Poetry pages - David Seaton
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Ever since I was a very small boy I have always written poetry and I have always taken writing poems very seriously; I polish them endlessly, but, I have been very shy about handing poems to people to read, as I think reading the verses of someone you know is a bit embarrassing. However, I like the idea of putting these verses online. Without the Internet they might never see the light of day. Putting the poems up on the Internet is rather like stuffing them into a bottle and throwing them in the sea, but because of the search engine's mysterious algorithms, those who stumble on my verses here might truly be interested in reading them. To reach unknown readers in that way would be a great pleasure for me. I have pasted up a few things I am ready to show, in no particular order, either of date or subject matter, and even those I wrote years ago I consider "work in progress" and I may change them at any moment. DS ______________________ |
| Poems:
A universe is made of dust that levitates in golden movement Raising up the infinite orbits of its perfect worlds Raising them high to the solid, bright columns of funneled window light Where the pale moth's wing, pinned fluttering to the velvet shadow, Scatters the planets and flung apart A cosmos floats. A stately shimmering, to twirl in tune To dance to the ghost notes, To dance to the bells Of the phone unanswered, left measuring out the afternoon Lost tattoo, the uncaught bell. Mysteries of a well-watched heart, as Drop by drop and feather soft Musing gathers on the cellar walls And perfume tainted, filtering into silent dust Of fruit and flowers, balls of string and rust, ‘Powdered wing,’ the hour sand calls, ‘’Snuff the candle, spare the moth’ ________________
Night ride In darkened volumes Of blackened rooms: In massed and cubic bedroom night, To the rustle and twitter of many legged memories Ticking fracture cracks walk across a thin iced mirror. ...Air expands to fill a vacuum in my chest For prayers to take their spaces out among the winds. _______________________ Outdoor cinema, Malaga, summer of 1963 Bats chasing moths above the paste pearl light bulbs cut the corners off the air From ancient loudspeakers Elvis pours “O Sole Mio” into the smell of sea and flowers Into a night blooming breeze of jasmine and fish, into the breath of diapers and cologne Tear salt, sea salt and sunflower seed salt The sea toccata and fugues through the blood of a night shining spattered in stars Van Gogh out of Pollack, echoing and diluted by the low-watted bulbs ________________
To Lisa (1953 - 2009) On gnawed over carrion of love gone cold _________________
My heart is a potter’s field of dreams, And the wild rose roots among their bones. They lie under broken glass and poignant epitaphs, Where every shadow sleeps alone. On darker nights, translucent discards team, Who filter up to walk my paths: They weep; they plead, they wheedle, whine and pray And curse the dreams that clad themselves in flesh, To flee my heart and haunt the day. __________________________
From diapers to a winding sheet A sweet wind blows though all this mess That cannot move a candle's flame While whispering to curse or bless So soft: bereft of form or name, Misery or happiness _____________________________
All was as light as a goat’s whisper And all was as near as a serpent’s breath And deep in the alembic of the loveless night With, all pretense shed, We penetrated with the fragility of birdsong The intractability of lead ____________________________
Rap Like a silvery fish flapping on a sunlit quay Like a poisoned rat crawling in the bright of day Like a curious kitten trapped in a microwave De profundis clamo ad te Domine _____________________________
Click
Click The abacus Click Click The rosary Tick Tick Time A pulse A thread A light A breath Immune To hate To love To fear To death Click Click The abacus Click Click The rosary _______________________________________________________________
Master of the liar's art ______________________________________________
Email to a childhood friend in Baghdad - 20-03-03 slowly mounting towards the sky chasing the swooping, hunting birds, before the night caged them hungry in their trees. Close by the river we ate fresh dates as the evening fell. Your mother laughed with her strong, red mouth, her great, white, perfect teeth Tell me, my brother, where is that laugh, that whiteness? ____________________
Gazing into his shaving mirror Frankenstein lathers up his long green face And slowly taking up his new Gillette Shaves… carefully Avoiding heavy stitching that Holds the verdant mess in place So looking deep into his hooded eyes Mutters and the mirror replies “I AM A STAR!" _______________
Silver acne-pocked, moonfaced moon Lovechild sun's daughter
Walk the waves, heartswelling cheap postcard. Light my night bright kite! ___________
To a dead politician in a textbook He peering photo-ward, mirror-wise Looks out from a new-smelling schoolbook Personality peeled down onion-like By what we know of him His true face dissolved by time Killer of illusions, not just men. But soon his smirking upper lip Will, in its halftone dotted, fresh-inked image Have ball-pointing, blue moustache on By he/she waiting for the bell to ring ___________________
Mediterranean Prayer Mare nostrum, madre nuestra, pray for us We who are composed of seventy percent water Demand that: Being brine incarnate too And thereby rejoicing filially in our mother’s presence The light of our eyes dancing to the light of her skin And having eaten the fruit of her waters And filled her with and from our bodies And smelled deeply of her various odors, her tar, her tears Her flowers, her fish Demand she pray for us The small, bare children, who wade from your shores The summer Saint Lawrences The toast breasted secretaries The muscled, beached, Thors Also for the sad-bellied businessmen All under sun born again Also a special prayer for us The drowned: the dead sailors who sleep in your arms Who all blackened and terrible, we bobble and weave While bloated and dreaming of storms blown past Our memories turn to fish food Pray for us, oh mother of several hundred assorted gods
Pray for us
From the singing springs of an unseen bed, To the silent velvet of an unseen box, An errant flicker through the summer night: Glowed, twittered and fed, Incandescent, fluttering on the wings of a ticking clock.
A glowing, shimmering witness An ember encased in pleading flesh Cramped into a diehard bag of energy Encumbered by a symmetrical longing for desire Centered deep in the smoldering metabolism Its I am, I am and I am Cluttered and smudged With paradiddles of echoed identity Pressed and compressed By a hologram of weight Notarizing infinite being. ______________ (To be continued) |