Poets

They should be standing inside us
and shiver when we tremble
their voices through our tongues.

They march towards us but
they fade before a page is read
in sonnets, words well chosen.

Alone in a church

a cough returning as an echo
in this cold medieval church

a thousand years of coughing
where despair is hanging
in the windows’ dust

a madonna who appears
to shut her ears and look away
is staring through your skull

thick grief in here for you
can cut it with a knife
sinking deeper down yourself

the outside world a murmur of the past
a thousand coughs come from the graves
are known and given comfort

Awoken

I woke up
Knowing nothing.
The dream spoke,
Occupied me,
Then faded in fragments
Into a numb reality of its own
Into knowing that
Halfway this stage
A truth had been
Awoken.

Dream on an early ferry

To find myself, in darkness on the ferry
The known already lesser known,
The island moving out of me, alone
When all depends on steel and water,

The scenery turns red and grey,
The East ahead in sunrise. Time
Takes more from crossing than it does at home.
In mist the engine is the heartbeat in this coma.

The vessel travels backwards through my time,
My mother combs my hair at sea,
I hold the brush and me, the child, is also she,
But she moves out of me as mist gives in. Arriving.