Jonathan Beale- Three Poems

Kafka’s thoughts when in London

Seamed here from its time past;

The legislation.  Chocking.

Croaky, dust full, filmed in filth

A bird shatters.

A predestined silence.

Moss and fractures on the roofs

Delay the eternal outcome.

Chat, somehow winsome.

Meanders up from bus stops.

Heels wear out the days.

Steel worded tongues’ drowning  

Made malleable

In the hands of a poet.

Dogs understand their doggieness

The dawn is broken by the green fox.

Placed matted lives; musty, unbroken,

Sherry glassed Sundays – devoid.

Winding drone of The Underground.

Whisking people away; resting heels.

Energy is beholden to its blind masters

Should ever the archaeologist discover?

Dusting out some vesseled lives moment

Broadening the history that.  Is Now Dead

Into a false new half life

A false new half-life.  Forgotten by all.   

 

In the eye

Unfathomable in this arid conundrum.  The human form speaks out;

The eye that sees speaks within such space. 

Showing the whole multiplicity of every atom. 

There are within, a single mind, a private function.  A unique private function. 

The oceanic current that crashes and destroys and allures each moon.

Needing a visible Icon, to exist, to be, we are reborn.

Greatness of seeing within the reality

They charter what exists in their vascular character. 

…and, now, dully waiting to be caught in the artist’s eye –

In the marriage of the strength & science and the conscience of art.

Life goes on and on. Art a distraction like an advert

that draws us along the rails of the Clapham Omnibus. 

 

Afternoon with someone, somewhere….

Everyone went about

Their day-to-day business

The heat droned on

Cars innocently hoot… as children

Randomly gabble in the street un-choreographed. 

The Heat droned on

The scent of the hot sweet tea – the...

       sun was up

            …late morning

                      The men discuss their “this’s and those that’s’.”

…Interjected with laughter

From their stories.

And still the heat went on

Backgammon they manipulate their tokens

The points

hold no hiding place

For a single chequer

Layer of sweat on all flesh

A young woman

Beautiful to the eye

passed by

drifting along

the sun up

the heat lay heavy with

sweet smelling smoke

And then….

Life lost - particles and protons smashed unrecognizably –life lost

And the heat droned on and lay around constricting.

“It’s Radio 4 news at 11.pm*

A female suicide bomber has….”