did he have a sense of calamity?).

In that crowded chamber, how the onlookers
Must have studied the two? Did they place bets;
Did a voice cry out as if a new tabloid was being sold?
Were there conjectures made; whispers behind hands;
Judgements on each woman’s performance?

How many of those onlookers
Would have made a decision and moved on
to the next judgement? And if they
Looked closely into the shadows of the room
Did they see an angel shimmer, could they
Have heard the breath of God, have seen Him
Silently stride through the congregation
And into Solomon’s mind; releasing logic
And in Time, to set their King aside
From the horde of cast-off declarations?

Was Solomon’s God his innermost voice
Eternally extolling him to make the ethical choice
Regardless of how he must look to the outsider’s eyes?


And how did Solomon the Wise look
In those moments when he gave his decision?

Did the crowd gasp? Did they cover their eyes and weep?
Did they clench their fists and consider a revolution? Or worse,
Did men feel their loins stirring; knowing some other male’s child
Would soon be severed in two? Did the many beasts
In that room win out over Solomon’s emerging civilization?

And in the aftermath, as the mother gave up her child
And so gained the highest ground —
Leading to the saying that love conquers all—
Did men then feel that shudder of missed opportunity,
Of limp disappointment at no bloodshed,
Or horror at each other’s (and so their own)
Hunger for the child to be slain upon that marbled floor.

And Solomon, alone that night,
Did he weep for mankind’s future?
Did he realize that the beast is tattooed
In secret, in the soul of every child, so that each of us
Thirst for blood, seek the darkness not the light,
Shiver with delight when harm visits
Neighbor and foe alike?

Sunday 1 May 2016

Samson: (edit 1)



"The sun is within me and so is the moon"
Author: Kabir

Your hands
are embedded with minute
fragments of bone, a tribute
to the jaw of the jackass—how clearly
you should have seen then,
the warning implicit in your weapon.

The flesh that covers them—warm
even now, (the ridicule you have become)
chained and kept far from the sun—flesh
that has touched lips and breast and blood,
touch now what your eyes can no longer see—
and your mind expounds, as only a mind can,
how your eyes, lured by lunacy, have led you to this place;
for in the dark
you have forsaken yourself, followed instead
the fallacy of the moon
whose weight is nothing
compared to yours and whose light
is but a reflection—a lake that reveals
but has no reality—yet
you gave the moon all your secrets,
allowed the sickle to shear your strands
and remove your strength; now
your hands, hands that once held, caressed and fought,
rest upon the two pillars of the temple
as you strive to bring everything down…

yourself

the moon

and the shame of being blind when the sun
gave you all the light you ever needed.