Greeks

Turns out I'm doing okay! Here's a new one based on the Odyssey. That's Sean Bean in the picture, being a legend.

Anticleia

I

Lacking options, he summons
the weak-necked dead,
hoping for counsel
and direction home
from long-winded Tiresias.

Lacking a spade, Odysseus hollows
out a sump with his sword,
sweetens the soil with honey-wine,
wheat-flour and water.

His mother, Anticleia,
breezes by his elbow
without meeting his eye,
as oblivious to their reunion
as any of the dead.
He reaches out to her
for the first time in years.
His arms pass through her like mist.

Anticleia danders on
among the crowd, still avoiding his gaze
like an embarrassed acquaintance.
With a sacrifice her eyes are opened. Heart
in bloodied mouth, she dithers for words.

II

Her voice barely holds long enough
to tell the whole sorry tale:
Penelope harassed by lechers;
Telemachus herding pigs;
Laertes nothing but skin and bone
in a miserable gardener’s get-up.
She stretches her ghost arms to his flesh
and bones and glides through them like air.

Odysseus gathers his nerves and speaks,
“What evil brought you here?
Some wasting disease? Artemis’ dart?”
“There was no violence about it, son.
I lost heart waiting for you to come home.”

Strong-shouldered Odysseus stumbles
to his knees and reaches for the hems
of his mother’s robe, which vanish like dew.

See you tomorrow,
Dave

Small poems are fun to write

So in two hours' time I'll be going to a supervisor meeting to see how much work these things need before they turn into something awesome. I'm quite fond of a bunch of them, maybe because they remind me of a good time or someone I like. This one does neither of those things, it is about birds, snow, and seeds.

[Rolling back the blind uncovers]

Rolling back the blind uncovers
a courtyard changed by snow

(last night a loft of pigeons
patrolled a continent of seed,

baiting coal tits or blue tits
that hustled round their hindfeathers,

pecking at the scraps), breath melting
in rorschach blots on the cold glass.

Hasta mañana,
Davíd

Do-Over

Today's poem asks what could have happened if things had been different.

Mulligan

She looks at him with a tender kind of sadness.
As she walks backward through the closing door
they grow unfamiliar through similar dreams
of things they may some day do. Fingers pulled
together as if by magnetic opposites
recall the times they will warm ill-heated beds,
crooked inside each other like lightning bolts.

Crosses fade from refurling calendars
that survey a systematic withdrawal
of tokens of affection, habits of speech,
a spreading air of innocence as they sleepwalk
into mutual ignorance.
A night will come
when the last rough edges are filed into smoothness,
as lips lean close, then further (much further) away.

Thanks for reading, more tomorrow!
Dave.

By golly it's that time again

February has been obscenely busy. BUT it means I've backlogged seven brand new poems for y'all to have a look at. Also Ireland beat England and that makes me happy, even if the game was a lousy kick-a-thon. ALSO the new edition of Read This is available all over Edinburgh, and online here. This is a poem about getting it wrong. Or maybe not.

Souvenir

Sitting elegant above the mantle,
simple as silk, a crafted sword,
he fingers the blade, grips the handle

of beaten iron, as woven and tangled
as the history of his fathers, each of whom had sworn
allegiance on what sits above the mantle.

Renouncing roman decadence, their eagles, furs and sandals,
the chieftain keeps his clansmen, who, at the given word,
will finger the blade and grip the handle

to rout imperial menaces, whose angle
of attack appears absurd.
Sitting elegant above the mantle

is the rapine of his armies, every bracelet, every bangle
further proof – if proof were needed – of the prowess of his horde.
He fingers the blade and grips the handle

of the souvenir he bought in Reykjavík which may dimly hold a candle
to the real McCoy, or Thordarsson, or however it occurred.
Sitting elegant, unsullied, in a crook above the mantle,
he fingers the blade and firmly grips the handle.

See you tomorrow,
Dave.

Moooooovin'

Moving house can be stressful, I hear.

Last pome of three, hope it's been a kickass January.

So

A short coffin on wheels
raised to rib-height by spider-wire legs
between the pulpit and the rows
of wooden benches.

Sarcoma
eating
into the books you’d read
your hard-headed sense of devotion
decades
planning holidays to America
decades
watching costume dramas and The West Wing
eating decades
of sacrifice and stiff-arming self-doubt
through decades
spent herding, corralling young minds.

A poet-saint
worth less faith than you offered
has his last say
on this dry winter morning
you might have loved.

Strange men
from the directors come
to wheel you from the church
in the short wooden coffin on retractable legs
we will later burn.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.

Steelers v Cards: Superbowl XLIII!

As promised! Movin' flat today.

Riddle: What has two thumbs and an awesome flat?
[points to self with thumbs] This guy.

Reception

The CBS broadcasters cut to commercial
as the opening drive goes three-and-out,
and the defense – led by the six-four two-twenty
linebacker in his eighth year out of Syracuse –
mobilizes at midfield, where the hand-poised ball
is torpedoed to the punter whose name
the announcers have yet to fathom,
sent hurtling
end over end
deep into the floodlights
and falling snow – inside the ten, inside the five –
as returning cameras determine
where the next play begins,
where the quarterback sends
his rookie receiver on a fade route
(finding one-on-one coverage wide on the side
the safety wasn’t watching),
the ball arching,
falling across ribbon-white lines, interrupted
by black-gloved hands – complete in open field! –
and carried through an elation of noises,
thousands of voices,
into the snow-drifted
endzone.

A Bientot,
Dave.

Today's Clever Title is Re:Visions

Over the next few days I'm going to be putting up a few workshopped poems, two that have been up already - Crags and Reception (formerly Catch) - and one new one...
Superbowl on Sunday!

Crags

And now I am a jackdaw alighted on a rock
above the city, bunnyhopping toward the cliff face.

I hoke at the wet stone,
shake the fine rain from my feathers,

and already my memories
are dripping off in runnels.

The castle, the highrises, the alleys
grow abstract with each fluttered heartbeat.

The river meets the sea and the wind
pushes me softly, suddenly over the edge

and I open my different mouth
and I open my different arms.

Til tomorrow,
Dave.

GUESS WHAT, BITCHES

BOOM

New poem out of goddamn nowhere. What would happen if you could go backwards through a relationship?
So the inauguration poet sounded like Microsoft Sam. That's gotta be one tough gig. Great speech though, Obama was a hecka good support act.
Other news: Frank Vorassi is gonna publish "Homecoming" in the March edition of Bottom of the World! AW YISS

Mulligan

She looks at him with a tender kind of sadness.
As she walks backward through the closing door
they grow unfamiliar through similar dreams
of things they may some day do. Fingers pulled
together as if by magnetic opposites
recall the times they will warm ill-heated beds,
crooked inside each other like lightning bolts.

Crosses fade from refurling calendars
that survey a systematic withdrawal
of tokens of affection, habits of speech,
a spreading air of innocence as they sleepwalk
into mutual forgetfulness. A night will come
when those last rough edges are filed into smoothness,
as lips lean close, then further (much further) away.

Thanks for reading,
Dave.