Latina

At whatever hour, whenever
there is Latin music,
she is Zorro
or a beautiful woman with a waist.
The colour red appears
either on a skirt, the white of a shawl
or the pink of a flower on the earth
and she dances a while
in a courtyard,
through the ceramic of low doorways,
over moonbacked teracotta tiles.

The air is garlic and magnolia.
The shadows may smoke a cigar.
Whether it is beans and rice,
a kitchen or a fire; gherkin,
goulash, paprika,
chili, tapas or tortilla,
she salsas.

In any gypsy recipe
the night is ripe with lips;
the spirit of revolution always,
in the revolution of her hips.

06

Another Chardonnay

And you – my passion – breeze through
These orange curtains like you own the place,
Pad along the cool ceramic floor with fiery strides
To the bar, heating the marble, raiding cupboards,
Growling; and I’m here watching you pace;
Find the bottle, put it to your lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night,
Wipe your mouth, sigh through your teeth,
While here I am, smiling – fisherman’s trousers tied
Around my hips, sun blazing down on the sarong,
Skin listening to those warm sea breezes,
Listening - to a lusty blond called Chardonnay
Tell me my troubles over the rim of her glass eye.
You take another swig; slam the bottle on the bar,
Yawn, stretch like a bear, step onto the porch,
I hear you say - What a perfect name…
Strike a match on the doorframe,
Light a cigar; pick Tequila from the larder…
Chardonnay wants another spiked Pina Colada –
What a perfect name…“And you?”
I reach for the bottle, put it to my lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night, “Whatever
You’re having, Babe - I’ll have the same.

a poem about Soup and Lettuce

On the black volcanic sand it rained,
on the Sahara white, the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no muddy ground
to tell of footprints under a nomad's moon
that swept by a roaring lions breath
arranged the landscape, valley and dune.

Snake tracks vanishing letters spun,
lizard feet wisped quick as a slithering tongue.

It rained one month the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no cactus cup
to catch one drop, condensed or not.
This silent irrigation, barefoot trod,
the red hot shifting map made dust
from lava turned to stone just for breathing air,

and there, a woman and baby, both so close to death,
cracked lips - how she longed for a taste of mud,

drained of every moisture bead, skin seamed,
rack of ribs, creaking bones, walked - one step,
one step, under a clear sky's fallen autograph.
Her baby held close by a fading scarf
made long ago by a Grandmother's hand,

knitted in the cemetery on the bench at Hoop Lane;
a grounds man by a wheelbarrow, smoking in the rain,
a memory plate of cut up fruit, eaten secretly at night
quietly in her tiny room surely kept them still alive,
walking through the blazing sun, so parched,
so close to death, not one more step to take: A mirage:

Visions of lettuce, sprouting from the sand
until unsure of truth or lie, oasis, sea or land,

one half coconut shell she did spy,
A few yards off in a shimmering heat of light.
A voice screamed from another land,
"Walk! I've cried every tear this desert lost
and have tried to stop the endless flood
for one half-filled shell of coconut.."

Then, like magic, there it was - soup in the sand,
and story told to children at a school:

A woman and baby so very close to death
are walking through desert isopleths
and find a coconut shell half filled up.
What should she do with this soup in a cup?
"Feed it all to the baby with her fingertips, Miss?"
is the innocent answer from a sweet child's lips.

So the woman takes the shell in her careful hand.
What would she do with the soup from the sand?



2008

What's the point?

The infinitesimal point needs no dimension
and embraces all. I'll tell you
right here and now
there is a light at the end of the tunnel:
Our essence is omnipresent, infinitely divisible,
and we are here to recognise
the oneness that we share.
At the intersection of two circles
or spheres whose centres exactly touch,
there is a place and time to see eye to eye -
Vesica Piscis maps a renaissance
in the architecture of soul.



2006?

Jane Austen smiles

Part of the seduction of fiction is in identification.


Who wouldn't need to feel pretty downtrodden
to identify with the threatening surroundings
of dark Gothic passages, the screams of a virgin,
separated from her family, at the mercy of society,
running through the drafty corridors of the 18th century,
and everything bleak, bleak, bleak?

She gave us the modern heroine, each good one
since Elizabeth, with all her wizened wit.
Elizabeth, with her good-girl strength and spirit
the inspiration for Bronte's Jane Eyre, a governess,
her passionate independence; educated, autonomous,
in revolt against the lot; id, locked in the attic.

Classic heroines, their lines censored, metaphor straitjacketed,
topsy-turvy corsets tight as Scarlet O'Hara's, but sadly, not so loose.

Later, on the streets of romantic fiction,
fantasy is real women at the centre of story,
still painting satire on the back of deep feeling.

Horse-drawn-slow, or slow, slow -  - quick-quick-slow,
down a winding road of flowers and hedgerow; hay,
soft lace, muslin, frills...watch the pace of rugged landscape,
there's a willful spirit emerge through the ages,
our indomitable, incorrigible, formidable woman
until she's full mettle throttle and a real warm heart.

See her fierce liberation on the pages of every day,
in the leaping of her zeitgeist on the squares,
on the curled lip canvas of walls, her words
are the cinematic graffiti of women's culture,
of fiery clouds calligraphic across blue skies.

(Jane Austen smiles. Another modern heroine writes the next page,
dipping the oceans, sitting in circles, weaving the texture of lives.)


07/08

It's about it,

It’s about the things we cannot write down
until all those people die - or we do,
whispering to stars making libraries in the sky,

all about the things that make us so elusive,
when elusiveness could be elu-civity, or lucidity,
for when we wanted to be as clear as day.

It’s about the glass stanza, somewhere in the middle
which breaks, and turns to such, and such; re loyalty,
stupidity, the inevitability of lines, sides,
Tribes, and many other rhymes.

It’s about illusions, delusions, fantasies, the ramblings
of drunken libraries, open books, doors ajar to moments of moonlight -
stars, stripes, scandals, newspaper articles, and silence.

it’s about peace in the middle of warring factions,
fractions, multiplications, and subtractions;
when a pie is not a pie, and there’s no point at all -

- measuring an expanding radius, or running
around on edge - it’s always about returning to the centre,
putting pen to paper, or tapping on the keyboard to begin.

Esa es vida, mi querida - That's Life, my dear...

Woman at 'Sunny's' pizza shop
chops onion and salami,
cries huge tears running
the colours of Italy
through the flour on her cheeks
"Que passa, mina Linda? Que passa?"
"Oh Querida!" she sighs
kneading the dough with
hands like clamps,
"hhhWhy???" she exclaims,
brushing more flour through her hair
twirling the base high into the bright sky
"Esa es Vida, Senora - es Vida!" say I,
my palms upturned, the pizza flying through eclipse,
the picture of her face before the moon lands,
spinning on her upturned fist..

Snake

Condemned to be a belly on the earth, you slither masterfully around the beehive, away from the beating of bamboo sticks, riding the air in a ripple of desert sand. In the whoop and holler of discovery, lengths of you hypnotize unraveling waves of dancing feet in a strike, a miss and retreat. Later, I wonder of your bite, hidden in tall grass, quiet. You are a toothless face on the fence skirting immunity or else beautifully venomous, contemplating legs, hips; no footsteps, no trace, just movement, and the lick of escaping lips

Fine

Colloquially speaking,
It is just a case of a
'Wayward Spirit'
Which sounds,
When put like that,
Quite charming;
Sparky, don't you
Think? After all,
It's not like you
'Served up your soul'
On a silver platter,
Extending invisible
Grams forward in
A fine spun, porous,
Net-veined manner.
Lets not split hairs.
We are refined; both
Delicate - marked by
Subtlety of discernment
And even though
I cannot often follow
These fine distinctions
Between design
And the undevised,
My soul has always
Wandered wayward
Through transpicuous doors
And home: no silver platter,
Just a fine-tooth comb,
To serve.

Skeletons 1954, Mexico (Frida Kahlo)

He took photos
To capture his favourite child
To frame the world
Or his vision of it.

She Painted
Tin paintings
To collect
And decorate
Her world.

A sun, a moon
And Pyramids;
Grey skyscrapers
For criticism,
Dead babies for freedom.

She was crushed,
Childless
And from her bed
Passion plays
Out with pictures
Of her pets,
Painted, "with no consideration"
Although she cared
About them all.

A jungle is always
In limited colour.
A monkey sits
In her arms,
Unaware of her presence.
She - unaware of his,
Her black hair a solid mass
Individual strands - there, but not seen.

Skeletons leap from the cupboard
Elegantly smiling.






05/06