After Ithaka
Keep Ithaka in your mind as you head in the opposite direction, Whether by choice or chance or just the way the wind blows. If you are…
Litter: A Poem
A small, billowing, clear plastic bag With a press-strip closure – one Strip yellow, the other blue – now Open-mouthed, accompanies me, Tumbling beside my footfalls For…
The Literary Life: A Poem
The future wants a story, romantic preferably. Dying young, promise snapped: that will do admirably; So, too, will suicide (cryptic note, if possible), or an overdose, a…
One Breath: A Poem
Somewhere in the antipodean blue The old salt sea rustles anonymously Darkened by nocturnal ink Busy and dark the currents, the old fingers Wedge themselves into sea…
The Tombs of Kha and Mirit: A Poem
(Egyptian, c. 1500 BCE, now in the Turin Museum) i Everything you would need and perhaps more: a game of senet, for two players, with its perfect…
Paris Nightlife: A Poem
Paris is romantic, everybody knows, And that may be, but I doubt It could be less so to me, trying To sleep – “Do you hear? Go…
Grief Limmericks: A Poem
My mother is lying there dead. Memories crumble like bread. After the strokes, no more chats, no more jokes. My mother is lying there dead. My mother…
Esprit d’escalier
The Poet stretches out his long legs, looks up from contemplating his elegant, old-fashioned brown shoes, addresses the creative writing class, his voice tuned to channel charm…
Under the Passionfruit
A length of spider’s web startles In thin, shooting brilliance up and Down its fine extent, appearing And disappearing, catching colour In the light, losing it, in…
A Weakness for Westerns: A Poem
Of course there’s almost everything wrong with Westerns: the term ‘Red Indian’ for a start and that, from Fenimore Cooper onwards, noble savages and/or a dying race…
The Oranges: A Poem
So many, mock me in their ripening, Their abundance – singly, in clusters Of twos and threes - bold as nothing Else to see, their globes of…
Seismology: A Poem
Beneath our feet - not so far below - Creaks a widening fissure in the earth, Grinding its way to sudden Shuddering outcome and release: A fundamental…
Resurrection
I am already a dead man: I have broken faith With the life entrusted to my treasuring, and Not once, but again and again, as if at…