Four poems by David McLean

POETRY
by David McLean

and at night

the mice small as angels as the footprints of dawn nibbled on our cheeks too as we slept our hoary mourning glory on cold kitchen floor as though we were our own unremitting silence and the violence of words lay as it did many years in the future, some proven probative truth's cold convenientia never the lesson we were shewn by the proud pragmata time entwined in discourse - i shewed you yours you show me mine - love's lustrous lines kick-start a heart apart, i do not know exactly how many pigeons there are and tiles in a waiting room may rapidly become dirty like our yesterdays even before we met or meet you shew me, sewing together my fate's already tattered tapestry, my palimpsest i defiled myself by eyes defined and we dressed all our hollow tomorrows in love's motley; even unsmiling Serbian Simic could never teach me sooth to speak on seeming's childhood meaning so i resort retort my last resort to hope's blameless abortion, your distortion of distortion, that your strong words muscular on mistress Historia's unwritten page shall twist fine this awry time uninscribe that twat's defiling lies; - and here somebody re-inscribed in fine -


pragmata är entwined in discourse
an "i" is entwined in mine
her global seeing eyes defined
the whole of life

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Simic’s vulpine vagaries

& fortunately i never managed to turn you into one of his lectured wolves from the olden days, converted and diverted from your fresh stream of life where father's fishes glower their pure loving paranoia from just under the surface deep beneath your shaded glade, but still at night in the basement we feel the nibbling mice that nested beneath, nestled between the machines of futility that inscribed love's last lingering lines. so poor are we that the pets parade pregnant with meaning while our greed takes the place of the cat's cheese, and our mother's too exuded sparks from tortured collars like Gustav's twisted love, their technicolour coats of drugs.

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these days (for Simic)

"even these are dark and evil days" whispered my childhood's nibbling mouse, but he was a terrible liar. even she yet unborn, her love exploded around me like a kitten's tricky bladder, burnt clean mother's unloved and disappointed womb like sundry forest fires; my matrix of meaning was already my God's favourite dream. at school our collars were dry but clean.

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autumn’s plaint

autumn stumbles day's decline the day declined to say to stay evening writes love's gruesome glyphs cryptic over sober sky. my eye defines life's illustrious lesion bruised nothing burnished leavings greener shoots from fate's futile tree on life's plastic plate, lying time his scheming unclean patina screams nothing may wait. death dismal dreams unbelieving god's gracious defiling belief, truth's puerile prisma my satanic stigmata my solitary priapic eye, blind, i lie i die between your thighs, my whispered why, inside

Author bio:

David McLean was born in Wales though he has lived Sweden since 1987. As of August 2007, he has poems in about eighty issues of 69 magazines and e-zines. In September 2007 he is "poet in residence" at Poet's Letter and in August 2008 "centre stage poet" in Decanto. Poems are online at such sites as Zygote in My Coffee, Erbacce, Sein und Werden, Venereal Kittens, Mad Swirl, Lit Circus and Gold Dust. More information is online at his MySpace page and at the Hecale portal.