café date (2009)

coffee kicks

your date
talks your arm off

you yet another
imitation audience

such expertise in
appearing unconfused

even when your attention swings
to the drizzle of adjectives
out on the street

& how do you like
these café clientele

glazed cakes &
tarts under glass

sincere, unimpressed looks
that say, “I hope
you are not the future”

don't they realise
the number of errors
can only inflate?

you drop a twenty
on the table,
slip out alone

Counterexample Poetics

One of my poems, 'unfinished liquid', has found a home at Counterexample Poetics.

Thanks to Felino Soriano for playing host!

There's some great work on the site if you take the time to have a read.

Retreat (2009)

Friday afternoon
we arrive, meet
our fellow meditators,
talk for hours
about the prospect
of not talking
for the next ten days

*

every morning
the gong waking us
into 4:30am darkness

*

for the first three days
we watch the breath

*

feel the breath entering
& leaving the nostrils,
channels of breath
gently brushing
the upper lip

*

stripped of speech
& gesture
how we still keep
a polite distance,
how I am careful
not to slurp at my tea
in the dining hall

*

writing is not allowed;
‘there is no need
to take notes’

*

no reading either
except signs & notices;
a makeshift sign
on the border of the property reads
‘do not go beyond this point’

*

every day after breakfast
taking a walk around the field;
around its perimeter
the long grass has been trampled
into a narrow path;
my toes,
exposed through sandals,
sprayed with dew;
grasshoppers leaping
away from each step

*

perhaps a sleepmurmur
is all that has exited
my mouth for days –
other than a cough
or froth of toothpaste

*

three times a day
a ‘sitting of determination’:
to stay still
for an hour,
observing the pain
in my shoulders and back
as it arises

*

towards the end
of each arduous hour
the coughing starts up
amongst the men
meditating around me
(this being their subtle way
of expressing discomfort)

*

remembered songs drop by,
wash uninvited through
the meditating mind

*

what is that sound?
two percussive blocks
knocked together
or a restless frog
in the dawn?

*

4:30am
New Year’s Day:
close to forty degrees;
moths, mosquitoes & others
drunken in the heat
party around the nightlight
outside our dorm,
& the thought arrives:
any other year,
I’d be joining them

*

some afternoons
it must be 45 degrees
in the meditation hall;
I leave a pool of sweat
on the mat

*

I break my vow of silence
to inform the ‘male manager’
that the first toilet on the left
has a blockage

*

men & women are segregated,
have separate facilities,
though we all meditate
in the same hall –
men on the left,
women on the right

*

everyone is asked to dress ‘modestly’
to minimise distractions

*

meditating in the hall
at dusk,
intermittent mooing
of a distant cow

*

a spider on the door
of our dorm room...
is it? – yes, it is
on the inside of the glass

*

without communication
it's difficult
to come to an agreement
about whether the dorm door
should be open or closed
during sleeping hours

*

on white porcelain sinks
in the male washroom,
mosquitoes & beetles:
a growing collection of corpses

*

anicca:
everything arises,
passes away


Note: This poem is based on my experiences during a ten-day Vipassana meditation retreat in December/January 2007-08.

Recurring Poem #6

C.P. Cavafy : 'Dangerous Thoughts'

Said Myrtias (a Syrian student
in Alexandria during the reign
of the Emperor Konstans and the Emperor Konstantios;
in part a heathen, in part christianized):
"Strengthened by meditation and study,
I won't fear my passions like a coward;
I'll give my body to sensual pleasures,
to enjoyments I've dreamed of,
to the most audacious erotic desires,
to the lascivious impulses of my blood,
without being at all afraid, because when I wish -
and I'll have the will-power, strengthened
as I shall be by meditation and study -
when I wish, at critical moments I'll recover
my ascetic spirit as it was before. "

(Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

Below: portrait of Cavafy by Panagiotis Gravallos