On the subject of 2005

But What Afterwards? »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

Firstly, I want your kiss.
Your dancing touched me though less secure that other women –
    dazzling, it was dazzling.
It conjured a look I had once through a window (at our house),
                                                                                           
waiting.
Now I write your name on my skin!
Now my hands are cold and my body hungry for return!
    (Some element supposes you will return and I, forgiven.)

Press on with happy lips – lips that dissolve at the moment
                                                                                  
we meet them.
So turn again.
It is all to frequent that we wish it well for others –
        So believe ourselves this once!
Dance is best but what of afterwards?
There can be little more to say except return.
What moves slowly, moves well and by every kiss
                                                             a second second of
you.

John The Baptist »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

Must I live under the volcano?

Muscular, reserved, performed,

   Even perfected –

I gesture to the world

And he to me affords a laugh

   As to what’s coming.

So I was early, of good stock,

   (Pronounced early as ‘the one’).

Sent bravely into the cauldron

   To make sounds,

To talk of heading west

 Into the eye of God.

 

I am before the wind of a storm

   but also swept into its path.

Ghost And Holy Ghost »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

Be it.  Light, persuading.

   At a loss.  To its heat.

Light loved as Christ was but lost.

I have a place, I have a house.

 

Here in the changing light each moment

   We sit ‘white’ –

Still and different to ourselves

   And more completely

 than the last second taught to us.

 

Blinded, we see every day our death

   And ask that man we passed

‘He reminded me he was a ghost,

   He was alone and had no need of me.’

 

He bid me goodbye.

  It is the unknowing I like first

At dawn

  And then as the sun sets

The thought of a ghost greater than
light

 

That began each spell and rhyme

   That our friend seemed

To know whenever he passed.

You Shall Be Returned To The Sea »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

It is the pattern that you may expect (following starry things), so
   that we may be exact. The sofa was our crib and I imagined
you on it – all perfect, all ready. Each second planned, kept
  quiet and the travel woke us, the carriage shook and we were alive "please
email me, to tell us to…, right round

the back of", we were lost again and these shall be
   the seasons. Spring warmly welcomed; outside the window
the ploughman busy in his field (fulfilling his task faithfully).
   God is thanked. The summer – at first refreshing (the views
of
The seas are wonderful, wonderful) but soon clouds gather

and a storm breaks over Brighton – an imported electrical
     one ( I think) from the Caribbean: all soft and
sensuous afterwards but in the heat alarming to us and we pray
    together. But soon these same clouds (the ones I wrote
to you
about) charged in front: it was quite beautiful, we felt above

them, circulating, travelling by air and not seeming to pass
    anybody (just flew around in circles), the light playing on
their surfaces.  My thoughts were never far from you and I hoped
    you would be waiting when I landed. "Dispensing
love that all
should be calm when I awoke." Autumn – a dog prowls, horns

are blaring (we are confused!), prey pursued by hounds and hounds
    pursued by people, saying to somebody "we’re not quite
sure
who except they should leave us". Winter – it is precisely this:
    that London is foggy, sexy, difficult and people cough
unnecessarily on the underground tho’ better to be below

because above it was icy and through a tunnel came rushes which
    which bowled the lovers over, made it difficult to stand in
the
Winter fury:  Spring will soon return and we shall be married.
    That is my hope. She brought me life and her eyes sparkled in
the night as jewels that spoke. These were secrets that I

sought in unobtainable code while we drank and laughed in
    pauses that stretched from Cornwall to the present English;
and in a moment I turned and she was gone to magic seas
    where music plays – and the shadow ("he got rhythm")
is like sunlight on the massive swell of our meeting.

Business Travel – Executive Style »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

Like the girl on TV, ‘Miss Celebrity’

Coming back to me

     Deep in thought

  as I navigate the night reading

Hoping she saw up there ‘flyers’.

“Miss, I tell you

the whole extent is wonderful

Downned in one gulp,

In many dreams as one,

          Migrating somewhere, some place

 

your curves on the fuselage of chartered light

in the wide but visible unknown of hide and seek”.

      Up here

……with soap, clean linen, hotel ‘a la carte’

and in the sunlight stroke between “them” –

     pale, smoke

                and glassed

horizons that fiercely burnt this last light

(and life)

With heat stroke.

Where it’s always light but breathless

     And glows green/white –

To the end of ‘all seeing’

Of the-not-seeing-under-control-rountine.

Finally migrating away.

     in airless flight

Both senseless and simulated.

 

Lowering a wing inward.

    With the world alight as we make this final approach

To think of her smile,

     The screen ahead fusing itself

With this vision

       And the next.

Postcard From Iraq »

B.H. Fraser

February 12th, 2005.


Filed under 2005,Poems

 

Who said I was lost?

                     I looked into the distance –

It is straight in front-

     On this path we now walk with others.

In this action, walking. Lungs, blood, breath.

    Run, run now to shatter this silence

As there standing by the tree

             Is the youngest of my gang

Just arrived from Washington .

He is ready for war, to avenge himself.

    How do you describe him? As Bringer of War?

As Bringer of Peace or Jollity or Old Age?

                                All these things –

      We have trained our youth well.

For an engagement to see nobody

      And then for a few murderous seconds

      The chaos of hell, of battlefield,

An aspect of land presents itself,

                                    Perhaps a hill.

          Ordinance this way!

How friendly.

           With noise, somehow intimate,

                    A hissing song of messages, of text,

(the bloody snap paper)

     As butcher bird appears

          With something much more personal.

     Shrunken corpses –

Licked clean, perfect

   By the blast of ‘your ever after’

        (cleaned perfectly in the high altitude of killing)

Only the “wish you were here” missing.

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