Saturday, April 17, 2010

Poem

Life is a Peanut Butter Sandwich


Mice in the cupboards eating peanut butter traps
until their eyes bulge out, neck down
asphyxiated by closure’s steel
spring clamp.

Mice in the cupboards knowing what they need
about their world, not knowing enough
about the other.

Mice in the cupboards on a metabolic high
living their short furred lives in wary dwelling
rooted in a world of routes
knowing what they need ‘till terror springs
the silence of never knowing more.

Those tiny beads
that once were eyes, reflect
my thin looking.

Monday, April 12, 2010

ABC

Arrive Belize City, (ETA 1:02 PM)


It’s Central America man
call it hot C.A. Where the Mayan’s were
America is calling

The ABC of traveling
is don’t sweat it, not
even at high noon, listen
to the old Shade.


On the short drive in, from airport
to seaport, I hear the mahogany’s all gone. Which means
no more knocking on wood. Knock not.


Does opportunity knock, in a Swamp
-city trash bin?

What’s been
washed ashore?

Why
is life
or Where
has it being
been?


-


Smile in the narrowstreets,
those hard eyes have seen
British rule and hurricanes

-

Sidewalks curbs and gutters, well
made of stone. (Like what the Romans left
in Gaul and Britain?)

The difference is
many would never have lived
here before.

Lumber town snake port,
where the sun didn’t shine
until the empire sat down.

On Spanish land
the English throne
gives the dog a bone.

-

At the olde gaol, punishment
was a capital crime. I mean to say
Death
was by hanging.

Is it brutish, or british
to measure how
to hang a man
humanely?

From a rope of sin
the devil dangled

between
decapitation
and strangling:

Arrrgh
Death is a door
-knob Slam!



Belize City waits
for an oceanbreeaze,
but not for whitecaps
that’d wash away
these ruinz

-

Clap board sun
goes up and down. Bare
foot boy on a bicycle
walking the dog, what
place is this? Tenacious.



Inland by Bus (Olde School): An On the Road Rhythm


Hattieville’s the town
a hurricane built,
after leaving another, flat
and further back


-

At the back o’ the bus
a sturdy little Mayan
throws up drunk
beer on floor

“Better lift your feet!”
We’re rolling on in
to Belmopan

Then the driver’s helper
is gonna
“Mop it up man!”

Soon we’ll go
where rooster’s crow
“The sun is up
in San Ignacio!”


-


Tell the driver
we’re going to Ranguana soon,
where the great heron showers
at the lip of the swamp
is where we’ll be.

There it goes
did you see it
thru the window
of these metal walls?

Like zinc lions
rusted to a mandrake root
it’s a difficult living
where the water is slow.

The iguana’s skin
is another tender organ
and the legs
taste like chicken.

Tell the driver
we’re going to Ranguana soon,
to ride a bird upon a stone
up and down like a mountain,
taste the colour in the sun.




After Market



Papaya flesh
so pink inside, the size
of a baby pig




Floating down the Mopan River on a Tire Tube


I ask Fernando where
is the fer-de-lance? And is
there any defence? He says
not to swim at night, and some
times not at all.



Bus Ride East, (tire by tire)

Into the sun
Rise
Kissed

-

Oranges
orange as
not orange is
but oranges


-


Don’t monkey with the bananas
chase a snake thru cane
or hunt a man in the mangrove.
Let the wild ones live
as the naked ones do.


Placentia


Palm tree casts a shadow

in time along the beach

q u a r t z s a n d t i c k s



Sugar Sugar

a drink for the sun
is water and rum

butter me baby

let me
see you
run






The Conscious Ocean

Brains like coral ring and
harbour)))fflicks of thought.
Currentsurge fins finis
sharkskin plies the shallow.
Soft fingerlings of tomorrow
minnow all around a round.
This salted flesh a wound’s
impossible flower,
where beauty is dissolved
without friendliness.
The sea in ourselves
in meaninglesssuspension
preys for life.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Untitled


Universal Truth

it may be just
that humankind’s extinction
proves the benign


Nic Coivert