AFTER THE BRONZE CASTING OF DYLAN THOMAS BY HUGH OLOFF DE WETT

IS THE SUN A MADMAN?

Are waves breaking upon the skin inside?
Is outside dissolved into an empty cipher?
What are the mad words that became symbols that crashed 
Upon the foreshore within the cage of bones that is a man. 
Is sunlight eternal? Can it resurrect the way 
We once felt about being young, walking down Cyprus Avenue 
Or the brightness we once felt breaking the skin? 

HAMPSTEAD HEATH 

Are the daffodils in bloom in April on Hampstead Heath? 
Is light luxuriously dappled against dolphin backed shapes 
Of hedgerows, small children, plein air views of tactile landscapes Dews, silences, deep, deep wells? Does love exist even beating in Tiny palpitations within modest breasts? On Hampstead Heath questions fail in reciprocation with intense sunlight 
Even unwritten on backs of hands. 

PERFECTION OF EXPERIENCE 

The links of rhyme expand upon the unsought place 
Where perfection of experience exalted memory across 
The woods, gorges, ravines, grasses, shimmering rites 
Of Maytime and all, all seemed to fulfil within 
The round tentative exploration of senses, 
Sounds, even the harsh cacophony of my life’s 
Sudden intimate leaving. Laughter and after. 

 I’m writing an epic poem using the heteronym Kenji Okanawi, a survivor of Nagasaki, who claimed three pensions, having cycled from Nagasaki to Hiroshima and back again, being blasted three times. Cycling on a three wheeled bicycle in three different directions, Okanawi is the only man to have three assholes too! Work that one out Niels Bohr! Blast off! I was sitting under the pyramid at the Poetry Library, when a sullen melodrama occured to me: 

AFTER THE BRONZE CASTING OF DYLAN THOMAS by HUGH OLOFF DE WETT

Dylan Thomas, you look like a surreal clown
Escaped from one circus to the poetry circus. 
A live awareness glints in your hollow, bronze eye 
Alive to the diamonds and the cheesy bits. 

You wear a dapper cravat 
Which droops seemingly to your knees. 
In the afterglow of your dying cigarette 
All the dapper truths mingling with the rest of it. 

The ROAD to TENOCHTITLAN 

I am on the road so weary yet all 
Of the fall is around me. 
The battles are a foregone 
Conclusion as foregone as the strand 

Is. The ashes leap out of the flame 
The eagle no longer calls out. 
All of the wildness is in me. 
Out of this rout, paths to divide us: 
On the road to Tenochtitlan. 

PRACTICAL HAY 

Mr Acerbic wears a jagged smile. 
Nurse Wetboard is sitting on his face. 
Monkey-faced men leer in at the portico 
I am on the baby Grand. 
Attack Of the strang/lers. 
We die In misty, rosy dreams. 
We die as we wanted to live: 
Cowardly, elemental tinpackers! 

Some days later I am still 
Underneath the baby Grand. 
Mr McGonad is sipping his pint 
Of corduroy. Mr Slipgirdle has 
A firm. Nurse Rendition 
Is throttling him with a loose. 
Alibi is hammering in the windmill. 
The electric is all blown away. 

Paul Murphy