Suitcase

Lindens in that place above and below

Shared by earth and sky

Sapling by sapling with the Rowans

Set back, or rather set forth of the Weeping Willow

Born of timeless barks shadows, upon the Silver Birch

Would that these definitive species

Say something equal of me

As with your butterfly

That entered on the waft 

Of summers midday breeze

Tea, served on a companions tray

New friendships begin

Host and traveller

An overnight guest; we walk a parkland walk

Soft talk, dreams blended with meditations

Back at the piano, Satie's Gymnopedie plays

Pages turn on the endlessly symmetrical score

Gardens with lilacs, roses in bloom

Iced Martini, lemonade too, brimming over

Conversations; preparation for the after dark

A meal of suggestive spices, delicately laced

At table set, with wine, in impeccable taste

The best of clothes, perfume chosen

More than to say hello, before candlelight casts shadows

Onto that place where only our shadows are allowed to go

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Heaviness of Light

I send you this splash of wave
Ask only that your letter distills the droplets found
Deep of sound unbound within
Make pure gin of the hope and the hip-hip hooray
You are coming to stay, if I am to have my way

I send you this chaos theory of a rectangular box
Ask that your fractals are light beams to bounce
Pronounced to climb and creep within
May pebbles skim on the pond like sea-swells
To tell of sands & play, dare that we share one day

Gifts from a time with time to contemplate
It is late, later somehow in the dark lined room
With the music of Anouar Brahem on the waves
Caves of grave generations without and within
May the perimeter of string pray to defeat delay

Travel with the fairies, dance with the fey
Only in our profound isolation
May my imaginations venture and climb
Soak up the rhythms; redefine denial, of that long
That long last loss, that one long lost loss of longing resign

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Purple Sage

Twisted, two obligations

Various considerations listed

Insistent, feel the lost thoughts lost again

Abstain, you are tied to, lie as to self the same

Upside, downside, cushioned comfort field or frame

Lain with those extrapolated and pilloried stains

Regain a mind at once so clear, free of fear

No more of Baudelaire or Stenigot, not now

Not then, no paradise of shock, no lock of hair

As silk slipped frost, all cost subscribed fulfilled

Drilled into safe emotive cells, wellbeing that dwells

On the printed page, that tells of itself’s own story

Through the spoken word, so absurd

No reader, no listener, no viewer, no friend, no word

From the past or the future, only the untold echoes

Reverberations that you heard but could not put

To a time or place, as if the race and the line, the

Call of mine, mine, mine; sublime in it's truth

Dutiful youth to wayward...

Struth how might you hold on to this

Old stories been and gone, levitations and escapologists

On the silver screen, what do we mean

What do we mean, what do we mean

It seemed straightforwards, to tell of hurt 

In that the void of breath, or blood should

Be so impossible to state, unable to relate

As flowers wilt and waters dry, as passions rise

Their chosen time closed to cry try, try, try

Let her go, let it die, say no more, be so fly

As to tell it never mattered, may you scatter

Letters, sounds, utterances, the found remnants

Of lust and love, to be trusted by expense accounts

Recompense to follow old and trusted paths

Last laugh and all that; crap, you never said

Dead until death us do part, let's start again

The day of it, the all but forgotten Zane Grey of it

The absolute pure flight and foreplay of life

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Boxed Out

Sailing on the seven seas

All in smile with sails to breeze

Happiness my heart to seize

Lay me down by swayed palm trees

Loison’s Pandora takes her leave

Time to dance, time indeed

Raise the flags and plant the seeds

Skies of blue no cloud or creed

We have the willow, we have the reed

Tales unfold our stories weave

Love my love to fair receive

Sun and shores I do believe

A fine fair way to end the grief

Closure now for souls own thief

Space to play in sound relief

Say goodbye, our time so brief

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Listening to Michelangelo

Into the wind

On sand, beside water

Sunrise, sunset, northern star

Bereft of ties

Minds work all to keep me

As if to walk into the desert

To plant the cactus

Lines drawn, portraits painted

Carvings made in lime and oak

Preserve the distance

Insulate from the pull of skin

Rhythms, vibrations

Drumbeats of the forest

Evolve to a slower pace

Care to jot down the ice effects

Let the love that entered re-enter

Warm thoughts fully felt

Smelted by the sun up sun

Out of the wind

Away from dereliction

Ache for the escape you ache from

Escape from the ache you escape for

Talk of sweet dreams

Send your love and kisses

Tell soft stories

Ease out the easy words

Mountain streams

And wishing wells

Rainstorms and taxi cabs

Intoxications & fascinations

Down the telegraph wires

Of immense immutable truth

Touch it once, taste it once

Care not for incommunicado

Cavort as only

Imaginary friends may cavort

Become the goddess and the giant

Be drawn along the star-line

And the devil’s causeway

Ache for the love that loves to ache

Ache with the love that aches to love

She walks in, he watches

How to say hello

Fired with lust

Lord let it be love

Stay calm, appear neat and cool

Boy I could be there

Throwaway words thrown away

Ghastly gestures gestured

Fool, fool, fool

Find yourself, be yourself

Open your defences, become vulnerable

Love is what love is

Care for her care

Thank heaven for words and voice

Place your arm on her shoulder

Lend her your leather coat

Be fascinated by her fascination

Be intoxicated by her intoxications

Dance as you ached to dance

Ache as you dance the dance that aches

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Elbowed Out

Find me in a faithless light 

Of the past and of the night

Singing songs and losing sight

Find me in a faithless light

Find me on a timeless flight

Of a mind with viscous plight

Taking risks and getting tight

Find me on a timeless flight

Find me with the blameless right

Of a future spelt and trite

Saying yes or maybe might

Find me with the blameless right

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Trepidation

Luxuriate in that fearless time of youth before you ever witnessed the exploits of the Mafioso

Wander if you will, in that skeletal forest, reminiscent of Nash’s burnt, scarred and devoured environment

Do you need to know any of that backstory to see that this is the face of a scared and frightened man

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Splashed water

I did not, would not, could not say no

Therein lies the impossible power of attachment

I pulled you close

Looked into your eyes

You laughed, yet you were quite unable

To look back into mine

I sat naked

As we dined

On the waterside terrace

Of my ex-wife’s sprawling cottage

You told of vacations

I began to understand

You ate easily of the anchovies

I struggled to find more abundant supplies

It was indeed unexpected for a neighbour to intrude

With pointless talk, endless conversation

Of troubles found

Here, at home & also beyond the Horn of Africa

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Doddle

Foul day

Strong winds, torrential rain

UA Fanthorpe telling of this thin strip of land

Earlier; gas flames set low, lights dimmed

Sat with a straight back, on a straight backed chair

I joined in a meditation with the Boys of Ampleforth

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Dream

I could not have thought it otherwise

Yet now I can think of you more easily

Even to think that we could be friends

Though to touch would be a fear

A fear that I might collapse into your arms

In search of all

That I have worked so hard to protect myself from

What brought me to this

It was a dream, less than a second I expect

An image of you with sparkling hair, a smile

A short nightdress

Your pubic hair pushed forwards 

Aching to be touched - I did not touch

To this day some fears remain

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Stance

There is no present presence

No renewed connection

Any attempt at wilful correction

Dispossesses hope of resurrection

Builds barriers to physical resurgence

Ley-lines that prevent the emergence

Of our embodiment in the ether

An untimely, seminal disturbance

Raised with every whim & fancy

That I breathe or timely mis-chance

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Scattering

It isn't quiet and it isn't still

It is novel

I watch a tiny train go past

This refuge of humanity 

Past the chalets

Over the shingle

Beside the beached fishing boats

Beneath the electricity pylons

All watched over by the lighthouse

& the swirling flocks of protected birds

A wilderness that I leave

Crossing over the narrow gauge track

I wish you could have been here

To share in the security of treasures lost

& memories found

To share in love, by a fireside

A warm afternoon of cakes

Among daylight custodial rearrangements 

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Impression

Hollow sky

To take hold indefinitely

To embrace

To follow through to the tree line

To merge

With  the silhouette of bare and empty branches

To reflect

The suns light on the bandstand

To begin the thaw

Of the frozen solid ground

To raise in the shade of the mist

Where a warmer, clearer presence might be found 

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Droplets of joy

Thin subliminal sounds of the ocean
Wave by cascading wave
Trickling harp by trickling heart

Darkness by the absence of artificial light
Darkness brought on by the closure
Of the once so certain, certain part

Super longevity; in this small four walled room
Super sized becomes the brevity
To ones own past times memory cart

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Bedhead

There is a warmth, a certain serenity

As if the star sign of Saturn alone should bring such piece

A carrier, a vessel to fill with echoes, a universe to populate

With dreamed up memories

That oscillate among eons of beautiful visions

In the future, to try to recollect these instants

Yet never again to truly trespass on those clouds

No more to instill that voice of endearment

Fearful of making the call

Under the ominous threat of rejection

Instead to read the chapter on depression

Settle on a preference for melancholy

Hang her scented lightness of cloth on every resonant passage

Celebrate the star sign that brought thought transference, and
Ultimate joy, before I wake up and smell the coffee

Shower, eat, drive, meet, return

To sit for a further day, at that place, where the ether

Can carry the birdsong, where the effervescent passages

Of time past and time present are able to wander 

Undisturbed - gentleness in being personified

from 

Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Absentee

Dare to break the spell

Purge the myths

Where the words wallow so frequently, so easily, so secretly

Set up the clandestine meeting

In a matter of fact sort of way, no more to it than that, no false 

Expectations, no hidden agendas, no place for truth or beauty

A map of California stretches across the table top

Was this his destination? 

That shadow of a man, how imperceptibly we carry our shadows

Dare to break the spell

Purge the myths

Of the doubtful doubts of insincere, and secret, easy, re-creation

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Mounds

Eight minutes the difference

Maybe climb the hayrack

Sit in contemplation

Drink a settled pot of tea

Thousands of times upon the waking

In or out of halfway dreams, where

Could the bare breast have came from

Heaven it is, only to know

Extrapolations, spent-fuel

Misfired imaginations

Overheard presentation of

Tree lined incantations

A single star, in a sky

At once so far away

Before a slow red sunrise

Turns on the weary day

Plagued by indecision

Fearful of derision

Indebted to the men

Of youthful circumcision

All across the frost filled grounds

All the way to fanciful minds

Thoughts plaid full

To the brim of fair silken mounds

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Rough

I have killed

As a fifteen year old youth I worked in the local slaughter house, earning pocket money for the summer holidays, picking up enough cash for Friday nights at the YMCA. A discotheque where I splashed on Brut aux de cologne before it became a mass consumer commodity. I splashed on scent to cover up the stench of blood and sweat, and fear; the fear of the cornered sheep who knew, from the ambient noise and the putrid smell, that it's time would very soon be up.

My time also done. The highly flighty young girls entirely unimpressed with my disk jockey selections of Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa et al. They breezed off to more soulful & romantic liaisons; who knows even to find a little bit of rough.

Not that the rough boys ever worked the slaughterhouse; no, mostly the rough boys were cowards and bullies, synthetic tough guys with no real fibre or backbone, or steel in their makeup.

They were the sort of boys who worked best in gangs, or who took their strength from their weapons of choice. The sort of young men who might have tried it on with me, until they heard that already I was a killer

I had killed before

All of that was a long time ago. I only mention it now, as we collectively undress.

More as a point of disclosure, to let you know of what I was once capable. It took a while to learn to stand up to bullies. Perhaps less time to move on to the more expensive aromatics. I hope that gives you some certainty, perhaps increases your expectations, of my future intentions.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Reclamation Yard

I could believe, if I wanted to, that with all those gulls in the silver, white and grey sky, then the sea could easily be over the horizon.

You might choose to share this thought-stream, from the evidence of your own personal vista. Pray tell of your unique, over the top dreams, themes, dramas, and convictions.

There are times when I could be embarrassed, there are occasions when I need to find a place to hide.

Not out here though, not beneath the bare trees that rest beside the canal, along the snow covered path, that might easily never end. 

You might choose to walk with me for a while, have fun seeing your own breath, inhale the smoke from the silage-stacked fires, and gaze down the endless corridor of limes.

There are those times when you may be embarrassed, those intemperate occasions, when you may need to find a place to hide.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Highway

First the door

Then the carriage

From the almanac

Coupled in marriage

Rope filled thoughts 

Thoughts that ravage

Scavengers rustle

Down the unlit passage

An interior tussle

Dark with damage

All Freudian slips to

Psycho micromanage

Trips born in haste

Vain with baggage

Powdered tufts

Acrid as cabbage

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

Pittance of Troubles

Insecurity and insincerity stand side by side at the gatepost. The CD player's drawer will not open.

Another nail, in the mid life, late life, risible crisis coffin. It doesn't amount to much does it; the result of a technical fault combined with low blood sugar levels.

Does anyone really believe, or are these just words. Just how long should the endurance be measured to satisfy the title of believer, and thus to be endowed with the moniker of an altogether satisfactory chap. 

Not at all to my satisfaction, no news yet from the car insurance, a dull wet mist to look out on.

The beat from Jim Moray might beat me back to life, as equally well might reading Romantic Moderns.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

And So I Write

There is sadness, is that not one of the reasons I go there. Four down beats to every five beat bar, or five to every seven on an upbeat kind of day.

Beats and bars and sweet sorrowful music to coincide with the tides ebb and flow; compelled by what's lost and what's not to be. To tell the truth how can we be swell yet at the same time dwell on the past presented by itself.

There is hurt and pain, it is more than one half of what drives me. The coiled spring that energises the clock when otherwise all time seems spent.

There are imaginary postulations, which if revealed would for sure embarrass me. I also need to find places, to hide those moments of half-belief in ridiculous implausible situations and coincidences.

These are daydreams of indiscrete circumstances. Premeditations created with wilful invitations. Invitations which are often, in my mind, super-sensorially accepted.

All this holds at bay the clear and final closure; yes there is upset, the infinite concentration and distillation of years of personal doubt.

Yet to give this up, to give up this past, to offer it to flame is no more or no less than a partial personal cremation. It is too big an ask of this one person.

Fires rise, flames die away, embers glow until the rains come, but our embers, hey continue to glow way beyond the rainfalls.

There is the mouth’s sour taste of waste; what a place to take the case to tribunal. There to face the rights and wrongs, to sing the songs of good and bad, across pontius pilate's plate of contemplative pebbles.

One stays quiet, even with the most direct attack. Clearly more had broken down than could be in  one mind entertained. That stream of bile on the journey north, what had been done to deserve this, surely tiredness can only accept one part share of blame.

I too am tired, tired of all the unease that surrounds me. It is as though I am at the kernel of tiredness, the core of the earths negative energy.

And so I write, with coloured pens. I listen to artists in colourful conversation. I choose purple as my new seasons colour. I re-engage with paisley patterned cotton shirts, resplendent in their tones of blues and berries.

from 
Elbowed Out - Love of Listening to Michelangelo

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

In Transit

You call from the train

It won’t ever be the same

Again & again. We go on

Nothing’s plain, nothing’s

The same as our refrain

Again & again. We are strong

Bothering the pain, bothering

The same as playing the game

Again & again. We say so long

As you call from aboard the train

It won’t; it won’t ever be the same

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Decay & Renewal

Where now my Scorpio, as again you invade

Now that this life is so surely fading

Where are the naked bodies still craving

Whose bosoms are bared, warm & ready to clasp

From the silence of the imaginary cloisters

To the reality of the islands cliff top track

Even with the fragrant fragments of the lavender

The odds against us always were unevenly stacked

Reminders as I loiter, without hope or wealth

Long past any thoughts of simply turning back

I write then as if I write for no one, no one other 

Than the no one who shores up the inner self

So now my Scorpion, where the devil are you hiding

With which airborne sensitivities are you colliding

Is your new life, is it the one of full on providing

Or are there shares untaken, leftovers left to grasp

Beneath the rain spots, in the square of Paternoster

To the bitumen of Yorkshire’s pit top black

With the aroma of dark and dank Octobers

The enquiry is continuous & incrementally racked

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Drawn Out Affair

I read of the multiplicity

Yet it is the nothingness that engages me

The nothingness

That engulfed god's good children with their persecutors

Step by uphill snow filled step

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Bar

I could grow old
Instead trip them up
Half way before the time

They might sing
Of silver starlights
With fives and dimes

Only to be stripped off
Less than half way
Along their lines

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Strings & Bows

She looked all washed out

And yet

She could have been you

Her frame that is

Fold over stories

Of a lovers life

Her sorrow-less eyes

Pathways

To the other side

The recording

Session near Paris

Magnificent country chateau

Too much of everything

Too little of nothing

She taps her feet

He fiddles

You couldn’t

Have stayed with me

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Joy Du Voyage

Her enchanting evening sky

Calls over my silk cloud morning

All the while we have cappuccino to go

Miles of beautiful landscapes lay ahead

High kicking truck drivers

Gesture at the service station cash machine

Voluptuous young lasses, with easy

To be happy boyfriends articulated in tow

Do we have ever more air

Are there endless days of this magical sun

Bathed in the lazy magnetic salt waters

She loves to love me, to think life's fun

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Someone Other’s Book

To those words on visibility

Might I add my own thoughts

On the invisible

And the indivisibility

We were rampant

As ants on the ramparts

We were frantic

As the early St Francis

Later we became

Poetic in our justification

I go there

Words alone can take me

Excited by my own words

With journeys

Through

My own imaginations

We are apart

Parted bodies

Distant flesh

Untethered and fantastic

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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

Fey

He rose easily out of the executive saloon

A picture of elegance, the finest deportment

He walked with presence across the gravel courtyard

In his Bugatti, wool and mohair overcoat

All of this was way beyond his means, yet

None of that affected his personal satisfaction

For this lunchtime, as on many other lunchtimes

He would deceive himself, & those who looked on

Admiring his upright and self important stature

from 
Parting Shots - Love Of The Status Quo

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