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Two poems by Kyle Allan

There

There are those spiritually hungry
who should be left alone
to be allowed to suffer
and fight for the self
their way
and not become colonised objects
of pity in the news
or tomorrow’s anthropological
thesis.

There are those who are lonely
who hunger for a god
that still won’t be named
or mirrored in human alphabet
or given a particular face
except the face
of everybody.
They should never be hidden
from loneliness
or given a place
where they will be hidden
from the tragedy
of reality.

It should enter them
in the eyes
in all the curved horizons
it will return to them
they will recognise it
in all directions
where they see
tangible living truths
that keep changing shape
because truth is a living thing
like a rainforest or
a colony of ants
or a stream of mountain water
or a compound of people
a low cost housing project
a taxi with a sliding door
a man selling chips
your barefeet hardened
by years of walking
old newspapers
and not a word
or somebody’s pure idea
it is here
and it moves
keeps moving
moving.

There are those who evangelise millions
and have never fallen in love
or been intimate with one person
or even slightly aware
that the self
keeps dying
somewhere inside the mirror
and all photographs
that are being taken by the media
are images of that which
has already died
and become another.

But none of this really makes me unhappy anymore.
Not even the peace in your eyes I will never fully understand.
There’s too much restlessness in my love.
This moment I am yearning for you doesn’t have to end soon.

 

Solitude

Which census will count
my hands desire? Which
government official the
parabellum of your body,
smooth and brown and wet
in air, within air, moving
into fading sunlight?

The lucid intervals of speech
that quiver. The small
touch of your fingers, invisible
to the punctured beliefs. A
mountain fell on the musk,
pain blinked in veins,
roots stirred in political hunger.
Why such vulnerability?
Leaning against a wall,
words lost in need.

There was silence between the windows.
I comb the blind flesh nervously,
counting renegade dreams.
The real evil is belief in perfection.
The hungry plague climbs the spine’s stair,
in air, within air.