Poems of Love and Loss

(An Anthology)

by Tim Veater

(All subject to Copyright and Intellectual Property Rules).

These verses were written over more than twenty years. I am in the process of transferring them here and have many more to go, as initial letters indicate!

A Busy World

it's all happening out there

it really is

I can feel it in the air

the world is in a tizz

there's a million million actions

a teaming thread of life

that's happening all around me

no more than a stone's throw off

a multitude of molecules

make up the air we breathe

is never ever steady

as it gently stirs the trees

a trillion leaves are busy

interacting with the sky

producing sugar for the plant

and oxygen for our lives

a billion insects flit as insects do

each one a work of art

a sophisticated engineering triumph

intricately created

just for a day or two

so ephemeral and brief the span

of hectic purpose springing

from ageless evolution

or some inspired plan

reflected in a mayfly winging

whilst underground

a teeming mass of miners toil

buried in their mindless work

of tilling and tunnelling the soil

unconcerned about the morrow

yes we are surrounded by a heaving, throbbing,

pulsating hive of activation

whilst all appears calm, steady state, integration,

and I the centre of it all

for all those microbes, insects, worms and higher forms

the plants, the trees the birds,

do what they do without the slightest thought

as to the purpose or the meaning

in which is their delight

they have no goal except to fulfil their role

that nature's charms have breathed in them

robin sings to robin

a blackbird trills away

tits pick blithely at the willow flower

swallows sweep their aerobatic display

and somewhere in the cold damp wall

secreted from the world

a toad sits still and old and cold

 African Violet

I rescued you and brought you back
from the brink, in my back-pack on the bike
dry and faded you were not a pretty sight
that's why I got you for a knock down price
little knowing how you would repay.
I sat you in a north facing window at the top of the stairs
catching only a few errant evening rays
but you liked it there as had your forebears
I sat you on a bed of shiny pebbles and watered
until your mossy roots felt damp and warm.
I asked after your health and cared
until you started to recover and revive
and went from strength to strength
your furry caudal leaves swelled and multiplied
turning dark and lustrous velvet green.
Before in all their splendour buds appeared
then more until like a concave of cardinals
each resplendent in their purple robes
with golden mitres central to the flowers
rescued, redeemed, the cill transformed
into a lush, hot vibrant jungle
like bluebirds flown all the way from Africa.

All Change.

now that the room has been cleared of all the bric-a-brac

the books on shelves the paintings on the wall

the nick knacks on the ledges and the plates on beams

the candles with their melted wax and mementos of canals

the mugs of kings and queens, of marriages and coronations

the statues, accessories, the carpets,

chairs and stools so lovingly upholstered

remembrance of the dear departed

the table lamps and log basket full of logs

the drawers all full of electrical equipment

obsolete unopened overtaken by technology

the 45's, cds, dvds, so seldom masqueraded

all swept away in one gigantic free for all

now all is slate and glass and stainless steel

with not a thing to spoil or clutter

but where to hang my fraying coats or store my muddy boots

where will the dog shake or cat scratch

how will I find my bearings or feel at home

only the fateful apples on the table blemish-free

remind us of that fateful garden innocence

when to know was to be ignorant

and to be ignorant was to be content

 All Kids are C*nts

All kids are c**ts. There's no more to be said.

They do not write. They do not ring.

Even on Christmas Day or when I'm ill in bed.

They revel in their power to hurt,

Presumably justified by just desserts

And cold distain. Indifferent to the pain

Of expectation unfulfilled, in those,

Hanging upon the barbed wire hour.

American Dream

I have strode the Mississippi,
From Albuquerque to the Rio Grande:
I have taken in the Rockies
And stood where Custer stood,
Standing his very last stand.
When yellow turned to black and white
And rivers turned to blood.

I have flown over the plains of Laramie,
With eagle's wings outstretched;
Whilst somewhere on Highway Number Nine,
Or perhaps Route Sixty-Six,
A hippy in his VW camper van
Picks up a Vietnam vet.
Here amidst the sandstone stacks, so red and dry,
A rattle snake rattles out his challenge
To any passer by - but no one passes by -
Only a sweep of blue and scorching sky.

Vast drift of yellow wheat impinges on my sleep,
A larder for a starving world.
Where once the bison roamed,
Their slaughter speaking volumes
Beneath the thunder of stampeding feet,
For neither human or other kind has wish to die,
Yet less to be extinct.

Nothing could stop the human tide
That spread like oil across the surface of the globe.
Its multi coloured fluorescence contaminating
Every untouched virgin valley
Every copse and every cove.
On the promise of a Rogers and Hammerstein dream,
Of building houses, home.

A carousel of corn - high as an elephant's eye -
Continentally misplaced on ivory keys.
Leonard Bernstein gardens with white wicker fences
And Eric Copeland trumpeting the common man.

Of Liberty Ships, Submarines and Hydrogen Bombs
All the way to the moon and back again
from Hollywood glamour released.

Coke and cars with big fins,
Refrigerators and flyovers,
Skyscrapers, elevators, yellow taxis and dust.
Steamships, railroads, New York, New York.

And still they come the unwashed human masses,
Fleeing a poisoned chalice. Seeking a brave new world.
Stinking, sweating, starving, stealing, smiling humanity;
Shouting, swearing, swinging, smoking, sailing families.
The Fords, the Cabots, the Lowells, the Kennedies,
The Lords, the Ladies, the pimps, the punters,
The down and outs and those without a name,
They came, they came

This body politic founded on a dream
And ideas born of faith, of civil war and radical intent.
This immense uncharted continent, absorbed within its folds
The millions who came and stayed or went again.
Where nothing Oscar Wilde could say or do
Could bear away the pain but for a moment,
As the earth groaned under the weight of it all,
And catastrophe beaconed aesthetically.

28.9.09

Angel Voices

Angel voices cry and cherubs weep

The vaults of heaven resound to wailing

A multitude of bodies lie

Without much monument

We the on-lookers pass by

A crowd just lie in waiting?

Some fading sepia image

Or crackling Bakelite

So many mother's or lover's tears

Have flowed into that salty waste

Crossing the river Jordan

Filling the deadly sea.

So just one more is not so big a thing

One person less, unlikely to make a mark

And yet it goes without saying

That in her passing

For those, a little time remaining,

Might grieve and sorrow

As if lanced through the heart

A bloodless stinging smart

No balm will take away or soothe.

Animal Friends

I'm sharing my life with a dog and a cat

to be perfectly frank, I'm contented with that

unlike humans I'm pleased to report

when I snap at him he doesn't snap back

her name is ivy and his name is jazz

we've been so long together we well know our fads

our likes and our dislikes we wear on our sleeve

not to mention the odd irritating dog and cat flea

maybe for this reason we live in sweet bliss

our fall outs are seldom and end with a kiss

the cat takes no nonsense the dog is in awe

and I know my place as the facilitator

like the great western railway we're governed by rules

that determine each day for the master of fools

we each know our place and know what we want

whether milk, fish or meat or occasional jaunt

the day always starts with her feet on my bed

purring and teasing, how easy she's read

whilst pad pad padding the paws on the stairs

announces he's coming to add to her prayers

when by persistence they achieve their desire

and I reluctantly get up to tend to the fire

she's right there before me all silky and smooth

so loving attentive her devotion to prove

but the moment she's fed up with belly replete

her diffidence takes over she's up on her feet

and nothing so boring as human attention

which rather reminds me of people I might mention

in contrast my Jasper (for Jazz is in brief)

I am pleased to report (and what a relief)

is always affectionate loyal and true

welcoming me back whatever I do

He's always on form at his tail wagging best

he never gets down unless he's at rest

in the hot or the cold or the dry or the wet

in return for my promise his loyalty kept

In pure symbiosis the three of us share

our lives altogether with never a care

the moral of which I'm pleased to relate

the secret of happiness: cat and dog for a mate

Another Day

My life follows a set routine,

I go to bed, I sleep, I dream.

Meeting, greeting, those familiar friends

Who haunt me from ephemeral realms.

At three-thirty-three a noise disturbs.

Is it a rat or nesting birds?

The darkness to the other senses lend

A heightened nerve.

Are those footsteps that I hear?

What whispering voices in my ear?

A ghostly presence here descend?

Or background music of the spheres?

No, the padding up the stairs,

Is just my faithful dog, quite unawares

Of the disturbance that it fends,

Of which he neither knows or cares

At five-fifty-five the world awakes.

My feathered choir a joyful chorus makes.

Banishing the darkness, all amends,

With cheerful song that resonates.

So starts another optimistic day,

Where fade the terrors of the night away.

Triumphant hope eternal blends,

In trilling, thrilling, play.

At Bay

As I daily wend my way

On the foreshore of my dreams,

Nothing can my fears allay,

Nothing seeming what it seems.

Giant rocks to stop the swell,

Golden sand all spread with weed;

Nothing irksome breaks the spell,

As along the track I speed.

Faithful pump keeps pumping still,

Even if it's prone to fail.

With every beat our fate fulfils,

Into the wind my legs propel.

All the pebbles, all the years,

Daily strewn across the beach,

From timeless past are ground away,

Like countless people – out of reach.

Beyond in various shades of blue,

Limitless it seems to be,

Ultra marine and lighter hues,

Stretching far as eye can see.

And at the point where sea and land collide,

A stream of silver spreads its way,

Reflecting photons from the sky,

Upon the shimmering sand to play.

In endless waves the sea rolls in,

In countless atoms all combined,

Three elements of land, liquid, air,

All united, intertwined.

But where's the fire that's blazing here?

How could we forget the sun?

The light that shines to cast out fear,

Whilst we our fleeting course we run.

Eternal orb that powers the globe

Without your light we fade and die.

We are but shadows on the road,

A brief hello, a wave goodbye.

At War

Whilst walking to the woods today

As twilight fell and all grew dim

The air was filled with raucous cackling

An all-pervading fiendish din

Upon the ridge where spruces soar

Etched black against the darkening sky

I came upon this score and ten times more

Of wheeling swooping devilish things

Cawing, chuck chucking, screaming in delight

They revelled in their crazy flight

Above the furthest outstretched arms

They swirled and swooped like fire alarms

Flying undertakers in feathered drapes

A funeral pyre of billowing acrid smoke

A thousand jagged throats in wake

All calling with the self same note

This frenzied flight of jackdaw clerics

As if aware of world events

Decided to compete with human madness

Falling about the sky at our expense

Unable to contain their delight

As with the setting sun

They manically embraced the night

A mad demented timpani.

Bees

I wake from sleep to find the night descended like a cape

From wherever I have been, I have returned refreshed

And now the shadowed silly dog has fled

To snarl and growl at someone else.

I wake to bees swarming in Radstock

To the sound of a buzz box beating time

Bell

Sweet callow youth, who slights me still,

Despite the ring of truth with which your bell is rung,

Cracked the bronze, rotten the oaken bearers.

They peel a broken note

A gaudy rose amidst the heather.

Small bells would be a better ploy

Where pitch is less important than the rhythm

Where the many bad notes

By sleight of hand

Could be lost amidst the sound of heaven.

Good intentions beat the better drum

Forgiving hearts prepared to close their ears

To sounds discordant

Part preferring to hear a gentle hum

Though false, harmonious and clear.

Berberis

The Berberis is all a-flame,
A burning bush of orange flower,
A promised land
To all of those who dare to dream,
Like Moses' mythic briar.

A burning bush,
In backside desert place,
Which on a sacred mountain side
Oozed forth a mystic voice,
To turn aside a face.

"I've witnessed their sufferings,
Heard their cries,
Observed them weep,.
Remove those sandals from off your feet"
"For this is Holy Ground!"

So here I stand
Listening intent,
To hear the voice again -
"I am that I am. I AM".
Though earthly life is almost spent.

Alive it is
There is no doubt,
It hums with industry,
As all about
Bees wave their magic wands.

Converting fire to something sweet.
A honied milk from straw.
Love's labours are not lost.
Perhaps a Gaia watching
After all.

A blaze of glory,
A demi-god, a mini sun.
A burning bush
Of flame and heat,
A shimmering spring of self-renewing hope.

Birds a'Cawing

This morning I was awoken by cawing,

A deep dark rasping sound

That acted like an alarm.

And after a while it got me up.

I looked outside to see

Four black Jackdaws on the lawn,

The largest tearing at the carcase of a dead rabbit,

Whilst the adolescents rasped their impatience,

Insisting she regurgitate in their direction.

It was a sort of war party breakfast,

The victors fighting over spoils.

Though they weren't fighting,

Just begging assertively,

Like children at the check-out.

The rabbit I saw last night,

Young and unaware what black fate may befall.

Fluffy and endearing,

Straying blithely into the

Cat-patrolled danger zone.

Easy come and easy go.

A child-like scream in the night

Marked the moment of demise,

And now this morning

As a weak sun turns on the light,

These noisy undertakers

Clear up the mess.

Eventually the crying stops.

They fly off to some other holiday destination.

But not before, and quite without precedent,

A clear loud percussion

On my bedroom window.

The big-beaked brooding bird

Sits on the window cill,

With button brittle eyes,

Tapping out a message in Morse:

Rat a tat tat, An ominous "I'll be back"

"Let me in and I'll peck out your eyes"

"Forgive me I have chicks to feed"

"I don't discriminate"

"Wake up its death calling"

"I want to flap my wings in your face"

"And tear strips of vain flesh"

"From your whitening bones"

"Haw Haw Haw Haw"

"You're all a joke"

Or was it just a friendly smiling Janet

Returning to the scene of our passion

Birthday

Birth day! Birth day!

The day you looked outside

And realised with a scream

That life was not a warm dark cave

Awash with beating ocean waves.

Levitated with flailing limbs

In blinding light and hard metallic cold

Not then realising

The worm of death

Had started gnawing at the core.

That convenient explanations

Fail to explain

The wild bold mad insider

Working his way out.

Todays the day remember?

How many do?

By that you know

Despite the bitter cutting winds

Where respite lurks,

And soft nectar drops

In reassuring sweetness

On the tongue of memory.

Ganymede throws its shadow on Jupiter.

Birthday Barbeque Blues. Clustered round the glowing joint Breathing deep its pungent air Fire crackling in the night Pouring forth its smoke and glare. Suddenly towards the East appeared Over Rinsey far away An orange glow of presage light Reflected in the underplay. Slowly the bright orb emerged Without a sound on well oiled wires Theatrically it raised the round Responding to our night time fires. Silently it gained in height As its heavenly arc it ran Full effulgence new creating Only borrowed from the Sun. Over Saint Michael's Mount it towered Shining sovereign in the sky Full and craterless its visage As a boy began to cry. Distant now the sea receding To its subterranean lair As if it coyly was retreating From the Moon's pink blushing stare. Hugs and kisses there abounding For birthday boy in jocund babble Innane laughter in the sounding Of absent friend now freed from care. Youth and beauty were apparent In the flickering firelight glow I the aged interloper Hardly even in the know. Now the Moon shone down upon us High up in the August sky Eros with his golden arrow Pierced a soul and made him die. Beautiful his new replacement Little did I realise Grief and angst were in the basement Stalking every word and sigh. Yet in the lunar solar sphere A greater moon exists called Ganymede Namesake of that beauteous boy from Troy Which Zeus in eagle form took heed And carried off across the sand His case to plead.

Bubble

I am but a little bubble

On the spirit level time

Just one tiny bubble

In which I helplessly repine.

On a plane stretching forwards

In a limitless expanse

On a plane stretching backwards

Into blue fading distance.

A bubble is a bubble

So tiny and confined

Yet projecting to infinity

In space and time.

Just three dimensions

Here represented

How many more unseen

Influence our fates, our dreams?

The universe is one big bubble

Like elemental holey cheese

Or chocolate bubble bar

Inexplicable mysteries.

So even the straightest line

If continued far enough

Comes back again

To see what has been seen.

Bubbles within bubbles

How are these contained

By processes scarcely understood

Inside the human brain?

For impossible though it is

To peep within men’s souls

What emanates from mental thought

Is incredible to behold.

A theory tested holds good

And then allows another bubble to appear

Which no sooner dazzles, pops

Leaving behind a soapy stain

Called knowledge and experience.

On which the bubble bursts again

Never ever presume

What goes on in there

For man within his bubble

Is the measure of it all

But not quite yet

As I closer come to death

I consider my last breath,

All the ones who gone before

Beckon me towards the door.

Are constantly about my head

Reminding me that they are dead.

Weekly I review their names

In the pages of the Times.

All the people good and great

Who I wished to emulate,

All are gone are passed away

To no longer bright the day.

I with them will join them soon,

Enter in a darkened room

Or perhaps a bright light I shall see,

Welcoming eternity.

What will happen no one knows,

Iron is shaped by hammer blows,

Beaten battered blacksmith forged,

Something different re-emerged.

Heart will stop its beating here,

Brain will disengage the fear,

Eternal soul will onward fly,

To some palace in the sky.

Or perhaps more likely on that day,

 I will simply slip away

And few will know and less will care

That I have passed my time down here.

No fine obituary in the Times for me,

Anonymous passing I shall be,

Somewhat annoyed I was not exempt,

From this damned inconvenient detriment.

Surprised that it should come to this,

A sad farewell and clammy kiss,

For nothing ventured nothing gained,

A quiet life I entertained.

With nothing striking nothing brave,

He drowned at sea without a wave,

And now he's gone and been replaced

By thousands more who've been displaced,

By war or want or flood or famine,

To struggle on and on and on - I imagine.

Cat

Tinkle tinkle little cat

How I wonder what you're at

Always mewing round my leg

Have you taught the world to beg?

Tinkle tinkle little cat

Go and find yourself a scrap

Only little time ago

I threw you out into the blow

Then tinkle tinkle up the stairs

Here again to plead your prayers

Such attachment! Such devotion!

Such distain when meal times over.

Cat Flap

(Lessons to be learned from my cat's attitude to the G7 at St Ives)

Me and my cat. Well fancy that!

A relationship made in heaven.

Or was it on earth, in light of the dearth,

Of available spaces in prison?

Last night she stayed out, in spite of my shout

And the worry it inevitably causes,

But when about eight, I called out at the gate,

She appeared with a saunter, and pauses.

"Do come in dear pussy and please don't be fussy,"

As I place a plate of chicken before her,

It's not altogether clear, what her response means my dear,

As she turns up her nose at the offer.

I return to my bed, with fresh dreams in my head,

Cup of tea in my hand and the paper,

G7 is news and the Morrison blues

But of me and my cat not a mention.

We're not famous you see, it's how it should be -

Anonymity is not without its advantage -

"I suppose," says the Queen, "we all should appear keen

to pretend you are actually happy."

"So let's all sit here, socially distanced it's clear,

And photographer please make it snappy!"

However envious I may be, of the scenes on TV,

Or the fact that I wasn't invited,

To wine and to dine. No I think it quite fine.

In fact I and my cat are delighted.

And so the world turns, my cigarette burns,

Sending nonchalant plumes to the ceiling,

My cat scratches and licks and smiles at the Micks,

Who are desperate to appear so appealing.

Above us there sounds, throbbing helicopter wands,

All part of the security precautions,

Though our leaders are loved, it has to be proved,

By ensuring that no one gets near them.

How many planes are required? How many cars must be hired?

How many soldiers and policemen are needed

To ensure seven people are protected?

But need I say more about the wolf at the door?

Red Riding Hood's easily bamboozled.

Cat Nap

I am married to my cat

Simply spoken, that is that

I am married to my cat.

Whilst propped up in my bed

She sits on anything that's flat

A chair or writing desk

Just silently gazing at me

Inscrutably contemptuous

For my pitiable human state,

Owl-like and statuesque

She oozes all the quiet confidence

Of her sphinx-like dignity

And timeless mystical divinity.

We daily demonstrate

All that's best in a partnership

Both detached and independent

She's free to come or go

But always stays

Aware they also serve

Who stand and wait.

We talk to each other

In language hardly understood

But we get the drift

Of what it is we want

She actually calls “Hello”

On entering the cat-flap

Always coming up to say goodnight

Before I go to bed

Purring contentedly

Or sashaying this way or that

Seeking a kindly touch

Or playful infatuation.

After all these years of rescue and retreat

She trusts me – just.

Remaining out of sight

Until hunger pangs call to dinner

Sitting on my shoulder

Catastrophe

Did you catch it in a trap?

Or were you bitten by a rat?

Maybe it resulted from a cat-scrap?

Or did a desperate rabbit just fight back?

Whatever it was, it shook you up

Though your stoical genes held up

Whilst bleeding right between the table flap

To cause a pool of blood to gather on the kitchen floor.

When I returned from weekend break

It took a while to suss it out and realise

Whilst I had been elsewhere

Quite blissfully unaware

This drama had unfolded.

Your little paw was twice its size

Your hind leg raw.

But just before I was about to take you to the vet

You thought it wise to hide

And perhaps you did know best

Letting mysterious nature take its course

Because now bathed in disinfectant and morning light

You’re on the mends

And looking up into my eyes

Meow to indicate your perfectly aware

The incident however caused

Has come and gone and with it

Yet another of, at least, nine lives,

Had disappeared.

Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner

Its getting closer day by day

Not so long ago

It seemed so far away

The high street shops are calling

With red and green and gold

The nights are getting darker

Its feeling rather cold.

Familiar songs are wafting

From Woolly's festive store

Evocative of childhood feelings

So many years before

An ending and beginning

For where one year is done

Another starts to beckon

The returning sun.

No sooner Christmas then is over

The spring is on its way

Those little shoots of winter

Blast winter blues away

But for now approaching Christmas

We must take it in our stride

Steeling ourselves to the inevitable

Roller coaster ride.

Circular Motion

round and round covering the ground

an exercise in perpetual motion

silence on silence envelopes all round

and only the sound of the ocean

the sun comes up the sun goes down

in all its brilliant splendour

the moon comes out and shows its face

in silver phases, wonder

how in spinning we stand still

how in travelling we get nowhere

how all our plans are doomed to fail

and all our loves despair

the corpus Christie fair is here

with all its noise and show

the flashing lights and music blare

the screams of girls unknown

around around they swing

oh the joy of spinning round

in vertical and horizontal planes they go

whilst I stand on the ground

and then as luck would have it

whilst coming round the corner

I met a man I'd met before

the latter meets the former

and as he passed me by

he poked his tongue right out

but then I caught him with my eye

and swung him round about

as cycling on and on and on

I make the wheels revolve

around the time when time stood still

and we were almost one

Cobwebs

The cobwebs on the ceiling, so appealing, keep reappearing.

The spiders cannot be faulted for lacking industry

Or the dog and cat be criticised for too little preening,

For lice and fleas must do what life to them has meaning;

They have no choice but follow doing what comes naturally

And every day in obeying natures orders, a war is waged,

A microscopic battle is engaged.

So are we embroiled on either side,

Killing or to be killed the great divide,

Contracted ever in the struggle,

Sometimes on one side then the other.

Like placid duck heading up river,

Whilst paddling madly under cover,

Trying to maintain a state of ordered bliss,

Merely to discover life's little secret kiss -

Perfection peace and all things holy,

Just reflects all human folly.

Colvery

Down dusty track of memory I strolled,

Enveloped by the ancient wood and years,

A fallen Oak, felled by the wind, its age revealed,

Where severed by a no-doubt noisy saw.

To right steep bank of Hornbeam, Ash and Beech,

Escarpment-saved from plough and sheep,

Survival from a pre-historic past,

Gazed on by mediaeval serfs entranced.

To left, the somnambulant stream,

Pursues its silent course, almost imperceptibly it flows

From distant limestone hills to far off sea,

Undisturbed by dancing gnats or flitting birds.

Overhung with Alder, its banks the home of Voles,

It timelessly meanders, mile after mile,

Its dark mysterious purpose, here on this bend,

In private view, I gaze upon, exposed.

At the gate, under the dark canopy of leaves,

The sun-lit meadow is revealed, stretching away.

Buttery yellow from its carpet of Celandines,

Sun-kissed Buttercups and white laced Cow Parsley.

Awaiting the rasp of tongue and swish of tail

That only contented cows and avian choir provide,

To complete this bucolic scene,

Which just for a still moment, I imbibe.

Artistic eyes, poetic seam, that here finds verse,

Mesmerically I recall the dream,

An act of drama sixty-six years afore

The world with all its horrors intervened.

The summer day Steve Perry called and asked me out,

And here we rolled about the clay,

Enacting adult worlds of life and death,

Quite unaware that this would be,

The last time we would play.

Coming to.

I was awake and just about to come to,

When my mother walked into the room,

Just as she did - busying over nothing.

Fiddling, meddling.

Argggggggggg! my frustration boiled over.

I berated her as only sons are able,

Before she scuttled out.

But why am I located in the bath?

And why the beetles with the green and baize

Geometric patterns on their backs

In vivid embrace?

Have I been here all night?

And what of the earlier trip to Grandma's house?

Mill House where I always go at night,

Now clearly taken over by strangers

And all done up?

Why the difficulty to park,

Or the confusion at the door to get inside?

Amidst the sale of craft, I picked my way

Around the house examining fine detail:

The unknown bread oven;

The ceiling timbers in poor repair;

The temporary doors of a work in progress.

Arrogantly stating my right to be there,

Chewed up with indefinable regret

It wasn't mine. Wishing that it was.

Then I wake for real!

No house, no home, no mum, no gran.

Only emptiness and longing.

Crow

In waking dream, I walked the lane,
The lane where first the world appeared.
The sinuous line from mothers womb
To future and somewhere else unseen.
Upon the side-land men shoot crows.
One flutters, feathers flying and in a suicidal dive
Glides straight towards my wing clipped ear,
Its button eyes resigned to landing crash
In the green turfed ground beyond, below.

After, in the sports pages of the Times I learn,
South African vultures are disappearing fast,
As gamblers smoke their wakeful brains,
Before they loose their potency.
Meanwhile, on a facing page, a man in white,
His arms outstretched, the outline of a crucifix,
Celebrates the fall of Malam at London Lords
A strange despotic entanglement.

Then some time later, two crows alight on outside Pine
Staring at me through sash, unsettling beads of jet,
In search of porridge on the ground.
Or had they come from far-off land,
Where clacking like black castanets
Pall bearing mourners of those spectral ghosts,
Which wove their way into my sleeping mind?
To underline the fractious nature of the universe,
The way our dreaming, waking, intertwine?

Curtains

Each night I pull the curtains

Leave all the black outside,

Who knows what dark conventions

Somewhere out there reside?

For when a veil is drawn,

All colour seeps away

And sight becomes quite obsolete,

As other senses play.

The slightest rustle of the leaves,

The briefest breath of wind,

The faintest olfactory whiff,

A certain death portends.

Imagination slides up close,

To fill the waiting void,

As shadows slip between the trees,

The trees themselves alive.

They stand there ominous and still,

Each one a fallen unknown name,

In serried ranks of passing breath

Whispering. Whispering. Whispering.

Well that is what I’m told occurs,

I quite believe it’s true,

But as for me, I’d rather hide,

And pull the curtains to.

Cybermate

The love you had is the love you lost

And now its gone, you count the cost.

Sure fire thing it cost a lot.

You rue that day, it went away,

Well not walked exactly,

Just logged off.

The cost is not a money thing,

Its more to do with an inner spring,

A secret place with a crystal stream,

Where rivers rise to nourish dreams,

And longing, languid as a cloud,

Hangs in the air but cries out loud.

A thunder clap, a summer storm,

A drench of rain then all was gone.

For just a moment it was here,

Then apparition-like, it disappeared -

Into the thin blue air. 

Cycling

Cycling is just a way
Of putting off what needs to be done -
A sort of procrastination in motion;
A cyclical laissez faire of A to B,
And back again;
A pointless exercise in postponing
The inevitable loss of balance.

With each turn of the crank
And each revolution of the wheel,
Circular is transformed to linear,
Giving the impression of progress -
And we are all taken in with progress.

Inhaling the damp seaweed,
Caressed by the fine face mist,
The world reels past:
Changing but staying the same,
Just as it does on Panorama.

Daffodil

A single daffodil I picked

And placed it in its place,

Up high upon the window cill,

O'er kitchen sink and waste.

Bereft of friends alone and proud,

It stands, its head erect,

Its moment's glory here allowed,

From others plucked in haste.

Against the light the pointed petals

In lemon tissue creased,

A double trefoil radiating yellowness

Optimistic spring sun and heat.

Whilst deep inside its central form

A darker yellow trumpet glows,

Dumb metaphor notates -

A silent trumpet blows.

From golden depths

Its pollen laden sepals spring,

A dark allure to buzzing bees,

The source of every living thing.

This Golden Harvest, these shades of Avalon,

Recall a mythic mystic past,

A future clarion call,

When fallen braves, entombed, at last

Meet up with one and all.

Meanwhile this solitary flower stands,

Immortalised by romantic poet long since gone,

A Wordsworth genius who ere long in muse,

Whilst "wandering lonely as a cloud",

Enshrined eternally the Daffodil in verse.

Daffodils

There is around the crystal vale,

A light more luminous and pale,

Than any other flower.

For in the spring time, when there it grows,

The yellow floating heads in rows,

Of daffodils in many forms and shades.

Lace intricate or egg yolk blades,

Triumphant in their finest hour,

Before bending, breaking, turning brown,

All their glory trampled down.

The woodland way,

Where raucous hairy lurchers bound,

Following each smell,

Alert to every sound,

Filling their day,

Welcomes us in.

In storm or wind or constant rain,

In sun or heat or who can say?

We walk our lives away.

They in their olfactory state of bliss,

Me lost in muse of lover's languid kiss,

Together play amidst the flowers.

Dance

They dance in their own rooms

To far away music from another place

Each step tentative but purposeful

Straight chin-toe-pointed

Arms limp as lifeless flowers

Pressed against thighs

Feet that describe an arc

Deftly, momentarily, touching base

Resting like a butterfly at forty five degrees

Then inexplicably startled

An allegorical flight

Around a hollow space

Each in their own world

Distant and unreachable

Held aloft by discordant strings

A single voice pure as light

Hangs in the air like smoke from a cigar

Envelops these elegant forms

Diaphanous and spare

Clothed in silk

Flowing over nipple and nape

A tantalising covering

Of the bodies' points of reference

Choreographed by angels

Directed by a host of whispering ghosts

The steps though divided by a wall

Miraculously synchronise and compliment

Like reflections in a mirror.

Mercurial figures in the minds eye

Insubstantial imaginings

Behind the closed doors of the heart

They communicate without words

Days and Nights

my days are nights,
my nights are days
where in a topsey turvey land
characters slip in and out
where present, past and future merge
on this sloping hollow stage
we call our lives

filled with drifting mists
and hazy mornings
perhaps an Archimedes Screw
best describes the scene
in turning lifts all else
and yet itself remains unmoved
carrying with it in its steely embrace
a liquid sustenance for life and growth
green shoots, dead leaves

all changes but remains the same
a paradox difficult to comprehend
for all is on the move
an endless carousel
a universe frantically revolving
picking up and dropping off
to order mathematical
but all that intervenes
is but a nightmare or a dream
in waking or in sleep

Death Knell

I walked across the headland

With the thought of muffled bells,

Except there were none,

To usher him out with a knell.

The fields were brown and dry

Absent of 'pommes-de-terre',

Lifted amidst a swarm of tongues,

Distant and strange, yet there.

The dog walked ahead,

It’s white tipped tail

Waving our ultimate surrender,

The fateful earth's assail.

Black was the order of the day,

A generational thing,

Saying hello to say goodbye,

Like netted jackdaws sling.

Each checking out the other,

For signs of transience,

For time it seems flows only one way

And all around are dead.

Yet still the sight and sound remain,

Knocking around in my head;

What's done is done,

What’s said cannot be unsaid.

And what escapes the grasp,

Is best left go. It is the end.

For with his passing

The land has lost a good friend.

Another farm stands empty,

Orphaned the acres familiar,

On the alter of expediency

Deprived of care and character.

The soil now lifeless lies,

Deserted by every living thing,

Drenched in poison it cries,

To the heavens for Spring.

Meanwhile we all respectfully stand,

At a funeral fit for a king.

And wonder why no longer larks rise

Or Curlews cry on the wing.

December Dance

The clinging leaves are waving at me
With their yellow hands
Or perhaps they're mocking me
Like eighteenth century courtesans
With their trembling fans?

I've spent the night on Clifton Downs
With an aristocratic woman shown
All around her impressive home and grounds
At some strange foreign ceremony
To welcome an exotic cow!

As usual I felt uncomfortable
On some inexplicable secret mission
When from nowhere came a missile
Hurtling through assembled crowd
Causing scattered screams, confusion.

Outside I sped on skateboard
Past rows of impressive houses
Observing all the decadent sweetness
Of strangers departing, dispersing
With a kiss to their loveless lives and wives.

Awoken by a rasping cough
The seasons thoughtful gift
On this damp December day
Devoid of festive light and cheer
Apart from hot lemon ginger beer

In some vain attempt to sleight the night
And keep my cold and cough at bay.

Diary

Little red hard-backed book

So glossy and smooth

I can see my face

Vaguely in your cover;

Some sort of shadowy

Infernal ghost.

Inside the pages blanched

Clean and faintly ruled

A parallel universe

Waiting to be etched

With spidery words

Representing a life lived.

A life like no other.

Red and hard outside

Inside brimming

With the whiteness

Of the unforeseen

The yet to be.

DIVINE LIGHT

the blinding light behind the tree

bears down upon me like some god-given gift

a cosmic blessing this September morning

but showing up the grim grime-covered glass

where the cat on window cill

pleads each day to enter.

intense as like a welding torch on steel

it cuts through all the trembling leaves

setting pine cones all ablaze

the searing pain of brightness

on my troubled brain.

the regal herald to announce the day

and turn all black to verdant green

such bright effulgence makes the darkness seem

a distant memory of grey.

impossible to look upon now fully risen

a spotlight all the way from heaven

a benediction, absolution.

confirmation that my task is sure.

and all the saints agree.

divine the light that guarantees

death where is thy sting

and grave where is thy victory?

DNA

You ask me how I know?

It's in my DNA.

Those strands of life flow though me

And will not go away.

Just a little drop of liquid, Binds me to you.

Pushed upon an opening, Straining through.

Like a point of impact on a distant train,

Trudging through the tundra. Never seen again.

Fishing boats returning on a misty morn,

Silhouette of rigging. Bows cutting wave forlorn.

Shoulders all above me. Concrete slabs below.

Cleopatra's needle. Sucking undertow.

"You will have to help me". That is what he said.

As he moved beside me. Surging overhead.

Bowing down above me. When the storm had passed.

Thunder clouds roll over, all within its path.

Whispers. Whispers. Whispers. Gentle airs that blow.

Upon the fragile flowers. Pressed where they shouldn't go.

Eternally impressed. Permanently mauled.

One final drop of liquid. One shuddering brief recall

Forever binds me to you. The memory in thrall.

Drains!

Aching back and foggy head,
This is what the doctor said,
Nothing more to do or say,
It will always be this way,
Never mind the sun is shining,
Brings us hope a new day dawning,
Pneumatic drill goes at the rock,
Luke the builder on the block.
So we face another day,
Digging trenches, work at play,
Never will it feel the same,
Looking out at brand new drains!
Better make him coffee with two sugars,
Keep him sweet and at the boulders,
Later on a bacon sandwich,
For which I'm so sorry there's no rhyme with. 

Dream

Love upon some distant doorstep

A faint remembrance rides

Upon a creaking hinge.

The scraping of a rusty violin,

Whose strings have become frayed

From too many vibrations

And lilting melodic phrases.

Carried on the shoulders of the wind,

A dawn of yellow swaying willow,

A chorus of burnished gold,

Resurrect the dusty memories

And banish the smog of night.

Morning mist still clinging

To the echoes of bizarre meetings

With old friends still young

And those long dead.

Walking familiar evening lanes,

Radiating heat from a summers day,

Skin brown and smelling sweetly of hay,

Oozing the sweat of desire,

The heady joy of youth.

Poignant and tantalising

Evocations of a lost, never returning, land.

Dune Day

Through bleary eyes the orange-tinted morn awakes
Ushering in another sun-baked day of sweltering heat;
The night though short was long and hot and clammy sweet,
A stinging back and aching foot reminded of a cycling feat.

There amidst the Marram Grass, Sea Stock and Marsh Mallow,
Dune high we sat and gasped and sighed,
Dumbfounded by the majestic sweep
Of sea and sand and sky

The sun had not lost its heat nor beer its cool,
Lounging there like Vista Kings, Landscape Conquerors,
Capturing the view from six hundred feet;
Burning the day away in red-hot glow and aery smoke.

Godrevy the far-off pinnacle of white, across the dangerous rip;
How many futures there were lost, some known and loved?
This day just yellow sand-dotted multi-coloured lives,
Wallowing, happily passing time, watched unseen.

Walking back we spied a fox taking sanctuary by the church
The bearded grave-stones standing sentinel all around,
A silent crowd of dear-departed souls lie quite forgot,
The sanded hour-glass long run dry

And in the the knee-high grass I found a flower,
We Google-checked it and sure enough it was confirmed,
There un-heralded, obscure, a flock of purple orchid hid
Under the shaded sycamores, quite un-sung

I almost feel the searing guilt, as one I pick but now its done,
In presenting, capturing a moment quickly gone
Of summer day amidst the dunes, of lanes and views,
St Erth, St Uny, St Ives and all the saints.

Eight-0-Eight!

Shall I go out and stay out late?
Or remaining in, avoid the din
And eat a plate of langoustine?

I look again, it's eight o nine,
A funny thing, this thing called time,
Impossible to delve.
I look again its eight dot twelve!

I lie in bed the sun is gone,
Behind the brow it's settled down -
Except of course it's us that move
And it stands still alone.

Green natures lost its golden glow
Turned darker olive just to show
A sort of waiting time of high suspense
Before the curtain falls perchance.

A silence ominous and rare descends
A startled blackbird's scream portends
Oncoming night.
It's eight two one, can another nine have gone?

A sort of indecision nails me flat
Remaining here I think on what?
Just flashing numbers passing time
The syncopated cadences of rhyme.

Whether the contemplative or the active life?
The hermit or the socialite?
Eight twenty five the time has come
To hesitate, to hibernate or run?

To yet again submit to insensate fate?
Or predestined transcendental calm?
Or in defiance rant and rave
Against the fading of the light?

Merge into the dark crush of desperate
Pretending to have fun?
Before you know it, one o one!
Its closing time, another day begun.

Embers

So you say I know, you know, I love you,

You know I know you do;

But oh how I wish, like re-cast bell,

Your words rang out as true.

You say you miss me and ask if I do too?

But how am I to really know

When empty words will say

Anything you want them to?

Words after all are only sounds,

That float upon the air.

No more than majestic music crowns

The feelings that they bare.

The twittering of a sparrow,

The spluttering of a car;

The swish of flying arrow,

The thump of beating heart.

You say you really want to meet,

Experience says you don't;

There was a time when what you said,

You sometimes even kept.

You said you'd call around to clean

Just for a bowl or two;

A bowl or two of what I thought -

Of cereal or of stew?

Four men are lost and one is dead,

I heard upon the news,

Trapped in a fire that blazed away,

Begun just to amuse.

The miscreants have quickly fled,

Incendiary down the street,

Make light of all the things they said,

As embers fall at feet.

So fire! fire! fire again!

Run with torches bright!

Olympian flames will never die,

Despite foreboding night.

Empty Glass

JD and coke. JD and coke.
With them the nights have fled!
The black intoxicating liqueur
Has been supped, but still echoes round my head.
The flashing lights have flashed,
The mischievous provocative lines
Have beamed their last.
The little bubbles
Have fizzed to the top
And now are lost to atmosphere.
And what is left?
An empty glass, an empty space.
A painful incredulity
That that familiar brand
Will no longer pop up
To empathise and entertain.
In stained sparkling crystal,
No other spirit will replace.

Dear Steve, Whenever we spoke you always brought a smile to my face. Now you have managed to bring a tear to my eye. What you go and do that for? You helped cheer so many of my nights in the chat room and your presence is sorely missed. Not to everyone is afforded the distinction of touching people's hearts, even at a ...distance, but you were surely one of that select band. You died too soon but you will be remembered with great affection by a great number - those whose lives you touched. RIP my Good Man.

Ending

So farewell then friend,

He who was my daily muse,

My vigil through the night-time hours,

My all-embracing thought,

As flowers are to the bee.

A thought as insubstantial

As the wisping smoke

From the shotgun muzzle lately fired.

Like wasps from an aggravated swarm,

Like a loyal dog after its master,

Like a kestrel sweeping on its hapless prey,

It has followed me around.

It has blown around my head

Like crimson leaves caught in autumnal wind

The only evidence of bare trees

Before the winter intervenes.

A remembrance of spring and green shoots,

When love was pure and unattainable

And longing throbbed my youthful veins.

So like the desperate climber,

Held only by the rescuer's grip,

I cling on dear (for life without is but a desert place,

Of thorn and prickly pear)

Wondering if the hold will slip,

Or whether in a moment of icy resolve,

The braver choice - simply to let go?

Eulogy to John and Cary Grant

(On the occasion of a new ITV film)

In a white mug, how the tea stains, rusty red

And how difficult it is to drink,

Lying horizontal on my trusty bed.

What luxury it is to lie awake,

The room as silent as a tomb,

Outside a damp November, calm,

The clinging Hazel leaves a-yellowing,

With not a sound or movement,

To disturb the moment here,

My early morning upstairs room.

I read in 'The Times' of Cary Grant,

His early years in Bristol, 'two up, two down',

When aged only eleven he returned

To find his mother gone, though she did not,

Committed by a drunken father to a home,

For those who unforgetting were forgot,

But told she was on a long vacation,

Which not for twenty years did he discover,

His father lied and on his death bed he admitted,

She was alive and still his mother.

It's no surprise he ran away and changed his name,

A famous actor he became with many parts

And many glamorous wives and secret lovers.

He flew his Horfield nest

But could not flee the horrors of his past,

Despite his several scattered homes

In Beverley Hills, Palm Springs and Malibu,

They followed him there, well disguised,

Playing the convincing part

Of a quintessential English Gent.

And how his audience lapped it up,

Complicit in the self-deception.

He made his mark and played the role

Without a hitch or an American inflection.

“Dahlings I love you”, he said and said again,

Perhaps he did and had to do, to make his way,

Through envied vacuous glamour, glitz,

From Temple Meads to snake-pit Hollywood,

A slick and smiling testament to the US Dream

And how good looks and charm can overcome

The disadvantage of a broken Bristol home.

I'm pleased to say at thirty-one,

Belatedly he made it up,

With his abandoned self and long-lost mum.

I never shall forget in different time and place

The despairing howl as John went in the ground.

Eye

We sing the praise of the all-seeing eye, fixed central in its cranial apse,
Continuously in flux and movement, focusing near and fine,
Or through another glass, deep into outer space;
Where stars themselves shine pre-eminent, or
Microscopic, dissect the very building blocks of time.
Automated intricate instrument, perceiving all but itself,
A window out, by letting in; a window in, by letting out.
By what miracle of fate, this instrument conceived?
This tiny orb, in which the world enclosed is?
A sphere within a sphere, surrounded by a watery moat,
Illumed with strange rays, in rainbow colours prismed,
Flooding the echoing halls with light.
Casting its shadows, by which we navigate,
Sense movement, distance, all the world in print.
For without thee, we are blind and all is dark,
A dungeon lacking colour, movement, art or form.
The lens by which the world is turned upon it's head,
The parallax and paradox is now seen through,
The gate by which the Queen of Sheba enters
And all the opulence and beauty in her train;
That wracks the soul with passion and desire,
That looks on love and sees it back again.
Or yet, in viewing sorrow, weeping, an inconstant friend,
To witness truthfully, amidst the calumny of men.

Fall

Fallen. Fallen. Late falls the fall.

The rosy apple drops.

Everywhere they polka dot the floor.

Touched by the earth,

Rotting brown eats to it's core.

The sliming slug destroys it's beauty.

Shaken the sturdy sinews

Supplicate the sky.

Solid, the torso trunk

Against the winds mad anarchy.

Fluttering leaves give up the ghost

In arterial shades of crimson,

Fall fall towards the ground and die,

Consumed by the gentle worm's

Courteous ministrations.

Whilst serpent weaves his ancient way

To suck the juice and sink its teeth

Into the nectar flesh of condemnation.

An endless striving for subordination

Of everything springing up.

Fallen fallen late falls the Fall,

Like autumnal grass we pass,

Reach for the sky, Go to seed,

Then fall, fall, fall, 

Into death's irresistible arms.

Fame and Fortune

Fame and fortune rule the roost,

I really shouldn't like to boast,

But fame and fortune have never really bothered me.

I lie!

This thought was prompted by an item in 'The Times',

That Stella McCartney, famous for her couture lines,

Had got the DBE for services to fashion.

It might have helped to have a famous father, Paul,

Now eighty-one or near enough who sang;

A strummer and a drummer all that remain

Of that famous four, 'Beatles' clan – a clever pun,

That gave the sound-track to our adolescent years,

A revolution on the red and white 'Dansette',

'She loves you' and 'I want to hold your hand',

The simple sounds of growing up

And swimming in a soup of sixties fashion.

Sour dough I read has come and gone,

Replaced by ancient grains our mediaeval fathers ate,

Whilst Stella wants to build a house

On remote Scotland 's western coast,

Disturbing nature's Otters' holts,

To make an 'architectural statement' - as famous people do,

Not so distant from the Kintyre Mull,

Her father's voice still ringing in her ears.

And as a sop to all the peasant fad and moans,

She might, it's said, plant some native pines,

To help obscure the helicopter pad.

Fifty Pence

An "equilateral curve heptagon" - a seven-sided circle!

A remembrance of forty years of time recurring.

Sixteen designs to span a chasm of memories,

Each in its own, an anniversary.

Time on time rolling, base coinage hardly noticing -

In common currency - degree between the fingers.

The shape cupped hands create in prayer,

The seven ages of man and human imperfection.

From Britannia to Kew and many milestones in between.

Of wars remembered and battles won.

Of suffrage and suffering, bravery and sacrifice.

Of strength and stamina - the nation's metal.

Of boy scouts and women's rights,

Of political affiliations on the European stage.

Of going seven sided decimal

And decline in values with the passing years.

Of half a life-time slipping through one's fingers,

Like time itself, leaving its marque.

Fly

How a fly can annoy!

Tiny black dot in an empty space

Tracing a jagged flight of fancy

On the blank canvass

Of the rooms airspace.

Pointless irrational movement

Holding the eye's

Undivided attention

And the mind in a metaphor.

Caught in the light

Its little wings shine

Bright as a jewel

Wet in sunlight

A miracle in miniature aeronautics.

Controlled by a miniscule brain

Can you possibly imagine

How you tantalize?

Darting here and there

Tempting the newspaper swipe.

With lid-less eyes

Wiped clean with a black filament

Create a multi lensed picture of me

Prostrate, entranced.

Apocalypse NOW! 

Fool's Gold

The poet's task is very hard,
yea and lovers also.
Like ancient alchemists of old
who sought to turn base metal -
dull poisonous malleable lead -
into butter yellow everlasting gold,
so too we try by all means hot and cold
to find dull words to represent
the feelings that lie buried,
deep within our souls.

For words and rhyme are inadequate
to represent that stab of pain,
that thumping chest, that knotted gut;
when like a dewy mist a voice is heard
or familiar face appears,
like clotted cream out of white milk;
or better still, when just by chance
in busy thoroughfare, where all is hurry,
you bump into each other
and time stands still just for a second.
The gulp of breath, the windows on the soul,
when with an iron rod the eyes connect,
searching and probing deep
the silence, when no one can speak
and prayers would be profane.

Again, again, I try to replicate
that magic moment, moments gone,
when out of darkness came forth light,
when out of rock a jewel tumbled.
When words gave way to bliss
and all the angels swooped to see and tell,
curious at what the gods had brought to pass
for levity and sport in some remote location.

We heat and cool, we mix and stir,
then leave for weeks to coalesce,
then with what anticipation peep
into that caldron love
to see if speck of yellow dust
might yet appear upon the breast.
Breathe deep those fumes of musk.

Friend or Foe

I loved thee truly, friend or foe

for in whatever way you went

I went there too, or thought to go

and followed you through thick and thin

my aim to please, your love to win

for no one dared to follow

except we two

the love I bore thee cannot be denied

though women scoff and men deride

ever unsure if the beam in thine

was just reflected light

which from my own did shine

or were we both equally

insufferably blind

although I sought ever to convey

true feeling, true regard,

my love was met by every low device

Mephistopheles himself would proudly claim

a battle with yourself to prove

your fortress heart would never move

or admit of weakness

for sure you took advantage of my love

my patronage an earnest of my firm resolve

desire, that once did burn so hot and red

has now died down and only embers glow

extinguished by cold words of insolence

an acid rain leaving just soggy ash

after the fire is spent

gold medicinal prescribed for aching joints

be now employed for aching hearts

confirmed am I it be the only cure

to ease this malady, this strange contagion,

a remedy for this emptiness of soul

for bullion though in earth doth lie

untarnished remains, eh sine die

God Dog(gerel)

The storm has past. Its day at last.

The sun a blaze of glory.

Those fears and dread which in my head,

Are now a different story.

The cat's been fed. The fire is red.

The kettle's steaming brightly.

The tea's been made. The music's played.

I'm really feeling sprightly.

Last night the room was filled with gloom,

Today its lit in yellow,

So in my mind the world is kind:

A mellow sort of fellow.

Before was plain that love's distain

Had crippled me for ever.

That I was left, unloved, bereft,

Without a friend's endeavour.

My dreams were strange. Life's rearranged

By those recently departed.

Maybe they came to ease my pain

And help me get re-started.

One final verse before the hearse

Draws up before the chapel.

Another day in its unique way

Keeps us going, rhyme or no rhyme.

The phone's gone dead. Its all been said,

There's nothing more to say.

The friends have gone. They've all passed on

They've died or moved away.

The ringing phone shouts I'm alone,

The striking clock concurs,

The brittle leaves shake in the trees,

Indifferent to my tears..

In silence grand I take a stand

Against the dogs of war,

My simple life so full of strife

Rolls up against the shore.

Its strangely gone. This feeling's done.

I'm not alone for sure.

In ocean deep, this tryst I'll keep,

With spirits gone before.

Oh please please stay. Don't go away

And leave me as before.

I close my eyes to all those spies

Those gestures of distain,

My heart's on fire, Full of desire

I want to live again.

Not here but there. A spirit world

Transcending human pain.

Gone

I have worn my heart out on my sleeve

I have made my bed and now must lie

At times I've even got down on my knees

And played the part of the besotted lover

Just to please you.

I have waited up unearthly hours

I have listened to each tick and tock

In sitting room and hall amidst the flowers

Ever hopeful for your call

Just in case but it was not.

Whilst walking down the lane

Whilst peeling the potatoes

Or riding on the train

I have wondered what you are doing

But all in vain.

So many seconds, minutes, hours and years

In every one a fleeting thought

That some day you might appear

As you had before

But you never did come back.

Hanging

Hanging by the rope, I dangle every day

The noose it slips and tightens, squeezing my life away.

For every sky above me, A heart for every fate.

A tear for those that love me. A smile to those that hate.

My sky is grey and louring. Filled with swirling sleet

Abyss beneath, nothing but unfeeling feet.

Suspended animation. Time itself is held in sway.

Where hope hanging only by a thread, allows the fates their day.

Storms may rage about me. Stones fall down on my head.

Biting fingers running through me, Numbed pains of freezing blood.

The spirit leaves reluctantly. It does not want to go.

A superhuman act of faith involved in saying no.

I feel the rope around me. I feel it closing in.

As every hour you fight it off, you know its going to win.

So near and yet so far. The rescuers at hand.

I can hear their voices call me. I can smell them where they stand.

But still I hang quite helpless. A baby freshly born.

The final knot of hope, becomes the knot of scorn.

It is the rope that saves me and the rope that does me in.

There's no way up and no way down. There's no way out or in.

The clock chimes six and soon it will be day.

Another night of hanging and keeping death at bay.

The strongest constitution will surely be dispatched.

The most courageous spirit be extinguished like a match.

For there comes a point in everybody's time

When the simple act of letting go, is more welcome than the climb.

When with relief the life-force ebbs away

And with it pain and fear and love, the struggles of the day.

Exhausted slump, the howling wind's embrace

Reclaimed by universe. A frozen mountain's face.

As a billion times before, in a billion different ways

People slipped into the ocean and sank beneath the waves.

But each a mystic moment when another unique soul

Evaporates completely or is reclaimed to wander whole.

Yet heroic is the victim who with every sinew and device

Fights the overwhelming odds or the throwing of the dice.

Now just a body hanging lifeless and ill at ease

Whilst all about continues as normal as you please.

Only the screaming wind, the scudding clouds, the icy rock and snow

Are witness to this towering feat. How great, how small, we know.

Helicopter

The clatter of the helicopter
Fills the room,
Oh won't you go away
You are battering my senses
As defying gravity you play
Your aerobatic tunes.
As the gentle natural smells and sounds
Are completely swamped and made to disappear
By human ingenuity
And the stench of un-burned fear

Oh what relief now you are gone
What torture whilst you stayed,
What of the timid little wren,
The chiffchaff and the finch?
Did you make the little creatures quake?
Did their little hearts beat faster?
Did you make them all afraid?
Did you make the sparrows scatter?
Did you make the pigeons fall,
As when a hawk appears
And instinct takes control?

Perhaps they think this is the same -
This infernal metal bird -
That here destroys the quiet solitude
Where nothing but confounded rattle can be heard?

Oh here it comes again from distant isles
Set in an agate sea,
In waves of chattering,
An ominous destiny.
With every beat,
With every law-defying throb,
Why do the blades not fling away?
How does the thing stay up?

Casting its flickering shadow
In Basra or Sri Lanka, in Gazza or Rangoon,
In Pakistan, Afghanistan or Vietnam?
The throbbing god of war,
Brings destruction from the blue,
Metallic Mars indifferent
To the sound of the screams and hullabaloo.
Whilst miles away the men in suits or uniforms,
Bedecked in gold and silver sworn,
To uphold the Constitution

And never tell the Humvee, Huey, public,

Anything at all.

Homing Pigeon

Think on this, when thee remove
To some dark glen or far off wood,
That travel of itself, nothing doth prove,
Or distance thee from lover's love.
For like the pigeon trained in flight,
Though transported far, always returns,
Enduring storm and wind, through day and night,
Until at last, homes back again confirmed:
So shall I fly, despite all adverse squalls,
Back to thy wheaten sheaves,
Thy familiar sheltering loft,
To boo and coo till twilight falls,
To strut my stuff and call your bluff.

Honey

I'm stuck with you;

You stick with me!

For the Winged Chariot Time,

Is short, and at break-neck speed,

Soon will carry with it,

The parting moment.

So like translucent honey,

Spread thinly over still-warm bread,

Let us ensure it tastes as sweet -

A viscous lingering strand,

'Tween souls quite separate.

Hubble

Hubble bubble, toil and trouble, have put you in the sky,

And now you're there you have become, our one all-seeing eye.

The miracle of the universe, is there for all to see,

The technicolour images, mind blowing geometry.

Dear Hubble your creations must take our breath away,

Ingenious human minds that put you there, is clearly on display.

But not as much as what it sees, the extraordinary thing called "space",

So much, so far, so many worlds to put us in our place.

Since time immemorial, men looked up and out in awe,

Convinced of a divinity, in everything they saw;

Today we take a different view, exploding myths of old,

But still eternal questions linger, as we grapple to take hold

Of the sublime immensity, the majestic far flung suns,

How human mind on planet earth could such conception fund

A search for other earths, for other life, even intelligence.

Within the swirls, the clouds, the vast unconquered waste?

In Memory of  Chuck Jones

So goodbye Chuck Jones

Famous inventor of Daffy Duck

And Bugs Bunny

You invented "What's up Doc?"

Sadly your catchphrase caught up with you.

Farewell Chuck Jones

Animator and four times Oscar winner

You will be remembered for

"What's up Doc?"

Famous last words.

Or were the screams of millions of delighted children

Still ringing in your ears?

24. All Change.

now that the room has been cleared of all the bric-a-brac

the books on shelves the paintings on the wall

the nick knacks on the ledges and the plates on beams

the candles with their melted wax and mementos of canals

the mugs of kings and queens, of marriages and coronations

the statues, accessories, the carpets,

chairs and stools so lovingly upholstered

remembrance of the dear departed

the table lamps and log basket full of logs

the drawers all full of electrical equipment

obsolete unopened overtaken by technology

the 45's, cds, dvds, so seldom masqueraded

all swept away in one gigantic free for all

now all is slate and glass and stainless steel

with not a thing to spoil or clutter

but where to hang my fraying coats or store my muddy boots

where will the dog shake or cat scratch

how will I find my bearings or feel at home

only the fateful apples on the table blemish-free

remind us of that fateful garden innocence

when to know was to be ignorant

and to be ignorant was to be content

25. Cobwebs

The cobwebs on the ceiling, so appealing, keep reappearing.

The spiders cannot be faulted for lacking industry

Or the dog and cat be criticised for too little preening,

For lice and fleas must do what life to them has meaning;

They have no choice but follow doing what comes naturally

And every day in obeying natures orders, a war is waged,

A microscopic battle is engaged.

So are we embroiled on either side,

Killing or to be killed the great divide,

Contracted ever in the struggle,

Sometimes on one side then the other.

Like placid duck heading up river,

Whilst paddling madly under cover,

Trying to maintain a state of ordered bliss,

Merely to discover life's little secret kiss -

Perfection peace and all things holy,

Just reflects all human folly.

26. Long Rock

Long Rock - a finger pointing out to sea
Horizoning to far-off Amazon
With nothing but a vast and watery waste to come between
Where monsters lurk, whales chirp and play.

Where fish in shoals flash silver
Where man-made craft ominously prowl the deep uncharted waters
Where many ships have floundered
And myriad ancient salts have passed into solution.

Each day her head she hides, then slowly re-appears
Green locks unfurl, a neck encased in lace
To bare her crocodile-like back, jet black,
Basking in mid-day shine, or night-time ivory light.

This crayoned line where earth meets sky
The only remnant of a lush and wooded hill
In times gone by when forest ruled the bay
And who knows whom considered it as home.

The oceans surge to time the final arbiter,
To unseen celestial forces and distant, distant spheres
Its mentor, barometer and periscope to a fragile earth that sighs
Our lifeboat drifting precarious amidst the stars.

Long Rock so isolated and alone
Battered and hard. Bruised but un-bowed
Awake only when submerged, drowsing when dried
To human eyes inhospitable to everything but spume and spray.

But oh the secret world that lurks beneath the flood!  

27. Crow

In waking dream, I walked the lane,
The lane where first the world appeared.
The sinuous line from mothers womb
To future and somewhere else unseen.
Upon the side-land men shoot crows.
One flutters, feathers flying and in a suicidal dive
Glides straight towards my wing clipped ear,
Its button eyes resigned to landing crash
In the green turfed ground beyond, below.

After, in the sports pages of the Times I learn,
South African vultures are disappearing fast,
As gamblers smoke their wakeful brains,
Before they loose their potency.
Meanwhile, on a facing page, a man in white,
His arms outstretched, the outline of a crucifix,
Celebrates the fall of Malam at London Lords
A strange despotic entanglement.

Then some time later, two crows alight on outside Pine
Staring at me through sash, unsettling beads of jet,
In search of porridge on the ground.
Or had they come from far-off land,
Where clacking like black castanets
Pall bearing mourners of those spectral ghosts,
Which wove their way into my sleeping mind?
To underline the fractious nature of the universe,
The way our dreaming, waking, intertwine?

28. Curtains

Each night I pull the curtains

Leave all the black outside,

Who knows what dark conventions

Somewhere out there reside?

For when a veil is drawn,

All colour seeps away

And sight becomes quite obsolete,

As other senses play.

The slightest rustle of the leaves,

The briefest breath of wind,

The faintest olfactory whiff,

A certain death portends.

Imagination slides up close,

To fill the waiting void,

As shadows slip between the trees,

The trees themselves alive.

They stand there ominous and still,

Each one a fallen unknown name,

In serried ranks of passing breath

Whispering. Whispering. Whispering.

Well that is what I’m told occurs,

I quite believe it’s true,

But as for me, I’d rather hide,

And pull the curtains to.

29. Cybermate

The love you had is the love you lost

And now its gone, you count the cost.

Sure fire thing it cost a lot.

You rue that day, it went away,

Well not walked exactly,

Just logged off.

The cost is not a money thing,

Its more to do with an inner spring,

A secret place with a crystal stream,

Where rivers rise to nourish dreams,

And longing, languid as a cloud,

Hangs in the air but cries out loud.

A thunder clap, a summer storm,

A drench of rain then all was gone.

For just a moment it was here,

Then apparition-like, it disappeared -

Into the thin blue air. 

Cycling

Cycling is just a way
Of putting off what needs to be done -
A sort of procrastination in motion;
A cyclical laissez faire of A to B,
And back again;

A pointless exercise in postponing
The inevitable loss of balance.

With each turn of the crank
And each revolution of the wheel,
Circular is transformed to linear,
Giving the impression of progress -
And we are all taken in with progress.

Inhaling the damp seaweed,
Caressed by the fine face mist,
The world reels past:
Changing but staying the same,
Just as it does on Panorama.

Daffodil

A single daffodil I picked

And placed it in its place,

Up high upon the window cill,

O'er kitchen sink and waste.

Bereft of friends alone and proud,

It stands, its head erect,

Its moment's glory here allowed,

From others plucked in haste.

Against the light the pointed petals

In lemon tissue creased,

A double trefoil radiating yellowness

Optimistic spring sun and heat.

Whilst deep inside its central form

A darker yellow trumpet glows,

Dumb metaphor notates -

A silent trumpet blows.

From golden depths

Its pollen laden sepals spring,

A dark allure to buzzing bees,

The source of every living thing.

This Golden Harvest, these shades of Avalon,

Recall a mythic mystic past,

A future clarion call,

When fallen braves, entombed, at last

Meet up with one and all.

Meanwhile this solitary flower stands,

Immortalised by romantic poet long since gone,

A Wordsworth genius who ere long in muse,

Whilst "wandering lonely as a cloud",

Enshrined eternally the Daffodil in verse.

32. Daffodils

There is around the crystal vale,

A light more luminous and pale,

Than any other flower.

For in the spring time, when there it grows,

The yellow floating heads in rows,

Of daffodils in many forms and shades.

Lace intricate or egg yolk blades,

Triumphant in their finest hour,

Before bending, breaking, turning brown,

All their glory trampled down.

The woodland way,

Where raucous hairy lurchers bound,

Following each smell,

Alert to every sound,

Filling their day,

Welcomes us in.

In storm or wind or constant rain,

In sun or heat or who can say?

We walk our lives away.

They in their olfactory state of bliss,

Me lost in muse of lover's languid kiss,

Together play amidst the flowers.

33. Dance

They dance in their own rooms

To far away music from another place

Each step tentative but purposeful

Straight chin-toe-pointed

Arms limp as lifeless flowers

Pressed against thighs

Feet that describe an arc

Deftly, momentarily, touching base

Resting like a butterfly at forty five degrees

Then inexplicably startled

An allegorical flight

Around a hollow space

Each in their own world

Distant and unreachable

Held aloft by discordant strings

A single voice pure as light

Hangs in the air like smoke from a cigar

Envelops these elegant forms

Diaphanous and spare

Clothed in silk

Flowing over nipple and nape

A tantalising covering

Of the bodies' points of reference

Choreographed by angels

Directed by a host of whispering ghosts

The steps though divided by a wall

Miraculously synchronise and compliment

Like reflections in a mirror.

Mercurial figures in the minds eye

Insubstantial imaginings

Behind the closed doors of the heart

They communicate without words

34. Death Knell

I walked across the headland

With the thought of muffled bells,

Except there were none,

To usher him out with a knell.

The fields were brown and dry

Absent of 'pommes-de-terre',

Lifted amidst a swarm of tongues,

Distant and strange, yet there.

The dog walked ahead,

It’s white tipped tail

Waving our ultimate surrender,

The fateful earth's assail.

Black was the order of the day,

A generational thing,

Saying hello to say goodbye,

Like netted jackdaws sling.

Each checking out the other,

For signs of transience,

For time it seems flows only one way

And all around are dead.

Yet still the sight and sound remain,

Knocking around in my head;

What's done is done,

What’s said cannot be unsaid.

And what escapes the grasp,

Is best left go. It is the end.

For with his passing

The land has lost a good friend.

Another farm stands empty,

Orphaned the acres familiar,

On the alter of expediency

Deprived of care and character.

The soil now lifeless lies,

Deserted by every living thing,

Drenched in poison it cries,

To the heavens for Spring.

Meanwhile we all respectfully stand,

At a funeral fit for a king.

And wonder why no longer larks rise

Or Curlews cry on the wing.

35. Diary

Little red hard-backed book

So glossy and smooth

I can see my face

Vaguely in your cover;

Some sort of shadowy

Infernal ghost.

Inside the pages blanched

Clean and faintly ruled

A parallel universe

Waiting to be etched

With spidery words

Representing a life lived.

A life like no other.

Red and hard outside

Inside brimming

With the whiteness

Of the unforeseen

The yet to be.

36. DNA

You ask me how I know?

It's in my DNA.

Those strands of life flow though me

And will not go away.

Just a little drop of liquid, Binds me to you.

Pushed upon an opening, Straining through.

Like a point of impact on a distant train,

Trudging through the tundra. Never seen again.

Fishing boats returning on a misty morn,

Silhouette of rigging. Bows cutting wave forlorn.

Shoulders all above me. Concrete slabs below.

Cleopatra's needle. Sucking undertow.

"You will have to help me". That is what he said.

As he moved beside me. Surging overhead.

Bowing down above me. When the storm had passed.

Thunder clouds roll over, all within its path.

Whispers. Whispers. Whispers. Gentle airs that blow.

Upon the fragile flowers. Pressed where they shouldn't go.

Eternally impressed. Permanently mauled.

One final drop of liquid. One shuddering brief recall

Forever binds me to you. The memory in thrall.

37. Dream

Love upon some distant doorstep

A faint remembrance rides

Upon a creaking hinge.

The scraping of a rusty violin,

Whose strings have become frayed

From too many vibrations

And lilting melodic phrases.

Carried on the shoulders of the wind,

A dawn of yellow swaying willow,

A chorus of burnished gold,

Resurrect the dusty memories

And banish the smog of night.

Morning mist still clinging

To the echoes of bizarre meetings

With old friends still young

And those long dead.

Walking familiar evening lanes,

Radiating heat from a summers day,

Skin brown and smelling sweetly of hay,

Oozing the sweat of desire,

The heady joy of youth.

Poignant and tantalising

Evocations of a lost, never returning, land.

38. Coming to.

I was awake and just about to come to,

When my mother walked into the room,

Just as she did - busying over nothing.

Fiddling, meddling.

Argggggggggg! my frustration boiled over.

I berated her as only sons are able,

Before she scuttled out.

But why am I located in the bath?

And why the beetles with the green and baize

Geometric patterns on their backs

In vivid embrace?

Have I been here all night?

And what of the earlier trip to Grandma's house?

Mill House where I always go at night,

Now clearly taken over by strangers

And all done up?

Why the difficulty to park,

Or the confusion at the door to get inside?

Amidst the sale of craft, I picked my way

Around the house examining fine detail:

The unknown bread oven;

The ceiling timbers in poor repair;

The temporary doors of a work in progress.

Arrogantly stating my right to be there,

Chewed up with indefinable regret

It wasn't mine. Wishing that it was.

Then I wake for real!

No house, no home, no mum, no gran.

Only emptiness and longing.

39. Eight-0-Eight!

Shall I go out and stay out late?
Or remaining in, avoid the din
And eat a plate of langoustine?

I look again, it's eight o nine,
A funny thing, this thing called time,
Impossible to delve.
I look again its eight dot twelve!

I lie in bed the sun is gone,
Behind the brow it's settled down -
Except of course it's us that move
And it stands still alone.

Green natures lost its golden glow
Turned darker olive just to show
A sort of waiting time of high suspense
Before the curtain falls perchance.

A silence ominous and rare descends
A startled blackbird's scream portends
Oncoming night.
It's eight two one, can another nine have gone?

A sort of indecision nails me flat
Remaining here I think on what?
Just flashing numbers passing time
The syncopated cadences of rhyme.

Whether the contemplative or the active life?
The hermit or the socialite?
Eight twenty five the time has come
To hesitate, to hibernate or run?

To yet again submit to insensate fate?
Or predestined transcendental calm?
Or in defiance rant and rave
Against the fading of the light?

Merge into the dark crush of desperate
Pretending to have fun?
Before you know it, one o one!
Its closing time, another day begun.

40. Embers

So you say I know, you know, I love you,

You know I know you do;

But oh how I wish, like re-cast bell,

Your words rang out as true.

You say you miss me and ask if I do too?

But how am I to really know

When empty words will say

Anything you want them to?

Words after all are only sounds,

That float upon the air.

No more than majestic music crowns

The feelings that they bare.

The twittering of a sparrow,

The spluttering of a car;

The swish of flying arrow,

The thump of beating heart.

You say you really want to meet,

Experience says you don't;

There was a time when what you said,

You sometimes even kept.

You said you'd call around to clean

Just for a bowl or two;

A bowl or two of what I thought -

Of cereal or of stew?

Four men are lost and one is dead,

I heard upon the news,

Trapped in a fire that blazed away,

Begun just to amuse.

The miscreants have quickly fled,

Incendiary down the street,

Make light of all the things they said,

As embers fall at feet.

So fire! fire! fire again!

Run with torches bright!

Olympian flames will never die,

Despite foreboding night.

41. Empty Glass

JD and coke. JD and coke.
With them the nights have fled!
The black intoxicating liqueur
Has been supped, but still echoes round my head.
The flashing lights have flashed,
The mischievous provocative lines
Have beamed their last.
The little bubbles
Have fizzed to the top
And now are lost to atmosphere.
And what is left?
An empty glass, an empty space.
A painful incredulity
That that familiar brand
Will no longer pop up
To empathise and entertain.
In stained sparkling crystal,
No other spirit will replace.

Dear Steve, Whenever we spoke you always brought a smile to my face. Now you have managed to bring a tear to my eye. What you go and do that for? You helped cheer so many of my nights in the chat room and your presence is sorely missed. Not to everyone is afforded the distinction of touching people's hearts, even at a ...distance, but you were surely one of that select band. You died too soon but you will be remembered with great affection by a great number - those whose lives you touched. RIP my Good Man.

42. Ending

So farewell then friend,

He who was my daily muse,

My vigil through the night-time hours,

My all-embracing thought,

As flowers are to the bee.

A thought as insubstantial

As the wisping smoke

From the shotgun muzzle lately fired.

Like wasps from an aggravated swarm,

Like a loyal dog after its master,

Like a kestrel sweeping on its hapless prey,

It has followed me around.

It has blown around my head

Like crimson leaves caught in autumnal wind

The only evidence of bare trees

Before the winter intervenes.

A remembrance of spring and green shoots,

When love was pure and unattainable

And longing throbbed my youthful veins.

So like the desperate climber,

Held only by the rescuer's grip,

I cling on dear (for life without is but a desert place,

Of thorn and prickly pear)

Wondering if the hold will slip,

Or whether in a moment of icy resolve,

The braver choice - simply to let go?

43. Eye

We sing the praise of the all-seeing eye, fixed central in its cranial apse,
Continuously in flux and movement, focusing near and fine,
Or through another glass, deep into outer space;
Where stars themselves shine pre-eminent, or
Microscopic, dissect the very building blocks of time.
Automated intricate instrument, perceiving all but itself,
A window out, by letting in; a window in, by letting out.
By what miracle of fate, this instrument conceived?
This tiny orb, in which the world enclosed is?
A sphere within a sphere, surrounded by a watery moat,
Illumed with strange rays, in rainbow colours prismed,
Flooding the echoing halls with light.
Casting its shadows, by which we navigate,
Sense movement, distance, all the world in print.
For without thee, we are blind and all is dark,
A dungeon lacking colour, movement, art or form.
The lens by which the world is turned upon it's head,
The parallax and paradox is now seen through,
The gate by which the Queen of Sheba enters
And all the opulence and beauty in her train;
That wracks the soul with passion and desire,
That looks on love and sees it back again.
Or yet, in viewing sorrow, weeping, an inconstant friend,
To witness truthfully, amidst the calumny of men.

44. Fall

Fallen. Fallen. Late falls the fall.

The rosy apple drops.

Everywhere they polka dot the floor.

Touched by the earth,

Rotting brown eats to it's core.

The sliming slug destroys it's beauty.

Shaken the sturdy sinews

Supplicate the sky.

Solid, the torso trunk

Against the winds mad anarchy.

Fluttering leaves give up the ghost

In arterial shades of crimson,

Fall fall towards the ground and die,

Consumed by the gentle worm's

Courteous ministrations.

Whilst serpent weaves his ancient way

To suck the juice and sink its teeth

Into the nectar flesh of condemnation.

An endless striving for subordination

Of everything springing up.

Fallen fallen late falls the Fall,

Like autumnal grass we pass,

Reach for the sky, Go to seed,

Then fall, fall, fall, 

Into death's irresistible arms.

45. Fifty Pence

An "equilateral curve heptagon" - a seven-sided circle!

A remembrance of forty years of time recurring.

Sixteen designs to span a chasm of memories,

Each in its own, an anniversary.

Time on time rolling, base coinage hardly noticing -

In common currency - degree between the fingers.

The shape cupped hands create in prayer,

The seven ages of man and human imperfection.

From Britannia to Kew and many milestones in between.

Of wars remembered and battles won.

Of suffrage and suffering, bravery and sacrifice.

Of strength and stamina - the nation's metal.

Of boy scouts and women's rights,

Of political affiliations on the European stage.

Of going seven sided decimal

And decline in values with the passing years.

Of half a life-time slipping through one's fingers,

Like time itself, leaving its marque.

46. Fly

How a fly can annoy!

Tiny black dot in an empty space

Tracing a jagged flight of fancy

On the blank canvass

Of the rooms airspace.

Pointless irrational movement

Holding the eye's

Undivided attention

And the mind in a metaphor.

Caught in the light

Its little wings shine

Bright as a jewel

Wet in sunlight

A miracle in miniature aeronautics.

Controlled by a miniscule brain

Can you possibly imagine

How you tantalize?

Darting here and there

Tempting the newspaper swipe.

With lid-less eyes

Wiped clean with a black filament

Create a multi lensed picture of me

Prostrate, entranced.

Apocalypse NOW! 

Fool's Gold

The poet's task is very hard,
yea and lovers also.
Like ancient alchemists of old
who sought to turn base metal -
dull poisonous malleable lead -
into butter yellow everlasting gold,
so too we try by all means hot and cold
to find dull words to represent
the feelings that lie buried,
deep within our souls.

For words and rhyme are inadequate
to represent that stab of pain,
that thumping chest, that knotted gut;
when like a dewy mist a voice is heard
or familiar face appears,
like clotted cream out of white milk;
or better still, when just by chance
in busy thoroughfare, where all is hurry,
you bump into each other
and time stands still just for a second.
The gulp of breath, the windows on the soul,
when with an iron rod the eyes connect,
searching and probing deep
the silence, when no one can speak
and prayers would be profane.

Again, again, I try to replicate
that magic moment, moments gone,
when out of darkness came forth light,
when out of rock a jewel tumbled.
When words gave way to bliss
and all the angels swooped to see and tell,
curious at what the gods had brought to pass
for levity and sport in some remote location.

We heat and cool, we mix and stir,
then leave for weeks to coalesce,
then with what anticipation peep
into that caldron love
to see if speck of yellow dust
might yet appear upon the breast.
Breathe deep those fumes of musk.

Girl at a Cornish Window 

My love has gone and left me

My love has gone away,

So I stand here at my window

Staring out across the bay.


He set off on a coaster

Bound for Liverpool I’m told

And thence around the globe

To whence the gold is found.


We grew up here together

In Newlyn’s narrow lanes,

He said I was his Rosebud,

I thought of him the same.


We played amongst the rock pools,

I watched him with the boys

As they gambolled in the rollers,

All bravado, laughter, noise.


And in the warm spring sunshine

When Swallows reappeared,

We wandered through the beech woods

Picking primrose for a dower.


The bunch I handed to him -

I had nothing else to give -

‘cept what I’d already given

Which I’d signalled with a kiss.


So like looming storm clouds

That approach across the waves,

We gathered in the doorway

And I had to look away.


Struck dumb, the words quite failed me,

For no words could then express,

The flood that then submerged me

Or the pounding in my chest.


As I heard his footsteps fading

I looked the other way

For my eyes were quite unequal

To what a tear might then display.



So now I sit here at my window

Passing time as it drags by,

Hardly caring or despairing,

Trying hard to reason why.


Just waiting, waiting, waiting,

No news of any sort.

In suspended animation.

‘Til again he comes to port.


I'll rush down to the harbour

Wrapped in my simple shawl.

And put my arms around him

And tell him he is ALL.

God Dog(gerel)

The storm has past. Its day at last.

The sun a blaze of glory.

Those fears and dread which in my head,

Are now a different story.

The cat's been fed. The fire is red.

The kettle's steaming brightly.

The tea's been made. The music's played.

I'm really feeling sprightly.

Last night the room was filled with gloom,

Today its lit in yellow,

So in my mind the world is kind:

A mellow sort of fellow.

Before was plain that love's distain

Had crippled me for ever.

That I was left, unloved, bereft,

Without a friend's endeavour.

My dreams were strange. Life's rearranged

By those recently departed.

Maybe they came to ease my pain

And help me get re-started.

One final verse before the hearse

Draws up before the chapel.

Another day in its unique way

Keeps us going, rhyme or no rhyme.

The phone's gone dead. Its all been said,

There's nothing more to say.

The friends have gone. They've all passed on

They've died or moved away.

The ringing phone shouts I'm alone,

The striking clock concurs,

The brittle leaves shake in the trees,

Indifferent to my tears..

In silence grand I take a stand

Against the dogs of war,

My simple life so full of strife

Rolls up against the shore.

Its strangely gone. This feeling's done.

I'm not alone for sure.

In ocean deep, this tryst I'll keep,

With spirits gone before.

Oh please please stay. Don't go away

And leave me as before.

I close my eyes to all those spies

Those gestures of distain,

My heart's on fire, Full of desire

I want to live again.

Not here but there. A spirit world

Transcending human pain.

Gone

I have worn my heart out on my sleeve

I have made my bed and now must lie

At times I've even got down on my knees

And played the part of the besotted lover

Just to please you.

I have waited up unearthly hours

I have listened to each tick and tock

In sitting room and hall amidst the flowers

Ever hopeful for your call

Just in case but it was not.

Whilst walking down the lane

Whilst peeling the potatoes

Or riding on the train

I have wondered what you are doing

But all in vain.

So many seconds, minutes, hours and years

In every one a fleeting thought

That some day you might appear

As you had before

But you never did come back.

Hanging

Hanging by the rope, I dangle every day

The noose it slips and tightens, squeezing my life away.

For every sky above me, A heart for every fate.

A tear for those that love me. A smile to those that hate.

My sky is grey and louring. Filled with swirling sleet

Abyss beneath, nothing but unfeeling feet.

Suspended animation. Time itself is held in sway.

Where hope hanging only by a thread, allows the fates their day.

Storms may rage about me. Stones fall down on my head.

Biting fingers running through me, Numbed pains of freezing blood.

The spirit leaves reluctantly. It does not want to go.

A superhuman act of faith involved in saying no.

I feel the rope around me. I feel it closing in.

As every hour you fight it off, you know its going to win.

So near and yet so far. The rescuers at hand.

I can hear their voices call me. I can smell them where they stand.

But still I hang quite helpless. A baby freshly born.

The final knot of hope, becomes the knot of scorn.

It is the rope that saves me and the rope that does me in.

There's no way up and no way down. There's no way out or in.

The clock chimes six and soon it will be day.

Another night of hanging and keeping death at bay.

The strongest constitution will surely be dispatched.

The most courageous spirit be extinguished like a match.

For there comes a point in everybody's time

When the simple act of letting go, is more welcome than the climb.

When with relief the life-force ebbs away

And with it pain and fear and love, the struggles of the day.

Exhausted slump, the howling wind's embrace

Reclaimed by universe. A frozen mountain's face.

As a billion times before, in a billion different ways

People slipped into the ocean and sank beneath the waves.

But each a mystic moment when another unique soul

Evaporates completely or is reclaimed to wander whole.

Yet heroic is the victim who with every sinew and device

Fights the overwhelming odds or the throwing of the dice.

Now just a body hanging lifeless and ill at ease

Whilst all about continues as normal as you please.

Only the screaming wind, the scudding clouds, the icy rock and snow

Are witness to this towering feat. How great, how small, we know.

Helicopter

The clatter of the helicopter
Fills the room,
Oh won't you go away
You are battering my senses
As defying gravity you play
Your aerobatic tunes.
As the gentle natural smells and sounds
Are completely swamped and made to disappear
By human ingenuity
And the stench of un-burned fear

Oh what relief now you are gone
What torture whilst you stayed,
What of the timid little wren,
The chiffchaff and the finch?
Did you make the little creatures quake?
Did their little hearts beat faster?
Did you make them all afraid?
Did you make the sparrows scatter?
Did you make the pigeons fall,
As when a hawk appears
And instinct takes control?

Perhaps they think this is the same -
This infernal metal bird -
That here destroys the quiet solitude
Where nothing but confounded rattle can be heard?

Oh here it comes again from distant isles
Set in an agate sea,
In waves of chattering,
An ominous destiny.
With every beat,
With every law-defying throb,
Why do the blades not fling away?
How does the thing stay up?

Casting its flickering shadow
In Basra or Sri Lanka, in Gazza or Rangoon,
In Pakistan, Afghanistan or Vietnam?
The throbbing god of war,
Brings destruction from the blue,
Metallic Mars indifferent
To the sound of the screams and hullabaloo.
Whilst miles away the men in suits or uniforms,
Bedecked in gold and silver sworn,
To uphold the Constitution

And never tell the Humvee, Huey, public,

Anything at all.

Homing Pigeon

Think on this, when thee remove
To some dark glen or far off wood,
That travel of itself, nothing doth prove,
Or distance thee from lover's love.
For like the pigeon trained in flight,
Though transported far, always returns,
Enduring storm and wind, through day and night,
Until at last, homes back again confirmed:
So shall I fly, despite all adverse squalls,
Back to thy wheaten sheaves,
Thy familiar sheltering loft,
To boo and coo till twilight falls,
To strut my stuff and call your bluff.

Honey

I'm stuck with you;

You stick with me!

For the Winged Chariot Time,

Is short, and at break-neck speed,

Soon will carry with it,

The parting moment.

So like translucent honey,

Spread thinly over still-warm bread,

Let us ensure it tastes as sweet -

A viscous lingering strand,

'Tween souls quite separate.

Hubble

Hubble bubble, toil and trouble, have put you in the sky,

And now you're there you have become, our one all-seeing eye.

The miracle of the universe, is there for all to see,

The technicolour images, mind blowing geometry.

Dear Hubble your creations must take our breath away,

Ingenious human minds that put you there, is clearly on display.

But not as much as what it sees, the extraordinary thing called "space",

So much, so far, so many worlds to put us in our place.

Since time immemorial, men looked up and out in awe,

Convinced of a divinity, in everything they saw;

Today we take a different view, exploding myths of old,

But still eternal questions linger, as we grapple to take hold

Of the sublime immensity, the majestic far flung suns,

How human mind on planet earth could such conception fund

A search for other earths, for other life, even intelligence.

Within the swirls, the clouds, the vast unconquered waste?

In Praise of Peggy Mount

Well fond goodbyes to Peggy Mount,

Female icon of the screen.

Many backs, of many actors,

Must have shivered quite unseen.

When from the wings

That rasp was thrown,

Dominant and distinctive

Trumpet call of empires down.

I wonder why you never married?

What went through that mind of yours?

(Apart from lines with which you parried,

Actors acting, out of doors).

Perhaps your love was us the public?

Getting cheers and good reviews?

Or when surface looks get all the credence,

Was it better than the blues?

Did you write your memoirs somewhere?

Is there somewhere we can go?

To relive those rasping moments,

Reconnect with what we know?

Sadly I fear this is not likely,

Perhaps I'll Google on my own,

Unluckily, she Googled-out on Friday,

November 13th, two thousand and one.

Incoming Tide

(Rather strange that only the next day after writing this, it was reported that many Chinese cockle pickers had been drowned at Southport Sands. It was based on a recent walk I took with a friend but has to be dedicated to them. And also the friend.)

What can we say of the perfect day?

What can we say?

The broad sweep of yellow sand,

The white crested breakers, breaking;

The mighty power of the ocean,

Hero and Leander drowned by love

By the oblivious Hellespont,

Washed up on ruthless ridges

Of a multitudinous patterned beach.

A dog intoxicated

By the boundless beauty,

The featureless expanse,

Of flat soft silica,

Stretching to some invisible

Vanishing point,

Runs in circles,

Always coming back.

Two people arm in arm

Unable to disentangle

The here and now

From the here-to-fore;

Afraid to cling

Or yet in letting go;

Holding only to the moment,

Trying to feel the force,

Before the next obliterating wave.

Indifference

How can men be so intimate,
Yet within minutes, days,
Be so disinterested and so disconsolate?
So desperately, irretrievably, indifferent,

As if nothing had changed,
Nor minds or bodies met?

No whispers interchanged,
Or passions articulately expressed.
As if to embrace the merest sensibility
Would admit to weakness or defeat
And bring a fragile building crashing down,
Upon some luckless traveller in the street.

So from bed to bar,
The transformation is complete.
Where once the rolling bodies intertwined,
Exhausting all and every option indiscrete,
Revealing everything but soul,
And maybe even some of that!

Now stranger meets with stranger,
With only furtive glances, nods or winks.
A total stony silence or vacant stare,
Too afraid to smile or speak.
Denying everything but time,
The time that we were there.

Still stored in some dark recess of memory,
Whether cherished or distained.
Where the sincerity of words?
Where the mad desire that could not wait?
Nothing here remains but blackened stumps,
After the forest fire.

Journey Home by Tim Veater

So we fly the path before us

Whitening waves dash pebbled shore

Lights do nothing but to blind us

Till from above the light is pure.

Wind behind us bids us forward

Aelolus on our side

Dark and damp the sea spray tells us

There is no where left to hide.

Onward onward

For the clock is ticking fast

Sea to seaward, land to land ward,

What was forest, now is marsh.

Listen to the rush and rattle

As the ocean strokes the land

Listen to the power that quickens

With the shifting of the sand

Mighty clock the wheels are turning

All are spinning round the sun

So too my wheels are yearning

With each cycle to be home.

There is nothing here to keep us

All is noisy, false and vain.

Gyrating bodies crush together

Vain attempt to squeeze the pain

I alone head out, head east

Balanced on a narrow tread

Leaving all the road behind me

Looking to the road ahead.

Just one star above is shining

Despite the billions hiding there

So just one human here is riding

In the damp and misty air.

59. On the death of a Jay and a Passing Train 

"See you soon", he said as he flew away,
Parted by a level crossing - we'd had the sun-filled day.
Nor has he yet, though yet he may.
I cannot quite prove or bet on it.
For even as I write, perhaps,
He has tried to get through on some device
Or some pretence. A pretext contrived,
To keep a promise made in jest,
At flashing light on mountain bikes.
But since then, we haven't met,
Despite the deafening roar of passing train.

"Take this", he said,
Pulling a 'hoody' top from out his back-pack.
The night was coming on and with it chill.
The sacrifice was sweet
And I succumbed without demur.
Indeed it did the job, smelling of him,
A heady perfumed mix of smoke and sweat.
When I got home I hung it on a chair
And quite forgot that it was there,
On back of both, where it remained,
Not yet retrieved but sacrificial, lent.

"Keep the top!" in anger said.
What made him change his mind isn't clear,
But something isn't right.
Oh how without a word, or with just one,
The wind can change,
From balmy south to bitter east.
And back again: "No rush" he said,
When later trying to be kind.
But which is better, which is worse,
It's really very hard to say,
When trains rush by and love has died.

He "may call in when passing",
Or failing that "will see me soon",
If time and tide allow. "So busy now."
"So many things to see and do."
Meanwhile, whilst setting out on bike,
There in the Long Lane road,
The remains of a freshly squashed Jay,
That lately was a favoured friend,
Daily flying in to peck, eager yet wary,
Now just blue/white feathers, soaked in red,
What once was always round, now is flat.

60. Life's Clock

David Jason's looking old and so am I,
What the years have done and how they fly?
On giant clock that we call time,
Our arms are fixed and mine's on nine.

For sixty seconds make a minute,
An hour has sixty of these in it,
And twenty four of these compose a day,
A week, a month, a year away.

When fifty nine of these are here and gone,
Two thousand and twenty three million,
Five hundred and sixty thousand moments have passed on -
I hope I haven't got the calculation wrong!

So now at quarter to the hour, each quarter twenty years,
I wonder if my time was spent the best I could?
Or what is worse, or what is better -
If the final ten or twenty left could be improved upon?

The curser blinks or winks upon the screen
And mocks my passing moments here unseen,
For long time after I am quite forgot,
Someone might scan these lines -
To prove that I am not.

61. Limbo Dancing

I'm in a sort of limbo,
I'm neither here nor there,
A suspended animation
Has got me in its stare.

I've reached a sort of plateau
After climbing up the hill
Where resting on the top
It's very calm and still.

Leaning back upon my shoulders,
My heart is full of sighs,
My head thrown back still further,
Deep blue seeps in my eyes.

My brain is all a fluster,
It's filled with scudding clouds,
Which even as they scuttle over,
Create a decomposing shroud.

Then magically I'm ascending,
I do not have to fight,
Oh the amazing sensation
As my soul takes flight.

Relaxing on nothing but air
Casting care aside,
Gravity looses its power,
As I hover and I glide.

To glance down and back
At all that's gone before,
So strangely unimportant
So distant and so small.

Just floating, floating, floating
Oh the bliss of weightlessness,
As from the earth departing
And all unfaithfulness.

Oh happy constellation
Some power as yet unexplained,
That drew me up and left me
To meander unrestrained.

Where nothing seems to matter
All frustrations disappear
Maybe, before I plunge back down to earth
I'll linger longer here.

62. The Lobster

What a remarkable thing the lobster is?

A monster from the deep dark past,

A subterranean boxer, ready with its left jab

To knock out shrimp or crab.

Out of all proportion,

With giant claws outstretched,

In eager anticipation of crustaceans

For its pre-tensile grip.

A thing of science fiction,

A thing from under-space,

Crawling across the ocean bed,

Aeons before word or thought.

Like an underwater diver,

Like a mediaeval knight,

Combines its nimble lumber

In a armoured carapace.

Enamel black like the depths,

Yellow tipped like sand,

Spindle legs yet tailed,

Antennae whiskered wands.

Unseen unheard multitude,

Patrolling an alien land,

Cold deep mystery,

We hardly understand.

Distaining all other predators,

Falls foul of ingenuity and taste.

(It by a pot; we by our intelligence)

Trapped and transported to another place.

But how many think, whilst at some fancy table,

With lobster on some china fine,

That in that epicurean moment,

We taste a hundred million years of time?  

63. Long Rock

Long Rock - a finger pointing out to sea

Horizoning to far-off Amazon

With nothing but a vast and watery waste to come between

Where monsters lurk, whales chirp and play

Where fish in shoals flash silver

Where man-made craft ominously prowl the deep uncharted waters

Where many ships have foundered

And myriad ancient salts have passed into solution.

Each day her head she hides, then slowly re-appears

Green locks unfurl, a neck encased in lace

To bare her crocodile-like back, jet black,

Basking in mid-day shine, or night-time ivory light

This crayoned line where earth meets sky

The only remnant of a lush and wooded hill

In times gone by when forest ruled the bay

And who knows who considered it as home

The oceans surge to time the final arbiter,

To unseen celestial forces and distant, distant spheres

Its mentor, barometer and periscope to a fragile earth that sighs

Our lifeboat drifting precarious amidst the stars

Long Rock so isolated and alone

Battered and hard. Bruised but un-bowed

Awake only when submerged, drowsing when dried

To human eyes inhospitable to everything but spume and spray

But oh the secret world that lurks beneath the flood!

64. Lost!

those are the worst dreams

the dreams you dream

when sleep's fine mists envelope

when really you should be waking.

lost in a huge warehouse

full of dirt and disorder

with cobbled floors and running effluent

vast like a cathedral

but stained and musty like a cellar.

the workers, drones,

with set stares and blank eyes

expressionless and defeated

harbouring a deep unshakable resentment

of which I was the epitome and focus.

me with my clean living ways

my healthy lifestyle

my freedom from fear

born of arrogance and other men's sacrifice

never required to be enslaved

except on some superficial and trivial plane.

I could not wait to run,

to turn away in denial and shame

but where was my bike?

my backpack and helmet?

my means of escape?

my only salvation?

they were gone, presumably purloined

by the miserable wretches that skulked around

and could do me evil without the slightest flicker

of their grey emotionless eyes

the horror of being for ever lost

of being marooned in this soulless place

sunk in like a night on the moor.

shunned by all

offered only vacant stares and cynical grins

all human kindness absent

wandering aimlessly as in a deep freeze

the icy cold worked its way to my heart

all else were travelling home but me

i was to be disregarded and left behind

to my own devices.

and no one interested in my plight

why should they it was they who toiled

I who benefitted without the least regard for their welfare

their grudge would find its target

born of past grievances unremitted

past offences prosecuted unforgiven.

I an island, stood amidst a sea of oil

black and glutenous

that clung to my clothes like the very devil

but just when all seemed lost

just one face amidst the human mass

round and bright with eager open smile

I recognised as friend a very angel of deliverance

to save me in the nick of time.

65. Lost and Found

One night whilst crossing all the spheres
On looking down I spied an object lying there
Swooping low I plucked it up
And in the moonlight took a closer look.

To my amazement and surprise
The mysterious form within my hand
Appeared to glitter and expand.
In minutes amazingly a face appeared.

A young man standing fresh, all eyes and ears,
His limbs were long, his hair was gold
His pupils blue, his aspect bold.
I feared that he on seeing me he would run away

But no he stayed and walked my way
So in my pocket safely stored
I took it to my heart to hoard.
There I took a closer look for evidence

Was it old master or modern fake
Was it true or just Marquette
Was this person alive or dead.
Anyway as years went by

The said strange piece was mislaid
Despite my frantic searches
I could not find where it had strayed.
Lost, borrowed or stolen no one knew

Sadly I resigned to concede the point
So weirdly discovered but lost of late
Did it possess some magic power.
Until one day when many years had passed

I happened on a market stall
Where amongst the many trinkets on display
A brass boot, cigarette holder, glass ash tray
I spied an object I had seen before

I recognised a frame familiar
I picked it up and straightway knew
This was my little miniature from yore.
Yet now the face had aged

The head appeared too small
The limbs had there much thinner shrunk
And lost their youthful elegance.
Despite these changes I was so convinced

I paid the inflated price without dissent
And clasped it to my breast once more
Was it just the years, the tears, or alcohol
That had aged my picture so

Or had the layers of paint and grime
Distorted what I saw?
Within the comfort and safety of my home
I inspected it under bright light

And gently wiped away the excrement
To reveal beneath the gore
The same fine features
I had seen before.

Rising Neptune from out the deep
Like some lost treasure
Miraculously complete
The youthful enigmatic smile appeared

And with it I was overcome with such relief
I woke with tears streaming from my eyes
Like when an agonising pain subsides
Or the intensity of grief

A masterpiece remains a masterpiece
Whatever fate decides to throw
Caught by a masters hand, time impotent to destroy
Eternal love of beauty held suspended ever

Whatever heavy price demanded by the giver
If in your collection you aspire
To keep and hold that you most desire
As at first acquaintance though it might come free

Resent it not if on restoration it demands a fee
Only fear that with the passing years
The damage cannot be restored
Or those heavenly chords again be heard

66. Lost Love

Larger than life it got away,
Oh for the grace to let it go.
Where is the joy that went astray?
Gone on the howling gale that blows!

Familiar the face that looks my way.
Who would have guessed they knew me so?
Funny the funny games we play,
Making so sure that no one knows.

Bleached the colours. Faded the hues.
Where is the orchard that once we grew?
Gone in the chilling swirling river,
Blown by the wind, swept with a shiver -

Playing the part of the indifferent swinger -
Mountain peaks shrouded in icy-blue.

67. Love Bug

I lack the will to move

Though move I must

As by some hidden hand

Restrained;

Or with some elusive illness

Taken.

My only thought my Love,

Who ere such short time

Gave all,

But now despises all

And me forsaken.

Empty the space in which she moved,

Silent the room in which her voice vibrated,

Only the clock now chimes

Our passing hours,

Only the kettle sings her name

In shrill and steamy notes,

Anticipated

How soon love's flower

When lacking water dies,

How soon the leaves turn dour

When summer sun deserts.

What precious time is wasted.

Leave, taken leave of senses

The telephone once hot

Has now cooled down,

Those messages resented

New friends have flooded in

And swelled the pond.

Demented fish lie flapping on the shore

Caught in the net,

Futilely gasping for air.

What's more,

A dark mysterious stranger

Is gently knocking at the door,

But no one's heard him yet.

68. Love Song

You are my love boy. You are my love.
Whatever else may transpire,
Whatever waters pass.
Whatever meetings over bars,
Whatever waves may roar,
Whatever plains may flood,
You are my love boy. You are my love.

Shaken and smitten. Sitting alone.
Sand in my sandals. Stone of my stone.
Pebbles on beaches stretching away.
Waves in their tumble. Struggling free.
Free of the ocean, vast and unseen.
It beats like a heart and ever has been.
You are my love boy. You are my love.

Fire of my fire boy. Blood of my blood.
Alone horizontal. Vertically stood.
This area restricted. Erogenous zone.
We explore the lush meadows that are calling us home.
Whilst Berlioz plays a haunting refrain
That echoes the night like a far distant train.
You are my love boy. You are my love.

You are my love boy. You are my love.
Deep Russian basses chant inscrutable noise.
Carry your name boy. Absence of choice.
Delivered by angels. Miraculous voice.
To wake with a word. A word gone astray.
Destiny calling. Tonight and always.
You are my love boy. You are my love. 

69. Love's Stand

My overtures of love, have been repelled
For ten long years, unheralded unseen,
Have steadfast stood their ground despite the mell,
Uniformed and armed in silent stillness held the line,
Resisted every charge, every attack,
Withstood the impulse to fall back.
Instead foolhardy, ignoring all the dangers evident,
Believing in God and fate, is all our trust,
That what has been and what will be, is meant.
Despite our comrades falling all around,
Even if we all must die, we shall not flinch,
We shall not fly , until we are convinced 'tis proved -
That we were not wrong to yet hold tight
To this: that love must yet survive.

69A. The Bargain by Sir Philip Sidney

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

70. Meeting

(Artistic license based on friend's report)

He had me in the quarry. Up against the wall.

I didn't try to parry. He was young and dark and tall.

Whilst on the beach I saw him,

He was leaning on the rail,

The sea was very blue then

The dinghies full of sail.

I was very on my own then,

I'd left my boy behind,

A certain thrill pulsed through me,

Just like the ocean wind.

He just stayed there looking over,

I pretended not to see,

Whilst carefree stream rushed past me,

Searching the foaming sea.

I fiddled with the pebbles,

Tossing them away,

Whilst keeping this exotic stranger,

In the corner of my eye.

When finally he made his move,

He disappeared inside,

The small squat building sat there,

I remained just where I lay.

Deciding what to do,

Held in the hand of fate,

Following an unwritten script,

Not wishing to berate.

After what seemed like an aeon

I rose and climbed the bank

And with my heart pounding

I thought he'd shun my prank.

"You after it?" then he said

Or words to that effect

My mouth went dry

Words sank within my chest.

Inside that small dark cell,

He forced his way upon me,

And I gladly gave him all.

As, you will remember,

He was young and dark and tall.

After a few brief encounters,

He's all but disappeared,

But for the waves of excitement,

That reverberate weirdly down the years.

Every time I happen to go there, 

To talk to empty space,

I remember how I met him

And in my mind I see his face.

Wondering if at any moment

He'll lightly tap me on the shoulder

And shows he really cares and knows

Where I'm coming from.

71. Memories Are Made of This

Let’s create some memories.

Memories? Yes memories!

You know, those things that float

Like soap bubbles or Chinese lanterns,

Flickering off into the night sky.

We can make them if we try,

Although we often try too hard.

The best are made without much effort,

Incidentally, surreptitiously, serendipitously.

Like when you sink into a deep soft pillow

Or trip into a freshly made sand pit

Or breathe in the view from the crows nest

Or free fall through balmy air.

Places, people, events;

Special places, people, events.

They all get stacked in packing cases,

Awaiting the removal men in white coats,

To take then to a meaningless place.

By the smell of wafting smoke

Or baking loaf, perking Café Haag,

Or freshly rain-sprinkled lane,

They have a tendency to seep back in

And like a piano played with a casual touch,

Strike up a familiar chord, again.

Yes, let us then make memories,

In the spring and summer of our lives;

Like jars of preserves on the kitchen shelf,

All neatly labelled with sweet gaudy fruit.

For soon, and sooner than we think,

The tang of their bitter sweet flavours

Will be all we have to spread

On the dry bread of our days. 

72. Mermaid of Zennor

Holding my breath as we drove through the night towards our destiny
Could you feel my heart thumping as calmly we chatted and laughed
Inconsequentially? But we knew where we were going.
For this was the night that we met.
Though before we had petted its true
And crossed over a border into a minefield.
Amazing what a foot-touching-foot can do.
One step on a journey to never-land.

There in the darkness we stood in the water.
Naked and vulnerable we looked at each other,
Whether to stand still? Or dive in together?
Just two standing stones, Mesolithic and stately,
Its own magic circle created completely.
Erect yet still leaning. Towards an awakening.
The silence of night time clung to our bodies,
The music of ripples as they lapped on the shore line,
A flickering reflection of twinkling star time.

The body of water which in sun-light looked inviting,
Was now transformed to the eerie and haunting,
The ominous depths dared us plunge in them.
The shock of the water cold fear to the senses,
Turned sweet by the moment of daring the fates,
Too hot to be chilled by conventional states.

The barrier crossed we swam there together,
Bridging the years in this crazy endeavour,
Never the same from baptism of fire.
Irresistibly drawn by the mermaid of Zennor,
Enticing us in to drink of a potion
That would bind us for ever.
Elixir or poison we're still to discover.

73. Midsummer Night's Dream

Do you remember Sweet,

Times when from loves cup,

We supped deep draughts?

When all was dark and people slept,

Puck mischievous and bright,

Tip-toed around the room,

Dispensing sparkling dust,

And holy water?

When liquid inspired laughter,

Boiled misty on elemental heat,

And forced evaporation?

Dried joy to salt.

The only sensation,

A chalky furring of the palette.

74. Millenium 2000

Despite the blast, the yellow liquid sparkles through my veins

And in what false contentment I momentarily lie,

Suspended over aching void, an uncompleted empty room.

What effort in an edifice I put and placed my trust in tottering towers,

Which now collapse.

Great lumps of masonry falling past my head.

A coliseum in which so many people disappeared.

And bloody sweats seeped into sand,

Poured from a crystal jug of faith and steadfastness,

The saints are dead and feared.

Conquer the cult of long hours, resist the urge for working on.

The pile of paper merely buries mind, rendering it unfit for what is done.

Ruled by incessant tick tock, places head upon the block.

The clock, merciless and masterful,

Is to be unwound. 

75. Missing

Do you know what it is to really miss some one?

Can you feel what it is to care?

To enter a room expecting someone -

And be met with vacant stare?

A room squashed full of people

Each one an unique face,

Attracting dilated pupils,

To discover none of them match?

Or in the evening, sitting in favourite chair,

Listening outside for a motor,

Or footsteps when nobody's there.

Or staring at the telephone

Hoping that it rings

And when it does the thrill of expectation

Or trough the stranger brings.

Or the joy of recognition

When in serendipity,

You make a chance encounter,

Proving synchronicity?

When in every passing moment

There's a part of you at play

Wondering where, and what and why,

Whenever they're away?

And you wish that you could see them

Like an angel in the sky

And swoop right down beside them

To try to catch their eye.

And you hanker for the past sometimes

For the mad impulsive past

For the mad impulsive past sometimes

Always knowing it could not last.

Mist

A melancholy mist

Hangs from invisible strands

Over a silent serendipity.

The shiny silver ground

Emanates an effluvia

Like a New York street.

The air is thick with sound

A strange white noise

Like colours mixed losing their meaning.

The whole of nature fast asleep

Lulled by this hypnotic ether.

Three figures paths pass

By chance or dream like fate

Within a hundred yards.

Tangentially they cross the street

But do not intersect

Or even acknowledge

Their common ground, and

Granite posts mark the way of their going.

Silent, as if to speak

Would break some secret spell

Plunging the whole world into darkness.

Mole Hill

Have you ever lain in bed at 5 o'clock,

At the first inkling of a new morning

And heard a cloud of droplets fall

On far off naked leaves,

Before they patter on your roof -

Your window pane -

Like the muffled sound of soldiers feet

Marching towards you?


Or have you ever stood in the corner of a virgin field

With just one earthy mound,

All brown and covered in gaudy unnatural flowers -

Like a Mardi Gras mole hill -

And read the words of a young son for a young father?

If so we have shared a moment

And the rain has not rained in vain.

Missing Moments

the days come and go,

whether u want them to or no

and whatever befall,

u can never recall the moment,

unique everyone,

what's done is what's done,

what's not done and what's missed,

like the morning dew,

when kissed by sun,

as if by magic disappears

and is gone.

Moon

Scarred and arid sphere

That haunts our sleeping hours,

Suspended without strings

Not unlike ourselves.

A limpet night time stalker,

Reassuringly predictable.

Looming lemon in the east,

Shrinking silver on its ascendant throne,

As clouds of emissaries

Fleetingly gain audience,

Before in a benign decline

It exits damask red.

Opal to ruby in progressive crescents,

Solstice and eclipse combine

To pass the longest night

To mark the greatest gulf

From life enhancing sun.

Pock-marked by time

Like some virgin queen,

To whom on bended knee

We obeisance render;

Praying just

For her beneficent smile

To quell the terror

Of an ice cold stare

Or winter of abandonment.

Moon Dust

Lying on his back,

Space-cold and starry-bright.

When all the sky is black

But for the glittering night.

The moon in splendid languor,

Sheds its palest beam

Makes all other heavenly bodies dull

Reigning supreme.

The million million fiery spheres

Which round it shine,

Cannot compete with this,

Despite it being only borrowed time.

Thus in this moon lit glow

So too you shine on me

Lying recumbent ,silent and in awe,

In waning set me free.

A diamond effervescence

Fills all the empty space

And magically transforms

This time and place.

The magic lunar dust streams down

Into my waiting cup.

Distilling spell-bound liquor.

Filling it up.

Mount's Bay!

On silver platter the ocean glides,
Mercurial lines of grey,
Slide metal plate, on metal plate,
Towards the over-arching sky.

Sweeping from iconic St Michael's Mount
To silhouetted Penzance town of dome
And tower and many roofs of wood and slate:
Mount's Bay embraced by homes.

Shining blindingly in the West,
The sun a million, million footsteps hence
From suspended scorching flame
To this fine experience.

 
But towards the east, magnetic sea,
So blue upon the sight,
Even the hardest heart would soften, 

Break, upon the blight.

The shuffle of the pebbles, round on round,
The screech of Oyster Catcher, Curlew, Lap Wing,
And man with bounding barking dog,
Black shapes against the silver sing.

Later, a deep Vermillion fills the sky,
Ground from a rock called Cinnabar,
To which the blazing sea reflects, relates,

An oriental star.

Great artist, who with deft stroke and rich palette,
Created such stupendous canvass, ever changing!

We stand in awe, awestruck we contemplate

This grand mesmeric painting.  

The sinking fire beckons the quieting dusk,
Then night, when multitudes spectacular,
Illuminate with twinkling gems of light,
The auditorium called the space afar.

 
Reminding us how small we are,

How bound by fate, we acquiesce

And know our humble place  
A momentary flash of sentient aberrance.

Whilst surrounding all, a vast unfathomable moat,
Enfolds us in its temperate arms,
To lull us gently into sleep,
A timeless and eternal banishment.

My only thought: Should I my lover meet?

Life's Clock

David Jason's looking old and so am I,
What the years have done and how they fly?
On giant clock that we call time,
Our arms are fixed and mine's on nine.

For sixty seconds make a minute,
An hour has sixty of these in it,
And twenty four of these compose a day,
A week, a month, a year away.

When fifty nine of these are here and gone,
Two thousand and twenty three million,
Five hundred and sixty thousand moments have passed on -
I hope I haven't got the calculation wrong!

So now at quarter to the hour, each quarter twenty years,
I wonder if my time was spent the best I could?
Or what is worse, or what is better -
If the final ten or twenty left could be improved upon?

The curser blinks or winks upon the screen
And mocks my passing moments here unseen,
For long time after I am quite forgot,
Someone might scan these lines -
To prove that I am not.

61. Limbo Dancing

I'm in a sort of limbo,
I'm neither here nor there,
A suspended animation
Has got me in its stare.

I've reached a sort of plateau
After climbing up the hill
Where resting on the top
It's very calm and still.

Leaning back upon my shoulders,
My heart is full of sighs,
My head thrown back still further,
Deep blue seeps in my eyes.

My brain is all a fluster,
It's filled with scudding clouds,
Which even as they scuttle over,
Create a decomposing shroud.

Then magically I'm ascending,
I do not have to fight,
Oh the amazing sensation
As my soul takes flight.

Relaxing on nothing but air
Casting care aside,
Gravity looses its power,
As I hover and I glide.

To glance down and back
At all that's gone before,
So strangely unimportant
So distant and so small.

Just floating, floating, floating
Oh the bliss of weightlessness,
As from the earth departing
And all unfaithfulness.

Oh happy constellation
Some power as yet unexplained,
That drew me up and left me
To meander unrestrained.

Where nothing seems to matter
All frustrations disappear
Maybe, before I plunge back down to earth
I'll linger longer here.

62. The Lobster

What a remarkable thing the lobster is?

A monster from the deep dark past,

A subterranean boxer, ready with its left jab

To knock out shrimp or crab.

Out of all proportion,

With giant claws outstretched,

In eager anticipation of crustaceans

For its pre-tensile grip.

A thing of science fiction,

A thing from under-space,

Crawling across the ocean bed,

Aeons before word or thought.

Like an underwater diver,

Like a mediaeval knight,

Combines its nimble lumber

In a armoured carapace.

Enamel black like the depths,

Yellow tipped like sand,

Spindle legs yet tailed,

Antennae whiskered wands.

Unseen unheard multitude,

Patrolling an alien land,

Cold deep mystery,

We hardly understand.

Distaining all other predators,

Falls foul of ingenuity and taste.

(It by a pot; we by our intelligence)

Trapped and transported to another place.

But how many think, whilst at some fancy table,

With lobster on some china fine,

That in that epicurean moment,

We taste a hundred million years of time?  

63. Long Rock

Long Rock - a finger pointing out to sea

Horizoning to far-off Amazon

With nothing but a vast and watery waste to come between

Where monsters lurk, whales chirp and play

Where fish in shoals flash silver

Where man-made craft ominously prowl the deep uncharted waters

Where many ships have foundered

And myriad ancient salts have passed into solution.

Each day her head she hides, then slowly re-appears

Green locks unfurl, a neck encased in lace

To bare her crocodile-like back, jet black,

Basking in mid-day shine, or night-time ivory light

This crayoned line where earth meets sky

The only remnant of a lush and wooded hill

In times gone by when forest ruled the bay

And who knows who considered it as home

The oceans surge to time the final arbiter,

To unseen celestial forces and distant, distant spheres

Its mentor, barometer and periscope to a fragile earth that sighs

Our lifeboat drifting precarious amidst the stars

Long Rock so isolated and alone

Battered and hard. Bruised but un-bowed

Awake only when submerged, drowsing when dried

To human eyes inhospitable to everything but spume and spray

But oh the secret world that lurks beneath the flood!

64. Lost!

those are the worst dreams

the dreams you dream

when sleep's fine mists envelope

when really you should be waking.

lost in a huge warehouse

full of dirt and disorder

with cobbled floors and running effluent

vast like a cathedral

but stained and musty like a cellar.

the workers, drones,

with set stares and blank eyes

expressionless and defeated

harbouring a deep unshakable resentment

of which I was the epitome and focus.

me with my clean living ways

my healthy lifestyle

my freedom from fear

born of arrogance and other men's sacrifice

never required to be enslaved

except on some superficial and trivial plane.

I could not wait to run,

to turn away in denial and shame

but where was my bike?

my backpack and helmet?

my means of escape?

my only salvation?

they were gone, presumably purloined

by the miserable wretches that skulked around

and could do me evil without the slightest flicker

of their grey emotionless eyes

the horror of being for ever lost

of being marooned in this soulless place

sunk in like a night on the moor.

shunned by all

offered only vacant stares and cynical grins

all human kindness absent

wandering aimlessly as in a deep freeze

the icy cold worked its way to my heart

all else were travelling home but me

i was to be disregarded and left behind

to my own devices.

and no one interested in my plight

why should they it was they who toiled

I who benefitted without the least regard for their welfare

their grudge would find its target

born of past grievances unremitted

past offences prosecuted unforgiven.

I an island, stood amidst a sea of oil

black and glutenous

that clung to my clothes like the very devil

but just when all seemed lost

just one face amidst the human mass

round and bright with eager open smile

I recognised as friend a very angel of deliverance

to save me in the nick of time.

65. Lost and Found

One night whilst crossing all the spheres
On looking down I spied an object lying there
Swooping low I plucked it up
And in the moonlight took a closer look.

To my amazement and surprise
The mysterious form within my hand
Appeared to glitter and expand.
In minutes amazingly a face appeared.

A young man standing fresh, all eyes and ears,
His limbs were long, his hair was gold
His pupils blue, his aspect bold.
I feared that he on seeing me he would run away

But no he stayed and walked my way
So in my pocket safely stored
I took it to my heart to hoard.
There I took a closer look for evidence

Was it old master or modern fake
Was it true or just Marquette
Was this person alive or dead.
Anyway as years went by

The said strange piece was mislaid
Despite my frantic searches
I could not find where it had strayed.
Lost, borrowed or stolen no one knew

Sadly I resigned to concede the point
So weirdly discovered but lost of late
Did it possess some magic power.
Until one day when many years had passed

I happened on a market stall
Where amongst the many trinkets on display
A brass boot, cigarette holder, glass ash tray
I spied an object I had seen before

I recognised a frame familiar
I picked it up and straightway knew
This was my little miniature from yore.
Yet now the face had aged

The head appeared too small
The limbs had there much thinner shrunk
And lost their youthful elegance.
Despite these changes I was so convinced

I paid the inflated price without dissent
And clasped it to my breast once more
Was it just the years, the tears, or alcohol
That had aged my picture so

Or had the layers of paint and grime
Distorted what I saw?
Within the comfort and safety of my home
I inspected it under bright light

And gently wiped away the excrement
To reveal beneath the gore
The same fine features
I had seen before.

Rising Neptune from out the deep
Like some lost treasure
Miraculously complete
The youthful enigmatic smile appeared

And with it I was overcome with such relief
I woke with tears streaming from my eyes
Like when an agonising pain subsides
Or the intensity of grief

A masterpiece remains a masterpiece
Whatever fate decides to throw
Caught by a masters hand, time impotent to destroy
Eternal love of beauty held suspended ever

Whatever heavy price demanded by the giver
If in your collection you aspire
To keep and hold that you most desire
As at first acquaintance though it might come free

Resent it not if on restoration it demands a fee
Only fear that with the passing years
The damage cannot be restored
Or those heavenly chords again be heard

66. Lost Love

Larger than life it got away,
Oh for the grace to let it go.
Where is the joy that went astray?
Gone on the howling gale that blows!

Familiar the face that looks my way.
Who would have guessed they knew me so?
Funny the funny games we play,
Making so sure that no one knows.

Bleached the colours. Faded the hues.
Where is the orchard that once we grew?
Gone in the chilling swirling river,
Blown by the wind, swept with a shiver -

Playing the part of the indifferent swinger -
Mountain peaks shrouded in icy-blue.

67. Love Bug

I lack the will to move

Though move I must

As by some hidden hand

Restrained;

Or with some elusive illness

Taken.

My only thought my Love,

Who ere such short time

Gave all,

But now despises all

And me forsaken.

Empty the space in which she moved,

Silent the room in which her voice vibrated,

Only the clock now chimes

Our passing hours,

Only the kettle sings her name

In shrill and steamy notes,

Anticipated

How soon love's flower

When lacking water dies,

How soon the leaves turn dour

When summer sun deserts.

What precious time is wasted.

Leave, taken leave of senses

The telephone once hot

Has now cooled down,

Those messages resented

New friends have flooded in

And swelled the pond.

Demented fish lie flapping on the shore

Caught in the net,

Futilely gasping for air.

What's more,

A dark mysterious stranger

Is gently knocking at the door,

But no one's heard him yet.

68. Love Song

You are my love boy. You are my love.
Whatever else may transpire,
Whatever waters pass.
Whatever meetings over bars,
Whatever waves may roar,
Whatever plains may flood,
You are my love boy. You are my love.

Shaken and smitten. Sitting alone.
Sand in my sandals. Stone of my stone.
Pebbles on beaches stretching away.
Waves in their tumble. Struggling free.
Free of the ocean, vast and unseen.
It beats like a heart and ever has been.
You are my love boy. You are my love.

Fire of my fire boy. Blood of my blood.
Alone horizontal. Vertically stood.
This area restricted. Erogenous zone.
We explore the lush meadows that are calling us home.
Whilst Berlioz plays a haunting refrain
That echoes the night like a far distant train.
You are my love boy. You are my love.

You are my love boy. You are my love.
Deep Russian basses chant inscrutable noise.
Carry your name boy. Absence of choice.
Delivered by angels. Miraculous voice.
To wake with a word. A word gone astray.
Destiny calling. Tonight and always.
You are my love boy. You are my love. 

69. Love's Stand

My overtures of love, have been repelled
For ten long years, unheralded unseen,
Have steadfast stood their ground despite the mell,
Uniformed and armed in silent stillness held the line,
Resisted every charge, every attack,
Withstood the impulse to fall back.
Instead foolhardy, ignoring all the dangers evident,
Believing in God and fate, is all our trust,
That what has been and what will be, is meant.
Despite our comrades falling all around,
Even if we all must die, we shall not flinch,
We shall not fly , until we are convinced 'tis proved -
That we were not wrong to yet hold tight
To this: that love must yet survive.

69A. The Bargain by Sir Philip Sidney

My true love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for another given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss,
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

His heart in me keeps him and me in one,
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own,
I cherish his because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart, and I have his.

Late November

The dog was restless

Pounding up and down the stairs,

Finally sitting by my bed

Nuzzling his nose under the duvet.

Straining to divine his consternation

Gazing into his brown eyes,

We engaged in inter-species communication

Which got me up and out.

And in a bare field running wild

He expressed his frustration.

It was light but the sun had not risen.

An ivory full moon

Dominated the north west sky

Like a table lamp, forgotten.

We both of us returned, the dog content,

Me to my bed, he to the carpeted floor,

Where both we lay

To simulate or stimulate the dead.

To watch the clouds turn marigold

Behind the naked branches.

First to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6

Then Palestrina's Agnus Dei.

To imagine the inconceivable mix

With distant moon float far away..

White mental ghosts of those no more

Float by that cold unfeeling rock.

Yet now so strangely comforting

Like a familiar friend at wake,

Until the blood red warrior returns,

For make no mistake, it will.

Meeting

(Artistic license based on friend's report)

He had me in the quarry. Up against the wall.

I didn't try to parry. He was young and dark and tall.

Whilst on the beach I saw him,

He was leaning on the rail,

The sea was very blue then

The dinghies full of sail.

I was very on my own then,

I'd left my boy behind,

A certain thrill pulsed through me,

Just like the ocean wind.

He just stayed there looking over,

I pretended not to see,

Whilst carefree stream rushed past me,

Searching the foaming sea.

I fiddled with the pebbles,

Tossing them away,

Whilst keeping this exotic stranger,

In the corner of my eye.

When finally he made his move,

He disappeared inside,

The small squat building sat there,

I remained just where I lay.

Deciding what to do,

Held in the hand of fate,

Following an unwritten script,

Not wishing to berate.

After what seemed like an aeon

I rose and climbed the bank

And with my heart pounding

I thought he'd shun my prank.

"You after it?" then he said

Or words to that effect

My mouth went dry

Words sank within my chest.

Inside that small dark cell,

He forced his way upon me,

And I gladly gave him all.

As, you will remember,

He was young and dark and tall.

After a few brief encounters,

He's all but disappeared,

But for the waves of excitement,

That reverberate weirdly down the years.

Every time I happen to go there, 

To talk to empty space,

I remember how I met him

And in my mind I see his face.

Wondering if at any moment

He'll lightly tap me on the shoulder

And shows he really cares and knows

Where I'm coming from.

71. Memories Are Made of This

Let’s create some memories.

Memories? Yes memories!

You know, those things that float

Like soap bubbles or Chinese lanterns,

Flickering off into the night sky.

We can make them if we try,

Although we often try too hard.

The best are made without much effort,

Incidentally, surreptitiously, serendipitously.

Like when you sink into a deep soft pillow

Or trip into a freshly made sand pit

Or breathe in the view from the crows nest

Or free fall through balmy air.

Places, people, events;

Special places, people, events.

They all get stacked in packing cases,

Awaiting the removal men in white coats,

To take then to a meaningless place.

By the smell of wafting smoke

Or baking loaf, perking Café Haag,

Or freshly rain-sprinkled lane,

They have a tendency to seep back in

And like a piano played with a casual touch,

Strike up a familiar chord, again.

Yes, let us then make memories,

In the spring and summer of our lives;

Like jars of preserves on the kitchen shelf,

All neatly labelled with sweet gaudy fruit.

For soon, and sooner than we think,

The tang of their bitter sweet flavours

Will be all we have to spread

On the dry bread of our days. 

72. Mermaid of Zennor

Holding my breath as we drove through the night towards our destiny
Could you feel my heart thumping as calmly we chatted and laughed
Inconsequentially? But we knew where we were going.
For this was the night that we met.
Though before we had petted its true
And crossed over a border into a minefield.
Amazing what a foot-touching-foot can do.
One step on a journey to never-land.

There in the darkness we stood in the water.
Naked and vulnerable we looked at each other,
Whether to stand still? Or dive in together?
Just two standing stones, Mesolithic and stately,
Its own magic circle created completely.
Erect yet still leaning. Towards an awakening.
The silence of night time clung to our bodies,
The music of ripples as they lapped on the shore line,
A flickering reflection of twinkling star time.

The body of water which in sun-light looked inviting,
Was now transformed to the eerie and haunting,
The ominous depths dared us plunge in them.
The shock of the water cold fear to the senses,
Turned sweet by the moment of daring the fates,
Too hot to be chilled by conventional states.

The barrier crossed we swam there together,
Bridging the years in this crazy endeavour,
Never the same from baptism of fire.
Irresistibly drawn by the mermaid of Zennor,
Enticing us in to drink of a potion
That would bind us for ever.
Elixir or poison we're still to discover.

73. Midsummer Night's Dream

Do you remember Sweet,

Times when from loves cup,

We supped deep draughts?

When all was dark and people slept,

Puck mischievous and bright,

Tip-toed around the room,

Dispensing sparkling dust,

And holy water?

When liquid inspired laughter,

Boiled misty on elemental heat,

And forced evaporation?

Dried joy to salt.

The only sensation,

A chalky furring of the palette.

74. Millenium 2000

Millenium 2000 by Tim Veater

Despite the blast, the yellow liquid sparkles through my veins

And in what false contentment I momentarily lie,

Suspended over aching void,

An uncompleted empty room.

What effort in an edifice I put and placed my trust in tottering towers,

Which now collapse to smoking pyres.

Great lumps of masonry falling past my head.

A Colosseum in which so many people disappeared.

And bloody sweats seeped into sand,

Poured from a crystal jug of faith and steadfastness,

The saints are dead and feared.

Conquer the cult of long hours, resist the urge for working on.

The pile of paper merely buries mind, rendering it unfit for what is done.

Ruled by incessant tick tock, places head upon the block.

The clock, merciless and masterful,

Is to be unwound and stopped.

75. Missing

Do you know what it is to really miss some one?

Can you feel what it is to care?

To enter a room expecting someone -

And be met with vacant stare?

A room squashed full of people

Each one an unique face,

Attracting dilated pupils,

To discover none of them match?

Or in the evening, sitting in favourite chair,

Listening outside for a motor,

Or footsteps when nobody's there.

Or staring at the telephone

Hoping that it rings

And when it does the thrill of expectation

Or trough the stranger brings.

Or the joy of recognition

When in serendipity,

You make a chance encounter,

Proving synchronicity?

When in every passing moment

There's a part of you at play

Wondering where, and what and why,

Whenever they're away?

And you wish that you could see them

Like an angel in the sky

And swoop right down beside them

To try to catch their eye.

And you hanker for the past sometimes

For the mad impulsive past

For the mad impulsive past sometimes

Always knowing it could not last.

Mist

A melancholy mist

Hangs from invisible strands

Over a silent serendipity.

The shiny silver ground

Emanates an effluvia

Like a New York street.

The air is thick with sound

A strange white noise

Like colours mixed losing their meaning.

The whole of nature fast asleep

Lulled by this hypnotic ether.

Three figures paths pass

By chance or dream like fate

Within a hundred yards.

Tangentially they cross the street

But do not intersect

Or even acknowledge

Their common ground, and

Granite posts mark the way of their going.

Silent, as if to speak

Would break some secret spell

Plunging the whole world into darkness.

Mole Hill

Have you ever lain in bed at 5 o'clock,

At the first inkling of a new morning

And heard a cloud of droplets fall

On far off naked leaves,

Before they patter on your roof -

Your window pane -

Like the muffled sound of soldiers feet

Marching towards you?


Or have you ever stood in the corner of a virgin field

With just one earthy mound,

All brown and covered in gaudy unnatural flowers -

Like a Mardi Gras mole hill -

And read the words of a young son for a young father?

If so we have shared a moment

And the rain has not rained in vain.

Missing Moments

the days come and go,

whether u want them to or no

and whatever befall,

u can never recall the moment,

unique everyone,

what's done is what's done,

what's not done and what's missed,

like the morning dew,

when kissed by sun,

as if by magic disappears

and is gone.

Moon

Scarred and arid sphere

That haunts our sleeping hours,

Suspended without strings

Not unlike ourselves.

A limpet night time stalker,

Reassuringly predictable.

Looming lemon in the east,

Shrinking silver on its ascendant throne,

As clouds of emissaries

Fleetingly gain audience,

Before in a benign decline

It exits damask red.

Opal to ruby in progressive crescents,

Solstice and eclipse combine

To pass the longest night

To mark the greatest gulf

From life enhancing sun.

Pock-marked by time

Like some virgin queen,

To whom on bended knee

We obeisance render;

Praying just

For her beneficent smile

To quell the terror

Of an ice cold stare

Or winter of abandonment.

Moon Dust

Lying on his back,

Space-cold and starry-bright.

When all the sky is black

But for the glittering night.

The moon in splendid languor,

Sheds its palest beam

Makes all other heavenly bodies dull

Reigning supreme.

The million million fiery spheres

Which round it shine,

Cannot compete with this,

Despite it being only borrowed time.

Thus in this moon lit glow

So too you shine on me

Lying recumbent ,silent and in awe,

In waning set me free.

A diamond effervescence

Fills all the empty space

And magically transforms

This time and place.

The magic lunar dust streams down

Into my waiting cup.

Distilling spell-bound liquor.

Filling it up.

Mount's Bay!

On silver platter the ocean glides,
Mercurial lines of grey,
Slide metal plate, on metal plate,
Towards the over-arching sky.

Sweeping from iconic St Michael's Mount
To silhouetted Penzance town of dome
And tower and many roofs of wood and slate:
Mount's Bay embraced by homes.

Shining blindingly in the West,
The sun a million, million footsteps hence
From suspended scorching flame
To this fine experience.

 
But towards the east, magnetic sea,
So blue upon the sight,
Even the hardest heart would soften, 

Break, upon the blight.

The shuffle of the pebbles, round on round,
The screech of Oyster Catcher, Curlew, Lap Wing,
And man with bounding barking dog,
Black shapes against the silver sing.

Later, a deep Vermillion fills the sky,
Ground from a rock called Cinnabar,
To which the blazing sea reflects, relates,

An oriental star.

Great artist, who with deft stroke and rich palette,
Created such stupendous canvass, ever changing!

We stand in awe, awestruck we contemplate

This grand mesmeric painting.  

The sinking fire beckons the quieting dusk,
Then night, when multitudes spectacular,
Illuminate with twinkling gems of light,
The auditorium called the space afar.

 
Reminding us how small we are,

How bound by fate, we acquiesce

And know our humble place  
A momentary flash of sentient aberrance.

Whilst surrounding all, a vast unfathomable moat,
Enfolds us in its temperate arms,
To lull us gently into sleep,
A timeless and eternal banishment.

My only thought: Should I my lover meet?

Night Rhyme

My life follows a set routine,

I go to bed, I sleep, I dream.

Meeting, greeting, those familiar friends

Who haunt me from ephemeral realms.

At three-thirty-three a noise disturbs.

Is it a rat or nesting birds?

The darkness to the other senses lend

A heightened nerve.

Are those footsteps that I hear?

What whispering voices in my ear?

A ghostly presence here descend?

Or background music of the spheres?

No, the padding up the stairs,

Is just my faithful dog, quite unawares

Of the disturbance that it fends,

Of which he neither knows or cares

At five-fifty-five the world awakes.

My feathered choir a joyful chorus makes.

Banishing the darkness, all amends,

With cheerful song that resonates.

So starts another optimistic day,

Where fade the terrors of the night away.

Triumphant hope eternal blends,

In trilling, thrilling, play.

New Year – 2020

This time of mine, when I awake

From slumbers deep I overtake

Another night,

And claim the time as mine.

In twenty/twenty vision see

The day emerge

To resonate with all the earth.

For 'nine o'clock' is only here,

Elsewhere around this revolving orb

Is other time and restless place

A myriad different views.

Lights, weathers, heats,

Plunged in deep, dark sleep

Or setting red in angry glows.

Seven billion hopes or fears

Arrive or leave, struggling to survive.

Or like me here, lie in lost repose,

Hardly alert, yet wondering,

Expectant what new day and year

May fling my way or interpose.

No longer young, the years have slipped away,

With this 'Elizabethan Age' in sad decay,

Yet every passing, offers something new.

As if to make the point the sun breaks through,

A cyclone high the year renews,

Bare creamy branches wave against the grey.

I write my lines and sip my tea,

Wondering what new day and year may bring,

Leaving all those characters in dreams,

To face them in reality.

The fountains of the deep are broken up,

The rivers run with blood,

The skies are red with forest fires,

The oceans surge a mighty flood.

Yet all is bathed in morning light,

And silence reigns supreme,

Black cat sits licking on my lap,

Contented and serene.

Whatever spirit lords it all,

Of nature or a higher power,

Take pity on our mortal state,

To rescue us from greed and arrogance,

In this current hour.

The evil spirit treating others with disdain,

Causing so much anguish, hatred, pain,

Bind hands so soaked in blood.

And lying tongues that war, whilst speaking peace,

The foppish bragging fool,

Deliver us and what is more,

Reward those with humble heart,

And let the meek flourish here,

To care and care to make a just inheritance,

For those that follow - far and near.

Night Visitor.

Just before the night descended,

But before the light went out,

A dark shadow of a shape alighted

On the oak tree branch without.

Quickly I reached for my glasses,

Focused on the spectre there,

Yes indeed, as I had guessed it,

Tawny Owl just sat and stared.

Although in darkness it could see me

Better than I could it,

Just moments later it decided

It was time to flit.

No sooner had I fixed my eye upon it,

It had spread its wings and fled,

Swooping down into the meadow,

Harbinger of something dread.

A strange feeling overcame me,

Party to a secret sight,

Member of exclusive moment,

Fleeting, silent, holy flight.

Was it neighbour come to see me?

Restless spirit of the dead?

Reminder of some dear departed

Things they'd done and things they'd said?

Or an omen of things coming,

Day before my son's birth day?

Day before the Big Duke's gathering

In a city far away?

Cacophony of bells still ringing

In my head amidst the stones,

I discovered Jack and Mable,

After forty years had flown.

Night

Dark looms the lane,

The tattered leaves are shaking,

The air soft perfumed on my skin,

A time preceding waking.

What may be called the dead of night

The dead themselves are sleeping,

But now a million million breaths

Exhale in silent weeping.

The heavens above bedecked with silver gleaming

We long for something more than careless forces clashing.

We yearn for love and knowing - a sense of place

Some reassurance for our going.

Amidst this vast unfeeling space,

Whilst still my mind is draped in dreams

The silent night envelops all

And welcomes with embracing arms

Long gone Demosthenes.

Noises in the Head

my voice is carried on the wind

it is drowned by the roar of the waves

the metallic chatter of the helicopter blades.

in the gale of life. Even from the cliff tops

my words are snatched, before they leave the lips,

like dice within a plastic cup, rattling,

or drums in some dense forest, pounding,

each single syllable a beat

careering around this bony dome;

a team of tiny miners hammering

on tin plates anxious to be fed.

castanets and timpani, a cacophony of sound,

Meccano bits and pieces,

loose nuts and bolts of thought

now pour out like weak tea

through a fine strainer

with added milk and sugar

the remnants of a brew

leaving only a faded afterglow

from the diversity of experience

the  faint after-shocks

of tequila nights

long since perspired.

Night Rhyme

My life follows a set routine,

I go to bed, I sleep, I dream.

Meeting, greeting, those familiar friends

Who haunt me from ephemeral realms.

At three-thirty-three a noise disturbs.

Is it a rat or nesting birds?

The darkness to the other senses lend

A heightened nerve.

Are those footsteps that I hear?

What whispering voices in my ear?

A ghostly presence here descend?

Or background music of the spheres?

No, the padding up the stairs,

Is just my faithful dog, quite unawares

Of the disturbance that it fends,

Of which he neither knows or cares

At five-fifty-five the world awakes.

My feathered choir a joyful chorus makes.

Banishing the darkness, all amends,

With cheerful song that resonates.

So starts another optimistic day,

Where fade the terrors of the night away.

Triumphant hope eternal blends,

In trilling, thrilling, play.

New Year – 2020

This time of mine, when I awake

From slumbers deep I overtake

Another night,

And claim the time as mine.

In twenty/twenty vision see

The day emerge

To resonate with all the earth.

For 'nine o'clock' is only here,

Elsewhere around this revolving orb

Is other time and restless place

A myriad different views.

Lights, weathers, heats,

Plunged in deep, dark sleep

Or setting red in angry glows.

Seven billion hopes or fears

Arrive or leave, struggling to survive.

Or like me here, lie in lost repose,

Hardly alert, yet wondering,

Expectant what new day and year

May fling my way or interpose.

No longer young, the years have slipped away,

With this 'Elizabethan Age' in sad decay,

Yet every passing, offers something new.

As if to make the point the sun breaks through,

A cyclone high the year renews,

Bare creamy branches wave against the grey.

I write my lines and sip my tea,

Wondering what new day and year may bring,

Leaving all those characters in dreams,

To face them in reality.

The fountains of the deep are broken up,

The rivers run with blood,

The skies are red with forest fires,

The oceans surge a mighty flood.

Yet all is bathed in morning light,

And silence reigns supreme,

Black cat sits licking on my lap,

Contented and serene.

Whatever spirit lords it all,

Of nature or a higher power,

Take pity on our mortal state,

To rescue us from greed and arrogance,

In this current hour.

The evil spirit treating others with disdain,

Causing so much anguish, hatred, pain,

Bind hands so soaked in blood.

And lying tongues that war, whilst speaking peace,

The foppish bragging fool,

Deliver us and what is more,

Reward those with humble heart,

And let the meek flourish here,

To care and care to make a just inheritance,

For those that follow - whether far and near.

Night Visitor.

Just before the night descended,

But before the light went out,

A dark shadow of a shape alighted

On the oak tree branch without.

Quickly I reached for my glasses,

Focused on the spectre there,

Yes indeed, as I had guessed it,

Tawny Owl just sat and stared.

Although in darkness it could see me

Better than I could it,

Just moments later it decided

It was time to flit.

No sooner had I fixed my eye upon it,

It had spread its wings and fled,

Swooping down into the meadow,

Harbinger of something dread.

A strange feeling overcame me,

Party to a secret sight,

Member of exclusive moment,

Fleeting, silent, holy flight.

Was it neighbour come to see me?

Restless spirit of the dead?

Reminder of some dear departed

Things they'd done and things they'd said?

Or an omen of things coming,

Day before my son's birth day?

Day before the Big Duke's gathering

In a city far away?

Cacophony of bells still ringing

In my head amidst the stones,

I discovered Jack and Mable,

After forty years had flown.

Night

Dark looms the lane,

The tattered leaves are shaking,

The air soft perfumed on my skin,

A time preceding waking.

What may be called the dead of night

The dead themselves are sleeping,

But now a million million breaths

Exhale in silent weeping.

The heavens above bedecked with silver gleaming

We long for something more than careless forces clashing.

We yearn for love and knowing - a sense of place

Some reassurance for our going.

Amidst this vast unfeeling space,

Whilst still my mind is draped in dreams

The silent night envelops all

And welcomes with embracing arms

Long gone Demosthenes.

Noises in the Head

my voice is carried on the wind

it is drowned by the roar of the waves

the metallic chatter of the helicopter blades.

in the gale of life. Even from the cliff tops

my words are snatched, before they leave the lips,

like dice within a plastic cup, rattling,

or drums in some dense forest, pounding,

each single syllable a beat

careering around this bony dome;

a team of tiny miners hammering

on tin plates anxious to be fed.

castanets and timpani, a cacophony of sound,

Meccano bits and pieces,

loose nuts and bolts of thought

now pour out like weak tea

through a fine strainer

with added milk and sugar

the remnants of a brew

leaving only a faded afterglow

from the diversity of experience

the  faint after-shocks

of tequila nights

long since perspired.

Ode to a Cracked Mug

 

Oh dear Mugabe what shall we do?

You've ruined poor Zimbabwe now

And you haven't even got a clue

How you should make good the harms.


You were a freedom fighter once.

What does that really mean?

Free to what I wonder?

To kill and steal and scheme?


Independence, independence,

How happy people were?

To be free of white oppression

And the accidental arrogance of birth;


But my dear Mugabe

Its time the mug should go,

For a tyrant is no better

For being black you know.


You may ride around in big black cars,

Treat freedom with contempt,

Stifling opposition,

When you really should repent.


You haven't learned a thing you know,

Though eighty years have passed:

That pomp and power illusions are,

And only love will last.


What an empty shell you've come to now

Tin god with feet of clay.

Like Hitler in his bunker,

Its time you passed away.


Your leader Marx has let you down,

You're corrupt beyond belief,

And very soon you'll disappear

To everyone's relief.


So people of Zimbabwe,

Stay strong and don't despair,

The Lion's just a pussy now,

And hiding in his lair.


For time has got the habit

Of washing stains away.

"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality come soon"

The suffering masses pray.

Ode to a Cracked Mug

 

Oh dear Mugabe what shall we do?

You've ruined poor Zimbabwe now

And you haven't even got a clue

How you should make good the harms.


You were a freedom fighter once.

What does that really mean?

Free to what I wonder?

To kill and steal and scheme?


Independence, independence,

How happy people were?

To be free of white oppression

And the accidental arrogance of birth;


But my dear Mugabe

Its time the mug should go,

For a tyrant is no better

For being black you know.


You may ride around in big black cars,

Treat freedom with contempt,

Stifling opposition,

When you really should repent.


You haven't learned a thing you know,

Though eighty years have passed:

That pomp and power illusions are,

And only love will last.


What an empty shell you've come to now

Tin god with feet of clay.

Like Hitler in his bunker,

Its time you passed away.


Your leader Marx has let you down,

You're corrupt beyond belief,

And very soon you'll disappear

To everyone's relief.


So people of Zimbabwe,

Stay strong and don't despair,

The Lion's just a pussy now,

And hiding in his lair.


For time has got the habit

Of washing stains away.

"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality come soon"

The suffering masses pray.

Ogden Nash (Tribute to)

Ogden Nash, cut quite a dash,

All his life churning out humorous verses.

Sadly on the day, when he passed away,

Surrounded by doctors and nurses

His mind went quite blank and his optimism sank

As he could think of nothing funny to say,

So there were glum faces all round and hardly a sound

And silence in all of the hearses.

But when at the wake, they made the mistake

Of reading aloud his favorite poem,

They all laughed so much, the Vicar said such,

A joyous occasion he'd never seen since he was an ovum.

Old Friend

A printer's apprentice he became

Book-binding skill by any other name

All grown up and went away

Only the childish memories remain

Lodged within my addled adult brain

A remnant of a distant sound

Reverberates inside my hollow skull

Stuck fast like stalactite

Hanging from a limestone wall

Deep underground

He was a boy, an all male friend

And all the things that I was not

I did not plead to seek his love

But revelled in it when it flowed

His heavy arm wrapped round my head

Playing with my right hand ear

Unseen, my spirit glowed

As across the playground yard we strolled

I guess when I was eight and he was ten

He walked me home

As now in bed I lay

Late in the night, late in the day

A lifetime lost like water flowing down a drain

I struggle to recall those precious moments

Lost but valued still

That follow me against his will

And still remain

Reignited by a FaceBook post

Familiar face and smile but aged

A lifetime separating them and us

Retaining yet an echo of that innocent embrace

A glimmer of a fire almost gone out

Yet embers warm the cockles of the heart

So unashamed I remember now

Yes I command my brain to act

Recalling what I can of moments gone

Before the flickering candle spits and dies

Recall, recall, I here demand what cells remain

An honest game of poker played in a far-off land

I'd pay again to feel and see the dealer's hand.

 

On the death of a Jay and a Passing Train by Tim Veater "See you soon", he said as he flew away, Parted by a level crossing - we'd had the sun-filled day. Nor has he yet, though yet he may. I cannot quite prove or bet on it. For even as I write, perhaps, He has tried to get through on some device Or some pretence. A pretext contrived, To keep a promise made in jest, At flashing light on mountain bikes. But since then, we haven't met, Despite the deafening roar of passing train. "Take this", he said, Pulling a 'hoody' top from out his back-pack. The night was coming on and with it chill. The sacrifice was sweet And I succumbed without demur. Indeed it did the job, smelling of him, A heady perfumed mix of smoke and sweat. When I got home I hung it on a chair And quite forgot that it was there, On back of both, where it remained, Not yet retrieved but sacrificial, lent. "Keep the top!" in anger said. What made him change his mind isn't clear, But something isn't right. Oh how without a word, or with just one, The wind can change, From balmy south to bitter east. And back again: "No rush" he said, When later trying to be kind. But which is better, which is worse, It's really very hard to say, When trains rush by and love has died. He "may call in when passing", Or failing that "will see me soon", If time and tide allow. "So busy now." "So many things to see and do." Meanwhile, whilst setting out on bike, There in the Long Lane road, The remains of a freshly squashed Jay, That lately was a favoured friend, Daily flying in to peck, eager yet wary, Now blue/white feathers, soaked in red, What once was always round, Is now squashed flat on't ground.

"See you soon", he said as he flew away,
Parted by a level crossing - we'd had the sun-filled day.
Nor has he yet, though yet he may.
I cannot quite prove or bet on it.
For even as I write, perhaps,
He has tried to get through on some device
Or some pretence. A pretext contrived,
To keep a promise made in jest,
At flashing light on mountain bikes.
But since then, we haven't met,
Despite the deafening roar of passing train.

"Take this", he said,
Pulling a 'hoody' top from out his back-pack.
The night was coming on and with it chill.
The sacrifice was sweet
And I succumbed without demur.
Indeed it did the job, smelling of him,
A heady perfumed mix of smoke and sweat.
When I got home I hung it on a chair
And quite forgot that it was there,
On back of both, where it remained,
Not yet retrieved but sacrificial, lent.

"Keep the top!" in anger said.
What made him change his mind isn't clear,
But something isn't right.
Oh how without a word, or with just one,
The wind can change,
From balmy south to bitter east.
And back again: "No rush" he said,
When later trying to be kind.
But which is better, which is worse,
It's really very hard to say,
When trains rush by and love has died.

He "may call in when passing",
Or failing that "will see me soon",
If time and tide allow. "So busy now."
"So many things to see and do."
Meanwhile, whilst setting out on bike,
There in the Long Lane road,
The remains of a freshly squashed Jay,
That lately was a favoured friend,
Daily flying in to peck, eager yet wary,
Now just blue/white feathers, soaked in red,
What once was always round, is now flat-packed.

Opting Out


At breakfast time when sun comes up,
And robins start to sing,
The world is changed from shapeless black,
To startling blue and green.

I in my favourite state recline,
Bathed in a yellow light,
All warm and safe and in between
The day and restless night.

With duvet under arms and chin,
With mug of tea and Times,
The music flows from Radio Three
And all of nature chimes.

Let cities race like manic child,
Let all the cars be chased,
Let all the trains in tubes run wild,
Let queues abound, let pulses race.

I have had enough of them,
I have had my fill of place,
Gladly I bequeath them all
To crazy human grace.

In loosing all, I am enriched.
In poverty, there is gain.
So warm and cosy in my nest,
Where I shall fast remain.

Surveying all the world outside
In futile struggle, warring strife,
I peacefully am at repose,
Content to live my quiet life.

The only wars are in my head;
The only absence love.
Fair price to pay I'm wondering,
To part with the push and shove

So bed is now my habitat,
I'm stuck in it like glue.
What would so many others give,
For leave to be there too?

Owl's Cry

The owl is hooting. Hoot, hoot, hooting.

The owl is hooting close at bay.

At dead of night when all is quiet,

And darkness ebbs our life away.

Hollow sound the owl is calling,

Hollow like the chestnut tree,

Where he sits, his wide eyes falling

On the prey that may not flee.

Still, so still, it makes you wonder,

Where has all the madness gone?

Sucked into some vacant chamber,

Anechoic silence come.

So right here we stay and ponder,

On the absence of it all,

Gone the lightening and the thunder,

Nothing now but owl's call.

With a shadow passing over,

Merest whisper of a sigh,

Searching out the perfect other,

No time to waste the dawn is nigh.

Every dream and every longing,

All hellos and all goodbyes,

In this sound are all belonging,

Eerie haunting owl's cry.

Passing Time

As jackdaws swoop out of the sky

On languid wings a heron gliding by,

A distant sheep lets out a cry

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

The naked branches wave their limbs

Responding to the restless wind,

Emitting mystic whistling

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

Upon the curving washing line

The swelling sheets flap out in time

To billowing clouds that scud the sky

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

The buzzard screech, the pheasant croak

A motor cycle raucous note,

The wheeling sounds of lapwing float

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

The dog snores prostrate on the floor

The cat flaps through the kitchen door,

Meowing she's been here before

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

A thousand drops on window pane

Make a thousand suns again,

The sound of pitter patter rain

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

The strains of Schubert filter in

Piano, cello, violin,

In tune, in time, sweet life passing,

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

So many many tongues wag all around,

Competing for the greatest sound,

Here gladly, sadly, only one is found

And the clock ticks, tock, tick.

Instrument measuring minutes, hours and days,

Accompanying background sound that says,

However much you make a noise to deaden it,

Persistent, repetitious, tick, tock, tick.

Peace

Peace perfect peace

Swelling the songs of silence

When passing people reprise

The sensuous fleeting pockets

Of compassion

Singing the songs of passion

Slowly through the spaces

Time and motion leave behind.

People people falling

Into the void of forgetting

The tangled wreckage of life

Begging to leave

Singing the screams of expectation

The awfulness of being

Covering the eyes of children

Not wishing to see into the future

Impervious to the bullets whistling

Through the silken fabric

Of tormented human flesh

Fathers and their brothers

Brothers and their sons

All fall down together

One.

Meanwhile to clanking mechanical sounds

And cheerful whistling

Dead men drive off

A job well done.

Photograph

Frozen in time, the innocent smile

Is framed in a gilded circle.

Fine strands flow over crags

Impenetrable windows on a simple soul

Pink lips reveal the bleached enamel

Of an innocent flame of

Flickering happiness.

Ten years grown apart

Cold winds blow from the north.

Frozen in time

Waiting for spring thaw.

Cycling

Cycling is just a way
Of putting off what needs to be done -
A sort of procrastination in motion;
A cyclical laissez faire of A to B,
And back again;
A pointless exercise in postponing
The inevitable loss of balance.

With each turn of the crank
And each revolution of the wheel,
Circular is transformed to linear,
Giving the impression of progress -
And we are all taken in with progress.

Inhaling the damp seaweed,
Caressed by the fine face mist,
The world reels past:
Changing but staying the same,
Just as it does on Panorama.

Radio Three. 

This song of praise I raise to thee, 

For all the heavenly choirs, 

That miraculously enter here, 

And float a while, 

Upon the evening hours. 

What instrument of voice, 

Vibrating vocal chords and string, spring out, 

To dance upon the hungry ear. 

How many brains have here combined, 

To write, compose, to learn and play?

 

What Genius here was late deployed 

To wing the waves from there to here? 

Composer, writer, scientist combine 

To waft us to another plane, 

Where time and timelessness combine? 

Sublime. 

Radio Waves

Every night at some unearthly hour,

I climb the stairs alone

And switch the radio on,

Which by some miracle transmits

The music of the spheres

Directly to my room.


Which in the twinkling of an eye,

Connects invisibly

Over vast plains of space and history,

The sounds of genius,

Both in the hands and minds

Of he who first created

And she who with deft fingers

Conveys the notes sublime.


This bed! This place!

Where over time, so many symphonies were played;

So many sonatas, arias and sighs.

Where beauty deigned to tarry,

If only for a while,

And outstretched arms reached out

To grasp the mirage of

An enigmatic, reassuring smile.

 The Rain it Raineth


To whom the dogs belong?

Whose shadows stain the shiny prom?


And who the woman, who the man,

In brown and black, passing their time

Walking into their future, into our past,

Before the threatening wave at last?


Never to break, Never to move.

Stuck fast to canvas with oily shoes.

A little girl and little maid,

A brolly up but not for shade.


Policeman walks with sodden cape,

Arrested by the artist's swipe.

An empty road, an empty street,

Echoing to those passing feet.


And cries of laughter borne on wind;

Where go they? What destination firm in mind?

Somewhere sure, perhaps warm and sweet?

In distant houses white and neat?


The hearth; a weeping mother's hug?

A steaming tea in favourite mug?

Or grumpy sergeant at the door?

"Come on man What's thee waitin' for?"


White horses whipped towards the strand,

Flip drenching manes all over land.

Whilst loyal kind in shanks stands still,

Head lowered to the greater will.


(And all things wise and wonderful)

Like time, ethereal time, caught in the lull.

Janus progeny, when we like he,

Looking forwards, backwards see.


What we view now, the passing scene,

As we are here, they once have been;

Is set in paint in winter's land,

By magic wave of artist's hand.

So may we gaze and gasp and say

"It truly was a rainy day!"

Inner Ear

another good film bites the dust

another night is o'er

another conversation done

and what is more is more

and what is less, is more or less,

pure as the air is pure

a flower that fades

is none the less a flower

 
the scent that graced the room

 
though now is lost,

yet with the merest whiff,

:has still enormous power.

 

the beauty of each petal,

long dropped upon the ground

can still evoke a memory

a look, a word, a sound

that resonates

to inner ear profound.

Reflections

Bonds of affection.

What are they now I'm wondering?

Letters tied up with string?

Old cards on the mantlepiece?

Long faded flowers from spring?

Little head of yellow curls

Every wish indulged

The fairy queen with eager court

Crowd round a birthday cake

Aflame with promise to support

The lemonade, sandwiches, ice cream,

In summer heat did melt.

A little peddle bike in red

On Saturday errands delivering the meat

I fleet of foot accompanying

The lady's retinue in the street

Supporting cast or caste..

Oh poor uncared for little man,

Running still behind in dreams,

Remembering those summers gone,

The smell of grass and sheets of rain,

To what cold place the balmy winds

To what bare room or drain

Do they belong?

Perhaps without a birthday cake

No friends around to cheer

No bike to ride or rugby boots

Left shrapnel deep inside.

Too dangerous to clear.

(Poor) Reply


Glad you are enjoying brilliant weather

(Slight slight ignored). 

(Nor would it do to show affection)

You like wind, blow hot and cold,

It's natural deception.

 

For me the pebbles too were very hot.

The sea was very cold.

The contrast cannot be denied.

A memory to keep inside 

'Till you are very old

.

With one foot in the sands of time,

The other in the grave,

We shouldn't diss the things we had

Or devalue precious gold.

Love is a strange emotion.

It is a bitter pill without a likely outcome.

Our salty tears mean nothing 

To the vastness of the ocean.

Resting Place

I sat amidst the serried ranks of grey,
Flecked granite polished smooth.
Stone shaped and etched in black,
Recording names and dates and epitaphs,
Of those who didn’t make it through the night.

Hard those beds where now they sleep,
All facing east, towards in faith, a grand awakening.
A faint reflection of long faded years,
Obscured by unleaded, lichened time.

Names that ring bells and awaken misted memories,
When young and vibrant in hope,
We snatched landscaped snippets here and there,
Emotions sea-gulling in their wake.

Sometimes the symbol of the cross
Or something more elaborate
But mostly just blank stone or slate
Upon which, inscribed in just a few unlettered words
The essence of a life once experienced.

Where partners separated, catch up,
And grief itself is cured.
And all the love and loss,
The freezing cold and scalding heat,
Is here united in a sentiment of love and peace.

Pauper anonymous, on timber cross,
Lies unconcerned by fate or etiquette,
Adjacent to Barbara, Lady You Know Who,
Speaking beyond the grave: “Say not goodnight
But in some fairer clime, Bid us good morning”.

Meanwhile, a large black sexton crow
Waddles unperturbed amidst the sward
And swallows dart, like spirits,
Betwixt, between, the never-fading yew.

Gulval Sonnet

This is where partners separated, catch up,
And grief itself is cured.
And all the love and loss,
The freezing cold and scalding heat,
Is here united in a sentiment of love and peace.
Pauper anonymous, on timber cross,
Lies unconcerned by fate or etiquette,
Adjacent to Barbara, Lady-You-Know, Who
Speaking beyond the grave: Says not goodnight
But in some fairer clime, Bids us good morning.
Meanwhile, a large black sexton crow
Waddles unperturbed amidst the sward
And swallows dart, like spirits,
Betwixt, between, the never-fading yew.

The Boy's Prayer

Father, Father where are you? I do not know your name,

You were around when I was young and then you went away.

My lord has gone. I'm all undone. My bread is lacking leaven.

School meals are good, I like the food but its not the same at seven.

I try to be the best I can and kind to everyone,

But Spikey Moss gets up my nose and Sally Jones is bum.

I'm sorry for the things I did, that made you go away

And hope that you might find the time, to just pop in some day.

Temptations crowd in all around. They're very hard to beat,

Maybe a father big and strong would help me them defeat?

Although I try to let you go, you're always in my head,

I yearn a bigger hand in mine and someone in your stead.

I'm always looking out for you, in all the men I see,

I know one day I'll meet the man, who you were meant to be.

But until then, I'm playing my computer in the hope that I might find,

All the power and all the glory, of a world you left behind.

Sea Song

The tar-macadamed night

Sparkles with expectation,

As cypher signals from a distant ocean

Strike blow on blow before the anvil shore.

Immersed in waves of light and sound and water,

We plunged in deep, straining to accommodate

Love's sweet, bitter, painful metre,

Filled to the brim with lunar distillation,

We wax and wane, a pale reflection

Of some elusive beat

In God's pulsating score.

Parting Sorrows

If all the partings of the past,
All farewells and all goodbyes,
Were condensed into a liquid,
What a mighty tearful sigh?

All the rivers all the seas
All the reservoirs and lakes
All the mountain streams and rivulets
Would fail this watery ache.

The little boy dispatched to dorm
In lonely bed his body lies.
Abandoned by the ones who should have loved,
Whilst silent tears stream from his eyes.

The dedicated couple aged and worn,
Inconsolably separated at the workhouse gates,
Borne on the wings of heartless state
Parted asunder by an unforgiving fate.

A black edged telegram arrives in the post
The dreaded news that they are gone
Or announcement in the local press
That loved one won't now be coming home.

All the last adieus at ports at stations
on trains and boats and planes
In swirling steam or blazing sun
A catalogue of unknown names.

The vacuum that's never filled again
The empty valedictory arms
Which forlornly yearn for a return
Lingering as long as life has charms.

So many brief encounters lost
Locked hidden in the mists of time
Only imperfect memory and history access here
And only empathy alone can mime.

Separation


Was ever heard such mournful cry

On night's damp, silent air?

As in some dark and distant barn,

A beast emits a searing roar.


There amidst the granite bare,

From some primeval feeling gene,

Spills out the sound of tortured fear,

A calling out for what has been.


For who should say it is alone,

In being torn and ripped apart,

When loosing loved ones once undone,

Opens the sinews of the heart.


Despite a cloven hoof and head of horns,

The shaggy coat the flicking tail,

They also bare a crown of thorns,

The common sound of nature's veil.


For in that eerie moan of pain,

Despite the gulf, a common woe,

A calling for a thing that's lost,

The hollow sound of letting go.

Sheltering Sky


What makes for joy between two minds?

Where in some timeless space, do spirits meet?

Protected place where stalking darkness waits

To intervene in shadows. A fleeting indentation.
.

Plunged into a sweet and sticky syrup of desire,

Marked by the smooth and rounded shapes of skin,

Mysterious bodies wheel their mirroring course.

Bone china white, draped in erotic soft muslin,


Lap-winging their way across the contours of the night.

Blown by the wind, Sahara hot and dry,

A flock of birds in endless flight

Rippling sand the waves explore and fly.


In undulating stillness down

Towards the lush and verdant watering hole

Where with arms outstretched and a mighty cry

They plunge their bodies whole.


Here chilled water cools their fire

And only touch and smell assert their dues,

A gentle sound of tinkling bells

Amidst the arid unforgiving dunes.





Shooting Star


It dropped a jewel from the night

From empty blackness it appeared

Blood red, glittering white, weirdly green,

I knew not whether to run or fight;

Instead I stayed just where I stood,

Transfixed by what I saw,

Welded to the ground which between

Divided us and kept us separate.

Some precious stone I thought,

Ruby or diamond or emerald,

I could not ascertain.

Maybe imagination

Had done its oft nefarious work

Or some despotic force

Had grabbed me in its spell.

Maybe I had seen a shooting star

Or some inexplicable phenomenon,

Some other-worldly poltergeist,

A flaming brand of burning iron

Consumed by nothing more than atmosphere,

Leaves only worthless rock upon the ground,

A remnant of some distant star,

A speck of interstellar dust

That wandering devoid of rest

Remains eternally in motion

Until consumed by earthly fire.

Small Step

Yuri Gagarin spun round the earth

The world woke up to its place in space

And a new age.

Around the table we listened intent

To Ian Shepherd's voice,

Distorted by primitive forces

And distance.

We were very late

To the technological race,

Amidst considerable debris

Of mediaeval guilt

A wireless entered our sphere

And now conveyed

These incredible sounds.

Was it a Sunday afternoon?

Or was it a Tuesday? No matter.

For once we all fell silent,

Impressed by the achievement;

Straining to hear

The music of the spheres.

One in the eye for god!

But our father,

Not yet in heaven,

Saw it differently;

Predicting with solemn authority,

God would never allow

Man to walk on the moon.

Not for the first time,

In common with the pope,

He was not infallible.

But by the end of the decade,

With it crashed

The whole fragile superstructure.

With the first small step

My father started to shake,

But not his faith.

Like Job despite the earthquake,

He would not be moved.

A second Noah a second flood,

Of the words my father spoke

Which at the time were held in awe,

Have vanished now without a trace,

Obliterated from memory.

Except this one so strangely fixed.

How could my father be so wrong?

How could he with so few words,

Bring my universe crashing down?

Would it not have greatly to have been preferred

To remain in splendid ignorance?

Looking up at stars in wonder,

Mental pictures of exotic buildings,

Composing fine music,

Believing things that could not be disproved,

Steeped in bigotry and faith.

Striving to love the the things that love would prove,

Hating the things that hatred hates,

Eden before the tree,

Innocence before concupiscence,

Apple before the rot.

Smirnoff's Quest

The dry white forms in limestone cut,

Converse with themselves alone.

Cliffs that once survived the flood,

Are hewn by sculptor's arm.

Angel of death with wings unfurled,

Disconsolate Divine.

The angst of ages being writ,

Permanently in stone inscribed.

Anaemic torso frozen fast,

Into the moment disappeared.

Truncated limbs holds down the past,

A throne between its thighs is weird.

Bold scull looks right with sightless eyes,

Turning away its stare.

Its tears condense from vacant orbs,

See not the bathing there.

Hard virgin bleached, by sun and rain,

In nakedness we went away.

In nakedness we came again,

Just like the god who breathed upon the clay.

So Smirnoff breathes upon the stone 

And makes it come alive aloft.

Over the poet's bath of suds and foam,

Like Alan Ginsberg's cough.

Sock.

If I told you I was talking to my socks

Would you think me strange?

Well it was huddling at the bottom

Of my track suit leg,

Like some al-Qaeda terrorist

And I frustrated its attempt to hide

From my right foot.

“I’ve got you”, I said in triumph,

Not knowing whether the primal spirit

That lurked in the toe

Was alive or dead.

My peasant life is not unpleasant these days,

I cannot complain.

The woolly jumper my mother knitted me in 1963,

Still keeps me company.

As I swim in a sea of music,

The sun and moon take turns

To punctuate the passing days

With light and shade,

Whilst socks evade my capture

And do not respond to questioning,

I'm afraid.

The Song of the Doggie Man

Come and buy a bow-wow dog. Dogs for home and sport.

Waggle tails and draggle tails. Dogs both tall and short.

Runny dogs and funny dogs, ready for a lark.

Happy dogs and yappy dogs and dogs that never bark.

Fluffy dogs and roughy dogs. Dogs with puppies many.

Waily dogs and taily dogs and dogs that haven't any.

Buy oh buy my bow-wow dogs. Fat or thin or tall,

Jumpy dogs or grumpy dogs. Dogs to suit you all.

Anon. (Sadly not mine!)

Sound Song

Luo ye gui gen

Ru ying sui xing

Dian tie cheng jin

Xiu se ke can

Ji chang chun meng

Zi chu ji zhu

Men dang hu dui

You he bu ke

Yi qin yi he

Jia ji shui ji

Xin ru si hui

Tian zuo zhi he

Si mian chu ge

Chu cha dan fan

Yin shui si yuan

Spring Morning

Sitting on the lichened seat

All limey green exfoliate,

In radiant springtime heat

Soaking up the naked light and sweat

Throbbing to avian chorus most sublime

A beat almost too painful.

My mum! My mum! My mum!

Is on my mind.

How she would have thrilled

To be here too,

With fingers ever green

To weave a magic spell

O'er nature's handiwork.

As in a dream

Blessed May! Blessed May!

This sweet spring day.

The daisies sparkle at my feet

Each one a little sun

So lovely yet unfortunate

Trod on by everyone.

Sliced off but still they rise,

Raising their heads towards the skies.

My Mum! My Mum! My Mum!

The winter done.

This was her time in May

Her birthday time for sure,

When all the blossom shouts for joy

And swallows slice the air.

I only wish that now she's gone

I'd loved a little more.

My Mum! My Mum! My Mum!

And me forbear.

May Queen, May Queen, the First of May

Robins exult your name,

The finches and the little wren

Conspire to do the same.

Surrounded by such a thrilling score

How could I complain?

My Mum! My Mum! My Mum!

Say it again.

The viburnum bush bedecked with flower,

Like mellow lumps of cheese,

And dressed o'er all, its blossomed dower,

Wafts perfume on the breeze.

Whilst apple trees with flattering pink betray,

Time's fleeting beauty all away.

My Mum! My Mum! My Mum!

The moment freeze.

So for a while I take your place,

Sit where you sat,

Feeling the wind's fingers touch my skin

And pleased to think on that.

Ears attuned to all the sounds,

With which this spring time morning now abounds,

Whispering your name.

My mother Bessy May.

How I would love to have you here

Drinking a cup of tea,

Soaking this nature up with reverence,

Gulping it down with soft spoken words

For all eternity.

To all the other trifling pleasures preference.

My Mum! My Mum! My Mum!

For all the sound affords.

Sitting beneath the outstretched arms

Of beribboned cherry tree,

The very one that thirty gone

You planted here with me,

So all is dedicated to you now

As I call out your name

Bessie May! Bessie May! Bessie May!

O'er years that flee.

In Helston Street. In Padstow Town.

The maidens dance with glee,

Covered o'er with spring time flowers,

Bedecked in greenery.

What happy time the moment now,

Yes this is where she'd be.

She would be in her element

Just sitting here with me.

Spring Sonnet

My green-eyed cat slept sound last night
Upon the bathroom floor
But now she preens on sun-filled bench
Oblivious to all.

Completely black,
In shadow, difficult to see,
She shines in morning heat,
Just like the shimmering sea.

Whilst all around the spring bursts forth
In multi-shaded hues;
The yellow daffodil are nearly o'er
But paler still the tulips new
In different shades of pink and cream,
Pristine these cups of dew.

Spring


With fresh delicacy the buds burst forth

Pristine and clean, washed in lime,

The citrus fruit of spring.

Bathed in a propagator glow,

The clear white light beats down,

Sending its cypher waves to listening eyes.

 

Things that grow, suddenly, mysteriously,

As orchestrated by some conductors hand,

Are woken from a cloying sleep

To blast their heavenly way,

Demanding no audible alarm

To make their date with rolling time.

 

Everywhere bedecked with soothing green,

The cooling hedgerows proliferate,

Embroidered throughout with gaudy diadems.

Bluebells chime out to Garlic white,

The pink ten-sided Campion and blood stained Anemone

Tapestry the bank with cacophony of floral jubilation.

Spruced-up.

I bathe in a bath of sorrow,

I shower in a shower of tears,

When white ceramic tiles stare back at me

And boards creak on the stairs.

In empty rooms I pass my days

Echoing to whispering memories,

Strung out with spidery sticky filaments

About my mouldy plastered mind.

Where Puccini resonates to the blind,

The choked sink, the creaking door.


Two magpies hop chattering on an avian date

Amidst the drooping pine branches,

Spruced up between the cones

In pristine bib and tucker.

White tie and tails a-throbbing

Avian amorous peccadillo.

Yet who knows their meeting

Is a private affair of no concern

Except to them and me.

Programmed by an ancient gene,

Of which I have but distant memory.


A thousand objects hang around,

Silent witness to ephemeral passing.

A jackdaw's nest of glitterati,

Each infused with mordant history

Which chains me to the past.

The rotted windows rattle,

Unequal to the wind and rain,

The putty's cracked and broken,

Yet panes miraculously remain.


After weeks of sodden ground

And unrelenting rain,

How good it is to see the sun

In blazing brightness strike the carpet once again.

This is the space I call my own,

Where nonchalantly I pass my time,

Whilst chiming clock sounds out the hours,

Marking my slow decline.


The silence is reassuring,

Free of  prattling sounds that annoy,

Of voices interweaving and making

An incoherent aural white lightening noise.

There's nobody at home,

Just music's amorous tones,

In a heavenly host of notes,

Embraced in the lugubrious, nostalgic arms,

Of the last night of the proms.

Stage Struck

Did we spill the milk,

Before we spilled the beans?

Or was it after? I'm not completely sure -

Distracted by the moans and laughter -

Its hard to tell.

I only know it was before the curtain

Fell upon the stage,

And I lost you to that echoing void,

When all the lights went out,

And darkness with the imagination played.

Whilst the orchestra improvised from memory,

To keep us calm and in our place,

Not reading from the page.

Stonechat

The humble Stonechat flits amongst the briars,

Then spreads its wings and soars;

Soars upwards towards the echoing spheres,

The glitterati in the stars.

Not blessed with voice of Nightingale or Wren,

Of Robin, Blackbird, Thrush,

This creature not unlike the least of men,

Contents itself with idle chat.

Despite its inability to sing,

It boasts a breast as red as any bird,

That midst the withered moorland sedge

Flashes to a sweetheart undisturbed.

I miss your chat my little friend,

Miss more than words can say,

Which on deserted, salt-blasted cliffs,

Bade intimidating demons go their way.

Retiring bird, where have you gone?

I search for you in vain.

Pray why your great indifference,

Towards your human friend?

Without your chat, I languish un-assuaged

And only memory transports me back,

To hear your voice above the wind,

And lost estate - alas, alack.

Stoned

A stone by any other name, may feel as cold,

Like sheets of ice on unshod feet.

Whilst others black, sustain a flame,

Providing warmth and heat.

Some stones are soft and some are hard,

Some somewhat in between;

Some would make a beggar scoff,

Some fit for a King or Queen.

Some stones you keep

And some you throw away.

To some you get attached, 

Whilst others cause dismay.

Some stones are used for paving,

Smooth walking under feet;

Without some other stones,

The structure's incomplete.

When lodged inside a kidney,

A stone will give much pain.

When overweight, to loose a stone,

May be considered gain.

A stone may be quite base,

Like a pebble on the beach;

Or from a stone a diamond spring,

A jewel beyond belief.

Whatever stone we come across,

Of this there is no doubt,

A precious stone must first be ground

To sparkle out.

Stone Circle (to be improved)


They stand silent and alone,
Unmoved sentinels on the plain. 
Menhirs inscrutable, gathered round in holy embrace,
As immutable, cold and hard, as is the stone.

Once peopled by flesh and blood in times of old,
Singing, dancing evocation of a living, loving, past,
Yet just as white as bone, frozen in time

Is all that remains of the mammoth tusk,

So the rough remnants of those, are these.
Like resistance workers, silent under torture,

Not revealing the secrets of the underground.

The bones, the shards, the arrowheads,
The remains of fires and feasting,
Of great chiefs and conspicuous display;
Of stories recited, of unknown forest prayers,
Mysterious symbols and Mystery Plays, 
Of unfamiliar percussion sounds and horns,
Of shouts of joy for bright up-coming sun,
And wailing for a hero lost,

Or long-forgotten battle won.

Full bellied from the smoking spit,
Inspired by some strange intoxicating liquor,

Woad-painted bodies gather round 

In wild gyrating incantations to the moon and sun.
The hidden mortise and tenon joints
Hold tight the stones, 

As everyone, together bonds around fire,

Casting shadows on the ground,

Placating long-gone ancestors' fear and ire.

Long before Mohammed, Jesus, Plato,
Before Confucius, Gurus, Buddhas, east or west,

All known or unknown gods not knowing

The indecipherable heavenly signs, 

What was the ineffable gods' behest,

Maybe something or nothing at all.

A circle of silent stones in grand embrace,
Like fearless warriors

Or voiceless Morris Men springtime welcoming,
Sans sound of bells or reedy flute
Or thumping hollow knock of wood on wood,
Just the eyrie sound wind whistling.

An air of memories within our bony caves,
Bleached shamans of a phantom past,
Which we convey like precious stones
Till all the lights go out, go out.
The heavy weights of time, like drones
Each one a face, an incident, a trait,
Remain embedded there, within our bones

Contradictory nature, mysterious prehistoric cave,

Standing together, standing alone, 
Everything moving whilst they stand still.

Strawberry

Amidst the barrenness of winter

I picked a wild strawberry on Christmas day.

It was pale from lack of light,

A tiny fruit hiding under the leaves

But for sure it tasted strawberry.

Its pink body melted on my tongue;

Its seed-dotted-exterior

Fused with its flesh in an orgasm of flavour,

Out of time, out of place,

A flash-back to summer

And larger more gaudy fruit.

As I returned up the lane from my passion feast,

A fox emerged from the undergrowth

Carrying a limp rabbit.

The Camelia displayed its first pink bloom

And a flock of brown birds rose up in front of me

As one from woody and leafless hedge.

My mind drifting back to when,

Together we lay, my fingers tip-

Toeing over skin in joyful anticipation,

Reaffirming that even in the barrenness of winter,

We may still pick a strawberry on Christmas day.

Summer Gone

The summer comes but once a year
And when it does its fine,
The golden globe hoists up on high,
The air is warm and dry.
A fanfare greets the spring time days
When all is pink and green,
Imperceptibly it's soaking up
The suns delicious gleam.
A time to sweat, a time to fry,
To seek the shade and languid drape
In hammock, loll between the trees,
Veranda lounge, ice cubes and smoke.
Yet no sooner has the grass grown dry,
It's turning brown to hay;
No sooner blossom on the bough,
The apples ripen, branches sway.
The rippling bodies tanned and bare,
Which ape-like swung from branch to branch,
Are strangely covered, coy and spare:
A passing phase of youthful innocence.
As distant bells their autumnal invite send,
A harvest feast when all is garnered in,
Yet in its fullness is the season waved goodbye,
And yet another year to reckon by.

Swan Song (Part 1)

White swan, white swan, so nonchalant,

With what amazing grace you glide;

So disenchanted with the human world,

Riding the fast incoming tide.

Strangely incongruous upon the sea -

Out and beyond the salt-filled bay,

Stretching as far as eye can see,

Pitted and dappled, silver grey.

Here where river meets the ocean,

Marking out a smoother darker rivulet,

Your elegance explores the deep dark weed

And orange beak sups still fresh wine.

Whilst we poor humans gaze in awe,

Struck dumb by beauty so complete -

A milky opal, a perfect pearl,

Set in a sparkling amulet.

Swan Song (Part 2)

The Sovereign went to count her swans

Upon the River Thames;

Never has such a thing been known since 1134,

The first time in all her reign.

Supreme of all the birds,

Oh gracious swan in pearly white,

So comfortable in your element,

All others put to flight

Like to the first in virgin white

Was wedded to the state

The swan they say is wed for life

A bond nothing but death can break

So confidently glides upon time's river,

Serene above the water line,

Who knows how underneath

The paddling goes?

Dominant but mute,

The strength of inbuilt quality,

A natural aristocracy

Survives all natures shocks.

Long may the swan survive

To grace our greatest river,

The one sure northern star,

The glittering lights to circle.

So sovereign swan and swan of state,

When their heads do meet,

The figure of a heart is made,

To make the whole complete.

Yet when in upping of the swans

They gather hooting crash their wings,

In lamentation they are formed,

Which Solomon king of old defined.

'The Rain it Raineth'


To whom the dogs belong?

Who's shadows stain the shiny prom?

And who the woman, who the man,

In brown and black, passing their time

Walking into their future, into our past,

Before the threatening wave at last?

Never to break, Never to move.

Stuck fast to canvas with oily shoes.

A little girl and little maid,

A brolly up but not for shade.

Policeman walks with sodden cape,

Arrested by the artist's swipe.

An empty road, an empty street,

Echo to those passing feet.


And cries and laughter borne on wind;

Where go they? What destination firm in mind?

Somewhere sure, perhaps warm and sweet?

In distant houses white and neat?

The hearth; a weeping mother's hug?

A steaming tea in favourite mug?

Or grumpy sergeant at the door?

"Come in man What's thee waitin' for?"


White horses whipped towards the strand,

Flip drenching manes all over land.

Whilst loyal kind in shanks stands still,

Head lowered to the greater will.

(And all things wise and wonderful)

Like time, ethereal time, caught in the moment.

Janus progeny, when we like he,

Looking forwards, backwards sees.

What we see now, the passing scene,

As we are here, they once have been;

Now set in paint and winter's land,

By magic wave of artist's hand.

So may we gaze and gasp and say

"It truly was a rainy day!"

The Room.

The room seemed huge and smelled of gypsum fresh,

For years quite out of bounds for fear of falling through;

We now triumphant conquerors took up our territory,

The river ran on by the Chew.

Unlike a house recently raised, the walls were thick, irregular,

None meeting each other at ninety degrees

But choosing their own angle, determined by curtilage

The road and river which ran by.

Only one triptych window facing north-west

That captured the summer rays in sadness,

To briefly paint the walls a moving pink,

Outside, below, the river ran on by.

The door of rough oak planks, ledged and braced,

With iron hand-forged hinges and ancient lock,

Remained the same, a silent witness to the years

Of river running by amok.

Three steps up from antiquated bathroom and turret stairs,

The magical entrance we celebrated with a hand-made sign,

Which we burnt into rustic wood “Jane’s Junk”,

In praise of river running fine.

This was to be the hallowed space of golden girl,

For whom nothing was too good, even me.

Where red Dansette ushered us through our innocence,

But angry river washed away.

The Secret Agent

Vera Zassoulich, where are you now?

In some unmarked grave?

A faded Lilly in some forgotten ditch?

Where is your youthful passion?

Where the ardent cause?

Where the screams of torture

Filtering through prison bars?


Where in St. Petersburg marks the spot

Where the Chief of Police, Fyodor Fydodorovich

Was shot? Is it marked with a blue shield?


Your lover was a Nihilist apparently.

Your female friend was flogged.

Amazingly though tried, the jury acquitted.

Maybe they were robbed

Or just that mercy and justice applied

Their rescuing arms.


What vortex of emotion!

What passion of despair!

The candled nights' of argument!

The thrill of auburn hair!

The crushing weight of tyranny!

The white hot metal - hope!

The thrill of righteous indignation

The smell of carbine smoke

Combined to make this moment

A single piercing note.


How many gun reports have echoed since

From anarchists and dreamers?

Of nationalists and revolutionaries

Terrorists and dopes?

The teeming human masses

Continue every day

To come to terms with destiny

And dull routine

Battling the insistent urge

To break away.


How fortunate we, who in freedom recline

Not needing to get up, to work or dress

But in a decadent nonchalance recline?

Whilst others in mud and dirt and oil and sweat

Live out their brutal lives

In one way or another

Striving to prove they matter, yet.

Like desperate Vera Zassoulich

Who's feet once clattered shining gas-lit clay

Of that Imperial past before it blew away

Speaks to us all of struggle

For freedom, justice and relief


Red flagged and ominous

A far more frightful tide

On monstrous suffering bent

With Uncle Joe just came and went.


Was all the suffering worth it?

Was all the toil in vain?

A better world a better place?

With every bullet every bang

With every boat that sinks,

With every theory known to man

We everyone must cope

With personal fate:

A stray bullet or a train that's late.

Thrice Spiked Grint

from prison cells the spirits swirl
their acrid fumes about them waft
in lonely isolation cry to be relieved
by twinkling eyes in fading light

oh puck you are an impish turk
so full of words that fall like snow
which no sooner touch the ground but melt
and in the melting turn to soot

only the sound of breaking glass
only the snap of brittle twig
a candle flickers as you pass
and did the curtains move so quick?

despite your elfish grin and impish smile
your empty words and glittering wand
yet how I long for your return
and pine for you when you are gone

like fairy, prance about my night time fire
like fireman quench my all-destructive ire
inquisitive and larcenous you stole my dreams
and left me with a string-less lyre

for you are my brown eyed fawn
you are my thrice spiked grint
my giggling prancing sprite in white
my post beyond recall or fright

my bragging cheating player
my bold adventurous satellite
my lying, never dying tryst with fate
once upon a star-dust night

Tide


the tide goes out the tide comes in

in steely calm or raging white

and all complexions in between

in fiery heat or lunar light

reflecting in each wave and ripple

each pastel shade

upon the canvass of the sight

in ebb and flow until all time in time is played

the conversations turn and up and down

the beach it goes each time the last

trusting in faith its sure return

but in what state we never know

until that final storm that final gale

the meteor or inundating flood

explode the myth that time and tide

for no man waits

Timbuktu

Exotic goings on in Timbuktu!

A bloodless coup has taken place -

Oh Mali, Burkina Faso, Mauritania -

What are we to do?

Al Qaedas’s come to town,

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, Abou Zeid,

Yahya Abou al Hamman the names involved.

Amadou Toumani Toure has been displaced

By Captain Amadou Sanago - Who he?

(No doubt someone with the power to chain or free)

Countdown has nothing on this!

Apparently two hundred thousand souls have fled

From “Northern Ethnic Toureg Insurgency”.

Warring parties taking up their principled positions

A confrontation, boding ill for the transition.

“Ecowan” is not amused nor the “UN”.

E mails fly from diplomats and missions,

Trying to work out the implications -

Perhaps another Uganda, Ruanda, Congo?

Angola, Nigeria, Eritrea, Zimbabwe?

How many foreign names of place and people,

Before the conscience of the world disturbed

Decides to intervene and put it on “The News”?

Is there copper, diamonds, timber, oil?

If not, it never may disturb our lives.


Meanwhile in Timbuktu,

A watchword for the most remote,

The people just like me and you

Wait unfuelled and unfed

And outstanding architectural wonders,

Of Djingareyber, Sankore, Sidi Yahia, where lie

Seven hundred thousand irreplaceable manuscripts

In a myriad of other strangely sounding words,

From another age, await their fate,

Whilst we debate what Easter eggs to buy

And where on earth is Timbuktu?

Time and Space

exploding galaxies of time
infinite numbers flung out
unimaginable zeros
endless unfathomable space
is there no end
to looking back
galaxies within galaxies
stars within stars
the sky is alive
with the unseen
and unknowable
the mind is stretched to breaking point
by the immensity of it all
we take pictures
we see images
we are seeing light
we are seeing colour
too vast for our imagining
the reality is just too great
yet oblivious to its own being
minds not yet made up
observe and wonder
in a microcosm -
a tiny milli second -
of appreciation
and yesterday becomes more remote
than the most distant star

Time in Space


I shake my fist at the heavens

And point to the stars

Wondering wondering

That in so small a space

So limited a time

We contrive an eternity


Here is a wonder

Of mind over matter

That in some synaptic nerve centre

A thought is born

Abstract and obscure

Explaining everything


Inert and cold and vast

The universe expands

Warping the rubber bands of time

Yet held together by miniscule

Dots of force

Electrically charged


Aware of nothing. Aware of everything

We wrestle with the in-between

Biting the forbidden fruit of experience

We have become gods in our world

Yet as passing ephemera

Drown in a pool of light

To Lucy

The white topped waves
Godrevy lighthouse beckoning
The rolling cadences of sound
Profound the silences of space
The irresistible call of the wild
Gaias' arms embrace

A touch of genius
A splash of colour
The canvass speaks
The inner landscape of the mind
Eternally searching
To be reunited with the ineffable

The raging storm
The furious wind becalmed
Gone missing the gentle smile
The warm embrace
Entranced in pastel shades
Of patient hope

The barque sets sail
Slipping its earthly ties
And mortal cares
To reach celestial shores
Shipwrecking all our joys
To be remembered and adored

Leading the way
Into the luminous

Twin Towers

Repeating what they said,
Makes lighter work than what they feel.
For like a cool and shady pond,
The depths remain a mystery.

Black and white have been reduced
To the same grey dust.
Twin towering peaks, shiny and new,
Transformed to powder by devilish alchemy.

Not waving but diving!
In ten long seconds of remembering,
Between a flaming sword
And unforgiving final resting place.

What majesty accompanies the cataclysmic fall?
Mesmerising slow motion grandeur!
Awesome mass of concrete, glass and steel
Transformed into enveloping cloud!

As long ago the Babel tower collapsed
And with it human over-reaching,
See here repeated upon these mammon pillars
Of pride and smug self-satisfaction.

As half the world is glued
To moving pictures on the screen,
Better than Hollywood's best attempt
At apocalyptic revelation,

Another tranche on hands and knees
Is praising their Allah god
For answered prayers
Beyond their wildest dreams.

Only a last minute recorded call to wife and child:
"I'm quite alright - I love you"
With searing eloquence
Sums up the madness of it all.

As bodies float through space,
A blinding flash of humanity
Amidst the choking fumes of hate -
A sweet, sour, smile of blessing.

Unknown Caller

The telephone rang. I let it ring again.

(I do not answer phones these days).

But so insistent was the ringing tone

I slid from off the bed

And shuffled down the stairs alone.

Suddenly aware of drama in the sitting room

(Death was in the air)

A tiny feathered ball flew everywhere

Chased by a mottled terror machine

Of sparkling teeth and springing claws.

I sprang too into a mercy mission

To save the little wren

Which crashed into the window pane

Then frenzied back again.

Blood was drawn but not the birds

Before the furry bundle grabbed

Was disconsolately shown the door.

Returning to the room the bird had fled

(Unless catatonic hid amongst the tomes)

I climbed back towards the bed

(But not before I found the number

Could not be returned)

And smoked a cigarette

Which now hangs grey

In lighthouse shafts of morning sun

With thoughts of those who pass

And are not saved.

My feathered friend revisited

Lying lifeless on the floor.

Despite the effort

Is now no more.

Voices

I hear their voices all the time
They follow me around
Not in a schizophrenic sort of way
Just memory in play.
They all come back from childhood days
When all was fresh and green
When like a sponge I soaked them up
And stored them there unseen.
Whenever cat gets on my nerves
And I kick her out the door
I replicate the anger Charlie had
And hear his voice once more.
I hear my mother all the time
When sweeping up the floor
And feel her hand on what I do
When coming through the door.
I think of Mrs flower a lot
When climbing over stiles
The way she laughed and cheered us up
Her lilting voice and smiles.
Whenever I eat fish and chips
My father comes in view
They had the power to wake him up
Out of that deep dark hue.
Unleashing muddy boots by roaring blaze
Puts Farmer Cliff in frame
Oh how to my ears his lips were blue
And now I swear the same.
Yes in those days the air was thick
With smells and sights and sounds
Like distant cow bells
Across the alpine hills
They follow me around.

Waiting

dear man, I fain would say too much
for waiting on the time, the time that slides so slow,
my words might overflow with such ebullience
that later I might blush to claim to know

his absence though only several days from hence
appears a mighty age of ice and cold
so long it's mountain course has run
melting in temperate winds and after glow

silent and dark the hours strung from a gibbet frame
a rotting carcase from which the worms of doubt feed fare
my heart vibrating lyre in chains
hangs yet on every desperate moment there

in silence thus my time is spent
so that the time itself stands still
waiting upon another's argument
to validate my grave misdemeanour

the time I check, the numbers mount
I play with them, they play with me
they drain my life of vital spirit, truly spent
remorseless drawn to time's eternity

this is the moment that I have, but what a moment
anticipation hanging by a thread of human hair
can this be life waiting for another's empty compliment
without which despair despair despair

Waking



Day follows night. Bright colours splashed where all was grey

So in this flight of fancy labelled life

We cautiously emerge from sleep's strange crypt

And dress the temple with sweet meats and flowers.


Upon soft winds divinely placed

To rouse our senses from their rest

The scents of drying grass and ocean spray

Float silently and permeate the space.


Drawing up the strings of wakefulness

We gather up the broken fragments

Into an ordered familiar face

Mirroring who we think we are.


Smoke balloons and fades

Birdsong fills the air, then gone

Water seeps through grains of sand

All to who knows where?


Spirits that trip on the gentle breeze

Also fill the billowing sail

Bearing aloft the timorous craft

Before the looming swell


Riding the impulsive wave

We crest the foaming wave

And diving down with outstretched arms

Embrace the fateful day.

Waking Dream



A blaze of pink the shrub displays

When from my sleepy fog-like haze

I wake exchanging madness

For another mad mad day

Washing the face, shaving the hair

Pulling the plug on swirling memories.


An aching back, dry throat and eyes

Reflect a morn in which the skies

Are overcast and grey.

I wonder should I leave or stay

Or even take the middle way

Which is to be preferred?


A dream-like state where every fear

Runs rampant like a forrest fire

Every desire breaks free;

Or state of wakefulness

From which the fog of night slides off

And all is crystal clear


Awake or sleeping who should say

Or day or night or night and day

Nothing to choose between

The crags we view the land between

Dotted with fields a patchwork green

Invites us travel here to there


Camelia flower well might you blush

To spot me rising from this place

And wish me back into that other land

Where people and events

Despite their torture are not real

Roaming unbound in space and time.

Willow Flower


my eye imbibed a darting bee

buzzing round the willow tree

distracted in the quickening air

unable to decide quite what or where

on jagged course it moves about

miraculous intent and doubt


meanwhile the tree with sinuous staves

waves in the breeze its fluttering leaves

dressed lightly o'er in willow flowers

for bee and me this morning dowers

surprisingly resplendent in display

the reawakening hope of each May Day


fresh wash of lemon on lime the image finds

a citric splash of colour which reminds

of magic power to soothe the pain

as much of heart as brain

Wiltshire Street


Because I can't write music, I have to settle for this verse,
My requiem in hollow words, quite unequal to the task.
The obeisance of the living to the selfless dead.

It's like an empty casket, in a shiny silent hearse,
Drawn by a four-plumed charger, gliding down a nightmare street,
Avenued by people transfixed by clack of horses feet.

So very few related - except by common blood,
Which in a far-off desert land ran premature
From youthful bodies hot and red, leaving its rusty stain.

Cut short by fate and metal - a careless indifference
To oh such vulnerable flesh, or feelings of parents for their children
Or lovers for their loves.

Here just petals strew the way, washed by the tears of pain,
Burning their own sweet furrow, down cheeks that lips have kissed.
Yet but another passing; yet by another name.

That has travelled on a journey, to where a man was slain.
A monument to timeless strife.
A battle of ideals and incompetence.

These are our boys but what of those?
For do they not feel the same?
Is their loss not just as great?

What festival can recompense? What ritual can restore?
The incendiary seeds of hate which buried,
Grow for evermore?

At Christmas when the lights flash red,
When children's faith is pure,
When beneath all joy and all thanksgiving,

The distant sound of hammering nails in wood is heard
And mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, weeping,
Here, there, and everywhere.

Woodworking Apron


In my waking dream, I stood in my apron,

Blue striped and big pocketed,

Stitched lovingly by dear departed mum,

Concerned lest I get oil on my

White shirted, cufflinked Sunday best.

We stood around the bench,

School characters reunited,

Yet older all and more confident.

Apart from me who worried

Whether I was up to the task

Of shaping mortice and tenon

To a snug fit. Or be the butt

Of everyone's unspoken ire.

And limping Mr Cotton's distain.

Oh the humiliation of a loose fitting joint!

I stood facing the boy

With tongue between his teeth,

In tingling anticipation,

As before, he squeezed beneath my apron.

Wordless as a rock,

Both perpetrator and victim

To some mesmeric charm,

Or cosmic force of nature,

Veiled only by a thin layer

Of apron, I fought my way,

Back into the living land.

Ultimatum

If ye can't be nice, don't bother.

If ye can't be trusted, don't try.

If you have to lie, lie better.

If you're not sincere, don't sigh.

For friendship is a flower worth protecting,

Which unlike apples, doesn't grow on trees;

And love is a candle flame flickering,

Easily put out by the breeze.

So in the evening hours,

When the sun begins its decline ,

Don't you hunger for the moments

That are hard to quite define?

Like sitting on a beach

And staring out to sea,

A distant sail, all white and full

Of wistful memories?

UNFINISHED 1.12.09

The days just came and went where did they go?

What memories did they leave behind,

Like ruts in driven snow

The tracks are hard to find.

Their nature and their quality

We make them every day,

This is the game called life

Depending how we play.

If like me you feel life has passed you by

That  others seem to have the fun

When only tears fall from your eyes,

Relax, calm down, compose yourself be done,

Remember that a moment holds all the world.

The secret of the wild and the power to be,

It is enough do not despair.

To lean on others is easy

When the room is filled with smiles

But to be content alone

In the wilderness

In the silence in the dark,

When the whistle in the wind

Is the whistle of the train

To master that to grasp it

Hold it hug it never let it go

That is the better part

True freedom don t you know 

Smoking Tree

A

T r e e

T in s e l l e d

F l a s h i n g    m u l t i -

C o l o u r e d      r e f l e c t i o n s

O f     t h e     s m o k i n g     y e a r  v a n i s h e d

F r o m                 a                 b u r n t                 c i g a r e t t e

Butt

Now

I n      some    fumy

Corner of my mind

It   draws fiery   red

The air is balmy damp to day
the leaves are dripping wet
my cat refuses to come in
she is a stupid pet
the days of heat and sunshine have passed on
they seem an age away