This is the second posting of three or four sets of my poems.
The poems in The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion span many years and have been organised thematically rather than chronologically. The three themes are:
1. Love and Passion (posted 4 January 2012)
[Blog 22, the third most viewed of my blogs to date]
2. Separation and Loss
3. Reconciliation and Renewal
[Blog 51, posted 30th June 2012]
2. Separation and Loss
Contents
East-West Romance
when we meet again
such little things kill love
The Thread
A Golden Sadness
Oyster Song
In Anticipation of Redundant Love
Guy Fawkes’ Night
The Scorpion
email
Postscript
Requiem
Catechism
Lunar Modules
Face to Face
When the Shadow Calls
so we drank
Cold Feet
Must I die so
a rotten trick
Titoki
Memorabilia
EAST-WEST ROMANCE
Now my body that gave so gladly
is silent.
The hum of the fan
the wind through the hallways of Hale Manoa
distant shouts of Rainbow supporters
Rhapsody in Blue practised on a far-off piano
accompany my solitude.
Passion is distanced, emotion dulled.
I fear to call you
lest the cruel nearness of your nextdoor voice
belying oceans of distance
a hemispheric separateness
whispering unconsummatable intimacies
remind me of past pleasures
of friends’ café laughter
and long despairing tearful farewells.
when we meet again
when we meet again
let it not be as strangers
facing prohibitions
on the intimacies of friendship
fearing to scratch emotional surfaces
lest old scars are revealed
let not every act
be fraught and betrayed
by hidden agendas
and unspoken meanings
nor spontaneity be lost -
the touch the warm hug
the gentle caress -
inhibited by memories
and resonances of the past
friendship, love, intimacy
these are creative acts
that need confidence
in the natural rightness
of the brush strokes
such little things kill love
such little things kill love
it was as though you
went out of my life in
the middle of a sentence
a pause
a misplaced glance
a coolness
a sudden shift of pace
an angle of the shoulder
modulating indifference
THE THREAD
lying in your arms
the wild dogs in the cellar
turn to birds
sparkling with laughter
and when we withdraw
the silkiest of threads
woven in love
links us together
now my life
my love
hang by such a thread
full of swimming riddles
harbouring sportive monsters
lying still
in the bottom of my sea.
A GOLDEN SADNESS
can so much
hinge on so little
did you not entertain me to dinner
bread enough and wine enough
and corkscrew riddles to be cracked
did I feed you speeches alone
and long silences searching wisdom
the world was mended then
just for a fleeting moment
touching me inwardly with caressing hands
my soul stretched out for trampling
drinking a drop of happiness
stung in the heart
yet eager for war and festivals
still still
she has still my strange soul
earthed with the softest of threads
tired of long voyages and uncertain seas
having tasted too much that is good
resting in a still cove
in a golden sadness.
OYSTER SONG
have you stuffed your ears with rabbit’s fur
lest you hear words that waken you
is my hand a fool’s hand
bruising itself on stony boundaries
am I scribbling graffiti on tables and walls
in an indecipherable moonman’s script
is my foot a cloven foot
that you so fear each step it takes
much that is inside is like an oyster
floating slippery and hard to grasp
yet oysters harbour growing pearls
though the shells may pinch your fingers
if you pry and pluck before they’re ripe
of all the treasures it is our own
that we dig at last from the sheeny husk
so I will still sing my song
from the peace of my still house
and must sing it for my own ears
until my throat is made mellow
my hands talk and my feet dance
and I can awaken your heart
from its shrewd protective blindness
to fly with mine again.
IN ANTICIPATION OF REDUNDANT LOVE
Come on now crab
Stand tall and proud
You climbed a giddy height
From the safety of your shoreline pools
Walked the edge of the precipice
Once again
Bravely and with courage
Gave it your all
All on the line
Head, heart, guts and groin
But now
The time for retreat is near
No need for idle heroics
No breathless plunge
From cliff top to rocks below
In consumptive self-pity
Your shell is not that hard
And blood and guts enough have been spilt
Now is the time
To find a safe way down
To take care of yourself
Survival modes in lunar modules
And no recriminations
You are shoreline crab
Not mountaintop
And shorelines are fine places
To fossick in the sun
So let go gently crab
Lest your claws tear what you most love
Pluck up your heartroots tenderly
Protect them with your shell
For one day
You will need them again.
GUY FAWKES’ NIGHT
In the storms of the night
When past shadows call
And the black moon
Lies heavily on my soul
Lightning bolts blood my eyes
Illuminating the lashing rain
That sweeps the landscape of my troubled mind.
Then I fear
Illusion’s fragile dam will burst
The floodgates must open
Freeing the army of wicked dwarfs
Marshaling on my tongue
To rampage
Beyond the conversations we dared not have.
And you should fear it too
Letting loose the demons
My devil and my three of swords
Lest in the howling pains of rage
The crab turns scorpion
And stings and stings and stings us both
To cold oblivion.
THE SCORPION
walled in flames
his passion for life shrivelling in the heat of treachery and betrayal
the proud-backed scorpion
heavenly conqueror of the vain Orion
smoke-gutted, heart-burned, hollowed-out by pain
with no avenues of retreat
except to self-destruction
in one last despairing act
a final choice, a leap for freedom
plunges his poisonous tail into his poisoned heart
knowing knowing knowing
like Phoenix keening on the funeral pyre
he must kill himself to preserve himself
email
wiped your email
with a click of the mouse
would it were so easy
to trash you from my heart
POSTSCRIPT
When you remember me
(As I trust you will, as I know you will)
I hope it will be
Forgiving of my frailties
Physical, mental, sexual
I hope there will be some joy there
In the memories of what we were
What we had of love, romance, passion, friendship
As I too remember all the good things
To blot out the sad bad ending of it all
To stay the tears
The fears of life without you
You were so much to me
And are
Perhaps too much for both our goods
Yet for myself
I would not have wished it other
Than it was
(“Lov’d not wisely but too well”)
So total an immersion
Like a baptism of life, of love
A rebirth in the fresh deep pool of passion
That stripped off pretence and reserve
And revealed to myself
Below the surface of myself
Another self I’m proud to call my own
(greedy for life, greedy for love)
That will forever bind me
In fond and bitter memories
Of a happiness unlike any other I have known
Or will know
Yet would wish to know again.
REQUIEM
then there was silence
my silence
and a large black hole
where my heart had been
melodramatic and fanciful
conversations
full of unanswered accusations
memories of her assassin’s eyes
and the overriding wish
to be done with her
without forgiveness
finally and forever.
CATECHISM
now the lovelocks are broken
angry spiders are loose
and we taste the bitterness
that lies in wait
for even the best of loves
let us not
allow poisonous worms
to eat out our hearts
nor throw pearls of great price
on the rubbish pile of pain
let us not
treat what we most valued
carelessly as nothing
let us not
be chained by past memories
paralysed by future fears
and let us not
load simple joyful acts
acts of tenderness
acts of friendship
acts of love
with all our souls’ burdens
all our souls’ secrets.
LUNAR MODULES
vengeful cats
set among emotional pigeons
scatter them
old debris clears away
and I nearly go too
in the Mogal man’s bin
dreams shatter
yours then mine
mourned in lonely nights
tear-stained fragments
fuse fragile bonds
uncertain friendship
and sometimes
tentatively
intimate pieces
for love’s jigsaw
and now
back to basic shapes
eat well
sleep well
fresh air
exercise
hanging in there
one day at a time
survival modes
in lunar modules
FACE TO FACE
Face to face
With the anaesthetising society
Why fear to shout and scream
When there is joy or grief within
Who does it protect
This anaesthetic
Me or you
Us or them?
Curse tranquillity
There’s time enough for that
Celebrate awareness
Where my joy is my joy
And my pain is my pain
Rather than the prevailing dullness
Of everyday routine
Of paths with no heart
Of tasks to be done
Lonely clamberings to achievement’s pinnacled despair
Night sea swimmings to the sirens of success.
Music
Love
Poetry
And the sunshine
Is there more
Worth having
More
Needed
Than this
Kiss?
WHEN THE SHADOW CALLS
When the shadow calls
Remember the magic moments
The whispering sands
The abortive hot pool frolics
The joyful abandon of Bastion Point
On a moonlit summer night.
Remember the quiet calm
Of a Maraetai picnic
The peace together
Beneath Long Bay’s rocking firs
The dark threat of thunder
Beyond Pakatoa’s rainbow sunset
Our warm embrace
Above Te Kotuku’s surging wash.
Remember a tender rib-eye fillet
Bathed in candlelight
And Chateauneuf-du-Pape
And the lover’s knot
In the two of cups.
And remind yourself in your remembering
That the shadow will pass
And once again
We will dance through the dawn.
so we drank
so we drank
the last bottle of claret
to celebrate
having
a last bottle of claret.
COLD FEET
Dead, visibly dying
On the void of time
But keep the toes warm
So that death cannot enter there
From the bottom of the bed
And drain me out
Through cold feet.
Must I die so
Must I die so
All washed up
Move my arm, move my leg
Beached on the bed
Stranded by my body
Move my leg, move my leg
God why can’t I die
Please let me die
Before I crap myself again
Move my leg, move my arm
Move my arm, move my hand
Move my hand, hold my head
I don’t want to die
Hold me tight
Hold my head, hold my head.
a rotten trick
a rotten trick
to die
just then
just when
we had
our act
together
had learnt
how to live
what to value
what to discard
had found
some time
to spend
as one
after all those years
of struggle
and effort
where are you
now
now that love’s fruits
ripe at last
are lap-ready fallers
I dropped my rose
on your coffin
and cursed you
for dying
so soon
just then
just when.
TITOKI
I planted two trees
Titoki for you
English oak for me
Hoping to see
As the years fell by
Their canopies merge
And intertwine
To give the two of us
Some autumn shade
The exotic flourished
But the titoki
Struggled for a year or two
And died
So I pulled it out
And planted another
Which I nurture
Tenderly
As I did the last
It thrives now
In memory of you
And of what
You
Were to me.
MEMORABILIA
Fragments of lyrics and melodies
A collection of frogs
Packed in a cardboard box
A ribboned cluster of cards
Much-read letters
Newspaper cuttings
Pale transparencies
Held to the light
To catch a misty image
And revive fond memories
As though a spirit so free
Could be caught that way
Confined to the photo album
The attic treasury
Catalogued and classified
Like a mounted butterfly
In a glass case
Rather am I reminded of you
In the curves of the land
The sequoias’ gentle sway
The flickering city lights
And the sunset colours
I see you in the rainbow
Hear you in the wind
Smell you in the flowers
And hold your heart alive
In the Sugar Mountain air.
