Three Poems by Austin McCarron

Master of the Game

Sweetly singing, the sun

is like a youth of light,

a sea of broken hours.

I pick my way through

its clear eye and profoundly

dead the voices it blinds.

Quietly I descend into a tunnel

of flames.
I fight rats with rare diseases but

stars of sacrifice

I heal with breath of exotic visions.

I see hunters of glory, religions of hell.

Strange disconnected bodies approach

me for matches, howling with sickness

and joy.

I stare at pictures of destruction and the

silence of time.

On wings of dust, death is loquacious but

its smile is empty of words and

the odour of trees and

waves is rich like music of a burning sound.

Blearily I raise a glassy arm and

the tempest of my spirit is supremely calm.

The Disappearance of the Self

Slaves of history, in buildings of wire,

with lungs of birth, with hearts of light,

with eyes of flame, I have seen them off,

for the sake of magic, these dead spirits,

in a city of dark voids, in a garden of wounds,

in a wood of uncircumcised bones, in a mouth

of indignant flies.

Stunned by a dream of descendents, I patch up

a flag of wind. I survive the knowledge of self,

the death of being.  Half in punishment, half in

shame, I meditate on the offences of existence.

On beaches of Europe I raise the sand of water

until each country

of humiliating tenderness is properly restored.

On Flowers of Original Stone

On flowers of original stone

I lay streams of words in greenish light.

In cities and farms I celebrate the growth

of uncontrollable fire and wood.

I pass water on graves of wind and gardens

of choking soil.

Plainly I see a box of mirrors on its stained floor.

Gone before I know it, the festering

seasons, with corpses of pale and yellow flames.

There is death everywhere,

and its soul is sticky with vain attempts at love.

By evening the smell of earth is like great and

futile uprisings.

I open a gate of mountains, and it is like time

burning, the rush

of colours, the scent of rock, willing to explode.

Austin McCarron is from New Zealand but has lived in London for many years.  Poems appeared in Poetry Salzburge Review, Van Gogh's Ear, Snakeskin, Ink, Sweat and Tears and others.