Some of the Poems I read at midnight poetry

Enjoyed my first public reading of some of my poems. Nice crowd in the very nice Coffee Karma cafe.

Here are some of the poems I read.

 

Definition

The second largest river in Europe
flows for 1,770 miles,
that being 2,850 kilometers,

from southern Germany to eastern Europe,
this riverrun drains roughly 315,000 square miles
of land, that being 815,000 square kilometres,

it has the largest volume of flow of any European river and
beginning in the Black Forest it empties into the Black sea.
The Germans call it die Donau, I call it the Danube.

(and I thought it was nice place to start).

Bridge

Poland, Paris,
Frankfurt am Oder,
Cottbus.

The ice packed by
countless pedestrians
marching on the ascent
to the station or Kreuz-
berg further across the river.

Going home,
but where’s ‘home’
I do not know, and this makes
me think of all those
extent in the world, right
then under the falling sky
who wish they were on
that train, or that train,
or perhaps standing with me
viewing this O2 World,
this very particular advertisement,
not the one closer to their home,
and whether I want to be
in their place:

crowding at the doors
between carriages yes,
as the train glides into
the Ostbahnhof,
or maybe, with forgive-
ness needed from one,
on my way to others’:

Warsaw, Paris,
Frankfurt am Oder,
Cologne.

Nominal Shifts.

Chaos was the goal, an aim to smash one set of facts against another and to end up living nowhere, to spend the future killing the world, hobbling between the broken list of low-cost destinations as if the apocalypse had descended and différance had grown and finally taken over, leaving nothing identifiable, nothing recognisable or accountable, all footholds gone and obliterated.
Ciampino is not Roma, Torp is not Oslo.
Paris is not Beauvais, the Pryrenees are not the same as Pau; Skavsta is not Stockholm nor is Vasteras; Treviso is not Venice; Brescia is not Verona; Vitoria is not Bilbao; Altenburg is not Leipzig; Girona is not Barcelona; Charleroi is certainly not Brussels; Weeze is not Dusseldorf; Pisa is not Florence; and Stansted is not London.
Torp is not Oslo. Oslo is not Torp.
And while we’re at it: Dublin is not Dublin.