'My words are sandbanks...'

'words ... silence'

(Wednesday, 04 November 2009)

My words are sandbanks
Your silence in spate
washes over them
Yet nothing of it
seeps down
Dommage?
I guess

When did your silence first ...

When did your silence

first distrust my words?
first circle my words with grave disdain?
first puncture my words to show their bloated emptiness?

When did my words

first dim their power to suit your silence?
first lose their full-throated voice?
first slink away guiltily from your silence?
first feign feebleness even when fully charged?

No matter how much I polish my words
or spruce them up,
they will never have pedigree,
or be good enough for the durbar of your august silence.

So don’t ask me when my words
became what they are now.
Pointless this overload of questions,
this tilting stack of memories.

You, my muse...

If my god has clay feet,
you, my muse, have soiled feet.

Just because
I go down on my knees
and with outstretched arms
entreat your disappearing form
to turn around
and look at me just once,
you spurn me.

My writing drags its feet
reshuffles old images
stokes tired metaphors
rehashes borrowed lines.
How can you not see this?
How can you not care?
I was once your favourite ward, remember?

When I have gutted my own words
or pounded them out of shape,
will you then smile
to see this nasty piece of work?
You left me.... while invoking you
I offered not the gallant orchid
but the homely hibiscus?

My god has clay feet
and you, my muse,.. a swollen head.