Hallucinations

Impossible to sketch a mirror

or the sea,

but introspection? Yes, I can see myself

waving from the glassy mirror.

It is the iced froth of my ocean

where iridescent waves of thought travel on steam

trains that race across the depths in a molten blast

of steel swordfish, who would fence on their feet,

if they had any: my mind is as nimble as this

even when a face finds me and stares.

The girl in the mirror observes me silently with

blank eyes that won’t blink, not

when I see the spangled sea-apes dip

their slow hungry arms into her eyes and scoop out

her thoughts as if they are scallops

to be eaten. (By who?) Not when I see those same

apes smack their lips and grin because

her thoughts taste             nice. She will not blink

even as a storm begins to swell, bulging

her eyes like puffer fish. The ocean shivers, contorting

the waves into Charybdis, who swills the waves

of tears as if they were wine and she could

drink and get drunk. I shy away from the girl in

the mirror distorted as waves wash over her and she unfurls

a hand, through the water, through the mirror, reaching, reaching

I blink. And when I open my eyes

the girl in the mirror is gone.

baby

There is a picture on a wall,

of a mother and her child and they smile,

one up, one down

and you can feel the sun

setting somewhere

on the scene,

like an orange, falling off an orange tree,

tumbling,

tumbling to the cold dark ground,

crashing, splitting into shattered shells of what it was,

swerving and switching course

in the gust of wind

on a jungle gym

as up and down, up and down

the child clambers up and down

and says “Mum look!” and smiles around,

beaming as if, on holy ground, any footstep will lead to God,

for that’s what Mum said,

that’s what Mum says now

as she prays for her little angel

up

in the clouds.

Short Ode to a Squashed Lizard

O Lizard thou wast long and green,

With speckled skin and scaly sheen,

Thine eyes were beads of blackest coal,

Thine legs nimble to scale the pole.

And yet, O Lizard, at the last, thou wast slain,

Thou wast squashed full out of bone and brain,

And Lizard, fair one, green one, sweet,

Thine innards were strewn upon the street.

O Lizard how thou mortal insignificance 

Betrayéd mine immoral ignorance,

For until this present accurséd hour,

I had not paused in neither tree nor bower

To admire thou, O translucent glory,

Would that Death had not been so gory.

O Lizard thou hast taught me well

And from thine stony grave do tell

The fables of a wise one, dear,

One whom, when dead, I might go near.