Poem - MAG Poetry Prize 2010
Palm Sunday
by
London, UK
By God’s grace
I manage to switch from noun to verb
Looking
for my tools in the half-light in the bird song and the tunes that chasten me.
On
frost bitten tarmac under halogens,
waiting
for oil perhaps petrol and man made thunder.
With
vapour twisting waiting for dawn.
I
am defying sleep knowing sleep defies me,
I
render terror into dark purpose with familial deceits.
Befriended
by concrete and the smell of someone else’s urine.
By
God’s grace
I
will avoid rebirth, I will desist and I will leave as if unborn.
Only
moisture left, little better but none the worse.
He
might welcome me and I will give thanks for keeping an unmade bargain.
Too
tired for tears I listen for my obituary.
By
God’s grace
I
am a spectator by the broken Palms, following a trail of blood before blood was
special.
Whose
words are these?
Bad
Jews? Good Jews?
Nobody
can tell.
Whoever
tells you is lying.
They
panicked. So do I. So should you.
Whose
words are these?
Only
mine I regret, now more verb than noun,
Writing
not being.
Drowned
in aspiration
The
bad end of the bargain.
By
God’s grace
I
regret my self-made mystery,
An
investment in misery, sweetened by sensibility.
Cheering
the pulse of virtuosity and the razor edged
Using
words when fists would be best.
A
vulgar cardboard gnome fearing rain.
Looking
for the family vault in all the wrong places.
By
God’s grace
Broken
veins and forgotten promises
Long
gone rumours on the horizon
Lost
now in digital noise
Paraded
before regiments of grinning indifference
Laughing
at my plastic cross.
Added: 06.04.2010
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