From Bath to Cork with baby Grace

“It is time for the Resurrection,
Hibernation is not eternity”

Even a human being is entitled to wake up

without chocolate and haiku.

Ambiguity
introduces confidence
after Calvary

To rise from the dead at night,

well before dawn illuminates

bare tiptoeing feet of half-believers,

thrills me.

 

I am come from the other place,

where everything tastes

like raw, un-salinated olives.

 

I am come to be

in the presence of my redeeming

Landscapes

Seascapes

Mindscapes

Universcapes

 

I am company for an escaping spirit.

 

I am come for the fun,

a party to celebrate the Resurrection of the Word.

A sapling stood,
blowing in the storm,
while a poet,
buffeted by a thunder of questions,
cut fingertips in crevices
edging along solid stone.

What’s your poetry like?
What do you write about?
What do your poems mean?
Are you published?

The composer stumbled
from stage to topsoil,
sand, silt, and clay,
strewn on limestone.

I am a translator.
missionary,
adventurer.

You ask me
What’s your sapling like?
How does it stand in storm and flood?
What does your frail growth eat for breakfast?
How taste’s your sap?

–  in a few words we’ll understand.

“And what’s more,
tell us the story of your conception:
What magic pollinated and fertilised you?
Who gave you seeds to throw,
and drew you towards the sun?
Where have you bloomed?
What has attracted you
to such a timely death?

– in words from which we can grow rich.

O Sleep, my lovely boy, that sucks all fragments
from stellar gas, and swallows time from where
the galaxy resounds, and thereby draws the stuff
of dreams in bondage deep to sweet mem’ry;
If Universe awards your constant love
of generating eyes that move beyond
the Pale of slumb’ring lids, I shall
open the stars you win as prize by night.
She watches all that moves in hearts sublime
and even chews the devil’s grandest scheme.
No matter how flat she lies waiting here,
she may abstain from tales of light, and song.
Her orbit, though retreating, will awake
your smile, and transport you for goodness sake.

___________________

With thanks to William Shakespeare, Sonnet 126

 

Tiger was in his Hell,

he crawled into his Purgatory,

cried in silence,

like a bleeding lion

speared by an unrelenting hunter,

couldn’t walk to his Calvary

unassisted.

Tiger fell from his Garden of Eden

into Job’s pestilence,

out of the Mouth of the Whale,

and the tomb stone,

Tiger put on the mantle of Lazarus.

He faced his Peter at the Gates of Augusta

with firm forehead, trusty swing, and magic

conjured from the old days before his Flood.

Was it a plenary indulgence

lifted Tiger into his Heaven

in four days?

The black man from the innards of a dark wood

strode out on the Last Day of the Masters,

Resurrected.

 

Up and down, in and out,

even clockwise and anticlockwise,

thesis & antithesis,

contrary & collaboratively

When does a conversation begin?

In wombs,

by streams,

in lightening,

in the playground,

over coffee & tea leaves.

How does conversation move?

Like lichen in a hurry,

like racing jaguars

desperately striving to escape lava,

in fits & starts,

like a revolving Black Hole.

Who’s welcome in a conversation?

Gods,

angels,

devils,

shamen,

magicians,

jugglers,

clowns

queens,

princes and umpires.

You

foreigners,

Me

Roger.

Here’s an example of a conversation…

called “Business Jazz Podcast”.

When I lived in a black hole, no light escaped.
Light-bearing tones
were sucked in by the gravity
of waning density.

My black hole never filled,
there was always room
for matters to collapse inward,
growing melancholy.

As pain sank in,
like nails driven into the palms of Christ,
you saw my face
lighten for a camera.

Scientists used to have a theory of general misery.
They said my black hole would collapse
and, just as Dante emerged from his dark wood,
I would regain my fire,

and become a star reborn.