Alcatraz not Minoan ruins.
Morning mist hangs its garden off
Golden Gate bridge. Men in
fog loom large. Fog or ram’s horn?
Container ship - warrior barge,
passes under with another load of
Japanese cars to feast upon
freeways. ‘Straight guys are at a
premium’ you said. (Or so I
overheard). Seven months under
your roof in your bed. I never got
to Texas - never hit Route 66.
Marooned on my Isle, deep within
that lustful, solitary confinement.
*
Do words bring to mind flat
sided buildings, cliff face, waterfall?
Each emotion to its respective
season and climate. Age means era,
epoch, each physical transformation
(our) body plays out. Journey
from foot to fossil print, the single
breath, misting to humidness.
Blood shadows a dense valley;
untidy buildings, an old saw-mill;
blood thins to Gods’ ichor. I approach
you like a drive-in movie. Memory’s
what we miss, we spool reels of it.
*
Serpent-backed bridge profiled:
the city, chalk-toned, laid out like a
shooting gallery. From Green
Point (sub-net ghosting to Georges
Head) a V of gulls speedily hugging
the harbour; its surface serried,
grey disturbances. Wind grain. Yachts
coasting, canvas slap. Manly ferries,
(green, beige upperwork) slide
between white, salt-shaker buoys.
Trouble in Paradise? Never!
Spring thunder ain’t no car bomb.
*
One quadrant of sky turns,
face up, black as the ace of spades.
Much as a God can manage
muttering from the side of his mouth.
Star flecks, nova spittle. Rage of
emptiness pours through, for the hell
of it, endlessly. Looking back to
what beginning. The whole shebang
advances toward, beyond our
best efforts. We live under a Niagra
of star fall, huge optics dilate time,
blackness like velvet slips over
chrome. Sounds of nothingness
strung between a singlet of lights.
*
Barrel of the sun, gun-wad,
cloud packed, cools to Napoleonic
afterglow. The sun is soldier
and hero, after all; always on call
to strike the last pose, profiling
its rays across the grateful landscape.
Ragged mountains lift up to meet
it, plains puff out chests, the sea
a carnival of light, ice packs
bristle, glaciers growl. Time spins
on a coin. Horizon shakes its
dirty mat over cityscape, over glass
and concrete conspiracies -
roads burn fuses into nightways.
*