All but there

In her absence she often turned to meet him

With feigned presence

He always returned her greeting

In her absence defeated amusements begin

With indiscrete diffusions

She renders him unworthy of further meeting

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Curved Ball

I will close down, so soft, so slow

Walk again

Where the cherry blossoms grow

I say these words

On a wind worn night

With peace, not fear nor fright

The time may be long

Beneath the light of your moon

Let that I may be strong

In the swathes of poppies

Through the fields of corn

Sworn to beholden, feet worn

Howling gale, beating rain

Sounds so loud

They drown the retreating pain

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Artist’s Model

Water-paint of upturned breast

Impenetrable as the dawn mist

All else hidden by a scarf

That I imagine surrounded you

Untouchable as the dusk’s light

That laid low your shadow

I have a desire to touch

Disturb your soft free locks

& whisper my first soliloquy

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Channelled

Coldness creeps in

Through the open door

As light fades

From the once blue sky

His conversation

Easy and eloquent

A tale of a life

Passed staggeringly by

Window’s on to poppies

Girl in a printed dress

Art that takes over

Caressed as we fly

It's true I could scream 

To be there again

Back into the last

Christmas that I cried

Out on the cold moor

A derelict landing strip

Sat so clearly alone

Old ideas slung out to dry

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Home Hope

The snows await, the

Low sunlight’s strength of

Reflection suggests so

Last summer’s leaves

Flicker and fall

A sharper breeze blows

Pink and crimson

Blossoms now a memory

Past limes laid to rest

Replaced by winter’s

Cherry red, prickly

Hawthorn berries

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Love One

Is it about love

It is about life

Love is of life

Is it about one love

It is about one life

One love is one life

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Aghast

Through hallways and shopping malls

Teenage girls, beside spotlit mirrors

Snowflakes fall, her sisters call

Why the hell you running with scissors

Why wouldn’t we think of that winter

When we walked on ice floats

Tripped unsteady, by the fissures

Thinking of you, running with scissors

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Nadir

Killing time

Still they mill around

The blue bloods of injustice 

The faded grey line of injustice

Watch out for the signs

Walk in line

It’s the killing time of injustice

Killing time

Still they mill around

The blue bloods of injustice

Killing time

Still they mill around

The blue bloods of the justice 

The ministers crime begs out for justice

Watch out for the dimes

Step out; resign, resign, resign

It’s the killing time for the justice

Killing time

Still they mill around

The blue bloods of the justice

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Nape

Lost and found
Gone to ground
Lost and found again

Lost and found
You're not around
You've gone to ground again

Lost and found
Gone to ground
You're not around again

Lost and  found
I pound to out of bounds
I'm lost and found again


from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Neap

I was all for looking neat

The painter at your feet

A weekends lost receipt

I put myself to sleep

You were all for being deep

Conscience that you keep

For all their failed deceit

I put myself to sleep

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Basis

Scent

The one last probable great imponderability

That calls you back into my life

Scent

That I can pick off the pages, or dissolve 

From another young woman’s photograph

Years have passed

Way beyond absolution

Arches of roses collapsed

Bicycle of joys trundled

Certain as the stones

Laid out before

We, as all others

Caught by institution

Scent

Homogeneous in a few lines of text

That neither you nor I wrote

Scent

Worthy of being named the great imponderable 

That rolls you back into my life

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Listen & Observe (Spring)

A creaking door opens

Birds chirp

A solitary eastern cabin

Placed on an island platform

In the middle of a lake

Strings of bells chime quietly

The teacher yells at the young boy

It is time to get up

To sweep clean the boardwalk

Before we jump into the rowing boat

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Listen & Observe (Into Great Silence)

From the mist to the prayer

Rising and falling

Knock on wood

Patience comes calling

Quiet, stillness; silence jinxed

An identity parade

A single eye winks

I am seduced

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Row

Lavender fields steal away my resentment

Instead to reel off the whiled away hours

Wander among the rows of fragrant flowers

Shower the love; as once upon the coastal towers

Powered another kind of war

Loss of love, touched along the shoreline 

Unable to handle that which turns sour

The smitten intellect weaves away with power

Seeds planted in rough ground; scoured

Redefined in a clumsy kind of score

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Seasonal Ego

Yesterday the sun’s warmth 

Warmed my love of the world

Today grey skies & incessant rain

Reigns in my positive imagination

Photographs try to give momentary respite

Yet they throw out little thermal energy

For you I do recall the gentle Zephyr

Should you ever wish to return

from the collection
The Curved Ball of an Artists Model
Love Encouraged By the Breakout
Available from itunes by clicking here

Life enhanced

Always with a surprise

Yesterday a kimono

A white fabric, hardy

And well hung

Your smile gives away your pleasure

Today and for a long time

A presence more than being

Softly strung

You get on and you keep at it

Whatever got you down

You got it, shook it

Worried it right out of town

In touch

With your sensitive senses

You mend those

Who broke, and fell apart

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Trust anything but time

Pastel colours in quiet refrain

Hands still on the chiming clock

Whisper in case I hear myself

Look behind the picture frames

Dust, a relief of many years standing

Unplugged, from the upright room lighter

Unmoved from a mother's generation

Flock wallpaper abides in the memory

Even of just and only the place

Billericay Close or Quebec Narrows

All I ask is contemplation

About and around a race of which I'm out

All I ask is elevation

About to surround myself, unable without

Pastels, flocks & dust; trust the

Background music, the mood, the blues

Create paisley patterns; young men, bare feet

Pylons, stanchions, mill floors flattened

Valleys of derelict cotton works

Countries of windblown cotton fields

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Searching for a feeling, an essence, an evocation

In your room I am ironing
I feel pretty good about myself
I feel the goodness usually reserved
Or given a fairly lofty price tag

Much the same when you return
From your dutiful day at work
While all the while I toyed
With some unlikely protestation

Later, sat on the three-seater sofa
We feel pretty good about ourselves
We did kiss
But that was somewhat earlier

The iron is still, all else is steaming
Afterwards we mow the lawn


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Beyond the easily forgotten

Sentimental, awash with nostalgia

Do you remember, or are you scared

Think on - only from the past

No ideas for an unknown future

Nineteen Eighty Four is way back

A place no more than a wilderness

The Easy Rider’s have smoked

Their last cheroot, today is a reflection

But what of tomorrow

Walk naked down the high street

Or some other form of soul baring

Or extravagant expression; rose petals 

In gardens falling, more or less to dreams

To intensify - autumn’s fresher schemes

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Turn away from the return

Escape to this piece of England

Determination your sensitised survival key

Something snapped; one final silence too far

One magazine article, one mission

Two hundred miles apart

You are going or even may have gone

Purposeful; with direction and organisation

Another way of life to give back a life

To vibrant youth; no more to carry the still 

Misplaced child found in a house lost of love

Once, twice, but never ever a third time

Sound of fortune cards pulled from the pack

Wise words taken with a wiser smile

Shall we go home now

The first song on the first date

Soon together & determined at one

Purpose with and in a single key

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

White light, clear evening

Always forwards with preparation

Except this time to give chance its chance

Unexpected, the floodlit clock tower

The touch of hand on hand

In such a rush to build a past

To look forwards, to look out, for

Flashbacks of the future, memory of now

Wait; spare a moment from the cobwebs

Feel skin pressed hard against skin

Teeth bite hard into necks

Sink into softer navels

Bodies clenched tight

For fear of misunderstanding

Risk all

But do not call it desperation

Tall towers …longer views

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Bounded

Even asleep the heat overwhelms to wake

With perspired skin; here still the prisoner

On the final journey, a courtesan about to fly

A writer to hold the broken lead one last time

Outdoors it is marginally cooler

The draught floats through the open door

Into the courtyard, into the library

Across the road from Grand Central Station

Backalong, in bars and sherbet fountains

We were glad; expectant in high summer

Mad with excitement, pretty dresses

Long legs, friendship, gaiety was all around

Surrounded life closed in & leaves fell

Four seasons, the reason for the winter

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Grasp

So soft and still the irony

Times pasture’s thrill I mean

Rosebuds then tulips

Corn on the cusp

On the turn from green

Youth was never ever lasting

Passed there in between

Here and now and casting

For the love I need to seem

Stickleback  and tickled trout

The hay loft and the stream

Quiet, quintessentially without

The shout of silent lest I mean

That no one knows, or enquires 

Of what I gleam

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Not even frustrated

Downbeat town

Otherwise known as Beirut

Cap and gown frowned

Otherwise known as shoot on sight

Noise

A racket or unjust interference

The down of depression

Is killingly real

Deadbeats, downbeats & druggies

Half life’s and those less hopeful

A bigger question needs a bigger picture

Wiser than government

Inexplicable to the ordinary man

Caught here among the crossfire 

I though don’t feel it

No chance that I can say it

No way for me to contribute to change

This is not a poem

It’s not even coherent

What or why is all that’s left

Undone, hopeless

Nothing

Out of however many

You might wish to score it

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Floppy hat, flowered trousers and a ladder

Afternoon

In East England

Lincolnshire, or any other

Back water

Out

In deep & quiet country

A farmyard, a pasture

Or any other roadside stables

Old patient

Younger nurse

A driver without distinction

Or any other clues yet due

Except

College together at Oxford

And

That they spoke so very well

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Redeem this song

Smile; always and forever

The first kiss of late evening

Anticipated excitement

Fingers touch

Missiles miss, much

Thank you, now or never

The first engagement of assistance

Unexpected, tough to come such

Unusual to trip the light fantastic fandango

Under the moons many colours

Detect, introspections hobbled crutch

Unease yet easy & plain to see

Together is the love of kindness

Life it seems redeemed for free

Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Faraway

I send you a letter
That I love at the time of writing
And then forget
Next day another phrase catches my ear
But let  it not be called an internal rhyme

We talked of the camera obscura
A photograph, a thousand points of view
Through the window, over the valley
One mile more or less from the ford

In summer’s heat perspiration began
The muddled, befuddled mind…
To slow down, or jump in the pool
With or without question

In the letter I hoped for a reply
Did you


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Who goes there

Prickly stalk of bramble
Who would not be hurt by your graze
Or by the loud voice of that bully of a teacher
The fat show off, full of arrogant contempt

Willows; sway in all those wild winds
Of slaughter
Show your flex to sustain your summer
Give your shape, it’s beauty, fair play and free

Tarmac, trodden with heavy boots
Braziers, flames, smoked aromatic moisture
Laid down over lost pastures, flattened
Trimmed, dismissive, with a massive machine

Freeway, autobahn, rhetoric
The rhetorical question
Listen - can you hear the tough guys
Hear them, they are all alone


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

A young man becomes an old man

Warm silence
Ice cold beer
Anger and forgiveness
Inadequate without complaint

Mellow gentleness
Distraught with blame
Shadows and suspicions
Unable to find a name

Whispers cold
Chilled; the
Sisters of mercy
Awash with fear

Soft sensitive
Belongings
A quiet  walk
Before being buried alive


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Wait - please do not disturb

In between the rafters
Beneath the flattened lead
A regenerative recirculation
Still yet moving, slow air

The breath of silence
Slower than the breeze
Black cloaks stride out
Tread the aisle with purpose

All of those old words
Roof space freely had you
Praised other men’s verse
Worse to leave you left

Without your own memories
Absent of your own meditations


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle

Find only our fortune

White linen suit
Frayed fingers in your making
Can you turn me into a poet
Can you take me to Bohemia
How many wages were spilt
Before being distilled
Made ready
Initiated
Into fashionable society
Arrogantly taken off the peg

The lost province of aristocracy
Past cities of the intellect
Retailer
Wholesaler
Packer
Shipper
Importer
Advertisement executive
And Mr Big

Anyone but you takes the money
For your intricate handiwork
Your lyric, your chorus
Your woven weft
Bereft of any of their cluster
Instead to the isthmus
Or the black hole
Of singular isolated pain

We may find
Only our own fortune
Which may or not sustain
Even for a short while
Until tea or a late supper
Eventually we must
All step out

Bled and undressed
In time for the better fed


Taken from the collection Words in Aspect South Facing - Available from Amazon for Kindle