Flower shop

That involuted orchid
opens out to be
its own question
and proffers its own beginning

Buy back the terror
of the touching fingertips
of young tulips
that look at themselves

Never ask the roses
what they really want
Never choose them
nor be pricked into actions

the end of which
is not in sight


Grant Duncan 8.7.09

Bad Examples

The bad examples of obscure philosophers
and the shadows of old session-men
pass fondly through quiet studios
wondering how they held that rhythm
and speech or stopped that thought

Hanging on the wall there’s
an engraving of old Venice that
looks like a beached whale

They all shuffled their talents
as if they were dealers at poker
those ancient merchant seamen
with their eyes always on the opposition

They passed through libraries
caressing spines with embossed titles
but those see-through eyes
couldn’t open a single book

The words stayed stubbornly
in the allotted places
never to share their bitter flavours

Maybe I am a replicant
and so these memories bright as tulips
are really made of plastic?


Grant Duncan 25.5.09

Utopian Drive

It’s all so new
and so it goes nowhere yet

There’s a roundabout in the middle
that you can go around and around

to your heart’s content
because there’s no-one there to mind

And then you go on to the end
which occurs at an undefined place

from which you view some scrubby ti tree
remains of an imagined forest

But it’s all too strong
like that river that flows amid

the otherwise gentle town of Salzburg
So you may as well stay in your car

where it’s safe
and you can drive on as you please


Grant Duncan, 20.3.08

The Fying Vixen

The first law

...for Rajni

According to the first law

of psychodynamics

for all we grieve

nothing's ever lost

So abandon dreams

The fabric of this couch

is what you feel

and all you need

29.11.07

The pool

So the water
was chlorinated

and impure with
the murk of children

We wrestled for fun
and much more than fun

we held
the compelling touch

of untouched bodies
So we played and

decades on I heard
we could have loved too

had I found a word
to call that play-fight

what it was
and swum with you


Grant Duncan 3.3.8

The PM likes poetry