Tattooed Enigma

She sits in front of me

A row away to the right,

Draped in those ebony locks

A vision of cherubic perfection.

She sits over hunching,

Looking from time to time,

Away from ardent page

Where she talks to herself

Through loops of tribal sketches.

Talking of overt authority

And the people’s consent,

And their leaders true

And their killer’s moves,

What spins in your mind?

I ask thee classmate,

Girl with the dragon tattoo.

For it caught my eye

First and foremost,

That snaking shape

That reared grandly

Across her left shoulder,

Swirling from under dress

In one long sinuous curve.

O’ twisting Green Dragon

Why your fierce eyes,

Is that not thine guise?

Do you spurn thy mount,

And yearn for thine skies?

*______________________________*

Meaning What

I’ve heard this before,

Again just now, about

Milling around meaning.

Myopic nomads in desserts

Yearning for better whys.

Myriad hordes through time

Enter this vaunted debate,

Agonising over reason and how

Naught in tales or lives

Inspires great thought or heart,

Never aspires to lofty heights

Going on round the meaning cart.

Admiring hawkers and vendors,

Never seeing the solitary roads

Deep in the market’s twisted lanes.

It’s not pity nor cousin empathy

That stops by my modest house,

Is it disdain then when I see

Swaying drunkards tottering about?

Other vintages just catch my eye

Nothing more and never less.

Learning from growing rocks,

Yielding to the sighs of the unsaid.

Minds opening eyes brightly keen

Imbibing essence from empty cups,

Near the surface, `neath the frothy waves

Easing through seas in my submarine.

*_____________________________________*

Lingering In the Small Hours.

Three have rung since midnight,

My pen paws and waits

As I collect my still friends,

Those quietly yearning thoughts

That meditate and wait,

Till we begin the call to hunt.

Friends and my mates

Away in the distance,

Perhaps by some need,

Have communed, and are

Still on churning walls

That call to webs,

Which stretch net-like

To catch collected feeling.

Over, and down hills

We chase the essence

Of my ticking heart,

My Lady, she so fair

I map every point,

Of her soul on body

That wears it's beauty.

Complexity that beguiles

Yet with no wiles,

Save her I's and My's.

Glen Goyne calls to us

As Baileys raises glass,

But we can't answer.

Constitution of body

Allows not sweet partake,

Of that sublime spirit

Trickling from Emerald Isle,

And my anguished wail

Travels the Highlands.

The silvered packets

Of eight and ten,

Attest my morning elegy.

The cigarette burns

Consumed by intake,

I hold it 'twixt fingers

That casually flick ash,

And then a question.

What smokes me?

Must I rhyme,

Continue my pantomime?

Should this be dropped

And that left behind?

Could I change my ways

To swim in strange streams?

Would I care to listen

That someone writes my dreams?

And I wonder

As I'm wont to do,

Does all end well?

In fire or ice, or

The urinal of want,

In some obscure corner

Of a garbage dump;

Will we find on the floor

Like in bad cups of chai,

The sodden dregs

Of our dreary world?

But now as before

I must content being,

With the songs of redemption

That Jamaican lustily sang.

He who was shot with lead

Still believed and said,

Love and peace my brethren.

*----------------------------------------*

Stirring Emptied Cups

There are birds here

There and now in then,

I can see them

Could watch beaks and eyes,

But then and now still

I can't hear their souls

Or yet perceive flight.

There still be flowers

Here and there,

Sometimes in when,

I could look at them

Can caress their petals,

But now and then

I couldn't smell their being,

Still can't sense their colour.

I sit inside and out there

Having held my empty cup,

I had seen it's clay

And known it's every crease,

I drank from it

Then and till now,

I sip it's subtle content

Here and again will,

In slowing trickles

Spill onto paper,

To begin my wait

For visited reflection.

*-----------------------------*

My Refusal.

Pondering the lay of the world

Witnessing the way of events,

Floating in this listless sea

Do you not feel sick?

Don't you taste that slimy slug

Slithering ooze bold and thick,

As it cloys the world and self

With trails of fiery words, soured emotion

Closing your mouth with it's clammy plug?

Can't you hear that rattle and clink

That follows the slam of drawers,

As clacking keys move vault doors

That clang shut in cavernous sound,

And yet fail to muffle the constant blare

Of the wailing whir of money counters?

Can't you see the vivid smear

Of leering Pride and mounting Ego

That rapes the innocence of good Intention,

While the hustler Greed chalks his cue

And pockets his ball in the left corner,

As he eye's Necessity's deepening cleavage

As she bends over the table clad in sultry red?

Don't you smell the thickening fumes

That rise from the bog of arrogance,

Which bubbles and boils in this heat

With the wafting perfume of lilies,

From crushed petals strewn about,

That swell through the stench of smoke?

Shouldn't you sense, by now,

The corruption of an imperfect ideal

Or the pandering of weaker wills,

Polluting the instance with circumstance

Inviolating the mitigation of damnation?

This is the home stretch, no doubt.

Nearing the future with soft tread,

Ought the blade cleave the mists

While the ploughshare yet exists?

*---------------------------------------------*