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A Poem By Steven Berkoff

The most beautiful sunset I have ever seen,
A glorious glowing tequila sunrise
Fading, you can’t preccive the ice-cube blue
Melting into tangerine skies.
There’s always the ragged charcoal clouds
Chiseled by the sculptor in your mind
Into shapes of gargoyles leaping forth
From puffy nimbus towering heights,
Like those who shear their hedges, overgrown
And free
Into a private froze mannaric
That time will subtly gradually change.
Since shoots and leaves will grow and fade
Man’s art,
God will not be upstaged by vile upstarts!
And so your clouds, once lion, birds and
Crocodiles,
Metamorphosize into another shape,
And your poor mind must think and redefine,
Ah, yes, you think you see a grand profile,
You blink and now its nose has been restyled!

But now, how fast it drains, the orange glow,
Like some enormous giant throat is parched
and gulps and slurps it down in one huge groan
then leaves a rusty residue inside the glass
but now the rust doth turn to inky blue
yet leaving tiny moth holes in a sapphire tent
where twinkling lights are shimmering through.

The sea licks its long tongue on the sand
And finding nought withdraws it once again…
The hills are black with bristles on its chins
A solitary boat comes chug-chug-chugging in.

The multi coloured fish no more parade
Their carnival of technicolour skins,
Their purple, royal, azure-blue and greens,
Their orange and iridescent deep sapphires
Are safely locked away in God’s dark vaults
Until the raging sun once more awakes
And says, ‘Dear moon, go grab your forty winks,’
No sooner said then out the fishes leap.

They are the canvas of God’s favourite work,
Designed by angels in his art department who,
Intent to please their master’s every whim
Created the craziest colours to please him.
A competition grand and vast was held,
And every angel worked with shape and hues
To dazzle the one Emperor of space.
They dipped their brushes in brilliant rainbows
That hang over Piton’s emerald green hills…
They crushed the plants of indigo in too
And smeared a sunset in to enrich the tones.

But when it was too wild, too confused,
Too insane, bawdy, crazy and too lewd,
And so the angels tossed them in the sea
And began their work again more seriously.
But, God’s eye did find some true delight
And to reward his angel artists for their zest
He calls his favourite creates, angel-fish,
Although no doubt he certainly loved the rest.