REID BAER

Increasing Talents

It will be counted an immeasurable sin
if by the time the morning breaks
we haven't committed our own
fair share of mistakes.

copyright 2003 REID BAER

comment/contact REID BAER

ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP

Excerpt, from GAIA

from Gaia. Part 4. 2.



i.

The leper.

It's too, too late to remember
the pale evening's after glow,
leprosy blinds the albino
now to the falling snow
freezing the heart.

Daily, rags in the ruined hut
decay & with shadows fade.
Now only the dead visit
from the dark side
of the moon tide hill,
where stars like snow flakes fall.

Day after day rags of the leper
in the hut on the hill fade away.
The hut of the blind albino,
where only snow falls & the dead stay.

ii.

White Sombrero.

Don't look up now, man in the white sombrero
to the voice that calls from the top of the stairs.
Don't turn on her those pale blue eyes, though
she calls by name, so sweetly, so joyously, you,
this summer's afternoon, the one in the hall below,
in no sense of doom for him in the white sombrero.
She only wants to see those pale blue eyes, only
& but once more, before she bids goodbye.

iii.

The Destitute.

Say, I have gambled my dice,
pokered my final hand.
My eyes are of the loneliest hue,

Before me are the bridge erecting dawns,
my banner for insurrection
is a blanket under the arm.

My peers are too old to judge.
My children avoid me as the plague.
From rags to rags &


At the end of the road incineration,
awaiting what was once flame
to become ashes & dust.

iv.

The Potan.

Vendetta through the maize & sugar cane,
I pass between them walking away back to back,
they had not met today face to face.

Tonight, one with the face of a young moon
& one gaunt & grey, will stay in ours &
our neighbour's hut.

We will burn the gule, sugar cane,
sifting the brown toffee silt from the black pan
in the corn cob burning hearth.

The appointed time of their meeting
is already known by everyone in town.
Already the next Vendetta appears.
They sit at tea on benches, bullet belts
hung, in the café at the top of the hill.

The wind is frosty in the brilliant sun
flapping the chinked planks of its rackety wall.
Shop shacks run down the muddy hill
To the Masjid & café below,
Where the other gunslingers hang out.

I pass between to & fro,
soon in the maize cane a shootout
will begin at the exact place
I passed the day before yesterday,
when they meet face to face.

Tomorrow will be the burial
in the cemetery beside the Masjid,
after evening prayer. On the following dawn
another will depart, but only the police will profit,
with a price on the head of the moon faced boy.

v.

The Beggar.

No alms for the bereft,
No praise for the sand,
Only the storm, the blast
In the eyes of the beast
& the hollow haze
Where footsteps of the wind
Leave no trace nor
Memory of tomorrow.

copyright 2003 ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP

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