Like music for animals

Does love feel like music does for animals?
The creature does not comprehend the caress
but knows that it is good. It leans into it
and if the hand is withdrawn, seeks it again, 
and when we hear music we are moved,
without knowing why, not for sure, 
and return to be embroiled in its mysteries. 
Are we like cats craving a sensation
whose origin is remote, whose risks are real, 
to which we abandon ourselves entirely anyway?
How important is it to understand love anyway? 

Calligraphy

Everything and its opposite is true. 

All knowledge is coincidence

that will unravel given enough time,

and in the end there is time enough

to contradict every assertion, 

so let us at least record our errors

with letters that are so beautiful

they are admired after the ability

to read them is long forgotten. 

Balloon animal

As the illusion, the excuse, 

the performance, the pretence, 

the pretext of civilisation deflates, 

I retreat into the bicameral mind 

where the howls of mad gods echo 

in a maze of derelict modernity.

I press my skull like a shell

against the world's indifferent ear

to let it hear the autumn hiss

inside my head,

hissing as temperature inversions

refract the noise of distant traffic

until it becomes a constant faint surf,

or while a plane loiters at high altitude

growling its continuous complaint 

that it can't escape the azure

of this copper canvass dream

on which it lays its aluminium streak.

I retreat, and the conch I hold, it turns out, 

is one ear pressed against the other, 

my head elastic, inflatable, twisted, 

bent double, punctured, collapsing, 

and the hiss the sound my mind makes 

as it departs the clown show 

carnival balloon animal I am.

Immortal

Life is an illusion

because death is an illusion. 

There is no death,

and if there is no death

how can you live the kind of life

that is defined by the limits it sets? 

In the end there is only the realisation

that the person you thought you were

all this time, never really existed at all,

and all the choices you thought you made

were a brief elaboration of infinite possibilities,

and everything you thought you knew

varieties of error cascading one after another, 

and even your own worst enemy, 

whom you most despise, 

whose misfortunes you daily fantasise,  

is just you yourself upon a different path. 

So, knowing that, knowing all that, 

what kind of life will you live now?

Saint Giles, Edinburgh, September 12th, 2022

There was another Elizabeth, you know,
a girl born in Dunfermline Palace long ago, 
a girl who played in the grounds at Linlithgow
that lies in ruins now. Her father's crown,
his first crown, made of good Scottish gold, 
rests on your coffin, and courtiers mourn.
Through her you inherited his pedigree 
that you transmit now to your posterity.
There is nothing more you owe. Go.
Run off and play with your namesake.

(Written on the occasion of Queen Elizabeth lying in state in St. Giles cathedral. The British royal family derives its ancient pedigree through descent from Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI and sister of Charles I)

Throne

Imagine that head 

resting upon that stone,
dreaming angels. 

Since then, 

on that ground,

armies have fought, 

homes been bulldozed. 

and now settlers squat 

where Jacob slept. 

Time passes. 

Stones turn to dust, 

and yet those nations 

wrestling in Britain's womb

like Rebecca's twins
find in that Bethel stone 

a heel to hold,
a birthright to claim, 

and those broken promises
man makes to man, 

man makes to God,
and God makes to man. 

We were just kids,
just sibling rivals 

making power bids,
and now the king sits 

on a cistern lid. 

(Written on the day Queen Elizabeth died. Some familiarity with the lore associated with the Stone of Destiny is assumed, in particular the "Jacob's pillow" and "Westminster Stone" theories)

A season of endings

Worlds pass, 

and smooth skies of glass

slide their panels over each other,

lubricated with their doomsday stain

of blue and red and black, 

while the sun sets in our veins

and our briny blood runs clear 

and carries stars to graves 

beyond the heart's horizon. 

It is a season of endings. 

In the desert that remains,

silent, sterile and arid  

after the very last tear is shed,

we are memory and imagination.

We dream the present, 

existing as echo and evocation. 

It is a mirage, a fake oasis, 

a feast of dust, and we are drunk 

on the grapes of tomorrow's dry grief, 

and prophets' eyeballs are plucked

to press forth the humor with which

we fill our goblets of delusion

until we spill their inky draught.

We raise a toast to celebrate rockets

hurled like rocks at the sky, 

to smash it and let the future in, 

our petulance refined to a science, 

and from the falling fragments we make

a mosaic window through which to preach

a peasant's gospel to the post-literate, 

which we study to complete our ignorance,

while deep artesian aquifers of sadness

sunk far beneath the desiccated sand,

fed by ancient and forgotten lamentation,

mourn endless prehistories of disaster,

the eternal recapitulation of folly

of which we have no knowledge,

for which there is no consolation,

and which we are doomed to repeat.