The Fox

Poetry festival 20th June 2000

The Fox
In memory of a fox who ate all my hens in winter 1998!!!!

Shadows are broken
In the face of the moon
The morning breaths like a baby
And the village is dozing
He crawls down the sleepy hens
Put his claws into them like lift-fork
But no wall hears
And no eye sees
Except the idiot moon
Staring at the night of March
Tinting the sprawling trees

The crow cock cries with anguish
But no one hears the pain
The time stopped clicking
The shadows stopped prowling
The cricket stopped chanting
Every vein stopped breathing
Like the breezeless quiet sea
The red ink colored the pen
The space is no longer there

Two hens stayed behind
Like battered forgotten boats
Abandoned by the storm
Broken hearts
Broken feathers
Most of all grieving for the crow
Who filled their life with pecks,
With joy and many many eggs
Who stood on the rock like a tiger
Shouting for every moon

Next day the furry tail
Came again
Gliding gliding like a fairy
Walking like a whisper
Sliding like a mob
Liking his ivory teeth
Burning his floodlight eyes
Brandishing his pointed ears
Listening for every sound
And every bouncing echoes
Waiting for the farmers boots


The two hens freeze to death
Crawled to the cornered wall
Squeezing onto the mouse hole
Jumping onto the water bowl
Pushing against the mesh
The spider jumped away
Like a bouncing yo-yo
He jumped on them like a dart
Only to feel the strangling rob
Tightens on his throat
Like the grip of a hunter's hand
Like the narrow burrow that he once
Could not could not escape

The time stopped clicking
The shadows stopped moving
The cricket stopped singing
The red ink colored the fur
The tail stopped breathing
The shadows stopped prowling
The space was no longer there

For Baghdad

For Baghdad

Night without darkness
And the bees are floating
Light without eyes
And the breeze is killing
Meeting without meeting
Felling with no feeling
Like the boiling ice

Seeing you tomorrow
Seeing you tonight
Seeing you, the leaves falling
Seeing you when the trees are light
Like a bundle of emotion
Mixed with childish colours
At the time of twilight

Do you know my feelings?
When the rain tap on my window
When the drops slide like skates
Scratching along my skin
When the trees look so lonely
And all the roofs are flat
Do you know where to hide my eyes?


The rain stopped tapping
The sky looks dry
But inside I have the rain
And wish to cry
Do you know where to begin?
Measuring the clouds
Or counting the number of slates
On the top of million roofs?

• 
  
  Modern Arts Gallery
  Spaces and colours
  Green and blue, red and white
  Brown over brown
  Circles and lines that have no endings
  Angles and tangles and unfinished wrangles
  Faces with no faces
  Words with no grammar
  
  I saw you there in the shadows of a picture
  Sitting and lying sleeping and staring
  Inside the meaningless meanings
  Inside the paint and brushes fair
  You had no body yet revealing
  Your love and hate, death and fate
  Everything was there
  
  Our secrets where there
  Boldly written in water
  But no colour was there
  Your sanity was visible
  In the insanity of blue
  My silence was silent
  Trapped in white
  
  The rainbow of your eyes
  And crossbow curved waste
  Your lazy angled hair
  You’re ivory elbow
  And cloud coulored neck
  Were sitting right in the middle
  In an empty crimson chair
• A page from A Nursing Home Diary
  The sky is grey
  And half covered with slates
  The rain sits on an airbed
  While the morning sparrows have a swing
  On the washing line
  
  It is seven O’clock
  When they feed us breakfast
  When the spoons can not wait
  And the food jump in faster than
  What we can chew
  
  It is seven o’clock
  When I used to wake them up
  Have them ready for schools
  Packing their lunches
  Packing their cheek with kisses
  
  It is nine O’clock
  The shadow of the tree havemoved
  From the washbasin to my cupboard
  And the television is reading the news
  Full with faces that has no eyes
  
  It the time when I used to
  To drop them at the school
  And watch their little feet
  Leiving prints on the path
  And over my heart
  
  It is 10 O’clock and the rain has not stopped
  Sliding on my window
  Racing down like tears
  At ten O’clock I used to Phone my friend
  Talking about the rain, and about men
  
  How pleasant and amusing
  Talking about men
  Whatever they are
  We both loved their
  Strong Idiot hand
  
  It is midday and I can hear the food
  Bubbling into the pots
  Jumping into the trolleys
  Discreetly nibbled by Magi
  While she whips over her mouth
  
  Middy was when we first met
  His eyes were made of fire
  And his fingers soft and long
  Yet when he went away
  No midday was ever there