Auckland Poetry.com

Helping the Banks

The night is as obscure as homemade wine the TV screen
casts a grave light in a room that has no shadow; presidents
and prime ministers appear tell us of financial woes, even
the forgotten George Bush is there; they say they are doing
the best they can and that savers money is safe; but I know
they are as powerless as I’m, but they were the ones who
let lose the beast of a free market believing in the myth that
it would correct itself that is to ask a drunk to stop drinking,
gallons of booze and it are all free. “And your money is safe”
is not true, when a bank goes belly up the savers money is
the first to go. Had I money I would take them out and place
them under my mattress but since I’m broke I tell you.
They will try to stop you say it will make matters worse, so
let it; withdrawing you money is the only power you have,
you have little to lose, they will lose everything for without
your cash they are nothing

Cena De Amor (Love scene)
By IBN BAQI ca 1145
translated from Poruguese

When the night curls up
Its tail of shadow and
Drinks dark wine so thick
That is as lunching on dust,
Absorbed through nostrils;

And it tightens around me
Like a brave man grips
His sword; and its pleats
Hang like standards from
My shoulders;

That’s when I give in to
The sweet weight of sleep
It breaks up our embrace
And I push her away from me,
The object of my love,
‘Cause it is impossible to sleep
On a pulsating pillow

The Dancers

Went to a dancing competition, but little did
I know it was naked dancing by grotesque
old people, the audience, all young, laughed
violently, great fun this, till their faces
became a mask of horror, when realizing they
were looking at their own future.

Someone pointed a finger at me and shouted
“he is old.” and hundred hands began pushing
me to the dance floor and tearing off my suit,
but I was able to jump out of an open window
were I landed in a stream five fathom deep, of
tears that had forgotten why they had cried,
and crocodile tears shed at gravesides;

I drank it all went back to the window spewed
it over the shameless old people who had let go
of their dignity in pursuit of eternal youth, and
fled into the woods. Torchlight, barking dogs
and angry voices: Get him, he isn’t a democrat
wants to stop us having innocent fun, would
have been a good nazi, string him up.”

Pale sunrise, still- life- forest- a deer grazes
in the clearing, suddenly it jumps in the air,
a red rose is born on its chest, and as a single
rifle shot echoes amongst trees, a day begins.