Five Poems by Martin Ferguson

 

Landing Clear

 

The giant canvass is stretched across

two branches of  huge mango tree.

You slip your feet into open  trainers,

venture into the smallest hour

to the pit latrine

 

the petzel  pressed to your forehead,

encumbers like a headache,

its flash glimpses two lines of camp beds;

cocooned sleepers in their mosquito nets,

human chrysalides.

 

You look out into a swathe of ink black bush,

the filament's sharp  blade

catches a thousand glittering eyes –

the green glow,

of arachnid night.

 

Tabora savanna

 

 

A Devil

 

There is a thing that is called a devil,

it was a lion but it changed itself,

one half became a man, the other half

became a stone.  The devil can alter,

sometimes it is half lion, sometimes half man.

It lives deep in the forest's undergrowth,

under the branches of the silalei,

it touches no wild animal and eats

human meat, when people pass it calls to them,

'come my brother help me lift this firewood'

then strikes them down with its stake and cries out,

 

'I  belong to the Aiser clan,

escape from me if you can.' 

 

Then it gorges on their flesh.

 

If the devil is in a certain place,

people march together to move their Kraal.

Should a voice be heard falling from the mist,

stay silent, for you know it is the devil.

 

Maasai myth

 

 

Anting

 

Corvus sniffs out insects     

sits atop the hill,

his feathers crawling;

a seething  plumage,

purged of tics  and mites.

 

The soil filled tank writhes

at the classroom side,

our senses hyperactivate,

as we flick formicidae

with  rulers,

 

drop  them  down

each other's necks.

 

 

Cohabiter

 

I am a function of the hardware

of my head. Nature had three and a half

billion years – I  have got a hundred;

a hundred and one billion neuron.

Seven thousand connections per synapse,

never overheating, within one litre,

I'm liquid cooled, run on twenty five watts;

the power of a very pale light bulb.

 

Fact –  you don't even need to plug me in,

nor lithium battery do I require,

just a gooseberry mint foyle would drive me,

over the course of nine dozen pages.

At  least so long as human heart and I,

have faculty by nature to subsist.

 

 

Hypnagogia

 

She passes unsighted,

across l'Eglise Saint Pierre

de Montmartre

 

glances transmitted,

did not his daytime capture,

in the city of somnambulists

 

but came back to catch him,

as unprocessed images,

from semi-autonomic lids

 

in the late night register,

back room recess,

of twilight sleep.

 

 

 

Martin Ferguson’s poems have appeared in Stand,  Ink Sweat and Tears, The Honest Ulsterman, The Poetry Village, The High Window, The Journal,  International Times, Runcible Spoon, and Kleksograph, among others. His first collection, 'An A to Z Art of Urban Survival Following Diogenes of Sinope', was shortlisted by Against the Grain Press and published in 2019 by Original Plus.

He was the guest poet on Paris Spoken World Online hosted by David Sirois in July, 2020.

He wqs born in West Yorkshire and now lives and works in France, where he teaches professional English Language in-company. He has been known to occasionally frequent 'Le Chat Noir' café to give readings at the Paris Spoken Word  open mic poetry events, in the 11e of Paris.

samsmith&thejournal - Original Plus chapbooks (google.com) 

Martin Ferguson (@FergusonMartin) / Twitter