Poetry is not something that I claim to be any kind of expert in or master of; it is simply something I engage in when I'm taken to do so.
Given that I've had neither time nor motivation to write something for almost two months now, I guess the moment of writing the current crop of pieces has passed. I'm not sure when I'll start again.
So instead, for now, I'll post a few poems from the last big poetic outburst I had, back in 2000, and leave the blog rest with that for a while.
The first piece is Lost Taxis, from which this blog inherited its name. This poem epitomised the moment I was living in back then, where it felt like so much was moving away from me (love, work, health, friendships, family... even my home) and I didn't know where I would go next. Then, as now, the future was unclear and I had regain direction in my life.
Lost taxis
She packed her bags and mine
Closed the door and climbed
Into the ready and waiting taxi
That drove her away from me
I stood on the well-worn stoop
Considering how quickly her cab
Became a lost snapshot amid
The hundreds I saw that day
Cut
Blunted
By wooden
Words she
Tumbled
On my fire
Choking
The dying
Embers I
Had kept
Breathing
For her
Pills
Breath rides out slowly from my ravaged chest
Spilling thickly into numb air
Which I pull back in to seal my heart’s fate
Crushing it deeper into end’s maw
Wound too tight, an old clock bought last week
To be broken by this fool boy
Learning to live with a man’s fear of life
And how sharply it falls away
Thought
Silence hangs across this town
Like disconnected phone lines
Scoring fine, black boundaries
Between our heaven and earth
Where once crackled a million
Hot-charged moments there lies
Desolate in deaf summer heat
A bleached, tattered phone book
Noticing the wind teased leaves
I stop, caught by static shock
Sent running fingers on my neck
As once, I remember, did yours
Call
I saw dawn this evening
Clipping light
Around the telephone’s edge
You spoke
Sent child-like streams soft
Spilling through as
I fumbled for a cup
To save
New
Sliced white sunlight fell over
Her body as I drifted into
The room from a warm sleep
Filled with dreams of hungry cats
She is there now, burnt onto
My eyes by that brilliant sun
Resting softly on her naked
Skin I had dared to kiss awake
Dive
I reach blindly for you
Hands loose in the rain
Fumbling numb with cold
Air rushes into me as
I gasp
Shocked with the force of it
Skin death-white
Under the faint moon
Cracking in shrieks of
Sudden lightning
Blasted as rock
Whirling and stumbling
All at sea on the solid ground
Whipped and tackled by wind
Washed away, drained
Blood peeling from me
Turning again
Calling
And, wonderfully, you are there
Soft and steady
With your coat on fire
Eyes catching the light
Before drawing out its soul
To drink it deep
Curling pools of dark
In the night
Teasing behind
Flying strands of hair
Hands outstretched
From long and winding arms
Blazing a trail
To your body of water
Begging me to dive in
Stripped bare
Breath-taken
Lips cranked shut
Heart asunder
Feet screaming
I do
