Stochastic

a strut stuck
up,
stokhos, struck
by luck
by a bows pluck

Red

The Wind's
beating breaths broke
out.
Broad swells welled, dwelled
and melded
clouds across spread out grey skies,

Dead eyes reflected grey lies
spied dyed passions.

Assasins from the cold north
slunk through the dark and
darted through lost forests
left leaves right.

The Wind
wound bound grounded
out
rushed and floundered
flushed and hounded.

Resonant assonance sensed as in sounds,
assassins around.

A Flash.

The Wind grasped for air

and deep red
bled, read out
veins and heart's secrets.

Deep red
spread
out. Drenched quenched
desserts.

But no flutter flowered,
no life stuttered,
stopped
or started.

Light beams bright

Light beams bright
bounced off Life's sight
springing from clouds' lofty height.

In the greens of Springs nascent murmurs
I felt the breadth of Nature's
winds and smelled
her redolent colours.

The virility of her bosomed hills,
nobility of her chiselled peaks
graced Hope's reach.

For behind the Sun lay the
vanquished
shadows of Winter's listlessness
tugging my abeyances
and fears.

Symmetry stamped onto the landscape

I wrote this while I was in Paris, on the banks of the Seine

Symmetry stamped onto
the landscape,

Arching through time, pulling
strands of man's plans
knotting them to nexuses of
excesses, sexes and blood

flooded fresh flesh with
senses measured
and let loose into the light

-Z

Homage to another master

I stumbled across a poem in the lightly dusted library that my grandfather keeps. It's only one sentence, six lines, but it grabbed me by the guts and threw me around the room:

The Cat

She was licking

the opened tin

for hours and hours

without realising

that she was drinking

her own blood.

Spyros Kyriazopoulous

Where to start? I wish I could write with this much brevity, acuity and emotion. 

In a tragic, almost Sisyphus like circle, we see a clash of life and death, of happiness and pain. The Cat, although just an animal, embodies a drive for life but it is draped in solitude, as well as in a smallness and helplessness that evokes further existential frustration. The tin is an object crafted in furnaces, moulded by man, and here discarded. It evidences the unintentional but severe consequences of our progress. It is cold and hard and left behind where it wreaks havoc.

The poem is so innocuous at first; the beginning three lines paint a charming and quaint image which gives way, suddenly and without remorse, to horror in the final unremitting line. There are almost no adjectives in this poem. The imagery has an ascetic quality, the emotional development does not rely on flowered and colourful language. There are no soaring lyrical evocations, just a stark image crafted out of everyday objects. Despite this austerity, the poem has a tragic beauty that I admire.

As an aspiring poet and erudite I hope to write with the clarity and effectiveness that Kyriazopoulous has managed in this poem.

-Z

An Autumn Afternoon

Austere limbs held the last
autumn leaves against the wind,
little brown pennants of a lost spring.
Outside a street cafe
I sat and watched their flutters
their brittle battle.

I listened to their lilts and trills,
together much more than a rustle.
Perhaps a rite to their fallen companions
scattering along the street.

An actress I once knew in spring
drove past in an old Mercedes-Benz,
silver, of course.

She was biting her nail,
perhaps nervous for an audition

I should call her and ask,
see how it went.
My own brittle battle.

Erik Satie

I thought Erik Satie deserved a bit of recognition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DBoiyBoJ8


Satie slipped into a cerulean blue
and blew soft shards of light
heavy shadows.
He brushed a bell, ringing in quiet knells
of autumn births, new repetitions.
Old beginnings, he cut the sides of a melody circle,
straight through the left out right edge in empty space,
longing for the cool, tender reservation of
cerulean blue.