Least known or unknown address

Valedictory eyes

Purple gaze on to no one

A precursor to the past people

Of my present premonition

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Unusually I am keeping going

I am on my way

To somewhere of little interest

I keep going

For something usual may occur

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Fundamental

To superficially soak

In the stupendous stupor

Of not even half understanding

The weighty tome before me

With style, form, scholarly

Vocabulary; a resonant

Ambiguity holds me transfixed

By its inadmissible beauty

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Kras

Two sparrows and two children

Two adults buy two ice creams

Two whitewashed walls to sit upon

Two buttons carefully undone

Two aprons of the hovercrafts skirt

Two swellings in your cotton shirt

Two adults lift two happy children

Two shire horses draw the carriage

Two islands washed in innocent sun

One marriage skillfully wrecked 

One love, selfless & helplessly half won

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Barrier

Have the sense to use those other mens words
Such that your own sensitivity is protected
Hold back your empty tears with their thoughts
Such that your scars will wash off easy as mascara

Let those wandering poets shake the blossom
While you are magnified by the blue skies
That they may talk of doubt and grief and longing
To depths that your imagination needs not imagine



From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Still Life

The artist suggests that the image is a stillness; for myself the image is a precursor to movement, a springboard to set the emotions flushing, a kick-start to the stories of yesteryear, a lambast for tales of even before the time of time itself

A small back doorway; room enough for two to shelter, from the swift and short spring storms; room enough to stand alone, with wetting eyes, as the garden brush is fired in the dry dirt of summer; room enough to laugh on ones return home, after the birth of the prodigal son; room enough for two to part, over the spilt milk possession of a gas bill; room enough to have held all those times, yet passed them over for a new life

The artist’s stillness is suggestive; he opens you to way more than the entirety of all my wasteful words; he asks of you to enter, to stand in his space, a holding point that is less than a passage, less even than half a passage; he asks you to wait there, perhaps to hear Vaughan Williams’ timeless Larks Ascending waft on the breeze from a distant room

You do wait there; as you endlessly waited for me; as you stood alone, with shaking hands, in that vestibule; your salted tears streaming of self recrimination; you, a worn and sunken soul; you in search of the storm, that would forever fire you into oblivion

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

On the Run

That light

The same light 

That I saw with you in Lyon

Before the town was awake

As we escaped to the coast

Make the most of it

The poster with our names

Will soon be bringing fame

The song as you will see

Remains just about the same

That light

The same light 

That we fought over in Lyon

For our love and for mercy's sake

We faked a telegraph by the post

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Interior Designs

Thankful for the rattle bag that passes for my mind

Mindful that I can juxtapose

The beautiful loves of my life

With little or no scene or argument

Grateful that I can let them be sprayed together

By the early mornings warm sunlight

Rarely does the bitterness rise to the surface

My mind has a smile that dilutes the pain to nought but

A dried up river bed, the sort you might find

Beside that idyllic country house, in the Pyrenees

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Morning

I won't ever sit

In that quiet room again

No one knows of those times 

That I sat there contented

The ten fifty-five train rolling by

In the deep cutting 

Across the sedentary road

The half-staggered walk home

From the gastro-pub

After Ascot Day at York races

I follow you through your houses

Cat sitting or wallpaper hanging

A loving, rewarding relationship

Today another quiet room

I absorb the wide open country view

Through your new house's window

I feel contentment’s approach

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Pictures of You

I am drawn to the lonesome view

People free landscapes

Vast vistas of natures making

Time lapse shots of her immense moving waters

Skies full of the nothingness of infinite colours

I am also attracted to the detail

Close up shots of skin and feather

Woman and bird in all their glory

Artefacts with the beauty that intricate detail bestows

Faces with smiles that shout out; love is here, it’s living well

I am particularly taken

By the great lake and the mountain

With a minuscule figure at the waters edge

It is here that I am able to pretend

Place whoever I wish to be there, as that person

Today it is a picture of me

Yesterday and tomorrows are 

My abstentions from pictures of you

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Framed

You might call it escapism

My departure

Into the world of image

It is more than that for me

It is gentle, all embracing

How can I call it; torture

Coastal memories

Of loves descendant

Once strolled pathways

Springs rising springs

Washed in my own

Deeper sap of uncertainty

Flesh unloaded of burden

Carried voluptuously 

Laced by loss and distance

Fabrics; there to be touched

Touched by love

Untouched by me

There are surges 

Undulations of emotion

With each entered recognition

The excitement of twisted rushes

As lusts flow moves unimpeded

Throughout my bodies bloodstream

I say that the longing is subsided

Yet one picture tells me; no

That it is so entirely untrue

I calm myself, vent doubts

After each such intermission

Prepare for further storms

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Drive On

Three trees and a hedgerow

Lost in the country lanes

On a moonlit Saturday night

I was your prize

You were my treasure

My pain was to realise

I couldn't make your measure

I still have a mind full of desires

Forever a receiver of pleasure

Three chimneys and a steam cloud

Count the cost of staying sane

In the Monday mornings early light

I was stained, drained way too deep

You said, it's fine, just don't stop swimming

My mind, in check, I try to keep

Yet often now you'll find me grinning

I still have the physical urges

Sinfulness you see forever purges

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Asthétiques

A flash of defined skin and you are in my mind

Thus resigned, I am to be no longer seaworthy

A Duran Duran kind of yacht

That blocks out all sense of informed reality

With knife in hand and swimsuit stropped

She ensures my fragility is so easily cropped

That I chose to take a second look

Says somehow that the book on you is not yet closed

With odds so long I am way beyond Camus’ Outsider

She has desires, although its no longer me beside her

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Flock of Crows

It began with line dancing
A dance I didn't know at all
The onrush of two times chancing
Ecstasy before the certain fall

One crow to a tree
It's my ache to be with you
It's my ache to be with me
One crow to a tree

We strayed to secretive engagements
Between the timeless telephone calls
All too brief, the visiting arrangements
Ecstasy before the certain fall

Two crows to a tree
It's heaven just seeing you
It's heaven just seeing me
Two crows to a tree

One Sunday morning in the meadow
You had to say, but first you stalled
I was joyful, you were somewhat slow
Ecstasy before the certain fall

Three crows to a tree
The dream of sharing him with you
The dream of sharing him with me
Three crows to a tree

Others overloaded the compartments
Pushed about to let the wagons roll
A boat to a house and garden
Ecstasy before the certain fall

A flock of crows to a tree
It's not easy living with yours
It's not easy living with mine
A flock of crows to a tree

It ended by your fancying
You didn’t need me as a lover at all
The pointlessness of just friendship
Exasperation before the curtain call

One crow to a tree
It's not that I am not with you
It's that you were not with me
One crow to a tree


From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Extravaganza

The bedroom blind moves to and fro

Sucked and blown

By the breeze at the open window

The sunlight shines strong and bright

Through the flickered leaves

Of fresh spring trees by young hedgerow

Tea is brewed, hot cross buns toasted

No one else about

As if a time to create a few words seeming

If it is love you want, love you shall have

My love lies sleeping

Who knows what dreams are in her dreaming

If it is doubt that you would rather read

The flowers shadows

Appear to be somewhat hidden within

Even though the hour is fair-some and early

A little music is offered

Voyageur songs from Fall Creek - Wisconsin

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Kernel

So little to remember

Only with endless words

Could I hope to do you justice

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Stem Sperm

Would you laugh with me 

Would your laugh be against me

Could you laugh

As the midnight red light turns me to a tremble

As the spirits of the night in the shadows reassemble

Should I care

That the words are no more

Than a broken lovers token

In the glare of the bare night

Poetry is written, unspoken

The fare that I paid

Is returned to the sender

Left there unopened

The ridge of peace

Is only for the riders

Who go by, so still

So quietly awoken

Would your body settle with me

Would your body wrestle against me

Could your body thrash

As the indignant right rails me to ruefully disassemble

As the spirit of flight calculates & separately does tremble

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Silver

Inevitable, is it
That your name should be on my lips
As, with my breath
I blow the mist away
From the mirror of this Monday morning

The Supernaturals
Sing to me to smile
& smile with amusement I do
As if my immaturity
Thank God could never leave me

This silver birch is related
However distant
To the one we clasped, so fleetingly
In the virgin snow
At the edge of the Russian forest

Those trees are of the same strain
As the ones our one son
Photographed on the plaza
At the entrance to the art gallery
In England's burgeoning principality

Trees and mirrors and virgin snow
That I should think of you now
In front of the misty mirror
On an ordinary otherwise Monday morning


From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Safe Distance (Words from a Jacuzzi)

It couldn't happen

We wouldn't meet by chance

We've long since waved happenstance away

I went to France

You learnt to dance

The lock-gates counterbalanced as we swayed

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Light Moves

One stroke of colour

& the race to emotional overload begins

As if only one woman ever wore blue

At least that blue of extremism in contemplation

Smiles offered

Would you expect still to wait

As if the time wasted was all that remained

Of that fabric of life we once shared together

The mock chandelier is fitted

To the new house entrance ceiling

As if otherwise all else would be the emptiness

Of a place we had once dreamed of

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

See it, Feel it

Cold white light, silhouettes

The relics of religion

Warm sun

Melts the valley floor's

Frosted grasses

As if somehow

You know the ways of love

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Shades of Being

Two orange-red shadows

Light the wall opposite my bed

Happy to watch their slow movement

I feel warm under the covers

To keep this peace a little longer

I press the alarm to snooze

All over the country

All over the world

Thousands and millions of you

Will copy me

You too may be among the lucky ones

Those whose sleep was sufficient

To allow you to turn to snooze

Later, after a revitalising shower

I read a few pages of Pessoa

His Book of Disquiet

More positive than yesterday

He talks of the sunlight in his life also

That recently I was loved, and praised

Is worthy of mention

After those sad days

When I lived on bread alone

It shows to me the immense power

Of the indecipherable

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

It isn’t the City

The city doesn’t matter

It is the sunshine

That brings me to your love

The coffee doesn’t matter

It is the cigarette

That pulls me to your love

The art doesn’t matter either, for

It is the souls own image

That asks me of your love

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Early

Most every sky has a chink
For rain or sun to enter through
Most every tree or forest
Has a gap or a cutting to see you
These chinks, these cuttings
These gaps; moving, fleeting
They give you your stability
They take away your suitability

Such that you and I are unable
We are unable to hold off the wobble
We are left to bobble up and down
In search of someone others shore

Most every step leads to a void
A place for rope bridges or parachutes
Most every breath or airborne pain
Gives surety to ultimately stained fruit
These steps, these breaths
Slow, definitely measured
They give you your definition
They take away your indecision

Such that the we does not exist
We do not exist in either fire or ember
We are life’s leftover flames
In search of someone other’s ashes

Most every train of thought loses its thread
Its ability to spread & reach speech a struggle
Most every flex of the mind is limited
By the inability to synchronously juggle
These thoughts, these threads
Haphazard, without discipline
They give you your passage
They take away your assuage

Such that the I does not function
The I doesn’t give or take from you
Such that the I becomes the island
Unto which I was beckoned

Most every year washed in a new tide
A carrier of unfathomable baskets
Most every sandcastle
Washed away in the time before moonlight
These tides, these sands
Their fluidity, their impressionability
They give you your dreams
They take away whatever seems

Such that only by their side could we walk
By their side we could happily stumble
Such as when dawn light began to clear
We had to ceaselessly disappear



From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Record

Time out; to hold back the day

Dream of your rays in Cornwall

A warmer sun, a longer sun

Walk on wet and dry sands

Skip barefoot at the waters edge

Take vanilla ice cream with my coffee

In the evening; a restaurant, a bar

A slow walk beneath the moonlight

The photographs put chance

To the enhanced story

One year alone, other years together

Hard to tell, from the ambience

When I was at peace

When I was in turmoil

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Viewing Balcony

It is the unusual, as well as the stylish

The exquisitely planted ground

In sharp frost

Beside the busy main road

It is the memory, as well as the present

The heartbeat that rose

As I made the telephone call

From a Spanish Plaza

It is the thought, as well as the wonder

The desire to name the hard to believe

The only half understood

The reason, and the purpose

It is the ordinary, as well as the avoidance

The continuous traffic on the motorway

My dreams, onboard the outbound aeroplane

In the clear blue sky

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Faith, Hope & Love

It isn't about hope, it quite probably isn't about love
Faith too, that’s hardly worth a mention
It is about my physiology, about my psychology
Time I took time to gain more understanding

I hoped you might call, but you didn't
I was expectant, and then excited, but ultimately
I was extremely disappointed
All of that happened while nothing physiological
Outside of my body, ever turned a trick

I wish the physiology was more in tune with my youth
I wish the psychology
Had the maturity of a single, or a thousand lovers
I wish I had been more easily and way better understood

I made the call, talked for a timeless time
Without encouragement nor needless intervention
I wrapped myself in a cocoon, of impenetrable gossamer
All of that happened while nothing psychological
Outside of my mind, ever turned a trick



From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Clocks Move On

I want for no more than this breeze

Breath of life from outside of my dwelling

Draught of revitalisation

Here, from someone other's garden

To sit, say no more than that

Without thoughts of need, or purpose

Simply to be, sat here

Precisely in the present

I have no desire for challenge

The truth of it is that such noise disrupts me

Better to have your quiet body stood beside me

Here, & in the near and far distance

To take no more than unique love

Love forever feeds my introspection

Love that smiles innocently

Here, upon our happy state

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

As one gets older

The uncertainties that turned fiercely into certainties are all in the previous multitudinous words and actions. That though doesn’t prevent the words still wanting to flow, for there are new uncertainties that will become the future certainties

Each day there is some pain or other, some large or small irritation, some brief, or longer lasting, taste of peace and joy. Not that I know myself any better; I am up too close to take a balanced view, my balance is mostly unbalanced

I have a ringing sound in my ears & my toes are tingling, there are rumbles from my digestive system and a dull pain from the area of my shoulder. I can see light from two-thirds of a circumference without moving & I can think on of this mornings half-way erotic dream

None of this would matter, unless you, the reader, had not got this far, for now I have to avoid repetition. Same as it ever was might have worked as a song lyric with a seventeen times reverb, but not for my reader, he wants more from my soul, more from my mind

What fired the early morning half-awake cavorting, with such a young, petit beauty; what had him shouting instructions over the cliff face to the hordes of workers below. With such tiredness of thought the sleep had come quickly, with no alarm his sleep was free from interruption; yet he woke, briefly, before the slender young woman curled into his body, before her gentle movements delivered him to nirvana.

& now, in the early evening, I prefer to dwell on the emotion, rather than to try to understand the meaning. Although I am aware that those few pages of Jung could have ground into my sleep’s own subconscious; rewarded me for my days insincere efforts.

For the dream was a payback, all soft and warm and loving. No angst, no noise, no friction; just love, love and bodies in free and fluid motion. Love, and the carefree intimacy of the desirer and the desired; always to be in the warmth of ones own making.

If I described this room; with its unlit stove on a rural stone slab, would that help you, the reader to gather your own misappropriations of the days and years gone by. Would it help you to know, of the light within, and the dark without, of the overheard television drama, and one side of a boisterous telephone conversation.

I dare to say it would not help; yet to know that I look at a painting, of two working men tiling a roof, would I think be of assistance. Workers; the very places I came from, the very people I tried to escape from; the very purpose of pictures; not to be what we were born to be.

To become something other; inside and outside of ourselves, being ourselves first, and foremost; although even our self is caught up in the forgetfulness. We forget what to do, what to say; we forget what to learn, what would give peace, what would help our mind quieten. We forget, until the young woman joins our quilted existence.

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Obscure Linkages

That I should wander

In search of the gaps in my unconscious

Shows the permanence of scar

Your motiveless love has placed upon me

That I should read Lacan's treatise on the

Four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis

Shows the depths I have plunged

To retain your absolute indifference

That I now study Dwelshauvers lists

For which I have to seek translation

Shows the endless & hopeless course

Which I set about to forage

That you never spoke of Jaques Lucan

Neither Rollo May for that matter

Suggests that you always did have hiding

As one of your lost loves prerogatives

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Spheres of Significance

I had the moon in my sight

With your hand in mine

I was sure of the flight

That this was the time

Secured by the moon

In heaven by light

Not a day too soon

After the dark of night

Sand dunes to climb

Waves to caress

Virgo's sign, from

The officer's mess

Shake with the rune

Odds to suppress

Sing out of tune

To childhood regress

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu