Songs The Lightning Sings
    

The rain dissolves and carries mountains
The continents shift their rafts of stone and soil
Lightning remembers other worlds

Some hope that love is the last essential
some dream that words are a light in the darkness
but love is the measure of your loneliness
love is a cry you must answer
yourselves

This is your pain and your challenge
your gods are made
of your fears and desires

I sing with neither sense nor melody
my song does not need you or your words

This is the song that the lightning sings
This is the song of the world
 

 

 

For V

Soon after you leave

I take the poem into the street

It puts down all the usual stuff

vendors crying hot dogs and roses

brakes like manic hyenas

sirens slicing under surface mind

someone shouting BABY

I REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME

And that girl

in a red hula skirt

she got candykill lips and cross-laced legs

suggesting

money for love

An old man spits blood - does noticing

ever make you compassionate? -

coffee and cajun compete

on gasoline wind lovers with tongues

and poets with tongues

try to reduce the distance

between selves

There is a police helicopter

where the moon has been

and balloons like giant yellow grapes

reach the fourth floor

saris and cashmere kaftans and blousons

wraparound shades someone's face

is almost all

flowers

One kid is smiling and laughing

as if

the answer is here other eyes

narrow like chicanes

I am thinking of you

free and happy

as the poem is saying that you

are remembered for ever

Words are such ambitious wistful liars

but you can leave spaces between them

Thank Somebody

I am trying to be glad

that you leave almost nothing

of your beautiful self

in these words.

Geoff Cooper

Lochwinnoch

5/12/2010

Under The Evening Star

On unvarnished oak, sofly grained and whorled,

roast lamb, decanted on cream earthenware,

juices seething under coloured skin,

bronze, dark honey, unexpected blues,

old gold and new,

alchemies of naked fire.

Where is the king, the queen,

who will tear this membrane, biting

to the depth of succulence

- vegetable courtiers attend,

artichoke, celery, purple chantenay,

crimson onions, beans

green as any spring.

On simple sycamore, children of the sun

peaches, apricots, tangerines,

vermillion apples, midnight grapes,

a blushing moment's vintage.

All the goodness of the living

and the dead - at a sash window

Venus summons and invites,

hands fidget

with napery and knives,

Lips rehearse

appetite.

All sorts of gods

preside.

Geoff Cooper

November 23 2010

Lochwinnoch

 Unlimited

gravity has become so soft and cold and slow to melt

falling on the smoothness of your fingers

white like surrender and blossom

blinding the earth a mere

rejection of the sky

dwindling to

nothing but

water

primal liquor

genesis and continuation

tiny translucent seed of oceans

mother of rain and bread and kisses

sower of questions promises choices futures

child of lightning swelling the fruit of the womb

I touch the cool clear cosmos running from your palm

 

One

Arum flowers rise and follow

her passage through the meadow

in the hazel tree

an owl tunes his note

to the shadows of her wood

She sleeps in a hammock of soft branches

among the blossom of wild apples

fruits of wilderness and possibility,

tomorrow pauses in the throat

of songbirds

Her eyes contain constellations

histories, love - so many lovers

like stars,

so many centuries

you could not count them with kisses,

I have seen her

when my heart is empty,

- suddenly

when I have forgotten

the songs of the orchard

the harmony

of summer winds.

I have seen her when sad music

builds prisons in the mind

when the moon is sung by nightingales

and the voices of the dead.

 

 

 

 

The Red Fiddler (Marc Chagall)

Enters the freezing village,

as long as the world will spin

he has no destination

but the music that the brings

 

The red fiddler

carries the shape of a woman

makes snow horizons sing

conjures dances

from timber and cat-string

 

Crowds the windows

with expectant faces

shakes the coma

from cold minds,

sounds the revenge of melody

on the howling storm.

Now everybody can tell

there will be spring again,

lovers like blossom in the trees

lovers in the fields

hidden flowers

frantic angels

in the rising corn

Evening sunlight

of the cowherd's back,

an orchestra of birds

to startle every dawn.

The red fiddler

slowly leaves the houses

his music seems to fade

He bivouacs in bitter straw

but a smile

freezes to his lips

He knows

All the songs of spring

Sleep in his

ancient

violin.

Almost

You wake

from the last dream

The sky thins

Things disappear,

like stars

and other worlds

A yellow moon falls

The heart remembers

just to beat

Love like a deer becomes

one more shadow

in the wood.