Mixed poems
Body Language
To understand we humans more
And perhaps to be less of a bore
On the internet I bought a book
On body language or just how to look
I read it, almost ate every page
All the pent up fears and rage
Sexual stuff shown in the eyes
Rejection with a twitch of the thighs
Being too close or too far
Picking your nose in the car
So armed with all this theory
Ready to make myself less dreary
I changed posture, looked up as I walked
Did not cover my mouth when I talked
I measured distances from others with care
I closed my legs when I sat on a chair
Leaned back and then forward as I spoke
Did not fiddle with food or rotate coke
In short I practised what it said in the book
Would be a totally acceptable look
A balanced person of some intellect
A confident outgoing person who offered great sex
Did it life improve, well no it did not
In fact it got worse, so thanks a lot.
Vienna
Vienna so self centred.
All cities are when small and old.
Like a muttering old lady, dressed well in parts
Woollen socks over heavy nylon stockings,
Hot and harsh, a double protection
Or a punishment for past sins?
She has a paper thin skin,
So easily bruised, so do not go too near.
The slightest contact and she squeals with anger.
With her varicosed U Bahn map on face and legs.
She challenges with her weakness, her silent demands
Old hands with even older rings, gold like her fillings,
Jewels hidden intermittently by her twisting arthritic fingers.
A defensive pose with a sour scowl
Permanent as a winter’s day,
Above her narrowed ice eyes.
She is clamped to her gramophone
Where large hard discs scratch out inevitable waltzes,
Whiffs of more pleasant days.
Scents of past gardens in the hills in summer.
Hauntings of a past tenderness, or two.
She reaches for a monogrammed chocolate,
A disc too or a ball, her own choice.
Foil removed, she sucks, savouring the bitter chocolate,
Ready to bite when she chooses into the choking marzipan.
She the city, constant, her rules and time.
In contrast, the younger set scream and mill in Schwedenplatz.
Raw and raucous they drink then vomit
Onto the same early morning slave cleaned pavement
That she walks with her tiny shivering dog.
False prophet advice
False prophet advice
Arrogance and stage presence
Rolling out the tapestry of promises
A way of life to transcend
A map of your destiny
Handed to your cold hand
With a cheap magic trick
To cement the child in you
The belief in illusion
Advise yourself
For you know really
Who you are
Sunlit room
Sunlight slanting through a partly open Venetian blind
Lovely word 'Venetian', neat and clean
Like velvet and vulva
Tuberculosis or lickety-spit
Light and dark separation eases through the room
Shadows moulding other shadows
On plants hugging the windowsill
Leaves shine proud
The pot's darker sides sulk cold
A black table blurs the distant light
Into a blue horizontal mat
A picture of a black cat assumes the blinds art
Becomes an orange tabby
On the sidewall is a blue sofa
It stays blue, light and dark enriched
Comfortable in the implied heat of the sunlight
Broken in its path through glass and blind
A blue sofa for three, now empty
Still waiting to give support
Just visual then, an object
A clock ticks somewhere
Blind of time
Each tick a horizontal marker,
Each tock another
I am comfortable listening to time beat away
Me and the blue sofa on a sunny day
Sun
The sun is our heart
Contracting
It is the truest of lovers
Unselfish
It dies for all of us
Vienna again
Onion breath from onion head
Split mattress on too short bed
Stalled pedestrians at red light
Without a truck or car in sight
Past glory five storeys high
New stuff glass to mix with sky
Back turned to East European scene
Immigrants only good to lick streets clean
Music scratched from Mozart’s bones
Underground reeks of used cell phones
Old Nazi’s smile on teeth of gold
Careful not to tell tales of old
Posters advertise live sex
Peep shows for female genital flex
Monotonous voices always loud
Monotone choices for most of crowd
Tramp eating ice
Saw a tramp on a bench, dressed heavy for winter
Although he in summer sun
He had spotted a child's past tragedy there on the floor
An ice cream cone melting and almost done
He reached down and with a tender dirty hand
Took the last solid piece of that fallen ice
He looked up at me watching, smiled and said
That was very very nice
Challenge
The anti Christ named the time
He named the man
He named the task
To pluck out the one defined molecule
In the grain of sand
With a single grasp
With one try
One chance in a trillion trillion trillion trillion
Ad nauseum
To saved the Universe
From destruction
The chosen common man
Considered the challenge
It was the time
The place
He reached out
Suddenly his fist smashed into the anti Christ
Deep inside the ribs
With a twist he severed the heart
Black blood spewed
He held it high
The Universe was saved again
For there would be another time
Another challenge
Holy man again
Jesus.
That Christian holy man
Could heal
But it really knackered him
All that touching and doing good
It sapped him,
He was annoyed too
Since most people simply needed
A listening ear
Or an aspirin
Which had not then been invented
It is why the suicide rate is so high for general practitioners
The Jesus syndrome
It won’t get better.
Holy fat man
For a start he is very fat
Which God gave him all that?
He smiles as he hears people’s trouble
I see his huge belly wobble
It is all belief his power base
He is good at reading a face
He offers that which you want to hear
An alleviator of inner fear
So your time is up and give your gift
Expensive enough for a simple lift
Your joy is maintained just enough
To get you home to mundane stuff
Soon you’ll need another session
To sooth your apparent depression
He’ll still be there fat and happy
Ready to change your dirty nappy
For USA people do don’t get hyper
He is ready to change your dirty diaper
Holy
Extracting meaning from life is what it is all about.
Assuming there is some kind of truth.
Not so easy
When you have the fundamental life’s pressures.
The routine maintenance stuff.
The mortgage.
The babies.
The children growing up and school fees.
The divorce.
Relationships of relationships
Going on and wrong, up and down.
Drinking too much, and on and on and on.
So where do you reach out?
What is there?
Relax.
Take a deep breath.
You are Holy.
Take it from me.
This planet lead
This planet lead
Iron molten
To the core
We crack live on its tiniest islands
Of weather scratched earth
By fissures
of heat
The certainty of eruption
Uncertain only in time
When where controlled
By magnetic motions
As old as the universe
God
We are an insignificant set of organic mass
