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?