Three Poems

Unlovely, but

        not always… I remember
when some con-artist of the harp or lyre
played back to me the beauty of my guess,
and I was found, or suddenly emergent,
        in streets of ritual fire
where leaping kids get burned by happiness.

        I was an alien there:
the enemy-sisters powder-blushed their cheeks,
        played caring. It was social politics…
But was it? Rules go west, I thought, when war
makes the light touch, the small-talk, heavier,
and heads – some heads – are lost when kindness speaks.

Even formalist poets ditched reticence.
Crash the boundaries. Out with pretence!
Do as you dream… they slapped a rainbow-new
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