MODES OF BEING

A new hobby of mine is repeating a word

until it strays from its centre of meaning,

so risibly            alive

(an egg tumbling

through grass)

unburdened of itself, beyond thinking.
I lead a rich and duplicitous life on the ward. I’m fed well.

All the residents know me, their cherubic faces

assuaging my fears

in the midst of some sinister music.

I’m happy enough

letting the television play, allowing sunlight

its languorous dominion.

In the cool phosphorescence

of these bus stop days

(my dust rising and returning)

comes feeling.

CRYPSIS

Stop the gunboats! Lately I’m relishing being
a strange fungus
in the meaning of the hall
unmolested, my brain
a razed monastery of thoughts
a prized gourd at the funeral of verbs.

I’ve only growth
as a means of mobility. Here
beneath the smashed, chaotic flagstones
a specious beach

bestrewn with slogans, garbled soundbites
cracked versions of ourselves
exhumed in sunlight
in a tableau of what’s real.

What to tell you? That it’s enough
to make beautiful things
to love redly
despite the expiry date of dogs.

That the mind blooms
serenely, in virtue
of itself:
a feted puffball

of which these poems
are the spores.

THREE OR FOUR HILLS AND A CLOUD

Morning. Time to crank up the machine
without which
this wouldn’t be possible.

(You gesture towards

some tangerines, a laptop, a fresh

pot of coffee.)

This still life
cannot excite me today, will not sate
nor diminish this longing
to escape this life for jungle scenes
to play swingball
with vigour, meet monkeys.

Bad example, but you know what I mean
about torpor, the bureaucrat’s
burden, so often fishing in stagnant pools when each door
opens onto salvation.

In the next life (whoever
you are) I’ll be good, like the spring,
if not better. I’ll wade out
into flowerful fields
and disappear. I’ll see you tomorrow.