Most days I would try to write a poem; it is a practice, as I suppose is meditation, or smiling, or watching the world go by
Wednesday, 30 November 2011
Worn Sweat
Into the early morning
Not far in time to sleep
Deep dreams
Horizons and sunsets
Escape or creep back
As if to the Inchcape
There far from the west
Of wayward slumbers
Up and over the brow
Boldly off the Wolds
Off the clay and chalk
Off the sleep time talk
& the bare, fair set
Mazy wanderings
Up and over the treetops
Torn away from the trunk
Ripped off the branch
And the twig and skunk
Of the night time
Cigarette
The scared
Worn sweat
Which bared those unfair
& crazy wanderings
This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text
Tuesday, 29 November 2011
Onwards sprinkled poppies
In the seventh summer
Slip, I dipped on the
Trip to pink flamingos
Now my seventeenth number
Flip, I’m clipped on the
Strip of fairway gringos
In between the innocence & the heartache
What seems the green grass, the second class
The mother, the child, the both without a father
In their seven rows
Strips of once wild poppies
Nipped in bud, for the county flower show
Now my seventeen insecurities
Drip into my shattered mind
Rainy days; the sipped sour wine of impunity
In between the hazel & the hedgerow
What seems the pasture, swift past rapture
The other, the wild, the both without hope, rather
To be in the seventh seventeenth summer
Somewhere between home & away & eternity
Graveyards & birthplace; endless, timeless journey
Trips to pink flamingos
Stripped bare the fair play gringo’s; swathes
That wave, rave on - onwards sprinkled poppies
This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text
Monday, 28 November 2011
Incest and other conversations
Mottled
Colours through crimson bottles
Glass with past you do wonder
Petticoats on soft skin
Racehorses on close run rails
Fairways these last days of summer
Cared for with loves
Deeper understandings
Shadows only on the raindrops
Or the quenching waters
Blast furnace you do recall
Cold beers; for brow borne beads of sweat
Share incest and other conversation
Cast figures days when daylight fails
Shared with untouched love
& deeper misunderstandings
This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Shame of sensation
Green wheat
On the sweetest day of summer
Where Tennyson heard
That Byron was dead
He engraved the news, deep
In the sandstone of long memory
That first day of summer
& the corn was high
Or would be later in the year
For Tennyson, the corn
To disappear, life too dear
Cleared of his father’s reputation
Feared of shame and sensation
An odd kind of situation
Friday, 25 November 2011
Humans with emotions
I walked there
And back again
Looked in all the windows
Opened one or two of the doors
In truth I wasn’t really looking
For there is nothing that I need
But I liked the time just to wander
To see the pigeons feed
The pensioners study
The racks of three for two
The tins of pilchards are past
Their sell by date; nothings new
The flautist plays
His electronic mandolin
He sells lots of the Big Issue
It’s hard to stay so thin
The schoolchildren size up
The cost of liquorice sticks
Choose one colour or two
Or better value in the lucky dip
The opera house is open
The autumn catalogue is news
Blues Brothers, or Tourandot
The eclectic amongst you choose
Sun shines on the fountain
The dress shop picture is quite a pitch
Tourism given over to pride and prejudice
Thank the Lord, Chatsworth made it rich
Back past the old disused spa baths
Stone flags; great worn slabs
Weathered for centuries, but now
In the hands of developers
With tentacles like crabs
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Indifference
If only it was indifferent
Instead it is silent
Mute
If only it was significant
Instead it is blank
Brute
Charles Causley I believe once said;
“That a good poem was always about something else”
If that means different
About some kind of piled up, pent
He's really quite astute
If that means insignificant
Is that to slide down the blank
And blind refuse shute
Carl Dennis wrote;
“And write about the life
You can talk about”
You left to walk away
How often have you heard it said
Or said it yourself
You would talk, but
Have not a thought to say
Just words with which you play
Jane Kenyon in her poem Happiness:
“No, happiness is the uncle you never knew
About who flies a single engine plane”
Over moor of purple bramble hue
Under cider presses wooden screw
The hope is ever new
In factories and submarines
We bang the drum
Tam the tambourine
The love now blue
Was for a while
Ultramarine
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Wednesday, 23 November 2011
Moving Picture
I look at your picture deeply
I look at your picture
Your eyes smile
Your picture moves
I look at your picture deeply
My focus fades
I re-set the locus
I look at your picture deeply
Once sad, my gladness now
Sees a smile
Your smile, no more tears
Your years don’t fade away
It’s past two in the morning
Here’s hoping
I look at your picture deeply
Sepia tone fine grained paper
I smile
A scarf, a pendant locket
It was taken a good while ago
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
Round wrung floodlights
There was a shaft of sunlight
Right across the flags
A spot of cloud sunk sunlight
From mad, to sad, to glad
Observed with interest and culture
Slight refrain she nags
A spot of cloud sunk sunlight
From boy, to lad, to dad
Nowhere to take you
Except from peak, to peak, to peak
A lot of round wrung floodlights
Poetry, fiction, drama, strad
Instead beside the iron bed
Led from the here and now
Taken to a memory, shaded
Shadow of the Bhagavad
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Monday, 21 November 2011
You vouched to play
Quotations and reference
Citations and severance
Plantations of preference
Visitations deferred
How many more curriculum vitae
How many thanks but no thanks
Toe the line you’ll get your chance
Pride or prejudice, unjust romance
Social came just the same
To see for what you do
But looked right on, straight on through
Interested in 'selves, no interest in you
You brought the kids up on your own
Mostly now they’re resolute
Education will be their suit
Inspired by what happened too
Worlds away the musicians play
Caribbean, calypso, contraband
Extemporise to realise
This land is your land, is my land
So computer hack
The Union Jack
Take no more flack
It’s just the sack
And anyway the other day
You vouched to play
Down Islington way
At the Crown and Anchor
So thank her and her sister
Not so much her son, odd mister
Her Kingdom come you just kissed her
And for that we say your hips please sway
Your rhythm and your rumba
Your echo and your number
You dance, while all we do is lumber
You are our soul
You are reggaes rock and roll
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Sunday, 20 November 2011
Lay Quietly
The gossamer of finest denier
Cast into still air
Still its ether hangs
Tall pampas grass
Faced into the ocean wind
Still it stands erect
Silk scarf so finely spun
Lays light upon your shoulder
Still its quiet resounds
Spray so fine; hardly a mist
On the crest of sand and down
Still its hope glistens
Perfume; worn with a lovers touch
On a neck nape softly under spun
Still its dream captures
The vacation so easily missed
On the calendar often read
Still its love we kissed
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Friday, 18 November 2011
Every day a calendar (My lady love in lavender)
Lady love in lavender
Every day
A calendar
My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender
My lady love
My baby love
My lady love in lavender
O poppy fields
And cotton reels
Every day my love she steals
O lady love
My baby love
My lady love in lavender
O baby love
My lady love
My Lavender
In fields of corn
Our passion sworn
My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender
O baby
My lady
My lady love
My Lavender
Under silver clouds
With sparkled shrouds
My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender
O baby love
My lady love
My Lavender
Ever tender is the night
More tender still
The morning
My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender
O baby love
O lady love
O Lavender
Every day
My baby love
My lady love
Every way my calendar
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here
Wednesday, 16 November 2011
Fabula Night
Tenderfoot and follow through
The midnight hour
Son of February did arrive
The midnight hour
Change gear, accelerate too
An heavenly coastal soporific drive
The midwife from the north
Burnley thought, to deliver life
The midnight hour
Swathed in satin, torn in silk
The midnight hour
How many years before the strife
The midnight hour
Last moments of a couple be
What chance on a future wife
Dolphins call as surf waves roll
Cope unsung the artist’s knife
The midnight hour
Eastern shores of risen sun
The midnight hour
Lonely road to cottage tied
The midnight hour
Tenderfoot and follow through
Happiness through moonlit cries
Change gear, accelerate too
Away so far, you soon replied
The midnight hour
The mid-life lad down from the north
The midnight hour
Unknowing that their love had died
…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campuswhich can be found by clicking here
Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Grow Up
I re-read your old letters
See what I took to be excitement
I read with interest
Of the love I thought I saw
We had many complications
With so many children
Yet to become grown up
But you said it would be fun
We would work
Through our complications
And with the children gone
We would have twice the fun
I sent you new letters
Tried to raise erased excitement
But I wrote with a dualistic interest
As now I also fed on our lost love
There were complications
For we grew apart
From the start we lost our sight
Forgot it could be fun
We were not inspired
To work together
Through our complications
…and with the children
All but one now gone
We have given up -
We've messed about
& pressed out all the fun
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Lonesome
I laugh on my own, but I am not alone
No, you are here
You do not disappear
Is this the same
For lovers in grief
The disbelief
Shown by friends and family
Who do not
Cannot understand
You have not gone
Not away
Just to another peaceful place
Where I join you
Everyday
In my own gentle way
Friday, 11 November 2011
Town Boy
I sit inside the Christian fellowship coffee shop amongst a melodramatic search for reason; day dreams of retreat, into sublime silent solitude, sparrow-crumbs of memories in flight across my mind
Actually I pay my fare and sit astride the Easy Rider metro double-decker bus; visualising moorland heathers of golden crimson that one day we might have walked upon together
This one didn't make it into the collection Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland, to find out what did click here
Tuesday, 8 November 2011
Simultaneously stomping, stamping, smashing down the stairs
Simultaneously stomping, stamping, smashing down the stairs
Entrance, what an entrance, crashing, lashing, loads of noise
Argument, discord, simultaneous stacking, lacking thought
Pulling, sullen, mulling …togetherness ensues, chocolate drops consumed
This one didn't make it into the collection Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland, to find out what did click here
Sunday, 6 November 2011
Now a little story
Of the girl in the balloon
Who touched life, not a moment too soon
Light cried the captain
We need somebody light
I’m light whispered the little girl
Bright cried the captain
We need somebody bright
I’m bright whispered the little girl
Fight cried the captain
We need somebody who will fight
I’ll fight whispered the little girl
Might cried the captain might turn rough
We’ll need somebody tough
Might be a lady whispered the little girl
But I’m bright and I’m light and if it turns rough then I’ll get tough!
Hop aboard whispered the captain
Overwhelmed by her presence
This poem for Sarah didn't make it into: Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland but to see what did click here
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