WARREN LEVER

 

TAO

 

They have chorused down the taps,

warmed in the heat of an oven:

the eyes have turned back inside

themselves and toiled through

the dark filmmaking of mind,

being unreflective and dull,

and parted from a nature un-revealed

through want of looking:

                              

The Tao is found

in the gaze of a sparrow.

 

 

HEIRS

 

There are three girls waiting and smoking

under a bus shelter. Shift workers passed,

glazed their cars in rain; cut black ice.

three girl’s arms crossed, cold white skin.

 

one scuffed her heels, traced a grove,

and came across an ancient foot print

set into poured concrete

where I stamped myself upon an age.

 

there was a time when all we needed was

a permanent black marker and a window

we drew on –  reflections of ourselves

through the ce-fax of midnight.

 

a crisp packet ran a gutter and its

foil picked up the orange strip-lighting;

setting and night frequency

for the laureates of Sheffield road. 

 

 

EX-MINER’S SUNDAY

 

One bad morning, and so I went

down the backs out on the fields and saw

the auld man coyote walking in the mud

of his breasted virgin-mother –  crone.

 

the glacial movement in his eye

(and the artic breath) considering

the sun as her belly button

that turns, flips on; then falls back and folds in.

 

He ‘slashes and burns’ the sky

for fresh saplings of rhyme

and she, ashamed of the piss and seamen

that seeps from the soles of our shoes

like the apache’s tears,

laid this net curtain – the night frosting

of twigs, fags, thickets, abandoned cars –

on table

 

Did you know there are men who

don’t just glide like you or I?

but force pavement beneath to give,

and the earth to blush.

 

 

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SENTINEL POETRY (ONLINE) #31, JUNE 2005. ISSN 1479-425X