Friday 29 May 2015

VISIBLE VELOCITY

Another straight forward poem this post. 
Do you ever notice people avoiding you in the street, slipping in among the crowds rather than stopping and speaking? Perhaps it's just their reaction to me. On Monday this happened and rather than shout her name out I watched her slide away.
25.5.15.

I suppose she saw me,
abreast of where she walked,
as we were enjoying the finer points of our ongoing conversation.

She employed an obvious strategy:
get ahead of us,
avoid the inevitable polite interaction.

Her velocity through the lunch time throng suddenly making her visible.

I let her go.

That's it, that's all, no more.

Just a person I knew pre-redundancy.
An eight years on stranger.
Working hard not to say hello.

Not sure about every line, or in deed if it needs punctuation. I had envisaged it as a prose poem but it looked lumpy and I felt it needed the space to stretch out. It's a minor poem at best.
This next poem is another work in progress.
The Cartography of the Soul

They had robbed him.
First it was his parents,
marriage floundering then separation.
Mostly it was his schooling,
bright, brittle social construction.

His ancestors had sailed oceans,
criss-crossed the freezing sea,
sure of the craft beneath their feet.
And here he was, hollow inside,
tied to his logic by cynicism.
This is how my world will be.

Love would not save him,
as soon as the children could leave
he shut the door on his way out,
put half the globe between him and them.
Still it was not enough.

The gulf could not be crossed even in sleep.
He dreams; sexton in his left hand,
looking for at least one star in the darkling sky.
The black water ripples with no wind.

When he wakes he knows this is how it will continue,
No map, no compass, nowhere.

I put it away about three months ago and still cannot yet see its true shape. Any suggestions?
I leave you with Stabbed to Death Outside San Juan off the Mountain Goats new album.

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