Monday 27 February 2017

space poem #3

  
There is no space between the pauses, no easy leaps
into the cosmic sea, no place to find a purchase,
no ledge to grip and breathe; just the weight of me, a gift
of gravity, just the planet beneath my feet holding me
not as maternal parent but in anger and defeat, a fury
that my eyes gaze upward, that my thoughts yearn to flee.

If the rocket held enough fuel, if my clumsy fingers
knew the order of buttons to push, if the spacesuit
was airtight and through the great thrust I could be free,
my eyes might sometimes look behind me but the reality
would always be the future hanging before me,
one lurching step,
one free-floating fall, one anchored line at a time.

It appears that I am timeless;
a distant light travelling into the past for future eyes to see
and wonder
how a spaceman might have been stranded for so long
upon this sphere of blue and green, and  I also look up
at the stars that have been gone for longer
than starmen, such as me, have been
and wonder what other eyes might have stood
in some other time and place
and seen
and in seeing, have wondered
and with the wonder, yearned.

Friday 24 February 2017

space poem #2


Spun so that everything
has weight. Moved so that everything
appears still. He talks to make sense
of the senseless, listens to silence,
tries not to be cowed.  In his suit,
built to fend off cold and radiation,
he emerges - the cord, so like that cord
in the moments when he first emerged
that held him, fed him, connected him back
through the many moments to his first parents -
he drifts, watches stars and emptiness compete,
the void a mouth, a scream, a fist…
the stars, songs desperate to be heard
before the ultimate silence takes them
and makes them begin the journey again.

He turns slowly, moving as he is,
held as he is, suited as he is,
and wonders…

If the cord broke and he drifted,
how much time might he be granted
and what would be the worth of each breath
when even the stars flicker into darkness?

space poem (edit 1)


In the silence, a voice – the unheard sound
a ship’s rockets create as they cry out
against the void. In the vacuum, a wind… fingers
trailing down the cosmic spine, drifts
from star to star, brushes across the point
where dreams become and thoughts,
minute eddies of  time, flow back and forth, pool
in the emptiness of comparisons – really
is any star better than the previous, greater
than the nova, less than the yellow sun’s
emergent experience of the uncompromising night?

And in this darkness consciousness travels through,
a line without intention voyaging to places so distant
by the time they are arrived at the reasons
no longer matter… like how a starman
can hold a child, a daughter, say, her tiny legs
kicking, and, with all the promises whispered
into the powerful scent of that newborn crown,
still be shocked when she leaves home…
as if the years were but short breaths
between the joys and errors of life, and the starman
finds himself in the spaceship, his face pressed
against the small porthole, watches
as his daughter, like a bright blue planet, fades
into the diminishing distance of existence.

Wednesday 22 February 2017

a space poem

In the silence, a voice – the unheard sound
a ship’s rockets create as they cry out
against the void. In the vacuum, a wind,
like fingers trailing down a spine, shifts
from star to star, touches the point
where dreams become and thoughts –
the eddy of  time – flow back and forth, pool
in the emptiness of comparisons; really
is any star better than the previous, greater
than the nova or less than the yellow sun’s
emerging experience of the night?

And in this darkness we travel around and around
and through, a line without intention voyaging
to places so distant that by the time we reach them
the reasons no longer matter, like how a starman
can hold a child, a daughter, say, tiny legs kicking,
and, with all the promises whispered
into the powerful scent of that  newborn crown,
still be shocked when she leaves home…
as if the years were but short breaths
between the joys and errors of life, and the starman
finds himself in the spaceship, his face pressed
against the small porthole watching
his daughter, like a bright blue planet, fading
into the diminishing distance of existence.

Friday 17 February 2017

love


Spiralling out from the mind
hope, a rope to coil
around unsuspecting habits and you —
your words, stars that burst and I
move toward sound, bending like a leaf towards the sun,
remember songs sung at night,
hands on the speckled red laminate of childhood,
the crickets outside — ghosts that call cats
into the night-light playground of dreams;

sometimes the two of us share thoughts
before separate incidents from the past
divide what was momentarily joined.

When hands touch, fingerprints collide
so quietly no one notices the change
until at some later date, looking back,
realization dawns as a smile or a nod
and what has become just is.

Thursday 16 February 2017

The Unseen


 It is said somewhere, somewhere
out there where words meet the air,
merge, twist and become other than
the thoughts they were released for
that anything is possible and it can be true
but this time it is not no matter what
might be said, the moment that was
is not, vanished - a memory only, a fish
gasping, beached and afraid, knowing
as the sand grinds its life away, there is
no returning to the sea, no sunrise underneath
there is just the moment reflecting, a glint
in the eye, a quiver in the lips and words
let loose and falling into the past
where they will remain until having fallen
so far they become unheard while the moment 
beyond the reflection becomes the unseen.