A new poem by David Eggleton, whose new book Lifting the Island was published this week by Red Hen Press.
Breathing Space
Before the gerontocracy get to me,
and put me in a baby-stroller –
though, of course, I’m older than I used to be,
and being so old, I simply object –
I’m going to send a prayer to buzz
in the eternal ear of the Almighty,
then give a warm welcome to Christ the Tiger,
Christ the Mushroom, Christ the Heretic.
I’m speckled with speculations,
and I’m heaving with quirks.
I’m adrift over the chasm,
thinking how each abyss leads to avoidance.
We’re all staring at the same ink-blots,
saying what have you got that hits the spot?
What’s ever-green is taken as ever-given,
while we call out one another’s mystical ballocks.
Narrow-minded enough for gates of the Strait,
they got the banter, they got the capers,
the shrunken horizon of condemnation,
straw-man after straw-man, torched on paper.
Put your cats on Insta on behalf of the people;
howl like Ginsberg; growl like Pavlov’s dog.
I’ll be your random commentary,
thrown like raw meat to feed the balcony.
I’m waiting for the past with a handful of dust,
caught by the wind, then blown sky-high.
Stranded in paradise and sought by earthworms,
I’m learning to be myself, a withered tree-branch.
On that mythical isolated motu,
like the last survivor of an overturned waka,
with only my own footprints for company,
I shall not want for anything.
I will break my tokotoko, and drown my book,
then go under and not emerge,
as the wrong god descends the vines
from the stolen canopy of Heaven.