A Love Letter to Life - random poems

The Great Plastic Sky

At night the city shines
in its dull haze of glory
A roaring, neon town; burning heads of a thousand candles
Columns of flame waving feigned smiles at
the starry, starry sky so
soft, a blanket - glowing with
polka-dot wishes, saucers and dishes
drift around in milky cascades
illuminating beams of hope
smothered by skyline views
skyscraper peaks, chimney sweeps
brick mountains and
pluming grey walls 

The acrylic clouds choke on their marshmallow breath
The great plastic snow-globe, upturned lightbulb
Our explosion, great idea, great saviour, great death

Each tree has solid gold leaves, twenty-four karat
piston limbs churning with cogs - steel
stealing - reaching for the charred stars, fooled
by the fatal glow
Fake. Fly, the plastic ceiling a mere mirage, a copy
of the black cat sky

Bleeding, weaving its grimy hands, its
slimy eye, leaking, winding, white hate,
its black iris oozing a mortal pattern upon
the chessboard houses
Our eternal turn, failed gambit
taken the queen's hand in iron chains, brass clasps
A lost one, a captive, prisoner, pawn, until all pieces are sacrificed
she will weep, marginal life – mother nature. No saviour, a wife
to the world, our world. Forced hand, she gambles, we cheat
an ace to her face as she chokes

Oh, the homes?
Each window a moon
On each sill an alien
peering from behind clouded glass, out
onto the street light stars
Reaching, drowning each tiny wish
in murky, murky grey
mindless, wondering at

the skyline reflection
some sad mimic
some solemn mirror
of tiny light bulb planets
as if the canvas earth tried to paint the sky
in concrete palettes and fluorescent lights
a faded memory of the sun in its absence, leave
this place, a mis told narrative
in never-ending denouement, no peace
for the wicked, the wild.

and we're born as we breathe
and we live as we breathe
and we die as we breathe

Our smoking masterpiece
flaming its sorrow into the darkness
created to shroud our own

It's okay, we prefer to blind ourselves
No cracks, the blurred outlines of polluted souls
The dancing candles of our musty air

Look.

A silver cat scurries, leaks oil into tungsten strands -
grass. Tin flowers of old, protruding memories, a nickel bee
at each crown – our titanium minds heed no life, they lie like
dead flowers, bent and untruthful, even in sorrow

You watch as a bird lands
creates a soft arc of wire
Crowing, as if it could string a sentence from the stars
A worm hanging from its mouth, its beak, its teeth
Sharp as diamond

a messenger between two broken worlds

The Smoky Sky and
The Lonely Earth

It laughs at you.
Waves a leaden wing
Blinks its sharp metallic glare
And with one long creak of its iron hinges
Flies away
Into the great plastic sky