Poems
The Juggler [poem]
I play with every precious moment
dribbling down the parapet of time.
This four-ball juggler plies his art
and staggers from not one intrinsic
nanosecond to the next but none;
then puts his cart before the horse
and, reaching down into the wallet
of his moon, he slides a card into
the greasy hand of fate and asks if
it’s too late to be a caller at the door.
The Idiot Savant [poem]
If you two were to ask me what I seek in life and love
(arriving at my place one day, with flushed young cheeks,
yourselves somehow in tasteful scattered disarray)
I would not hesitate to tell you there is nothing that I want:
I am replete in all my hermitry — the whole world at my feet
(the ultimate in idiot savant [and also self-deceit]).
Jewel [poem]
She only shows her lithesome self at certain times of day
(just once, to be precise; although it feels like many more
to those incited to explore the literature on rocks and stones)
like sunlight glinting on the runelike facets of a jewel you may adore.
A myriad faerie glancings dancing spritely in a certain way;
I swear you would, like me, exalt her to your princely throne
of state and through her mysteries she would fascinate —
elusive as a fish deep in a stream or pheromonal fragrance
floating blithely on a breeze or wispy wyndly unremembered dream.
Doppelganger [poem]
I am a mirror
reflecting every
whisper which you’re most
afraid of in your self —
the feathered touch of
freedom’s fickle fibres
lusty
chime of bells.
I am a looking-glass
In Vain [poem]
[new poem for “Remembrance Day”, November 11th]
Face down in the mud (my newsome
view of world) brings wisdom’s harbour
neatly to my flapping open door. I spit
and loudly roar no more to stand again
This frailsome new fragility has warmed
the would-be wasted portions of my
priestly vision-vine which wistly grew
and grizzled largely unaligned and void
Unremarkable razor-marks adorn my
stifled throat like stuccoed roughcast
careless flungfast fungalled seizures
reasoning without success or even cry
Above my levelled head those bullets
zinging with a cold precision random
circus double-visioned conscienceful
velocity (to some: atrocity) of rhyme
Poppies like a carpet soon will cover all
the heinous futile excrement of war —
a sea of blood and opiates — while
skylarks inexplicably will singly soar
My fevered brain like blotting paper
soaks up unfertility from lifeless earth
What am I worth? sings every soldier
dying on a farmer’s former golden land
An oily cricket bat. A wicketkeeper’s pad.
The spireful village skyline pricks my
crude reality of clay and crashingness and
corkly balls as hard as bullets baffle me
Hallucination’s welcome information
numbs my broken body but it cannot
mend my seared and scarful soul.
A dozen holes. & war is birth control
What madness ever grazed this earth
with scars and bloody sackcloth ashen
screams and dreamless dreams of
something green and growthsome?
I lie here on the cheerful cusp of chaos
Mortar holes engore the ground around
me like a pusful acned pockmarked face
while generals sip sherry on the lawn
I am a pawn. They made my moves
(manoeuvres which they hid). A million
grieving parents inculcated to believe their
once were little sucklings did not die in vain
They did.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2013
Ode to Jack the Russell [prose poem]
In times of crisis someone always rises from the heap to lead the way.
In this case, Jack the Russell was the one to join the fray.
Often it’s the ones who look least likely to be heroes who defy all odds;
While those who brag beforehand fall to pieces when the action
on the ground or on the stage in life’s grand theatre gets too hot.
Somehow, the state of modesty bestows a later case of bravery
when even dogs can step up to the plate, regardless of their fate.
Alike [poem]
like a leaf
half-driven by the wind
half by my own propulsion
I am blown
by strategies unknown
toward the goal
like a dream
from which I woke to find
I’d been some other person
in a haze
an uncompleted phrase
without a verb
Rib Cage [poem]
He blankly gazed into the menu
ordered spare ribs
(never looking up — no smile)
How come I knew he’d order those?
I’d only seen him for a little while.
Somehow those ribs were written on his face.
Maybe I word-associated so that phrase
had somehow represented who he was:
A prisoner swaddled in a cage
[like ribs which never really come as spare]
life lived on the outside in his head
through fantasies of masturbation’s dry instead
ness
monthsome empty hole unbled
ness
nestling there.
A sad affair.
Why am I Here? [poem]
why am I here?
(not ‘here’ as in this place
or in the subatomic space I take
around the world
but in the manner I’ve been hurled
into a bag of whirly proton flesh
conserved in one by beadly bones
a graphic user interface
a standalonely database
which holds more gap than substance
a seethru sheer incumbent airhead
misread crossbred flayed and naysaid
someday brain-dead deathbed monstrance)
Through the Laughing Glass [poem]
When was the last time that you laughed?
I said this as I gripped her shoulders —
arms like lightning rods —
a flashing grounded earthing
mass of spark-conduction
low destruction
preproduction
epic mirthing squads.
The Naked Troubadour 