This year
May we risk believing
That old bruised fruit
Can grow new skin
That the tables in our temples
Can be overturned
Dust shaken from rugs
Threadbare and worn
Their colour renewed
Category Archives: Poems
PRESENCE
Into the absence
Inert chaos of nil
A word falls
Fires the cosmos
With pure presence
Extracts from grey nonbeing
Energy of light
Divides it from the dark
NEW YEAR SPEED BUMP
I drag my case over the man-made border
Between one year and the next
A sleeping policeman
Lying in the road
Marks time in yellow and black
Opens an eye and speaks
DIEU-MOBILE
Dieu dit
J’en ai marre :
De plus en plus cons
Les hommes creusent la terre
En extraient la moelleMinent le sol sous leurs pieds
Il ne restera plus que des trous
Du gruyère d’ici peu.
HUSH
Certainty knows so loudly
A fighter-jet
Carving the world
Into soundbites
Mass-produced in bright keys
Belched from its rear end
Filling all space for thought
With static
A TALE OF TWO WORLDS
Fairy tales
Predictable pleasing
Happy end delivered
Folded and pressed
To the good, never ugly
Vistas of rolled lawns
Patchwork fields
Forests grown on request
Ready-clipped to measured height
WORDS
Words ride on sound-waves
Across smoky rooms and satellites
They carve out keys
That unlock underground rivers
And spark dry flints
Into fires that buzz
Hum and ignite ideas
Through towns and continents
We must use them well
QUEUING IN HEAVEN
Can we choose where we sit
At the eternal church lunch
In that great house of heaven?
Do we have to share a room?
Could it be … dormitories!
THE CRY – LE CRI : A CHRISTMAS POEM (kind of)
We struggle through life
Dragging carrier bags
Heavy with what we know
But once a year we dream
That the world stops running
Its habitual course
Just long enough
For God to put in
An appearance
THE LINE – LA LIGNE
Vertical line wafer-cotton-thin
Top to bottom, heaven to earth
Perfection drawing down to gravity
Pure line cuts through messed-up years
Soul-tearing conflicts, each side’s tug of war
Mud at the wall 