quiet begins another day
same as the one that came before,
a steady series of suns – up and down
they teach me how to rise and set
they show me I’m in an orbit
outside of my control

Ophelia laid down in the water
that she might watch the world
from a different point of view
but the waves were too cool
and they kept the wicked away
so there she held them all at bay
there she decided she would stay
forever and forever and a day

this one burst in and declared in pride –
“i am came to set fire to your life”

“yeah well you’re too fucking late,
i burned the whole damn place down long ago”

“so what’re you still doing here then –
you in your grace, you in your glory?”

“you want this flesh and these bones do you?
you want this suit of torn forgiveness i can’t get rid of?
FINE! SHOW ME YOUR INFERNO THAT I MIGHT STEP IN BASTARD!”

“hey man i was just poking you
like the dead body i thought you were;
i’m not in for killing what ain’t already gone…
where’s the fun in that?”

“No – see that’s not how it works you shit,
i want the flames i was promised…that’s your debt
and i’m tinder here to collect in the hot, dry wind”

“i make it a policy never to kill the crazy;
i’m outta here – keep your madness to yourself”

“no wait! come back – these tears are gasoline!
i’ll give you my Zippo as inheritance…all you gotta do is…
GET BACK HERE COWARD!!”

But he was gone and i was left alone…
they’re all afraid of a little conflagration;
never the balls to finish the job i started..

i am exceptional in my irony
hiding from world in a cloak of people
i wove myself with liar’s hands
bending their light around me
like the gravity well that i am

whenever i enter this space
i feel a great wound tear open inside
and i bleed until i’m empty
as a drained, cold corpse
numb to the horror of the world

then i can rise up again
and carry the gaping absence
from the tomb i have built
with the dead grin of a man
whose lips have pulled back
from the dryness…

and they all think it’s a smile

there is a wearying weight to joy
that presses hard on the anchored heart,
the light elation that pulls against the dark
and tears us up by our black roots
threatening to expose what we have buried

i would sing for you if the air were there
but for now my words will be laid down
till the breeze stirs at this night’s end,
for there is always the promise of dawn

it’s the eyes
they are the same
yesterday and today and tomorrow
recording and recording and recording
every moment…every syllable
as it has been said…

input is input,
but where does it go?
these memory banks get full
so something needs to go
shall we lose ourselves as children?
i think not…
it keeps us from getting old inside

maybe this is why we become child-like
in the sunset years…
we hold tight to our young selves
for fear of drowning in a sea of age…
for fear of dying in a self-imposed cage

(TO BE READ WITH A SENSE OF HUMOUR)

 

it was -17 here last night
and it has become clear –
spring has abandoned the north
in favour of a vacation in the tropics
while we…we fret and freeze
we imagine green and unfurled leaves
with a breeze that makes you sweat,
but just a little…

i saw a duck frozen into the pond
the icy eve before last;
too far across the glassy expanse to reach;
it’s quacks growing ever quieter
til’ only the silence filled the cold night air
as brave coyotes, skinny from this endless arctic
risked life and limb to reach their last supper –
a little canard carpaccio with foie gras before the grand finale

it was -17 here last night,
the end is no doubt night for me and mine
with poetic madness setting in
let us weep for the lost sun and cry out –

SPRING HAS ABANDONED THE NORTH!

The term “Blood Moon” is a recent religious usage and is not astronomically significant.

Many “prophets” have profited (pun intended) recently with the publication of fiction and “non-fiction” works talking about so-called blood moons as the sign of a coming apocalypse. First of all apocalypse is the Anglicization of the Greek ‘apokalupto’ meaning “reveal” and so unless you are expecting a cosmic revealing of some sort rather than the end of the world (eschaton) you are using the word wrong. 

For whatever reason the first full lunar eclipse of a series of four in a row without a partial eclipse between any of them (called a tetrad) has recently been called a “Blood Moon”. Many people blame trace this to Christian televangelist John Hagee and others who link this particular moon to prophecies regarding the eschaton in the Bible that speak of the sun going black and the moon turning to blood.

It is important to note that constant attempts to predict the end clearly show that people obviously think Jesus was kidding around when he mentioned that “no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows“.

It is also worth noting that the first lunar eclipse of a tetrad is no bloodier than any other full lunar eclipse. Furthermore, using the rules established by some recent so-called prophets which require these BM’s to occur over the Passover season there have been exactly eight BM’s since the resurrection.

1. 162-163 C.E. (Common Era)
2. 795-796 C.E.
3. 842-843 C.E.
4. 860-861 C.E.
5. 1493-1494 C.E.
6. 1949-1950 C.E.
7. 1967-1968 C.E.
8. 2014-2015 C.E.

There have also been countless lunar eclipses (which look exactly the same) in that same period.

The point? Unless the world has ended seven times previously and we have simply not noticed we are being prophetically ‘had’ and should probably focus our Biblical efforts on more productive areas like trying to understand if Jesus was just joking about feeding the poor or if he was actually serious. 

I would also suggest the money you use to purchase books like Hagee’s $12.99 paperback (unsurprisingly a bestseller) could be better spent. Hagee’s book has sold more than 400,000 copies – that means Christians have spent more than $5 million on this…I wonder how much food could be bought and donated to the poor for $5 million?

 

what i like about ted hughes’ poetry is the intentional obscurity of it all and a form and flow chosen deliberately to obfuscate the reader. you cannot read his poetry fast…you must slow down with him and his words…you must stop, consider and reread. his poems are filled with grammatical and structural speed-bumps designed to make us walk instead of run and in walking we might see things we would otherwise have missed – beautiful, painful things worth considering.