Mark Heathcote Poems

Propped up on his crutches outside
The Night and Day Café a beggar
A homeless man doubled over,
After I was listening to Robert Francis sing
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Life under a toadstool can be heavenly
looking up, not looking down,
seeing beyond these snow-capped mountains
that loop around the valley floor.
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Regrets are best, left to smoulder
as ashes in the grate, undisturbed
yes, now they'll burn without closure
but that's how love grows, unperturbed.
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This Earth plays artful music from sorrow to joy
sure, we-are-but instruments to be played.
Hark! Does not the Songbird sing sweet, never coy-
though ear-piercingly can squawk a good masquerade
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He touched the hem of her skirt
She burrowed hermit crab-like, rattling
Don't don't—I'll hurt you, where it hurts?
"Manhood's a sensuous thing, a clay pipe
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Everybody knows the parable of the lost sheep
But I am not lost, nor am I malnourished
Nor am not filthy rich, nor am I poor or dirty
I am not overly good or bad.
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I danced in the flames of her love
tongues of wantonness trembled inside me.
I yearned for her bones' resting place
for those joyful tears on her face.
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It all comes from wanting and not having
that indeterminate something
that'll make us all, once again, whole.
Every failure is a mask unwillingly peeled back.
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What else, do we know?
What else, don't we know?
As a kid, I thought teachers were all kind of thick.
They taught me that the world is round.
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Where beneath this hill can I find you still?
In your black mink coat, palms so immense
they've tunnelled the earth, uprooted a daffodil
all for a worm, have you no common sense?
...