Three poems

Atmosphere

 

I can’t wish on stars in unseasonal cold.

They’re older than they look.

And they keep shtum in shivery night

even when I sneak up on them.

Still they spread a stern and spiky glow

on my uneven thinking about

how things turned out, horizon

to horizon, birth to dust.

 

All that dust is real, it floats eternally

and there you are or will be, or perhaps

you were, flickering from atmosphere

to atmosphere.

 

You don’t have to say a word

and, of course, you can’t.

I pretend the birds do that for you.

I pretend the stars effervesce

or mean something like a portent

when all I look at is the past while

trees are still busy, and the late traffic.

You’re going somewhere too.

 

Fate is a Virus

 

how my hair has fallen

over the world of my feet, over

splatter, my pallor, my loves, my cheek

 

I hunger for undergrowth, unsaved junk

mudflats, alarmed confessions, rain as a ghost feast

it doesn’t hate you     necessarily

 

the streets in the suburb are everlooping

funkish form fumbles on a twirl, a shame shag

 

even dogs speak in bitcoin whack

modern ecstasies sling round the supermarket

from cha-cha palace to bitch slap

 

online dalliance slopes over conspiracies

wish bent leaning into forever wherever

the stars went

 

 

The Ruins

 

Poems are separated by wind

planets   tally   matter   a thin coat

the ruins   the door you go through

 

The loads    on a long walk    accumulate

kerbs full of produce   and refuse

no modesty about what was once inside

 

A poem marshals silence on   vacant lots   

a rusty chair   burnt records    corpses    stones

 

trading or saving    what can be brought

to our speaking    faces