(with thanks to Ian Watson)
she wears green alien earrings
and spikes on a belt around her throat
she sits across from me in the tube-train,
I see my reflection in the saucer glass of
her eyes, I see myself through her gaze,
she wears the sky as a hat so she knows
the secret moist and coil of clouds, for luck
she blows a kiss as a hoop to snare the sun,
she hears the soft conversation of
fungus that whispers in the dance of spores,
her fingers branch the branching of trees,
her tongue tastes a vanishing point where
flights of birds burst from out of our skulls
making the day fearfully dense with light,
she flips the world into new states of being
she wears a belt of spikes
and green alien earrings…
KAREN’S BIRTHDAY POEM
when I was nine years old
I set out to create a new colour,
one that no human eye has even seen
I mix pigments and scribble crayons
squeeze bright fruit and blossoms
through the blender in gushes of hues,
but I was never satisfied,
when I was nineteen years old
I set out to create a new colour
one that no human eye has even seen
by gobbling huge concoctions of
psychedelic drugs made in secret labs
until my head is crammed with a
vivid choreography of rainbows
but I was never satisfied,
when I was twenty-nine years old
I set out to create a new colour
one that no human eye has even seen
by elective retinal surgery to expand
the range of my sensory perception
into the ultraviolet and infrared spectra
until I saw the world in a dance of
charged subatomic particles
but I was never satisfied, finally,
when I was thirty-nine years old
I found you, looking into your eyes
I see every colour I ever want see
for the rest of my life
and I am satisfied…
she wears green alien earrings
and spikes on a belt around her throat
she sits across from me in the tube-train,
I see my reflection in the saucer glass of
her eyes, I see myself through her gaze,
she wears the sky as a hat so she knows
the secret moist and coil of clouds, for luck
she blows a kiss as a hoop to snare the sun,
she hears the soft conversation of
fungus that whispers in the dance of spores,
her fingers branch the branching of trees,
her tongue tastes a vanishing point where
flights of birds burst from out of our skulls
making the day fearfully dense with light,
she flips the world into new states of being
she wears a belt of spikes
and green alien earrings…
KAREN’S BIRTHDAY POEM
when I was nine years old
I set out to create a new colour,
one that no human eye has even seen
I mix pigments and scribble crayons
squeeze bright fruit and blossoms
through the blender in gushes of hues,
but I was never satisfied,
when I was nineteen years old
I set out to create a new colour
one that no human eye has even seen
by gobbling huge concoctions of
psychedelic drugs made in secret labs
until my head is crammed with a
vivid choreography of rainbows
but I was never satisfied,
when I was twenty-nine years old
I set out to create a new colour
one that no human eye has even seen
by elective retinal surgery to expand
the range of my sensory perception
into the ultraviolet and infrared spectra
until I saw the world in a dance of
charged subatomic particles
but I was never satisfied, finally,
when I was thirty-nine years old
I found you, looking into your eyes
I see every colour I ever want see
for the rest of my life
and I am satisfied…