James Birkbeck

On the Waterfront


The Moroccan merchants,
With their coppery rusty skins,
Purveyed marketplace sheets of silk or satin,
and met with salty, crusty Russian seamen,
Who wore grandiose costumes
Made of flotsam and jetsam,
All held together with a smoldering layer of
moldering gypsum...

Gypsies,
Devious deviants with deviated septums
Looked down crooked noses -
Ham fistedly glued upon
Meaty faces squashed into pantyhoses -
As they pirated the seas of Byzantium.

And in this sphere,
Their discontent raped narrow minds,
and bred fear and ignorance like rabbits in
Puppy mills,
Filled with Easter bunnies
Breeding like contempt...
Stealing dangling carrots from lazy asses...
Pillaging villages and bludgeoning curmudgeons,
Until - in each - only honesty remained.

​2013


Voyage

Some Passengers in buses
Sit silent but harrowed,
White knuckles clenched on chrome bars
clinging to a sinking vessel
Tossed about violently by wretched waves
Praying not to be thrown into
The roiling black abyss
Praying not to be drowned in the pollution of futility and bitterness.
Nor to narrowly escape
Going down with the ship
Only to be forever lost in a sea of hopelessness.

But many passengers
Furiously tap away at glowing screens,
Frantically typing out
TXT MSG SOSs &
Casting them adrift
Sealed in binary bottles of bits and bytes
Hoping to be rescued from the
Cruel urban sea and all its floating baggage.

​2013

The Pastoral

The smell,
Antiseptically
Shocking
To the senses.
Dettol -
Carbolic -
Germolene.
The smell of clean.
Too clean.
Scrubbed raw
Under the sickly green
Filter of fluorescent light
Reflected off floor-to-ceiling
Lavatory tiles of tooth enamel white.
A cold, biting, sterile cleanliness.
A cleanliness next to godliness
Next to soullessness
Next to mindlessness
Next to the loneliness of dying alone.

​2014

  • Spades & Roses

Gender dysphoric window cleaners,
Snakes and ladders,
Buckets and spades
And spades
Are spades
And a rose
Is a rose
Is a rose
Is a rose
Is a rose
Is a thorn in my side.
Yes, it is.
A rose is a thorn in my side.

​2014

Custodial

Curator
Of a museum
No one ever visits
A promise made
Is hard to break.

Caretaker
In a servants' quarters
In the rear of the house
A place stayed
Out of guilt.

2016, June 5th

Thornapple Soup

Verbs and nouns
Spun round and round
Stood on their heads
To see upside down.

2016, December 23rd

Safe & Soundfield

In a Field
Inspiration was found
By following words
That made no sound
But were heard
Loud and clear

2016, December 27th

Sable

The Sable Iris
Beguiles.
Smiles.
Makes demands
Commands poetry
But I am mute.
Tongue-tied.
Words left in the dust
By a racing mind.
Breath-taken.
Winded by the pummeling
Of a pounding heart.
Yearning to be set free.

2017, March 20th

Gravity


You must stay inside
For the rest of your days
Don't venture outside
For you'll just float away
To the heavens
Above
We have not
done enough


G - R - A - V - I - T - Y
The limit's
No longer
The sky

​2008/2009

Three Thirty Post Meridiem


Scent of warm cat
Sprawled on couchback,
Basking in late afternoon sun.

On shelves,
Books -
Once artfully alphabetized,
Beautifully balanced
Carefully categorized -
Now fall about
And laze around
Drunk and disorderly,
Dressed in coats made of a dust
That floats languidly
On golden rays
And settles down to a heavy sleep
Upon the tops of parched pages
Of leather bound tales.

​2014

Guinea Pig Club


Sitting in a room
It's a bedroom
It's a red room
It's a waiting room

She's sitting there waiting
(She's ashamed to confess)
Sitting there
Waiting
For something to happen
Sitting there
Waiting for a thing
Perverse and grotesque
Just something
To someone
Who she just hopes she doesn't know
Just something
To someone
Who she doesn't even want to know
But this someone -
She hopes -
Will have a beautiful face

Waiting for the sirens
To herald a pretty face arrival
Waiting for a code blue
To welcome that pretty face in

So that she can face the world again
And cut a doll-faced silhouette
So that she can finally face the world again
With her perfect little doll-faced silhouette.

​2013

Call & Response

Taters chipped
Off old blox
On view 4 U

In pillories and stox.
Yer've seen the ta-tas so
Throw yer termahtas
It's ok.
The Mad-One-A can take all yer mox.

2016, April


Almost

He couldn't remember
How many times
He'd almost died before.
He couldn't remember
How many times
But definitely twice or more.

He couldn't be certain
If he really was
Afraid of death anymore.
He couldn't be certain
But he had become
Afraid to live, and that was for sure.
 
2016, December 24th


Lighthouse Keeper

She is not my lover, no,
She is my mother
Shelter from storm
A place safe and warm
A place to rest
A place to hide
Standing firm
Against raging tide
Her light feeds my soul
Makes me feel whole
Cutting through darkness
So I may see deeper
She is my lighthouse
And she is my keeper.

2017, March 22

Note: this is not about my own mother.  It is about the mother figure in my dream weerld.


Stairwellness

With a body
In need of repairs
Make a choice
To take the stairs.

Decide to climb
One step at a time
Opt for the stairway
It's never the easy way.

With a mind
In need of repairs
Make a choice
To take the stares.

Decide to find
A fix for the mind
Opt for the stareway
It's never the easy way.

2017, February


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