JOHNMICHAEL SIMON POETRY

He’s off on some first-person voyage again

purple shores of yesteryear all fading now

standing, feet planted in the helm

watching the spume, observing how a seagull

wings its way in circles, seems to sing

this way dear Captain from its hoarse

anchovy-tinted throat.

 

Eyes fixed on the tiller, ears cocked to his

internal music – outside reality fades.

 

Reality which for us is daily bread, embattled warriors,

wives washing the floor, the politics

of self-important shopkeepers, artists and poets

boiling with ego, demanding to be viewed and heard,

all the constant clamor of harpsichords and traffic

dimming now, flattening into waves and clouds,

the shore of a new continent naked and beckoning

awaiting its discovery, his fixed sextant and compass

is all his serious intent allows.

 

His coffee long ago has grown a skin

the hourly newscast bleats its spazzatura

into empty air. Abandoned now, an airline magazine

glossy with duty-free, sighs a disappointed Gucci

or Black Label sigh. Not for him the wars behind,

the reddening fires, currency exchange and stations of desire.

 

He’s off on his first-person voyage now

and as the winter sun sets crazily in Polaroid outside,

a window closes, opaque and lost, hardly discerned at all.

 

He grasps the tiller wild in fierce delight

the spires and turrets of a new adventure

coming ever closer – as the seagull sings again

this way dear Captain, this way.