Freedom

Freedom alas, is also

Two flags tied to the horns

Of an overworked bull

Pulling a cart of drunken men.

 

thinley 19/8/2007

Witchy Nights

 

The currents of pain

On the dead man’s sleeve

Have begun to ebb,

They have no business to be there,

They must find their calling

To the face of some newer moons.

 

She is showing him

A horizon less sunset,

 The sun sinking

Into a hungry sea,

Its fire quenched;

It vapours into the saffron

Of a monks robe.

 

Indigestion has him in pain today,

He should not have eaten that junk,

Her delight meets his grimace,

He explains, she sympathizes and

Then she throws her potion of words

On the new moons face,

Which flees fearing unkind blemishes,

And He watches the tides in the distance ebb,

And feels the currents of his pain recede.

 

thinley, 2/08/2007

A lot unlike love

I have nothing to give you
But a dry, sterile vacuum

Touch like
The kiss of gallows
On a dead mans lips
A formal show of affection
To the one he has devoured

Words like
The cleric’s clever answer
To questions that no one
Really cares about
But it’s “important” to ask and answer

thinley, 1/8/2007

Hide and Seek

Remember when we were children,
We loved to play hide and seek
And you were more industrious than the burrowing mice,
You sought places in the depths of the earth;
I would sometimes wonder if you were
Being called by forgotten faces,
Could you smell so well their scent in digested bones?
Now blood, vessels and tissues of the promising worm
That wriggles in the bowels of the earth,
Searching or imagining or desiring a forgotten sight;
For I could never find you
Until I gave up and called out your name,
That sounded so shrill as if it were a whistle to the absent,
Might it have pierced the slumbers of the dead
And blotted blank dreams with jets of blue or black?
For the winter branches on the tree shivered
And a crow perched upon it
Made a dive for the worm that surfaced,
Then you appeared with a mischievous glee
And I ran across to you
To hear from you the places you had been,
And we both looked across and thought we saw
An eyesight wriggle in the eyes of the crow
Until a merciless catapult shot
From the neighbouring boys
Had it grounded and we saw in shame
They sing joyous songs over their prize
Of a roast perhaps,

To, did they know were ancestral scents?

thinley, 1/8/2007