Three poems by David McLean

no exile

life is no genuine
exile where home is nowhere,
just a corpse locked up in some word
and bitching for all eternity,
dressed in sad flesh,

dressed in pretended memory;
as if absences were heaven
and meant little more than nothing
does, as if nothing
ever loved

====================

nothing more innocent

nothing more innocent than memory sleeping
in the beast hidden in this meat,
identifying the turgid absences,
the insensate violence, the knife
secretive in the self, the flesh

that wounds and scars. and time mars
nothing by simple progression, the cryptic glyphs
which pain scribbles in the unharmed arms
of children, silent in their primeval night,
disingenuously identifying itself as idyllic twilight,

and plotting some more ingenious torture
than straightforward spiritual rape
or murder. for they will wipe tidy smiles
all over a child's face, leaving minds
silent and gray as the vast loneliness

of empty space. time is the enemy -
nostalgia, history, community, identity -
the enemy is not place, distorted absences
under the torsion, systemic
symptomatic shapes. innocence

is distance; guilt is time behind each face

+++++++++++++++++++

solid beauty

what is simple solid beauty is tautology
and the luscious logical laws we can contemplate
for hours because words work there
for real, not the trashy mouth

of song dribbling idiot love for nothing
and everything. philosophical analysis is better,
always, than lyricism, though it needs a big wakefulness,
because all there is is everything there is

being the same as itself, not messing around changing
like a liar. there is no such object as an absence
or a void. the abject means feeling fine.
there is plenty and identity and too much time.

(why are philosophy's poems horrible and full of blatant lies?)


Author bio:

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. Up to date details of well over 1100 poems in various publications, both print and online, over the last three years or so are at his blog at Mourning Abortion. There you will also find details of several currently available books and chapbooks - including three print full lengths, four print chapbooks, and a free electronic chapbook. A new chapbook is out now from Heavy Hands Ink. It costs ten dollars as paper but is also available as a free .pdf download.