Tuesday poem: Prayer
December 17, 2012
Prayer
Let me kill the cynicism
that dogs me, toothily.
Let cleverness die
just for today;
let me believe
with simplicity,
that hope was born
that hope is with us
that hope will come again.
Let me lie down in pillowy hay;
no more maybes and yets
and tired, half-hearted smirk.
Or better still, blow me, now, full-sailed
and squalling, billowing onto faith.
P.S. Cottier
May I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas, whatever their faith (or lack of faith).
And, to get away from simple faith and back to weird curiosity, note how two of the wise men in Jacques Daret’s painting seem to be talking into their sleeves, like security guards looking after a VIP.
For the last time this year, click this feather for further poetic gifts. It’ll all be happening again next year, from January 22nd.
Tuesday poem: Answered by reptile
March 26, 2012
Answered by reptile
So the knives are getting
too sharply attractive,
your interest in wrist as whetstone
perhaps a little too keen.
Not even puns will save you,
those tight little refuges of spin.
So you get on your bike and go,
two wheels set towards infinity.
You even try this new cycle of prayer
as you sit beside the muddy pond.
but asking for strength is too clichéd.
Christ, it seems, has heard too much,
and won’t suffer that sort of shit,
(at least from the middle classes).
You look up, and see a tortoise,
neck out, a hyphen joining shell to air.
He suns himself on log island,
quiet, content; most of him tucked away
like a whispered promise.
And you know, that for today,
you will no more think to
carve a manic smile in wrist
than shuck him from his shell
and leave him wriggling on ground,
a discarded lively gob of snot.
His grey oval is an iris, glancing
at you, from pond’s centre;
winking you back into light.
P.S. Cottier
This poem is dedicated to anyone who has ever felt suicidal. Not just down with a hangover, or upset when they split up with a lover, or lost a job, but really suicidal. (And no, that’s not me.) May you find your own tortoise!
If you click this feather, you will go to New Zealand, where they may or may not have tortoises, turtles or inferior snakes, but where poems can certainly be found. Start with the middle poem, and then check out the bits on the side. Or read it however you want, you anarchist you.
PS Cottier 