Three Poems by Peter Green

Deathly dialogue

Death stood at the foot

of my bed last night,

lit up a choking cigar

and said,

"I've had my

eye on you for a while

now". Attempting to

be flippant, I pointed

to his acrid cigar

which he was puffing

sulphurously and jested:

"If you don't watch out,

that'll be the death of you!"

He glowered at first, and then

opened his rotting mouth

and smiled through his

yellow teeth. "Not bad",

he spluttered. "I'm glad

you have a sense of humour.

You'll need it where you're going!"

But as my heart thudded in panic,

and I quizzed him further,

he refused to be drawn and said:

"I've got a date with some more

amenable clients", and scythed

his noxious self out of my life

...at least for a temporary reprieve.

Sepia

Sepia: draining the soul of colour;

leeching out the life in my bones;

flooding my spirit with inertia;

an overwhelmingly parasitical presence.

A negative photograph of shadows

lurking in the background

like a ghost trapped in Purgatory;

a melancholy funeral march

to a cemetery dripping wet with grief...

Turbulence

The sun ebbs into the horizon

leaving a frayed bullet hole in the sky

and residues of smouldering gunpowder.

The leaves of the trees retract in alarm

as the breeze escalates into a gale

on avaricious eagles' wings

and tense talons; cotton wool clouds

mutate to black leering dragons

and monsters in the sky. Pulling on

a jersey I feel paradoxically excited

at the wrath of Nature but unsettled

by Man's helplessness in the face

of such indifferent malevolence.

Biography : Peter Green is a Scottish Poet who lives in Botswana.