Ghazals & Godzilla - Two New Poems

​Back to poetry this week with contributions by Daniel Ausema and Simon Williams. Colorado-based Daniel Ausema is a member of the SFPA and his poetry has most recently appeared in Strange Horizons and Dreams & Nightmares. You can follow him on Twitter at @ausema. Simon Williams is a widely published poet from Devon (in the UK) with five collections to his name, the latest being A Place Where Odd Animals Stand (Oversteps Books, 2012) and He|She  (Itinerant Press, 2013). He founded The Broadsheet magazine in 2013 and you can find him on Twitter at @GreatBigBadger

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A Poem Sent Back Across Time-Space (a Ghazal*)
by Daniel Ausema

My people crossed a thousand skies, fleeing the sun
Pursued by quarks (matter in disguise), fleeing the sun.

You stayed, digging a shelter in a mountain shadow
Why run? you asked, Can't be wise, fleeing the sun.

We used to meet in the wheat field at dusk,
Slipping away from watchful eyes, fleeing the sun.

I find no echo of you in potential lovers here,
Coolly distant, sipping their chais, fleeing the sun.

In red, dying light we part. My lottery number matches me
to my spaceship, melancholic prize, fleeing the sun.

We reach a new planet, and who am I to judge
what new love will rise, fleeing the sun?


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Eye-Witness, The Bronx
by Simon Williams
 
I remember being taken to the museum
as a kid and seeing all the dinosaurs’
bones like giant toothpicks. I thought
they were big, but this one
 
doesn’t need to leap tall buildings,
can just knock ‘em outta the way.
Where’s it been hiding and how
did it get down the Hudson?
 
There’s talk of a complete evacuation,
but we don’t all have folks in Maine
or Massachusetts. Anyway, my taxi
looks like roadkill.
 
How will they get rid of it?
A swarm of sidewinders were like wasps
it batted down, needed no antihistamine.
They just pissed it off.
 
I’m keeping my head down,
putting in an insurance claim.
Shame they didn’t keep that massive
gorilla under wraps, in case of this.


* A ghazal is an ancient poetic form, originally of North African & Middle Eastern origin, consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain.