Prayer

Some days, although we can not pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, a small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock still, hearing his youth
in the distant latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child's name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, a radio's prayer —
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

(I had posted this already...found it again and have to post it again.)

sunny side up (keep your)

Thetis

Thetis

No man frightens me. Watch as I stretch
my limbs for the transformation, I'm laughing
to feel the surge of the other shapes beneath my skin.
It's like this: here comes the full thrill of my art
as the picture of a variegated
lizard insinuates itself into my mind.
I extend my neck, lengthen fingers, push
down toes to find the form. My back begins
to undulate, the skin to gleam. I think
my soul has slithered with me into this
shape as real as the little, long tongue in my mouth,
as the sun on my back, as the skill in absolute stillness.
My name is Thetis Creatrix and you,
voyeur, if you looked a little closer, would see
the next ripples spread up my bloody tail, to bloom
through my spine as the bark begins to harden
over my trunk. Already I'm so much of the oak
I lean everything towards the black oxygen
in the black air, I process delicious gases
through my personal chemistry, suck moisture
from the earth to a pulse so slow you can't detect it.
Next tigress. Low tremendous purrs start at the pit
of my stomach, I'm curving through long grass,
all sinew, in a body where tension
is the special joy and where the half-second
before a leap tells it all. Put out a paw
to dab a stone, an ant, a dead lamb. Life,
my life, is all play even up to the moment
when I'm tripped up, thrown down, bound,
raped until I bleed from my eyes,
beaten out of shape and forced to bring forth War.

now you know...

where my title comes from

me and you

me and you,
simple as 1 and 2
me and you,
hanging on, being true

conversation

(Tom Waits for Marianne Faithful)

Will you take me across the Channel,
London Bridge is falling down.
Strange a woman tries to save
What a man will try to drown.
And he's the rain that they predicted,
Its the forecast every time.
The rose has died because you picked it
And I believe that brandy's mine.

And all over the world
Strangers
Talk only about the weather.
All over the world
It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.

The world is getting flatter,
The sky is falling all around.
And nothing is the matter
For I never cry in town.
And a love like ours, my dear,

Is best measured when its down.
And I never buy umbrellas,
For there's always one around.

And all over the world Strangers Talk only about the weather. All over the world It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.

And you know that its beginning,
And you know that its the end
When once again we are strangers
And the fog comes rolling in.

And all over the world
Strangers
Talk only about the weather.
All over the world
It's the same
It's the same
It's the same.

primeiro de agosto, primeiro de inverno