Saturday, February 4, 2012


“Even the Grass has a Hangover”
© Mike Absalom January 17th 2012

A drear damp misty morning.
Even the grass has a
hangover!
Mine is from peering hours at
a knife blade
with the aching eye of a
gold-and-silver smith,
waiting for you to stir in
your abominable sleeping.

And before that
I too had swallowed milk from
the black cow’s udder
until I could not stand and
my eye glowed purple
like a false amethyst in the
dark!
Ah! But you’re an awful
woman!
Still, even before your head
had hit the bowlster
I was long gone for the milk!

I would not want you to pay
no attention
to the scrabbling hands of
winter.
But the sound outside is
nothing more than a rattle of words
scraped together by dead
sycamore leaves.
It’s not a rhythm you will
ever use, or a rhyme!

Wake up now and catch the
quicksilver of your dream
before it evaporates into
another desert of unbaptised days.
Ah! But you’re an awful
woman!

Can’t you hear the young lambs
beyont,
down at the bottom of the
rushy field,
bleating the day white like woolly
vampires?
And the atramentous crows
tumbling like stoned shamans
above your cobwebby attic,
cawing out black spells and
inky nigromancy?

Cup your mind!
Go out and gather poetry from
the earth.
The mud loves you and will
claim you one day as its bride!
It has lain all winter
thinking of you
under the big cedar,
cooking up the summer smells
with green fire and potions
of winter lightning!
Ah! But you’re an awful
woman!
Wake up!!

Now there is a white shadow
along my back
marking the warm place where
your soul snoozed this morning
before it sighed and said
“No! and No again!” to the start of another day.
Ah! Wake up! But you’re an
awful woman!

It’s a drear damp misty
morning.
Even the grass has a
hangover.
But it is indeed another day!

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