you peel the sun like an onion
and wrap night’s brightest lie
around the moon with nimble fingers.
staggering days crumble dusty
their pillars of salt
allotted us
in God’s lottery we bought tickets for
in heaven, before we were born
to be this nothing
that thinks. death recycles us
to love where snuggling insects
nuzzle incestuous bones,
and hope. cold and alone.
life is a history recorded
empty as a lie,
mourning this mystery missing blisses
that became we. here
unfolded pages,
we dismembered memory,
his years discarded
the scarred and fading heart, the past
at last. that made us love
thus,
and days are like kittens
chasing tails to oblivion,
mystic bliss kissing the trails of shallow sorrow
that inscribe the light,
tonight, over the sheer and frightened wall
of night.
and all shall be well, and all shall be well
and several things quite all right
really rather nice.
David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He has a BA in History from Balliol (1982) and an MA in philosophy from Stockholm (1999). He has one chapbook as a free download at Whyvandalism.com. Another, in print, can be ordered at Erbacce-press. A full length poetry collection Cadaver’s Dance is available at Whistling Shade Press and can be ordered at alibris or amazon. Another book of 128 pages is out with Erbacce-press: pushing lemmings. There is a self-published book at Lulu called eating your night. Details of round 600 poems in or forthcoming in 260 magazines online or print over the last eighteen months are at mourningabortion.blogspot.com.
© 2009, David McLean
Halfway Down the Stairs 