Ken's Poetry

The Wizard

Cathedral Square Christchurch.

Man on the steps
calling down the square
spitting out the witches
tangled in your hair
cursing all the workers
in their concrete hives
pouring rhetoric in their ears
to rattle dreary lives,

waving in a bricky ocean
gesturing at Christ’s falling tower
sucking in the floating tourists
bringing all their mouths aflower

I have seen your toes like tongues
gaping through vermilion rungs
I have seen your groping hand
in its slavering sleeve of sand
I have sung your serenade
walked your ways of Everglade
run your rainbows in the dirt
felt the pain that never hurt.

I have watched your riddles fall
in the darkest place of all
seen your music drip at night
out of hearing out of sight.

Here your shrunken shadow dives
where the one wheeled pedaler twirls
the flowery hatted children round
laughing with the joy he furls.
Down the steps the listeners sprawl
drink you in with squinting eyes
hungry hands on paper cones
guzzling your truth and lies.

Some will click your frozen image
clipping out the words you said
trap you on the silvered paper:
I replay you in my head.