Some old ones:


Is dying like waking

Is dying like waking
To the light of another life?
Will I wipe the sleep from my eyes
And wonder at my fading dream?
Would I be the dream or the dreamer?
If memory fades with waking,
Then I evaporate into the cool air.
If it endures, I endure
Through an endless stream of lives,
Each waking into the other.
What hope is there in life everlasting?
I shall either change and die
Or endure to no end.
Sleep is best then:
Joy is perfected in passing.

Landscape #1

Flying in the confident breeze,
The flags overstep their bounds
And tile the path to-
Where?

A future where blood and tears
Briefly mingle before subsiding
Into the sickly-pale void?

Perhaps they form a platform
For the contest of giants,
Each easily assured of victory,
Each blow making the other bold,
Until the spectators are drawn in
And hurled like boulders.

Or they are a vast and composite shroud,
The covering of some slain God,
Whom the mourners conduct to the shores of Lethe,
Before abandoning their charge to the slow, silent waters.


Reflections on my 22nd Birthday

It's raining manna as I drive through
The broad road to the north
Memory burning in my mind
Groaning wheel turning in stained hands.

In reflection my life becomes a trembling
Mummers dance; movement with a deadly
Certainty, a frantic pace and no purpose.

No religion, no philosophy can alleviate
My suspicions, suspicions without form,
Inchoate and rooted deep in my heart.

Faith in saviour gods, submission to empty
Rituals and the laws of the dead and damned,
Indifference sprinkled with pity...

No solution, no solace, not even sincerity,
No salvation as the manna turns to blood
And the traffic moves on.