New Year & Coping

I don’t want to get drunk

Why shouldn’t I get drunk

I’m on my own

I don’t want to let the pain in too near

I could be responsible

I would be grown up about it

I don’t want to be madly happy

No tears of happiness

Can hold back this night from the morning

I didn’t want to say all of those things I said, but 

I felt neat, I looked good

& I damned well wanted you to know it

The fights had stopped, the music too

The brave face turned towards despair 

& he sent in another song request

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Cope

Would I ever say that I was at a loss

I don’t think so

Brave face and all that

Happy for tears of happiness

Sadness, despair? No; only once had I 

Lost control & it was not going to happen again

So I listen to the whole of the world

Send in song requests, answer email quiz questions

I choose to leave the personal stuff for later

Write, read, send texts if needs be

Though don’t make me take any telephone calls

Let the voices stay in bed until the morning

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

New Year

New Clothes

Skin tight sky blue jeans

Mauve paisley shirt

I felt neat

I liked how I looked

I was feeling pretty-damned good

A friend arrived

With two stolen bottles

Of his parents wine

I didn’t want it

I didn’t want to get drunk

I wanted the experience

Sitting

On the sidelines

In the dance hall

I felt shy

I felt inferior

I felt inadequate

She asked me to dance

We danced

We danced, wild and crazy

I felt happy

I felt popular

I felt incredibly loved

Outside 

At the end of the night

Trying to stop the fights

I felt responsible

I felt grown up

I should have walked her home

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

About

I read you once

It was enough to say 

I love you

I read you once

& asked for nothing 

In return

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

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 would recall the gentle Zephyr

Should you ever wish to return

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Life of Love

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 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

You, Away (Cowdust)

A simpler way

Similar of the day

& of the night time

Meditation sways

Calm of purpose to play

With children to lights out time

Picture peaceful Mandalay

& restless chaotic Bombay

Rich colours intertwined

Away for two days to stay

Alone in our bed I may

Write the lovers sign

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Absence of Free Will

It is not that I am torn

It is more that my mind

Seems to go just wherever it damned well chooses

I have been in love before

I am in love again now

Images & memories, that my mind frequently abuses

If on occasions forlorn

If caught on barbs that bind

I am resigned to follow her, go wherever she pleases

If to think of that spotlit dance floor

To shuffle so lightly, my how

With footsteps and body sways; she poses, she teases

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Tumblr

Escape, without words

A mind filled to overflowing

With maps and images

Famous painters

& women's breasts

Still mountain mists

From the East of Saigon

Enter into the night time

Wait for quiet to fall

Darkness to take her shadows

Memories of dusk clamber

For your erstwhile attention

Detention is worth the call

From the rest of the world

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Mon Plaisir

I can’t drill down

Any deeper

Alone I am unable

To magnify the view

I do remember a window

The lane a little steeper

There was a garden 

& a small kitchen

With two colourful cockatoo

Fields for potatoes

Before

The long curved beaches

Yet out beyond the reaches 

I was so often absent

Just as the image shows

I stayed out of view

There are pedestrians

Close-up; together strolling

Along the promenade

They sojourn  towards the town

Did you wonder that I wondered

On the hope of walking out with you

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Thin Air

The words hold themselves

I have no way of propulsion

You, where my thoughts lay

May be scared how they lie

Unable to hold or elucidate

I only wish of her lost ether

Readers, in their lonely rooms

Call out; it is the other lovers cry

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Pre Prenuptial

I tried to believe I could let go

Even before we started

I wanted to show, define

That my love was strong &

However long we were together

The treasure would have been mine

I would be sure & secure enough

To wish you much future happiness 

On the day that we would surely part

Yet once started by your refinement

I inclined to play the game too well

& lost. I reassigned my trial belief. Go

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Aznavour

She, woman of man's life

Where would we be, without 

Her otherwise attractions

He, man of woman's life

Who would otherwise

Be, less of undue distractions

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Glow If You Dare

Flames are lowered

Curves of decay amongst the embers

Turned pages of picture books

Remember those past Decembers

Lend her the lyric hooks

Sing songs of joy and tenderness

Suppress at once the sideways looks

That is not the way to send her

Fend off your depression

Close up the downbeat crooks

With the light of her impression

Share those romantic nooks & crannies

Play her Danny and the Champions of the World

Swirl her on to the dance floor

More you shout, folklore edicts the damsel fair

Rare as the sacred whirled through wilder air

Care of the curved decay

Whose lowered tones blend with her wishes

Superstitious as she has become

Run now, run your words down to the floor

The core is gone

The story slowly flickered, lest it shone

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Egg Light

The daydreams were pink eggshells

The night dreams were duck egg blue

Love dreams were of pure white you

The farms morning sun shone bright

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Stand Back

In too close

Too close to see the distance

Too close to appreciate the longer view

Decades; years and months

That are only captured in the briefest

Of photographic & postcard moments

Places whose constant presence

Occasion only a fleeting glance

Of family, friends and lovers

The seven waves

Wash only once over our shores

As if in a time-lapse periodic table

Thoughts, ideas and dreams

Float without fulfillment

As the stars in tonight’s milky way

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Looking Up The Hill

Leafless tree

Sky, grey on burnt red

Friendly, face to face

& cyberspace

Complimentary conversation

As the light surprises

The clouds drift

I gather my warm thoughts

& whisper

An inner word of thanks

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Natural Light

At first he thought
It was a fairground attraction
A spectacularly lit, immense big wheel
He was not convinced; could it be a new

Regenerative East Coast sculpture
A beacon across the North sea
Illumination for our European neighbours
He drove on confused, until the penny dropped

It was a slowly rising moon
A vast globe of reds and oranges
A fascinating image that got him rushing
To the nearest vantage point

Yet, just as with that unfulfilling full eclipse of the sun
Witnessed on the Dartmoor outfall rock
A few solitary years ago
Tonight’s transitory light also failed to hold its glow

He was in love back then
He is in love again now
He also cares to believe more of love
Than in the intermittent shadows of sun on moon

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Only Moment

A sharp frost

Loves remnants sprinkled

On the trees & the hedgerows

A silver white

Where has love gone

Morning sky

You are in the distance

Over the rooftops

Beyond the gold of daybreak

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Crystal

Turn down the night

As cars go racing

Settle to the inner sight

Again to walk the Machair

Trip down the sand dunes

All at one with two once fair

Take a balance to the light

The clock of time is south facing

The fiddler fettles as well he might

Again to drive on, as we dare

Pulled by tractor through golden rills

All at one with two to care

Stroke the glass ball, hear your plight

The mirage of worlds are pacing

Life unfolds the reasons for flight

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Moon

Low slung moon

Slow sung tune

Tree with shadows for branches

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Station

Propulsion

We are all propelled

This way and that

This way and that

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

That Afternoon

My hand on her firm tummy

Her skin suntanned and warm

Our child all lively in her belly

One day of love, forever frozen

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Interruption

The sun is warm on my face

Although my feet, in stockings, are cold

I browse the many images and words

Love is ever a blessing

The telephone rings; it is an urgent message

Regarding my payment protection insurance

The sun is warm in my voice

Although my reaction to the shocking recording

Was colder than bare skin in darkness

Silence is ever a blessing

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Windless

It is an encouraging light

Through all eleven windows

In the main it is quiet

Constructors at lunch

Factories at lunch

Traffic stilled by time

It is easier without projections

Listen to the absent tick-tock

All of love, all of care, which

Gives a renewal of our energies

Browse the poets & the artists

Who each strive to bring beauty

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Canal Side

Restrained

Without of understanding

Unsure of belief

In ones own thoughts

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Hermitage II

Listen

The chink of china

Informal conversation

A European City

Out for afternoon tea

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Hermitage

In search of one

A symphony of simple

Cool, calm; of a tradition

To dream of all but silence

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Roberto

Before the stillness

Among the crazy time

Bound, by papermache

The gluepot

& the paste brush

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links

Cobra

A place to become unsettled

Legs turn, unsteady

Humans, with the voices of birds

Fires, pyres, screened by poets

from 

Looking Up The Hill :: Love To Make You Stand Back

Christopher's Poetry collections can be found on iTunes and on kindle by clicking the highlighted links