Summer

Zdzislaw Beksinski (1972)

Open wide great jaws of time where laughter swallows gods divine
Blow your tune through trumpet stems and daffodil delirium
Drink the day in draughts that say the green has come to stay
Never hear the magpies squall behind the walls of hay
In penumbra veiled the colony failed to roll their Sisyphean rock
Past the meat-locker feast, that bipedal beast that slanders the afternoon clock

And crystal consonants don’t translate to capture the afternoon’s magnetic haze
Nor do vowels of earthenware and syntax candles the mystery erase
The background hum of metal made from piston paragraph
Waits at traffic lights to skin the rubber from the road
The octopus that inks this song on summer skyline scarf
Knows full well the consequence of doing things by half

Half made lies and half-life ties that knot the neck like noose
Half baked pies and half moon smiles the gap-toothed night let loose
Half a mile of bad road tiled with yellow-brick amnesia
Half a brain to wonder why we swallow this anaesthesia

Tomorrow

The rain came early; unpredicted by the weather underground
The pundits pondered, gave their words a laundry run-around
Proclaimed the world at fault, their wages stashed in mattress hair
And duly washed their hands upon this troublesome affair

The dam once broken floods the lawn with past rainfall
Wets my broken feet and causes cars to stall
Out in the street washing yellow lines from the curb
Footprints pad past wilted roses lest their thorns disturb

The sleeping queues of clotted arteries carbon clogged
The rolling hills of forests long past logged
The shattered glass from windows wondrous lost
The future’s shed its children brought to cost

And now the water shed from eyes that well
Drip the beat retreat from corpses where they fell
Sons and daughters drowned in light of a 100 TV crews
Daylight darker that all the ink that masquerades as news