Choral

That centre
If to be found
With resonance
Will, as water falls
Bounce & rebound

That kernel
Of open ground
With plain song
Will, as clouds climb
Silence all other sound

Except if it is to be lost in love
A cost thus borne least pleasant of
Except in that dead as dark as night
A target torn, astride the wingless flight


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Relate

Cream, cloth covered chair
Wait, wait there
By the pebbles
By the doorway to the stair

Burnt beige, broken bare
Stay, stay where
Stay where winters winds
Lead the call for care


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

All Dressed Up

I have a job, in a shop in Leeds
I don’t know how, there is no back story
It would once have been a gentleman’s outfitter

Nowadays we sell expensive branded attire
To those fanciful county & city sets
Men, and their lady friends, with ample wallets

Two shops, close by to each other
No sooner had I been introduced to the main store
Than I was moved out to the two-tone satellite

I was introduced to the staff
Arranged how we could share lifts
Talked of where we could get a good breakfast

It turns out
That most of the clothes are not sold in store
But are punted

Unmercifully, at society do’s
Charity balls, Yorkshire’s horse racing days and
Whatever is Leeds equivalent of a Night at the Opera

I am nervous
I feel out of place
I don’t know why I am here

I do though like the merchandise
& a significant part of my arrogant self says
“Yes, this stuff wouldn’t half damned suit me”



A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Sun Dance Slid

I have heard it called light pollution
The dilution of darkness that hides the stars

Far & away tonight is the best example
Thanks to the fog & mist & horizons kissed
With strong light from the hidden city

Pretty it is, and pretty it is not
With the sodium of Bergamot
Heat shouts; we are hot, we are so hot


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Push

I prowl these lands
Hope for scent or sound
Scour the wasted times
For signs of significance

Such as that gull in flight
The bare bramble bush
At the aft cusp of winter

I have a thirst, a real thirst
Not due to the poem
Down to the dirt, down to the
Diatribe of lifelong learning


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Duration

It is as if
When full term
Brings its own contentment

With the care
To wait, to listen
Also in silence

How else
To hold love
By a shared handle

Swing as a pail
Rocked by Johanna
On the honky tonk piano

Fast on the rail
Of one stolen stallion
Bareback squeal of the clarion

It is as if
Where time
Brings its own contentment

How else
To hold love
By the light of the candle

With the care to wait
To wait, and
Listen, also in silence


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Are we there yet

I smile from further away now
A half smile at that, to myself

O wondrous sky
Great gap in the rainclouds
Mercy be for your starlit clarity

She was the first (woman for my poetry)
First for my chase
First for the imperfect haste

First to find a place
For my shameless words
For my tastebuds to muzzle

The writing itself didn’t much matter
What mattered was that I was writing
Writing to win the love of one woman

Only later (listen to Joe Strummer)
The writing itself then mattered
Thus scattered we moved in turn to part

The writing then mattered
Cliches lowered, she broke my heart
Closed all the doors and started to start

The writing then mattered, pitter patter
Words mattered as musk moved deeper to dusk
Nattered was I, that it came so far into the dark


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Hospital Gowns

I cannot walk into this fog
I cannot walk out of this fog
Each forthright stride brings clarity
Each hesitant pause returns me to the gloom

Above is the dull roar of enemy aircraft
To the South lies the quiet of the radical wood
To the North travels the grumble of traffic manoeuvres
Here, in the kernel, doubt waves radiate outward

I cannot, nor do I want to, feel the despair of the hospital patients and visitors
They see their own end clearer than the 'well people' who stumble inattentive in the mist

The dying do not take hesitant steps
Their steps are forthright steps
Shorter steps, steps to prolong their time
Steps to ease their pain, as they head off
To blow cigarette smoke
Into the disappearing mist


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Nameless Place

Late afternoon mist, before darkness arrives
Sheep are gathered by the hedgerow
They wait for whatever sheep wait for
In these surreal metaphysical conditions

Bare branch trees are shrouded
Spume covered with a solidified half grey blossom
They are placed at indeterminate distance

Cars flash by
Halogen headlights and diesel breath exhaust

I park by the side of the wood
I want to capture this dull sky atmospheric
It is a view endorsed by the random rags
Disaffected litter attached to the skeletal frames

Around the bend a convoy approaches
The leader of the pack advances ever so cautious
He, or she, peers into the place where only I can see

Although I too fail to hold myself together, in this ether
The effervescence of interpretation escapes me

It could have been a meditation
It could have been a painting by Turner
It could have been an island in a Buddhist movie
It could have been the story of what is lost is lost
It was not any of these fanciful presentations
It was sheep, gathered in late afternoon mist




A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Supermarket Car Park Lunch

I change the radio station
From highbrow political debate
To an earnestly represented classical music concert

Imagine the coal fired power stations
Emitting their final puff of smoke
Their feed canals emptied of bulk fuel transport barges

As if the camaraderie of working men is to be gone
No more the communal showers
No more the rush to the clocking off clocks

There is rain
It streams down the car window
There is a meeting to attend

It is not to listen to a recitation by Lawrence Sail
It is not to joke
About the frequencies of peak experiences

Yet for some perhaps it is


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Country House

Breakfast
A view of the lake
Surrounded by frosted grass

The singular willow
On the waters edge
One is moved, taken off, as if to the ballet

To those elegant and slim dancers
Investing in us with their passionate movement
Pronouncements of beyond humanity gestures

The bare carcasses of old trees
Reminders of the effects of age
Demonstrative of the scarecrows we become

Earlier
There was a pink sheen
The effect of the sun slowly taking it's place
In the morning’s, south-westerly, silver-grey sky

A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

An exercise in listening

I used to do it across the county in Taunton
In an architects house, a living dwelling
A space that he created especially for B and B
Tonight I am in Muddifords Court Country House
A delectable if less reasoned reclamation
Now to the listen:

Road noise I guess, a continuous drawl
With little melody, or variation in tone or time
Streams of four rolling pneumatic wheels
Laying rubber onto tar-macadam
Millions of miles of these vibratory effects
My share alone runs into hundreds of thousands

Superimposition of the thin roar
Of distant aircraft engines
The front end, or back end
Depending on your place of departure
Of the transatlantic flight path

In the architects house
I used to listen to the trains fade away
As they journeyed up country
I romantically linked the train noise
To my arrival in the southwest of England
When I lodged alongside Plympton's rail-tracks

My ears ring now
Maybe too much time on the computer
The house is bedding down
Televisions and telephone conversations are stilled

All left is the tick of the typewriter
With each letter chosen
Also the ruffle of the cream cotton bedspread
As my skin scratches to reach the virtual keyboard

Ten years have passed by
Hardly without incident you might say
Hardly able any better to catch the moods
With the choice of words you might also say

The mood that is of all those mind-brain synapses
Pulses spinning and cavorting
As if about to shoot off into outer space
The same mood that says this place suits me fine
In a different life I would be here
In a pair of knee-high riding boots

Listen more closely:
Do you hear the train, steel wheel on steel rail
The repetitive clunk as rail joints are careered over
How many hobos on this night
How many less on that night ten years ago to the day

Through these lines you can pick at other stories
Pick until the sore says to pick no more
You have your own noise, your own communiques
Your own half way through the night distractions
That turn the point of purpose on it's head

Listen to the tap of keys
Listen to the thoughts
Listen to the processes that turn letters into words
Listen to the governance that turn words into lines
Lines of textual feminine discovery
As one might be foolish enough to think
That these words could ever be

I will listen for you, I listened for you before
I say this again, I say this such that the listening
Becomes a continuum of purpose

Often I have fancied
To shoot time-lapse photography
The same place images shot throughout the years
Now I fancy that with a night of sound
To capture decay & closedown
To capture flatness & nothingness
To capture regeneration & rebirth

I will listen for you, I listened for you before
I say this again, I say this such that the listening
Becomes a continuum of purpose



A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Mesmerised in Osmosis

Awash in the mesmerised osmosis
Hung by the miasma
The mediocrity of unspoken words
Bound as by the clouds
That overlap and wrap themselves

Into the doubt that is the grey
The grey, the white and the silver
Among the blue and the heavier grey
Where the rain spills out in torrents
Awash over the crimson horizon


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Frustrate

Take away steadiness, steadfastness
Amble freely down the random pathways
It won't give you all that you want
Although you may feel a little better

Why won't I feel any better
Do you think I need a sense of achievement
Am I born with a drive for purpose
Is that the outcome of transcendental meditation

The frustration and the anger

Is this the nature of organisational restructure
Is this the change of times, where time itself is lost
Be more determined; do less of it, but do it better
Alternatively do more, but do it less well, and be less inventive


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Almost Time

We walked together towards her car
She was attractive in a precise sort of way
With her pretty daughter holding her arm
There was talk of a party

Announcement of a celebratory gathering
At the car she leant in towards me
She kissed my cheek, and my neck
"You will join us, won't you"

I woke with a lightness
Good to feel wanted
If only I had
Had the chance to accept the invitation

Celebrate the times of such beauty
Tie into the good times
The ways of peaceful love
Be thankful of all that your vessel is able to carry.


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

Overlay

The latest dream tries to write over the earlier dream. I work hard to hold on to both recollections.
Now I am walking home in the sunshine, I am beside the campus college library. I can hear her on her mobile phone, her joyous infectious voice bubbles over with enthusiasm. Then I hear her say that she has seen me. She tells whoever it was she has to go.
In the earlier dream I had been in, and part caused, a car accident involving three drivers. I could not remember my home address or other insurance details so I took the two other drivers back to her house. I was upstairs. They stood together talking at the bottom of the stairs. In a strong voice I told them not to talk about it until I was with them. She gave me her address book, open at a page where my details dropped out; they fell and disappeared. I could not find anything about me. I began to panic.


A poem from Nameless Places and Hospital Gowns - Love Cared for by Relate available from iTunes and Amazon

I do believe the artist could be on to something

The moving sculpture represents water
The moving water
Asks the water lilies to stand proud
And the occasional sunlight
Spirits through the broken cloud

The breeze lifts
My fine auburn hair
In waves across
Thin framed spectacles

A light lead
Is automatically fed
Into my Rotring
Vorsprung dur technic
Precise point pencil

I look for words
& draughtsman's kerbs
Straight lines to nowhere
Are long forgotten
Gardeners move hither

Into and out of
The garden centre they wither
They choose to wilt
In silt that's out of sunlight

Anything or nothing
To avoid the metallic cams
And the tubular rings
Which at this moment lie still
Defiant under the gaze
Of the two wishful brothers

The sculpture now an installation
Springs into life
Visually
I do believe that the artist is on to something
But as always
It is the detail that lets him down

The sounds
Of ill fitting mechanisation
The grind that grinds you down
The resounding sound
Of ill fitting mechanisation

The sculpture now an installation
An installation that goes up and down
But in sympathetic non symphonic time
The sculptress she wears a frown

From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Of wider fortunes frown

Smile

Eyes of bigger fortunes

Trails blazed

In longer grass

Meanwhile

Cries of doubt are cast

Held now steady

Here in working class

Stiles

And cucumber sandwiches

Picnics, pitchers and jeroboams 

Of blackcurrant and lemonade

Meanwhile

Survivors of lives endured

Fair now ready

Where are their good times past

Trials…
Weights and tribulations
Of bigger nations
In times of famine or fast

Meanwhile
Those eyes
Of wider fortunes frown
In a round, sound & stronger glass



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

I love you & I’m not sorry

I love you & I'm not sorry
I'm not sorry for the way I feel
I don't feel sorry for you, I'm in love
And love's the thing that’s real

Whatever happened happened
Whatever is past is past
It's not the you that’s dampened
It's not the you that’s cast

So let’s celebrate your ingenuity
Your tears to make us laugh
So let’s celebrate also incongruity
Your fears to chase the chaff

I love you & I'm not sorry
I'm not sorry for the way I feel
I don't feel sorry for you, I'm in love
And love's the thing we steal


From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

And so also for you and I

You smile
Into my open eyes
I defy anyone
Not to call you beauty

A golden mean
A ratio rule
Everything in proportion
Life
And all that she offers
In a skin sealed envelope
Posted with a smile

Any kind of music
Or sounds only of birdsong
Any time you choose
In bounds the light
In time
In tempo
In mood

In or about
To be with love
In or about to be
With love

You begin
With mist moist eyes
Surprised
By disingenuous guys
I lie beside you
I defy anyone
Not to call you beauty

Any or another imagination
Any soldier, any platform
Any station, any journey
Lovers they
Gaze to say goodbye
And so also for you and I
This morning

We gaze to say goodbye
To rush headlong
Towards our next meeting
To rush headlong
Towards our afternoon

For our journeys are local
Also further than the clouds
For our togetherness is total
Also further out
Beyond and proud

You sing
With an unsteady tremble
Soft female sounds
Permeate your grounds
I try & decide

To defy anyone
Not to call you beauty
I cry and softly
Politely
Defy anyone
Not to name you beauty


From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Justice lies wandering

Angst
Amid the scream of anger
The pain

Of growing up
The pain of being or becoming
A grown up growing up

Always in the past
Shit
That fucking stuff

That brings regret
Stuff that opens
All those darkened doors

Too far away
And far too close
To see or feel the love

Tears
And misheard conversations
No words bring justice

Where justice lies wandering
And hope is left squandering
Or pushed away completely

Fight
Or flight in unselfish persecution
Of self at best

Unworthy except of blame, shame that
You ever entered
Through life’s wide open door

Cannot love
Ever be left like this
Ever like this be left

Instead the will of ordination
Fingers just touch on fingers
For this is far too early

Far too early
For a full on come on
Shoulder wrapped embrace

Dare
Of each and then of each other
Enter always the complicated situations

Engage your care
Back into those deep
Wide and furlong furrows

Leave space
Burrowed
With time

With gentleness

Of room for mistakes
And misappropriations
Conserve creation to cherish

This love too far away
And far too close
To see or even to be seen



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Bright side

Wide-open spaces
Rustle of a breeze
Through timeless grass
Birdsong
In flight
Above and out over
Downalong the meadow

Salt sands lay baking
Cracked earth
On barren beaches
Far reach
To past civilisations
Stationed
In retreat

Hillsides
Roll down
By wheat green grass
And corn

Not yet so high
O sigh for summer days
Summer days
Laid sideways such as these

Time
To reflect
To reconnect
With so many
Past
Beginnings
Forgiving
Living
Being alive

With skin
Our closest
Close
Companion
Here

Beside the
Whitest
Wild White Campion

Skin
Cradled around
Your finger
The ring of gold
Of
Past times
Last lines
Left to linger

Left
Bereft
Or bright side
Of many memories
Thoughts

Now to remember
On this quiet

There
Listen to the breeze
Listen
Through timeless grass



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

He’s found you too (we all know a Buddhist)

You know a Buddhist
I know a Buddhist
Our friends know a Buddhist too

And then the meter reader called
The meter reader’s time unfolds

Your friend is going to retreat
My friend he retreated too
He took some time to find himself
And there he then he found you too
And there and then
He found you too

You know Buddhists
I know Buddhists
Our friends know Buddhists too

And then the text machine
Of mine I scrolled
The text machine
Of time unfolds

Your Buddhist friend is going to die
It’s all we ever know
He’s arranged the words
For you to say
Upon his dying day
The never-ending words
For you to say
Upon his dying day or two

You knew a Buddhist
I knew a Buddhist
We all knew Buddhists too

In time lifelong films
Rich picture rolled
Lifelong films
Of past times unfold

Your friend is coming by
That day
A slow opening cocoon

The butterfly
With dual wings
Emerged beneath
The blue sky
Amid the
Orchid meadow

Our lives of love
They never die
They never ever do

You know a Buddhist
I know a Buddhist
We all know Buddhists too

You know a Buddhist
I knew a Buddhist
We all know Buddhists do


From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Donna Nook

If you still wonder why I
Say thank you
Then think on yesterday
Think on Donna Nook

The orchids
The meadows
The wobbly iron ladder
And the skeleton of a seal

Where otherwise
Would I have been
A computer screen
A television
A glass of lager
A cigarette
A sandwich
A stony single bed
And the no hope
Of another new deal


If then still you wonder
Think on nature’s riches
There instead
Two people holding hands and laughing
Three people
Each with a camera
With a photographic bent
And a moth
Straight out of its cocoon

Stories of
The beach edge watchtower
Cups of tea and scorecards
While practice bombs are dropped

From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

On the way of what to do

In these days of wondering
Days of wondering what to do
In these times of wondering
On the way to think of you
On the way to think
To think of what to do

So today the way
To blue skies and mountains
The way to spirits, souls
And stairways unleaden
Today the way to play
The way that children do
Without the wander
Or the wonder
Of the wandering wondering
Wandering & wondering
What to do

What to do
With the next few moments
The minutes and the hours
The days of country flowers
The seven steps to seek
That make up most my week

Seek out the moths
Sergei and stroganoff
The years of generations
Penetrations and separations
Of life lines into lifetimes

Take the pen
The paper and the pencil
Write down thoughts
Appropriate gestations
That may be met upon the spot
Past incarcerations
Or maybe not



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Paddle and Splash

I am in my brother’s garden
Alone
I am early
It is a mid June afternoon

My brother lives
I suppose you could call it country
But not an estate or a seat

Not in the grandest sense
Not a Chatsworth
Or a Balmoral
Or the old East Indies

Anyhow
Here I am
Here and waiting
And thinking

Could I ask you please?
Just for a moment
To choose
Your own favourite location

And
Then
For this moment
Listen to the wave’s splash

If your place is by the sea
Where you wander
Or paddle and splash

Back here
I sit on the wooden bench
A close fit two-seater
Listen - I can hear the birdsong

I can hear the flap of wing
Can you
I can hear the buzzing fly

This is a time
Unplanned
Here I am
Alone

With nothing needing to be done
Nothing at all
At this time of now
Is expected of me

Can you imagine such a time
When all that is to be done
Is that which comes
From within your own imagination

Imagine
Time for thoughtful recreation
Spontaneous blameless contemplation
Or action

I guess the grass was cut a few days ago
Anyway the shed is locked
No access to the mower

Unless of course I act against the law
Break
And enter

But why would I
When instead I can sit here
In the sun and the shadow

Sit here
And write for you
While I listen out
For my brother



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Luminous Intensity

The sun strikes from high above
Thirty years or more ago
At university or in love
We spoke of Lumens
His law and the afterglow
Of Luminous intensity

Immense then the
Density of the obnoxious teenager
Leaning against the bar in fair refrain
A peacock on the prowl
A scowl for all authority

Some things never change
And some things stay the same

Rising in the east
And setting in the west
Concave or convex
The arc between

Between the rise and set
Is blessed

Intense then the
Propensity of youth
Spent; fenced too far
In dares unfair domain
A hippopotamus with a growl
Cheek by jowl to remain

Some things never change
And some things stay the same



From the Collection I Suppose You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Rossetti

The pen says Rossetti
The picture
In my mind is of a face
With an engaging smile

A closed door
An open space
Above the floor
Aside in place

A cry for more
Of love to taste
An open door
On Rossetti’s face


From the Collection I Guess You could Call It Country, available on Kindle

Philadelphia & Bagels

Mental morning callisthenics
Extend my thoughts to love
My lover

Railway wagons
Shuttle past
The window

When last
Did you take
Your lady out to tea

Or have a picnic
In the park
With Philadelphia & Bagels



A Poem from the collection In such a shabby, crabby way Available for Kindle from Amazon

Singularity

For a moment I had forgot
Or rather I had forgotten to remember
To be aware that life moves on
Around me

Engrossed in some singular occupation
I occupied myself beyond myself
And lost myself to those who had
Found me

With Pope Joan
& Lady Nijo
Marlene, Win & Louise
And my hero Joyce

The carer for Angie
The repository for life's troubles
Doubled up deep
Inside me

I lose my way
With words
Yet vow after today
To have more care

Over my singularity:
I will hear the raindrops
Outside
And your voice; once again



A Poem from the collection In such a shabby, crabby way Available for Kindle from Amazon