John Weston

Out of Form

My fault’s too much order —
always straining to see
round the next corner,
off flies the poetry.
Hatch don’t forge says my guru with a smile.
Maybe I should take up singing
in the mountains, or listen to silence for a while —
skip the next turn, let missing




lines run free... Look, dammit, less than one minute:
Tap tap, curate’s egg, curtal sonnet

Boxers

(After LM)

They come with bush country
down under, where the free expanses
are veiled in blue and the Murray
slows to a trickle.
At this age it’s a no-compete
in the Kingdom of Flaunt,
but when Hackett meets Calvin’s old
“close-hold” style — straight knock-out.
Weightless,
I dance like a butterfly since.

For Shi Tao, in a Chinese Prison

Your Book of the Dead poems, online
their skin still gives off heat, as I
turn that gun from your ear, count
down each year by one line,
like a shaman spell syllable-by-
syllable a sympathetic
magic stronger than painted aurochs,
terracotta regiments, olympic
circles, to lift your flame from live
burial (“Come forth!”) before this sentence ends.