#sasspoems

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Flashbacks of an accident, Winter 200•

tires skidding

on black-ice roads:

a lone cheer —

me, now grateful

to still survive,

hollering out

hallelujah

or some other praise

to forces strange

[sasspoems]

sometimes i think that there is a braille message scrawled in the goosebumps of your skin and i am just the blind man to read it.  sometimes i think there's a symphony hiding behind your lips and i am the deaf man to bring it to life. sometimes i think there is poetry in the ocean of your eyes  and i am the man who aches to drown.  sometimes i think your palm was made to fit in mine.  sometimes i think i am yours.  sometimes i think we are fated.

constellations know our names

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Some Stream

A flood came forth

where before only clay,

cold and vulnerable,

had lined the riverbed.

vital and flowing,

bathing dry ground,

its arrival raised

every hair on my neck.

you were in every bend

and ripple there:

just as sudden and violent

and alive between my hands

as the clear rain

that rushed to meet

some wild expectation

of a bigger, bluer sea.

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Eclipse

plunged into charcoal singular,

spread across onlooking faces:

the quilted patchwork of knowing

a force of magnitude is at work.

our feeble eyes unable to bear it —

some rebel orbiter shaking up day

into night, in blue moon performance,

in feral wonder and humble fear.

to grasp cold knuckles and squeeze,

as solar night comes in chill wind,

just for a moment quiets the world

and we become stars, passing by.

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Urbane

I grew with the concrete towers.

I grew with the new mothers

and the kids around the corner,

getting older all the time.

I grew with the grey in the beard

of the driver of the #52 bus

and the trees and the Brutalism

that line these quiet roads.

I grew with the discount stores

and the empty shop-fronts

and all the for-sale signs,

now occupied with new faces.

I grew as a town only can —

on promise and pragmatism,

on opportunity and time taken

to dig for our foundations.

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

The Programmer’s Romance, or Executables

/list: to feel the way on which

/all those futures in my head depend

/all those tandem visions, bipedal

/all those joint decisions, unanimous

-/running this from code looks simple

but the launching is much harder -/

and the way that it bends, frustrating

and the way that it breaks, endless

making stay from go is stop from start

when/: left is right, eaten is starved

/if forcing this is futile, aching

/if feelings are born sterile, weightless

/find: the essence of myself in _you_

FOUND: void, null value, seeking again

but the retreat from you, illogical

but my persistence for you, forever

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Free, or Anthropomorphising The Spider

southern breezes seemed to carry

a bell tolling: nerve-bending fangs

and nails on chalkboard screech

it was that morning when Liberty awoke

and her eight legs seemed so unsteady

and the chitin body shook with angst

so ugly had she become that no one

could recognise her mirror image;

they saw in Liberty the chains of others.

that tough shell she had grown

after those myriad trials and beatings

now sheltering such a gentle many.

[scribblesonbrokenglass]

Dig For Victory

it took some time

to cut so far in

and strike ore;

shocked to find it,

to mine a rich vein

of more than pyrite —

a glitter at last

emerges from heaps

of life’s vague dust