Four Poems

Hello friends,

Happy New Year!

Four poems to get 2024 underway — enjoy! (And if you do, please consider purchasing The Robots of Babylon — your support would mean a lot to me.)

THE CITY (Palindrome-Haiku)

Go flat, urbanised....
A cradle here held arcades
in a brutal fog.

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LEAVES (Triolet)

Whose sorrow grew these hanging hosts
that rustle in the endless breeze?

The forest holds a court of ghosts
whose sorrow grew. (These hanging hosts

were sentinels of ancient posts,
but now are noosed to nameless trees.)

Whose sorrow grew these hanging hosts?
That rustle, in the endless breeze....

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VOLCANO (Palindrome)

A vale, 
sirenic.

Its alps 
a red net’s atlas;
a bared, nude summit, 
pure.

Pools loop, erupt. 
I’m mused —

Under a basalt 
as tender as plasticine, 
rise, lava.

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EMPTY THEATRE (Anagrammed Lines)

At the empty theatre, I was busy drinking
whiskey by the pint. I made a stranger tut.
He turned away, striking this empty beat —
but I kept rhythm. I was in a tense tragedy,
rethinking ideas better put away; myths
that weary my sun.... I’d kept the rising beat,
by angry muster, and I kept its white heat,
but the needy spirit was taking my heart....