Ucheobi (My Window)

A Portrait of the view from my window and it's metamorphosis over the past decade and a half I have been fanscinated by it.

My window is a perch from which I watch daisy mangroves envelope a lonely
back-alley
And the plodding tragi-comedy of an everlong skirmish 'tween the wilting sublimity of God and himself;
Last year,
I saw His attentions turn and slowly spurn, greenly and gracefully, onto a carpark, which, in it's adjacency, had caus'd offence;
His wrinkled genitals all seaweed khaki and mottled and matted brown and thorny like
A crown he must have borrowed from himself or taken from the shelf to scare me
A few miles up and a good while back.
And fast like snapping lute-strings chas'd Spring and Sun and a garb of flowers
An alb of blossom white, a stole of lilly pink
I watch'd, undistracted by the textural paean of black-birds in song, while
His pretty creepers sunk (and still sink)
under the tread of van-wheels
Still attempting to swallow and reclaim - with justice glowing in every petal -
that little scarr'd car park that looks far less than half His age
while six wooden fences carve plots of sad land per diem
for lodgers uninterested in the mania of clashing dukes on the battle-stage
behind and beneath.

It took near a decade but my gaze
Still lingers, dry, through my window
Flickering -
Anxious for the next fight.


D.B.B

There's music in my bones

The Backbone Flute
by Vladimir Mayakovsky
translated from the Russian by Andrey Kneller

Prologue

For all of you,
Whom I've admired or still am admiring,
Hidden like icons in the cave of the soul,
Like a goblet of wine at a festive gathering,
I shall raise my heavy, verse-brimming skull.

More and more often, I'm wondering-
Why shouldn't I place
The period of a bullet at the end of my stanza?
Today,
Just in case,
I am giving my final, farewell concert.

Memory!
Gather into the brain's auditorium
The bottomless lines of those who are dear to me.
From eye to eye, pour mirth into all of them.
Light up the night with the by-gone festivity.
From body to body, pour the joyous mood.
Let no man forget this night.
Listen to me, I will play the flute.
On my backbone tonight.

One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong

I lit a thin green candle, to make you jealous of me.
But the room just filled up with mosquitos,
they heard that my body was free.
Then I took the dust of a long sleepless night
and I put it in your little shoe.
And then I confess that I tortured the dress
that you wore for the world to look through.


I showed my heart to the doctor: he said I just have to quit.
Then he wrote himself a prescription,
and your name was mentioned in it!
Then he locked himself in a library shelf
with the details of our honeymoon,
and I hear from the nurse that he's gotten much worse
and his practice is all in a ruin.


I heard of a saint who had loved you,
so I studied all night in his school.
He taught that the duty of lovers
is to tarnish the golden rule.
And just when I was sure that his teachings were pure
he drowned himself in the pool.
His body is gone but back here on the lawn
his spirit continues to drool.

Leonard Cohen

Distance ever closer

The days are in no sudden rush,
Dazed waiting; heartstrings resonating
Outstretched hands enveloped by shadow,
This beauty inducing blindness
The sad eyes, they speak volumes,
Accented in a second language:
“Chérie, tu as tout mon cœur,
Pour aujourd’hui et toujours”

The remaining petal explained your feelings
As I walked on in realisation -
You are a dream more real awake,
A promise with feelings in reflection.




For my love, Emma Platt
By Adam Thomas
08/12/09

When You Are Old by W.B. Yeats

I came across this today and immediately thought it magnificent:

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face a mid a crowd of stars.

W.B. Yeats

The Deep Past

When I look into the deep past,
Is it a pool of scorched grass that
Peers at me through the looking-glass?

Is it the doorway to some outside room,
Where every hand I've shook is castrated
And given its own private nook?

Does the little light pierce a foot in Brazil?

How to tell if the time gone hates the time come?

Long vault and sharp retract, a glance back,
Where rocket-heads flame and the vast list
Of names wave me away with their
Double-barrel wrists.

How to tell if the I gone hates the me now?

And when I look into the deep past,
It'll remain deep and passed.

O.Wilks

The Overload

A Terrible Signal
Too Weak To Even Recognize
A Gentle Collapsing
The Removal Of The Insides

I'm Touched By Your Pleas
I Value These Moments
We're Older Than We Realize
...In Someone's Eyes

A Frequent Returning
And Leaving Unnoticed
A Condition Of Mercy
A Change In The Weather

A View To Remember
The Center Is Missing
They Question How The Future Lies
...In Someone's Eyes

The Gentle Collapsing
Of Every Surface
We Travel On The Quiet Road
...The Overload


By David Byne