A Poetry Showcase from David Hay

My Private Eternity

Have you ever placed the side of your face
flat upon the water
and let the reflections
become you?
The stars held softly on a midnight sea
where beauty touched your palsied tongue
and dreams more true than 
waking life
revealed the doorway
to your 
own 
private
eternity.

God I miss the sea,
how the rhythms of the waves
became one with the rythms of my thoughts 
and my soul once more became organic
as I communicated wordless
with those dark waters,

But now  in my bath of my rented house
with the mould above creeping 
down
 like the devil's spidered limbs
through the window of a crippling thought;
a routine panic attack makes the liquid
as inflexible as lead.

But remember that feeling
Alone, but tied to the string
of every rain drop falling
on the sea that could so easily be the sky;
everything folding into one,
I can breathe again.

Ode to the Vicar

So long in memories of childhood,
Did the long summers reside.
Where time trickled across and through
Flowers carnadine with such soft sorrow
That gave each ray of light 
A divinity squandered,
And replaced weekly,
With skin-flaked pews,
And organs, played laborious,
Whose note-tones
Stomped on the shoots
 Of freshly sprung tears
And the vicar, 
Oh god the vicar
Whose slow-dripping voice,
Made eternity with him and god
More frightening than damnation,
and just the thought made the devil's
Face, distorted by fear superimposed
On every fake flower in golden pots,
Haphazardly placed around his soap box.

But traumas acknowledged but not accepted
Lurk in the dim corridors of dream and thought
And slide underneath doors, like spiders during sleep
With queasy determination in to each sacred moment;
To nestle it's dark-trickle heart next to mine
And drown each beat with its own.

I've had enough.
I give my heart to the rose-tainted sun,
Let memories like notes embrace
Until melodies soar and dive,
Slicing through
Pale and black fire
Until all is harmonious,
And I can lie down
Without sentimentality or dread
Knowing the dreams and nightmares
Of the quiet boy,
Peeking in on death
Are still mine.


One-eyed God

God can only bear to open one eye
At a time.
The sun and the moon take turns
Watching
Seeking,
Across the animal dirt that was once
Just a flick of sleep from a thing
(No words can can symbolise true depthlessness)
That held everything but itself;

Stars are hermit-angels singing into our dreams,
The eternity contained in the falling of a leaf
Says the Druid 
Who communes with me
When my mind ascends into madness.

It birthed us:
our fleshy fabrics of light killing dark,
But It too is dreaming
And even its children's tears can't waken it.

Here lies one whose name is water

I capture the moon in
the flesh of every leaf.

I spit and starlings take their first flight
Emptying themselves out into the night.

A Cathedral tries to headshot the heavens.

Safe from circumstance
Safe from life
I drink a coffee and let nature's churches,
The forests,
Who choir with the light
Give me their peace.

Poets, whose names never became wonders to overcome,
But whose words were water, and whose stanzas were the dirt,
I plant my poems in between your ribs
So that one day others will do the same to me

A Book Review of Doctor Lazarus by David Hay . A Review by Maid Corbic
 
2 poems by David Hay in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020