New Star

there’s a new star tonight
born in the cerulean
winter light

moon falling
in lemon segments
through dark peel

I thought to look upon
the polished rosewood
of your skin one last time

into the basin of space
blackest place
your eyes

circlets
of solitaires dance
a brilliant pathway

where we used to drift together
arm in arm
shadowed with each other's scent

your mind
all that I required
desired, the flavour soft

like solar rain
wings a shade of lightlessness
folded round me, feathers swept on nakedness

the first white blossom bloods the stem of winter's bough
morning wakens to the blushing green of spring

it is a season of renewal
and I


will never show you this

Rejection

If you don't like my poem
please just return it
with a polite
'thanks but no thanks.'

Spare me your honest evaluation
of the style with which
I express myself. Honesty
is not kind, but often
merely a justification
on which heartless bastards
prop their egos.

Spare me 'the truth.'
'Truth' hasn't existed
since we found out that Cook
wasn't slaughtered by mindless primitives,
but disregarded the protocols
of another culture.

There's just one individual's
interpretation of events.
That's all we ever have.

Advancing Days

My stomach muscles struggled
to pull me upright today.
I somehow got cat food
on the inside of my dressing gown,
and I thought -
it's not yet, but
old age is coming.
Not racing around
scorched rubber corners
like the boy racers
the mayor is culling,
but like Franz Joseph,
advancing inexorably
to a dry rock bed
with a sign and photos to say:
this is where I used to be.

Simple Choices

If the sun had diction
it would pour from the pages of books
and light in the minds of readers.

But instead we have words,
splashed upon us like water
from a lawn sprinkler
on hot summers' days,
giggled and mashed,
or smooth and seamless
as lover's skin.

And words are not the sun,
but speak of it with crisp enunciation,
burst from the page in white fans

not concerned with
correct height to weight ratio,
cholesterol levels,
or type 2 diabetes,

having no Protestant work ethic,
organised religion,
or choice to make
between prepaid or monthly plans.

Only the sampling of aqueous ribbons
channeled from mountains,
only bright arms
too fierce to hold in embrace.

And for all my greedy clutch
at words
I hold the silent radiance
more dear.

Interesting

I just came across a fascinating article while reserching something else and thought I'd share it here. My apologies for those who think this stuff is booooring but I'm always interested in how differing perspectives alter world views and in how we tend to always assume that others see things the same way as we do.

The full article is here:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n17_v49/ai_19751428

I'll copy just the introductional paragraph here:

Absolutely relative - controversy over death of Captain James Cook
National Review, Sept 15, 1997 by Keith Windschuttle

Mr. Windschuttle is the author of, most recently, The Killing of History: How Literary Critics and Social Theorists Are Murdering Our Past, from which this article is adapted. Copyright 1997 by Keith Windschuttle. Reprinted by permission of Simon and Schuster, Inc.

MICHEL Foucault opens his book The Order of Things with a paragraph that has become one of his most famous. Foucault describes a passage from "a certain Chinese encyclopedia" that, he claims, breaks up all the ordered surfaces of our thoughts. By "our" thoughts, he means Western thought in the modern era. The encyclopedia divides animals into the following categories: "a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, c) tame, d) sucking pigs, e) sirens, f) fabulous, g) stray dogs, h) included in the present classification, i) frenzied, j) innumerable, k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, l) et cetera, m) having just broken the water pitcher, n) that from a long way off look like flies." Foucault writes that, thanks to "the wonderment of this taxonomy," we can apprehend not only "the exotic charm of another system of thought" but also "the limitation of our own." What the taxonomy or form of classification reveals, says Foucault, is that "there would appear to be, then, at the other extremity of the earth we inhabit, a culture . . . that does not distribute the multiplicity of existing things into any of the categories that make it possible for us to name, speak and think." The stark impossibility of our thinking in this way, Foucault says, demonstrates the existence of an entirely different system of rationality.

French Transition

In ice frocks
distance marches,
frog-stepped
down frosted boulevards.

This is a landscape
of frozen trees
salt-rimmed to sky
silence bound.

A lure to iris
floating in white,
swirled particles,
stretch limousine ride
through Napoleon's vision
where all roads
lead to Paris.

Fit-ness

I was thinking about
how a heart fills
its chest cavity
beneath the vault of ribs,

the way ribs spoon each other
like sated lovers,

and skin covers ribs
as shell cuddles egg.

Of you and I,
who fit the same way the moon
nestles into the night.