TRAGEDY AND BLISS
Riding on a stream
into Tuebingen,
severing the veins of clouds in my mind,
soaring over the little tragedies
in every single house,
ready to touch the agony again
rising from creaking floorboards
and worn-out lanes,
plastic shops
and poetic sewers.
What really is the point
of getting out of my tossing bed,
squirming through a vice-tight Security,
carrying a soiled and fraying bundle of poems
to give out via my nagging tongue to friends (and enemies);
donations to charity,
lines wishing for better days
and an end to the self-inflicted pain
we humans saddle ourselves with.
Off the plane,
I walk boldly through the jetsam
following the sun
to find a miracle of positive light
on a gleaming Weinhaus table.
Gruss Got!
It is then,
facing the rays of the new morning,
that I feel the creativity surge in my agitated bones again;
the gift of a poem from an unknown Warrior God,
liquid refreshment from a statue of Neptune,
out of place in the Marketplace,
looking for hope in a Googled world of despair.
Tell me yon Swabian chap striding past me,
someone whose handshake I’ll never know or care to,
do they call you ‘Knulp’?
And where do you think you are going
with those ashes in your overcoat pocket?
Down below to a slaughterhouse cell
or, screaming with bats, into a clanging belfry?
And yet you know I wish you well in your water,
I wish you fins and wings,
the chance to fly
with a Gypsy Moth
out of tragedy
to a little bliss
in the City of Tuebingen.
KEITH ARMSTRONG
