Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Ah, Grief, I should not treat you
like a homeless dog
who comes to the back door
for a crust, for a meatless bone.
I should trust you.

I should coax you
into the house and give you
your own corner,
a worn mat to lie on,
your own water dish.

You think I don't know you've been living
under my porch.
You long for your real place to be readied
before winter comes. You need
your name,
your collar and tag. You need
the right to warn off intruders,
to consider
my house your own
and me your person
and yourself
my own dog.
...

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go

...

In the shadows of withered hopes,
where whispers coil like smoke in corners,
thoughts twist like vines, both sharp and sweet,
their thorns hidden, but ever lingers.

You stand outside, a watchful tree,
your roots in soil of unspoken fears,
while I'm a storm in a teacup,
turbulence brewing, hidden tears.


...

It's not exile, homes and families behind
us, where we meet. It happens anywhere,
now: a stateless
state of no name, quietly seceding
from the crumbling empires round us,

without stamps or Eurovision entries.
No-one does it with a rough guide in a week.
You inhabit it
or nothing. Like this: in a pavement cafe
you blink and you seem to surprise them,

the crowd, all its separate faces at once,
coming out of solution like crystals,
like a rush of starlings
or the breeze that lifts the canvas awning
now and dents your cappuccino froth

with a crisp little sound. And that's it:
between breaths, just between you and me
as if; yes,
QED. You are received. This is
the freedom of the city, and the key

to the kingdom, and its borders ripple
outwards like a frill of breaking wave
onto flat sand,
a wavering line already fading leaving
spume-flecks high and dry,


...

Maiden-poet, come with me
To the heaped up cairn of Maeve,
And there we'll dance a fairy dance
Upon a fairy's grave.

In and out among the trees,
Filling all the night with sound,
The morning, strung upon her star,
Shall chase us round and round.


...

Half-dead people, hearts turned cold,
Conceived in shadows, in theft enrolled;
Born in crime, in darkness fed,
On stolen wealth their spirits bred.
In a land where corruption wears a crown,
And broken laws are written down—
Where disorder sits in power's seat…
Who will save this nation from defeat?

Murder and impurity—tradition's disguise,

...

Pushing off on her back out
Into the fishpond's cold
Archaic glitter, my naked wife
Could not have guessed how

High she rode into the noon
Sky, a brightened polestar
Gliding out between nothing
And nothing, between a sun-

Lit vacancy and its ancient,
Reflected, weightless
Hour unrippling back
From the sedges. The just-

Cut grasses fumed around her
Like gasoline, a few
Spent bees dozed above
The compost, and in my arms

The steady thrum of the mower
Carried on, though I'd
Shut it off to sit down
And watch: but so fond of her,

The water parted to take
Her back from that aimless
Sky, where light-
Headed and slippery as a star


...

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat,
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,

...

I thought you were a hero,
the first man I ever trusted,
the one who was supposed to mean
safety, no matter what.

Turned out you're a villain,
not the kind from stories,
but the kind who hides in families,
and teaches silence like it's love.


...