"bilbao" poems
Eleven thousand
three hundred
sixty one miles away
in a place I’ve never been,
you are thinking
of all the places
you have never been
or haven’t been,
some for seasons,
some for years.
A Paris pomegranate sunrise
from the Pont des Arts,
bright colours shimmying
at the pulse of romance.
The blood cell rush of Shibuya,
Tokyo at night among
a river of strange symbols,
blinking TV screens.
Prague dredged in frost,
feet-chatter on cobbles
past the Jan Hus memorial
under a cool periwinkle sky.
Glossy tulips in Bilbao,
metallic curves,
trill of syllables
by the teal Nervión.
I think of you, far away,
same planet, different spot,
the future washing towards us
full of scrambled images
and white noise,
a trickle of hope at your toes,
through my screen.
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 4:33 PM UTC
A phone call, Bilbao:
"yes, ok. Ok. Ok, yes."
Arms are waving
12 hours, a room in Paris:
a pencil case is being dropped on the floor, people are thinking in french
A police station with green walls:
a girl is stretching cling film over her face and falls off her chair
Somewhere else in France, I usually picture a farmhouse in the countryside:
running around in circles, reading from a piece of paper and trying to be heard over ‘Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux’
On a tube, London:
Takes off her bag, shoes, jacket, hat, jewellery, make-up. Lets down her hair
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 8:45 PM UTC
----------------
There was a young man from Bilbao
Who swallowed a book somehow
Can you suggest
How to digest
The thoughts of Chairman Mao?
------------------
There is a man not far from here
Who had a rather novel idea
To write a book
So a pen he took
And lo it did appear
--------------------
There was a young man from Brum
Who felt a book in his tum
He had it removed
Which just goes to prove
There's a book in everyone
-------------------
As a young man
I felt that I must
Write a long book
about love and lust
A publisher read it
Then promptly did shred it
And told me to go drive a bus
---------------------
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 4:40 PM UTC
Aquí tenéis, en canto y alma, al hombre
aquel que amó, vivió, murió por dentro
y un buen día bajó a la calle: entonces
comprendió: y rompió todos su versos.
Así es, así fue. Salió una noche
echando espuma por los ojos, ebrio
de amor, huyendo sin saber adónde:
a donde el aire no apestase a muerto.
Tiendas de paz, brizados pabellones,
eran sus brazos, como llama al viento;
olas de sangre contra el pecho, enormes
olas de odio, ved, por todo el cuerpo.
¡Aquí! ¡Llegad! ¡Ay! Ángeles atroces
en vuelo horizontal cruzan el cielo;
horribles peces de metal recorren
las espaldas del mar, de puerto a puerto.
Yo doy todos mis versos por un hombre
en paz. Aquí tenéis, en carne y hueso,
mi última voluntad. Bilbao, a once
de abril, cincuenta y uno.
Blas de Otero
594
The sky electric blue behind wisps of ash,
Over the road by the hammock lies the whispering grass,
The traveller lays there imagining Charles Monet,
In the bay to the right above the sprinkled bouquet,
There’s a scatter of conversation by the wicker chairs,
Discarded pasts float on up through the air
In the city at night the road is painted in gradient,
There’s a smattering of lanterns in a crescent they radiate,
A hubbub of excitement hums on the rooftop bar,
To the eyes at the top life below is bizarre,
Lessons thrown around like invisible flares,
Discarded pasts float on up through the air
Trains to new destinations and thumbs up by the road,
From island to island old habits corrode,
Aircrafts pepper the sky restraining adventures for now,
From the temples of Peru to the Cathedral of Bilbao,
When you only know one thing how can you compare?
Discarded pasts float on up through the air
Jun 17, 2019
Jun 17, 2019 at 3:53 PM UTC
A string of meaningless words,
Repeated endlessly,
Can be visual art, it seems.
In 1942 Gorgio Mirandi painted
A still life of a cup and a vase
Because they were there,
And reflected light.
A string of meaningless words
Can be art criticism, it seems.
And may even be poetry?
But string is real:
Tied around my finger,
I feel it and remember.
Stone, glass and steel is real,
If you can touch it,
Otherwise it could just be
An illusion.
The finger prints and DNA
Of all of us who touched
The rusted steel installation,
Despite the signs, are real,
Though you cannot see them
Or feel our presence.
Like the shiny parts
Of bronze statues touched
By each passing viewer,
Do these not form part
Of the work of art?
Jun 9, 2019
Jun 9, 2019 at 10:27 AM UTC
The mornings
are the worst.
Writhing between my sheets
like a night crawler cut in half
by the piercing apathy in your
permafrost eyes
the last time I saw them.
I'd cut off my own arm
before I went back to Barcelona.
It's that special kind of pain;
where I feel sick to my stomach
when I see young people holding hands,
kissing.
That special kind of pain,
where no girl is beautiful anymore.
I am the black hole,
the mouse hole,
in the bottom corner of the room.
It ***** out anything worth savoring.
I can act like I'm fine
for approximately 22.2 minutes a day
22.2 years I lived without you
two too many to count.
I used to be two
Now I am barely half of what I was
and I can't bear full moons.
I have the right to bear arms.
Especially after what you and I did to me.
But now I'm armless
You're careless
I'm handless.
I can't pick up the pieces
you scattered all over Denver
Appleton
North San Diego County
Barcelona
Valencia
Bilbao
Cumberland
and West Falmouth.
Maybe you can retrace that trail of blood.
I can't,
but that doesn't stop me from trying
every day.
And I keep arriving
at the same dried up
empty ocean
where only salt is left behind.
9 months later I'm still too ripe.
I'd cut off my own arm
before I went back to Barcelona.
I want to salvage
the parts of me
that sank with that ship
struck by whatever
the **** that was.
Whatever the ****
we all keep writing about.
In your defense and in mine,
no one as young as us
could ever be ready for that.
The world has two poles.
I was 23 when I was told
that I do too.
You brought them both out of me
and everything in between.
But now I'm stuck on the lower one;
a windless white flag at half mast.
Nightmares are just dreams
and nothing could be more real.
A heartbreak to a poet
is just a dream that came true,
and so are you.
Daymares are not real,
and neither is the frozen hemoglobin
they **** from your veins.
I used to get so high,
and laugh.
I've had one first cigarette
and a million last cigarettes.
I guess that pretty much sums it all up.
And back I go to Barcelona.
With one arm.
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 12:42 AM UTC