Empty Chair - an over-the-top verse

The empty chair covers my day
with a cold blanket of snow
My day begins thus on a low
My mind distracted, far away

The emtpy chair: when I walk past
and see today you will not make
the journey in, all I forsake
except my longing, so work comes last

Never before an empty chair
lowered a man's spirits so
his soul became a darkened pit

Please do dispell this deep despair
and make all gloom and sadness go:
Come into work, and sit on it

Another Divertimento Naive

I sing my song with the first light
Of frosty mornings in December
and in my song you I remember
O, Rose of England, fair, red and bright!

Divertimento Naive

Star that shines in the blue sky
A frosty evening of December
Please tell my Love that for her I
Will always Christmas time remember

In Town / At Night

Thus suddenly the door opened and I
Took the seven steps into your lair
How many nights of vigil and despair
In one sweet moment were turned into delight

Seven steps and one furious embrace
My lion heart of body and soul demanded
To shelter you my arms and chest expanded
To stay inside you - in our love's space

String Concerto

Fresh
Finely strummed
Harmonious chord
Disguised the dagger
That pierces the heart
Then the orchestra joins in

A change of heart

Now wherever I turn I hear your name
My eyelids up or down, your face I see
Nothing I taste but your imagined kiss

And yet I can but only tell you this
No matter how much my heart will ache:
In choosing you it made a grave mistake

So fare thee well, and take with you the sounds
and sights and taste that I now hold so dear

So take your leave, you who my heart has crowned

Never look back, nor ever shed a tear

Dives & Lazarus

Coffee no longer does the trick
Nor exotic herbal teas
Nor red bush from the Cape

What this wretch wants amounts to more
Than food scraps from your table
More than a drop of water on my tongue
More than dogs to lick the sores of my heart

But I digress

Coffee no longer does the trick
My days are a continuous dream
My nights an enfeverished vigil
My journeys on this earth are all this side of pointless

VER Haiku

Outside, the autumn rain
Inside, I press a button
and leap into the future

Transformers

Un corazon anhelante
Angelica, tu transformas
Y asi mantienes constante
mi amor, en su escrita forma

Divertimento

Duele mi mano de escribir canciones
Duelen mis ojos de mirar al cielo
Duelen mis pies por aferrarse al suelo
- Este pechito pide vacaciones!

At 5pm

You take your leave - my heart stops

If only for a tick or two

You pack it in and travel home

and I am left

Thinking of you

Firefight

"serán ceniza, mas tendrá sentido"

This cruel organ my blood pumps
barely contained inside my chest -
It gives my mind no break or rest:
Sensible Thoughts my blood does trump


This heart of mine, now set on fire
Set in its ways, obstinate furnace,
Its empty warmth little can earn us -
Its glow that's fuelled by desire


And yet I feel your eyes ignite
The blood that runs within my veins -
A swollen river in the night

My flesh will yet withstand the pain
That may my mind stand and fight
Against the might of my heart's reign

Piadosa diosa

Angelica, ten piedad
y el corazon no me quemes
No permitas que blasfeme
Oh diosa de oscuridad

Angelica, se piadosa
del cielo dame los bienes
que tu en tus ojos los tienes
Oh nocturna y bella diosa

No me trates como extran~o
Criatura celestial

Ven a comer de mi mano
Aunque sea de mortal

Harvest time

How much I long to hold your hand
while August clouds fly overhead
and skies ignite in gray and red
blurring the line of sea and land

How much I long to hold your hand
and be to fertile landscapes led
to go from earth to wheat to bread
under the warmth of summer's sun

Eclipse

The shadow of your beauty obscures the Sun
but I, a mere mortal, would not know:
your beauty itself projects a clear glow
and fills with light the path on which I run

The garden

The things I care about are not that hard

to find: they roam around

the garden on sunny days, scattering

my thoughts - these thoughts themselves, you understand

can be seen scattered on the pages

filled with my words. I care about

the words and thoughts and those who scatter them

among the grass and flower beds, that is

around the entire garden.

Llanganuco 1988

The narrow road, the oppresive valley
The stream that cuts its course through it
Wedged between boulders

in almost constant shade
Dwarfed by snow-covered peaks that touch the sky
All light from Sun or Moon reflected in them

And then, like a gem of absolute beauty
An emerald lake of icy and quiet
Waters that kiss the shores adorned
By no more than a few twisted trees
Dust from the road and boulders
Close to the waters' edge

Vision

Here comes the storm with soothing thunder
The drops of rain awake my senses
Alas, they also obscure my lenses

Summer haiku

The long uneven grass
A gust of wind
Ruffles my world's own feathers

Limerick of the senses

I know a lady from Crewe
who likes to smell her own poo:
she can tell by the smell
whether "everything's well"
when she's eaten a curry
or two.

Ode to my laptop

O sweet laptop! O sweet and lovely laptop
That sits atop my table on kitchen cooling racks
To try to compensate for your shortcomings

The fact you overheat
because you are old and work will not replace you
until the beancounters say that you've reached ROI point
That you have peaked in your usefulness to us and a new model
can be contemplated. O laptop, my love
The new model will not be as understanding of my needs
No more putting the kettle on and making coffee
While you boot up or the browser opens
No more having a sandwich while SAP loads and purchase orders
can be released into the wild like snakes raised in captivity

But with lower productivity.

O sweet laptop! So sweet and lovely you freeze up
like the Artic and one needs a pickaxe
to make you once again responsive:
If you were trully mine I would'ave given you
a memory upgrade and a reconditioned battery
But you are - alas! - just leased processing power

So I can work from home and reach homeostasis

So I can watch my kids during the summer

- the so-called work-life balance.

Drought

The grass had gone all yellow. There my mother
watering can in hand tended to her roses
while we all sat outside, that hottest of all summers
in July 1990. My grandfather
held in his hands a copy of the Telegraph.

"When ever will this drought end" whinged my mother
conversationally, and added "it will kill all my flowers"

"Drought? Drought?" said Grandad
"What do you know about droughts?"

We felt a story coming, the war and all that, Monty
and the Eight Army and his years of service.
"A drought is when you find dead livestock
on the side of the road; When you open a tap
and it coughs up some dust with hissing sound"

"A drought is when you have to cut a reed
and suck water out of a shithole
in the dry river bed"

He went back to his paper. Mother summoned me and sent me

inside with the can: "Go and fetch some more water,

be a darling" she said. We were sitting outside.

It was such a hot summer.

Cut through the gloom

Light up a candle in an empty room
The darkness goes, but not the gloom

Brujula

Ya la rosa geometrica señala
con sus ribones nauticos la ruta:
oh hieratica y magnetica batuta
que adorna, que dirige, que apuntala!

Landscape

Now the strong winds are diying down
The leaves off trees have fallen
The rivers with the rain are swollen,
waters gone murky, and almost copper-brown

Dusk Haiku

The first shining star
A gust of evening wind
The clouds, so high and far

Doce cascabeles...

Con sus botas de vaquero
y sus esbeltas calancas
hace resonar el suelo
al contonear de sus ancas

Atmospheric haiku

The gathering storm
Tap! The barometer
awoken from its dream

Vereda tropical

Sway in the wind like a palm tree
Laden with coconuts or papayas
Tough, broad brown leaves
flying like flags of nature

when the storm blows
Salt in the air gives taste
to your sharp cheekbones
Drizzle from the waves gives shine
to those eyes of yours
And I whisper, like the wind,
sweet nothings in your ear.

Feb 1975

En mi nin~ez, en largos veranos
Aspire el aire puro de mis calles
largas horas pateando la pelota
sobre el asfalto, o persiguiendonos
unos a otros en rojas
y verdes bicicletas
Tirandonos piedritas
y huyendo de perros guardianes
en barrios en construccion
y chacras aledan~as

Snowman

Look, this is when we built

a little snowman:

two black buttons

for eyes, carrot, pipe

red plastic sheet for scarf

red silly felt hat

It was such a cold winter

the one of 2009

we couldn't but come and play

not knowing if it would happen

again, anytime soon

The snow melted

but not the memories

smuggled then as pieces of future

in four-megapixel pictures

EMPOWERMENT

The sun shines mockingly outside my front door
Slippery ice covers the pavement
- the walk to school just got more interesting

Musn't forget to ring pest control services
Report that garden rat
I know it's only one but my neighbour too has seen it

At work the powers that be await to quiz me
None too happy with my results
But we don't call them that, we call them 'outcomes'
And I tread on the ice as if walking on egg shells
Telling my children 'be careful! Don't run off lest you should fall!'
That'll really make us late
and earn us a chat with the head teacher
and our name on the register,
please sign here and here

Then I think of the rat lurking deep in my garden

Job application

In a matter of minutes a form is completed
Add a few characters, like in a soup of letters
So much I have learned or I mime from my betters
But all I have is this form that I fill in, embittered

To a toilet seat

O toilet seat, I took no notice
while you strained under my weight
and my whole family's, day in, day out
Sunrise to sunset and later still

O toilet seat, now you have broken
and in your fancy design your little revenge
unfolds in a miriad of fruitless visits and phone calls
to high street retailers and trade establishments
who cannot help me find a replacement
to do your dirty work and bear the mass
of two adults and three children
day in, day out, sunrise to sunset and into the wee hour
up and down and up again
until your fancy cushioned hinges give up the ghost
and I get on the phone or the car to resolve
this agonising problem I hadn't seen coming
when I went to B&Q on another cold morning
and a fancy bathroom suite I scooped in the sales.