Pockets 080304

NW - 12 assorted guitar picks, slide , capo, paper clips

NE - twonie, 3 elk, penny, Kleenex, 2 sets of keys

SE - wallet (no cash) - contents too dishevelled to list

SW - rectangular key, rogue plectrum, gum in foil

4/3/08

copyright 2008 Trevor Haug

Preferring Poetry

One day I'll board a plane

With nothing more

Than verses in my head

And a few under my arm

No guitar to hide in the bulkhead

No amp to rent at the other end

No reverb, delay, effects to tweak

I'll have a comfortable chair

And a short introduction

And polite applause

After every selection

The faithful will trickle in

From surrounding towns

Older ladies who have time for poetry

A child or two and a coughing man

And with these borrowed

Items from other poets -

A crutch of grief

A nostalgic seabreeze

And witty jazz metaphors

I'll hobble and paint

Over someone's despair

With my own carousel tones

And sad eyes

While outside

The cars will wait

In the Spring mud

8/3/08

copyright 2008 Trevor Haug

Cien Poetas Mexicanas

I have invited

100 Mexican poets

into my bedroom

I shake them alive

like dusty puppets

who need forearms for spines

and fists for brains

My Spanish is lacking

so their eloquent soliloquies

are full of gaps

like messages from space

disrupted by solar winds

I catch something from Carpio

about the virgin,

a whisper of death from Espino

Lerdo tries to explain light

Solana, a tree

I coax from some

the shadows of sadness;

from others, secrets

buried by time's conquest

Hour after hour

they interupt each other

in an anthology of ruined verse

In the end, leaving me to dream,

they interpret each other's awakenings

Gallardo is in the corner,

head in his folded arms

and Nova is lost

in a volume

of Neruda's love sonnets

Plaza and Rincon

have slipped out

to make quesadillas

While the rest have joined

the moon and the stars,

riding like bandits across the sky

09

copyright 2009 Trevor Haug

Christmas Sonnet

The crowning and the cry - it is begun

Thrust out with groping hands into our world

Turned on His human side, the Son preferred

An ambience of hooves and straw and dung

Soon feeding like a beast upon the breast

He turns milk to His body and His blood

With eloquent witnesses, chewing cud

As passive as the east is to the west

How bright tonight the wide symphonic sky

To stage a spectacle amongst the poor

And draw them to the stable's open door

With lambs in tow, to see, before they die

The Lamb who heals the fault of worlds apart

Sleep comes to His incarnate racing heart

21/12/10

copyright 2010 Trevor Haug