contemporary poetry

early dawn
listening to the wind
tap on the window

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You always know what to say
To bring me home to you;
The quiet of the dawn
Finds me watching you sleep,
Studying you
Measuring your breath
Isolating your dreams
Hoping to find our pure love.

On the veranda,
Morning coffee
Neither saying much
Just a look now and again
That spells love.

Grab any day and it is not enough.
We are unbearably alert,
afraid that there is nothing else out there,
yet hopeful as skies darken
and earth calms down enough
for us to search out what might lie hidden.

There is a slight stammer when we speak,
which we must always own,
carried casually, like spindrift,
into the warp and weft of an early morning horizon,
sluicing through a swarm of stars.

We heard The Big Bang linger
as dust settled into the shape of us,
a bit of buff and sparkle
as we warmed up,
clusters of maverick molecules
becoming question-making machines.

Was it a special sprinkling
which formed itself into longing,
that lonesome pleading with the universe
to whisper possibility along its fault lines,
cracks cackling with mystery at the edges?

This is not hubris. We do not search
for a creature who will scan
the iris of our eyes,
probe the shape of our lips for truth.
We do not need a canary-yellow caged mind
that will latch on to ours.

We need to know only that they are out there,
sweet sentient scraps in an ignorant universe,
almost like ourselves, but with the strut of magic to them,
that we are not incurably alone in the crisp after-cold,
a wayward excess of that first scorching swirl.

Vist Marie at http://mariemacsweeney.com.

I am moved by death in many stubborn ways:
some news, an obituary, an in memoriam; but it is moving,
a slow passing into dying deep embers,
where the wound is unhurt,
uncut, only in oblivion.

Words toss me
hassle me into
some writing, some thinking
and some meditation. But,
poetry is a sum total of all
and then words are reduced
to ashes which burn, at
mention of words.

I knew as a child how words were mesmeric
as I stood on stage to recite poems of rhythm,
poems which scanned mind
and brain, poems that I learnt by rote, poems that the Radiant Reader in school brought peace to soul, poems of dignity, indignity, poems that were balladic, epic, nomadic. Poems where words escaped mind’s eye wrought
into worlds of laughter, sadness, madness.
And then, words fleshed them into spin-offs.

Today is spring, someone
announced, I never knew it
had a date, or birth, or death I only know that fruits
of earth are sown here, mesmerized by an unflagging wind. Spirit of
dominance. And springtime’s cherries will open, wilderness of skies.

I must leave this
wilderness of thought
grass growing, head cracking
splintering forth,
a country is burning
the dead are buried long
ago, they will resurrect
only at the raucous bark
of a dog. I haven’t travelled enough to know
that the writing on the wall
is only a slur to all actions.
Shoot them out and twist
history into contorted truths.

This springtime reminds
of autumn’s wind
and decadent roads
will smell the tar once again
as roads need to be repaired
in this season only
with the brush of the rains
lacing them with wetness, muddy. I stand or walk
precariously as the roads
are prepared once again for torrid rains, the monsoon’s blues, and the fang-bearing winds.
In this hill town I breathe freely. Rustic.