This morning I forgot my dreams completely. So here are the poems I wrote during the last eight weeks’ break from posting.
23 JAN
domus
without any choice
we’re born into this absurd
human family —
bound by terms and conditions
never to leave home alive
22 JAN
dignum et iustum
there’s a deep knowledge
comes upon each one of us
— in that moment, we
know the rightness of breaking
the rules — who can explain this?
21 JAN
high spirits
something in the sheer
joy of his acrobatics
as he swings from branch
to branch, reminds me less of
a monkey — than a squirrel
20 JAN
obscure
what kind of tortured,
bourgeois genius was Brahms?
— I don’t know — it’s like
standing too close to my own
reflection in the mirror
19 JAN
male
the moon pulls the sea
— this is the law — and all men
without exception
dance to the insistent beat
of their own misogyny
18 JAN
Holy Trinity
one man’s transcendent
ultimate is another’s
sheer gobbledigook
17 JAN
humanist
bare, objectless faith
— just the fact of it, like some
vast, deep, broad ocean —
and Christianity one
small ship on the horizon
16 JAN
unus panis unum corpus
do I feel one with
the human race? — yes and no
— more yes, because we
are all possessed of the same
comprehensive ignorance
15 JAN
vessel
screw the lid down tight —
wait for the pressure to build
— exactly the wrong
image — mechanistic — my
soul a piece of gadgetry
14 JAN
vocation
the theologian
is a poet who lost his
way in the forest
13 JAN
bathos
I’m woken into
the grave — but it makes no odds
— here I am, still yet
the same bundle of desires,
yearnings and contradictions
12 JAN
ambition
since I only know
one tune — when I present my
connoisseur choice of
music on the radio
I’ll be a complete phoney
11 JAN
psychodynamic
how expertly we
all of us negotiate
the slippage between
our heroes and our villains
— without ever noticing
10 JAN
evolution
in what sense are we
absolute beginners? — this
surely must count as
the summit of all knowledge
— nothing else but this question
9 JAN
Liz’s shoes
the parental care
I myself never received
— is the care I give
freely from the plenitude
of my imagination
8 JAN
numbers
women — an oppressed
majority comprising
more than half the world
5 JAN
normal
I feel strangely trapped
between wishing I had led
a more normal life
— and resenting the normal
life I’m currently leading
4 JAN
to whom can I tell
my story before I die?
— the question haunts me
3 JAN
dead
it’s as if you’re gone
before you knew you existed
– cheated of your own
being and every given
truth you ever accepted
2 JAN 2015
insight
I love my mother —
is this true? — darkness listens,
silence answers — but
certainty obscures my heart
— how shall Love ever find me?
31 DEC
intangible
where on earth do I
source my beliefs concerning
myself? — what force leads
me to choose which self-image?
— whatever is going on?
30 DEC
divergence
sex and intellect
make mockery, each of each
— yet no-one’s laughing
29 DEC
onesidedness
father and mother —
the primary givens of
human life — please — how
and why did we twist these two
into one ‘God the Father’?
28 DEC
wave function
(for Liz)
evidence for the
veracity of Jung’s claim
that all psychic life
is generated by the
tension between opposites:
I can’t live With or
Without You — my Inferno
— my Paradiso
24 DEC
immersion
it’s part of being
human to ask yourself what
being human means
— unfortunately, no-one
can interrogate desire
23 DEC
evanescence
beautiful human
emotions demanding free
expression — witness
also how the emotions
flourish and die, just like us
22 DEC
Hatshepsut
on the Palace roof
Brian May performs God Save
the Queen — but the Queen
is dead — feminism is
dead, long live feminism
21 DEC
Christian Eucharist
profound urgency —
choreographed around the
logic of a dream
— premise and denouement both
equally impossible
20 DEC
temerity
repulsive creature —
bound, cowed, crippled and wholly
given over to
desire — how can I help you?
— I dare not lay a finger
19 DEC
Eden
a gentle stroll through
parkland — is this paradise?
— infinity glimpsed
against all odds — captured in
the shaped lines of a garden
18 DEC
diagnosis
depression — surely
the flip side of the ego’s
secret tendency
to spend time fishing among
its own thoughts for compliments
17 DEC
computer model
no-one can predict
climate change accurately
— what’s predictable
is that we’re going to do
nothing until it’s too late
16 DEC
man’s world
how would my world look
though female eyes? — the mind asks
meaningless questions
— maybe the cleverest thing
it has ever learned to do
14 DEC
avoidance
getting in touch with
my feminine side — we laugh
uncomfortably
— shielded by irony from
looking at what we’re saying
13 DEC
fresh blood
just purely the fact
that reality happens
— inexplicable
even without life’s way
of turning the knife in the wound
9 DEC
helpless
poor disabled thing —
the spider has lost its legs
— nothing I can do
7 DEC
who knows?
I have so little
idea what I’m doing
so much of the time
6 DEC
shadow
I feel like Sherlock
Holmes examining my own
past actions — as though
being here, now, were a crime
— all I need is the motive
5 DEC
sanctuary
a desperation
able to remain hidden
even from itself