Poems From Fenwick Tower Read online

Make Mine a Manhattan

  Across the trail that hugs the conifer-spiked edge of land mumbling into November sea,

  Bohr makes a statement carved thoughtfully into the whitewashed wall of an outhouse,

  That bit about “everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real”.

  I can’t help but look beneath my hole-for-a-throne and wonder

  If underneath the black ooze of unmentionable,

  There is a ticking little bomb with its nose pointing upwards.

  Game Tree in Soft Focus

  From my rented window view, with glasses put away for the night:

  Myodesopsia in contra dance formation

  Repeated over multiple plains with Comet and Lionhead goldfish

  Over electric lattice

  Lines punctuated by burning yellow Marigolds and Calliandra

  Dance progressions disappear beneath pond slime and shadow

  Or around upended draughts boards glowing a dull, brown glow

  Going For a Song

  Down on the dirt road made of your clay and mine

  Your soft clay and mine

  I am a man who likes quality

  Okay, low-cost

  Cut-price quality

  But still

  Quality

  Together now we have this

  Soldier of misfortune here in the studio

  Let’s take our next caller

  Go ahead, Gabriella

  Gotta question for the soldier man

  Gabriella asks

  Why send off your warning from pneumatic tubes

  Just blast out a tempest on a didgeridoo

  Dust off your keening, earnest voice

  Cracked in places but ready to go

  Down on the dirt road made of your clay and mine

  Your soft clay and mine

  Klopstock Quadriga

  The cheese in the harbour is made from the milk of

  Tired clouds squeezed by high winds and circumstance,

  Says Old Man Klopstock

  He rides his fingers over

  Folds of holes in winter pockets

  Looking for a door to escape

  Down there

  Where cold, wounded thigh meets

  Death shroud of Charlemagne

  The ecclesiastical meets the fantastical

  Klopstock slips into his own wound

  But before his final departure

  Tips his wig to suggest that you

  Dig a hole in the water

  And bury your tears at sea

  Print a picture of your shadow

  To prove you come by darkness

  Honestly

  Swimming Pool, Water Park, Snow

  Life guard out in an apple orchard

  Nice shorts there out in January cold

  Lifeguard tower covered in frost

  Interrupted step by step

  With flip flop indentations

  Shouting to displaced Jamaicans

  Who did not make it home

  Get out of the water

  Followed by one, two three short blasts

  The Jamaicans eye one another,

  Convince one another to humour their fine

  Life guard, and feign fatigue

  They beg for assistance out of the invisible water

  Exemplified

  By snow-covered earth

  The lifeguard and his distressed swimmers make it to shore

  There is mollification

  If not exultation

  You Can Paint an Elephant, But You’re Still Gonna See Wrinkles

  1.

  Consonance sweepers

  Bring out the hypocritical oath

  In the many.

  I asked the Baum of Gilead, “What’s your theosophy?”

  He cried as he replied:

  “Though it may sound hollow I swear by Apollo

  That my dreams are screams in emerald green

  Such as the world has never seen.

  It makes you wonder where you’ve been. Still,

  No one takes them…seriously.”

  I am trying to be kind to

  The rivers in my mind

  Although the rivers aren’t that very kind to me.

  They catch me in the undertow

  And tell that they told me so

  And that redemption is the missing key.

  2.

  Lil misshapen lump of melancholy

  Says that on this side of Armageddon,

  “Luscious lemon pudding cake

  Seems sadly out-of-reach. Might

  Settle for a 4 lb bucket of

  Marbled corned beef brisket,

  A geisha girl and a biscuit.”

  4.

  Cockalorum’s beard found a kitchen midden

  Of seashells and broken, dirty dishes.

  The beard’s conclusion:

  “Death

  sparks death

  sparks

  Sun,

  Sun…”

  This is where you get unbuckled and let some other kid ride. Tsum vider zeen….