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Friday 28 February 2014

Humber; Almost

Mottled wall
Brand new car
Window with balcony railings
Sun roof & automatic

Old town; Cuba or Peru
Neapolitan auto promotion
Photographs of here and there
Shot on fine grain film

Wind blows intense
Couples stress their words
I sit in the corner seat
Tap the tiny keyboard

Go back to the past times
Think on the opposition
The support of melody
Sat way outside the cafe

Where sky and hedgerows meet


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Thursday 27 February 2014

Travel

She wears the flower print fine cotton scarf
Which almost matches the reddish pink, open-toe sandals
Is he her son, or is he her lover; the laughter suggests an intimacy
The demonstration to all around
Of a certain sort of quintessentially provocative relationship

The strawberry yoghurt is one strawberry strong 
& the Americano coffee is steamed through one shot
Of freshly ground and roasted bean

Men, who speak in high voices, surprise me
With their male conversation; that they are father and son
Is my more observant observation.

The young man (with glasses) shows off his sky blue tee shirt
Although I doubt from his complexion
That he has ever been to Buenos Aires, or anywhere else
That the Argentina La Albiceleste logo might suggest


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Wednesday 26 February 2014

Rising

Lost words
Words of umber and ochre
Words of self and ones other self

To wake
With ease of deep contentment
Scribe on softer gentler thoughts

Turn the tides
Of salted water
Into a life of finer scent

Tears and laughter
O breeze 
Of breeze

Their promises freed
Seized
With a kiss

What a beautiful day
Dreaming of you
Coming my way

What a beautiful dream
Everything changes
Everything stays the same


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Tuesday 25 February 2014

Table Time

Where they've been
Where they're going next
Where they have observed 

A few snipes at the unfamiliar
But mostly
How people here

Are much the same
As those back home
In New York

Twang
Withdrawn, also exited
Great emphasis wherever

Often with laughter
Yes and lots of reference
To o my God

Two guys
Sat side by side at table
They also did this yesterday

I wonder
If they spend much time
Travelling onboard inter-city trains

Willow weeps
Slightly wavers in the breeze
No hurry in this life

Except for the swallows
Whose movements are supercharged
With elegant stealth


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Monday 24 February 2014

On Ones Own

As the old man
Plodding by the silver birch
As the young man
Skipping along the river bank

Engaged by love of self
After, or before
The fall for the love of others

Wind and rain
Strike against the shared umbrella
Two as one at the onset of the summer

Walking sticks and selfless tricks
Take their turn towards the cabaret
Arm in arm the page three lit-chicks
Chase the uniformed blue beret


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Sunday 23 February 2014

Fasts

Pebbles beside gabion-baskets
Remnants of old torn fishing nets
A Saturday morning desolate beach
Before the day was even halfway ready

We were fresh off the overnight ferry
Too early to call on friends, or family
So we came to the slip we knew so well
We had even seen cars flooded there

When their owners forgot how seriously
Imminent is the spring tides ebb and flow
We almost got caught ourselves once
That day when joy overcame our senses

In the ages of less uncertainty
No need to be sure or unsure anymore
One biscuit is much the same as any other
In the great scheme of diabetic diets

The letters make words almost at random
Although the process is much the same
Through that wishful creative journey
We call the poem, or the song, or the story

Of course, that night in Lyme Bay
When I wrote of Now There Is No horizon
That resonates with me in such a way
As is not possible for the others

As the cliche reminds us
You had to have been there
To listen to Hockney talking on the radio
As the open-window let in the sea air

The roar of the last departing motorbike
Faded out to a purr as he rode out of town
Along England's oldest promenade
All of this, on a calm and moonlit night

When the gentle splash of waves
Hardly raised the pebbles sufficient
For any kind of crash at all
More like marbles cannoned

In a satin lined, string tied
Silk & velvet bag
That was then; this is now
Decaffeinated bedtime coffee

Hotel room without a view
Although a fair collection of audio reflections
From the plumbing & the central heating
A system that says you will be warm
For we know it's cold up north
And we are able to compensate

With little or no regard
For the natural environment
Little or no regard
For our own carbon footprint


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Saturday 22 February 2014

Fresh Shoots

Did  you walk the fired stubble
Of last years corn harvest
Did you stain your bare feet
With the half black dye
Of the sodden black ash

Play another song; any
You care to choose, then
Reminisce as best you can
In Fields of Gold, or down
Highway 61 (revisited)

Did you walk on the downs
Where bare grass opens up
To the chalk substrate below
Did you scribe a sign or symbol
To signify your past and presence

Sing along, to your hearts content
Whistle and yodel if so you wish
Make it no houses, houses, houses
To be built here, on what was once
England's green and pleasant land


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Friday 21 February 2014

I Stole the All of Joy

Did I truly
Make off with your ebullience
Hijack your bounce and verve

Is it true that only the downtrodden
Was left behind
The cast aside and trapped free thinker

Under sodium skies
With winds set down for late evening
As though the truth of one

Can be at one with one
Who sits somewhere in transit
Over the distant darker blues

Underfoot undulations
Night visit to neighbours; harmonious
Welcome, careful journey of love

I drink my Northumbrian water
Hear you talk of limestone dissolved
See you swim; in river, loch and cave

I was on the edge of sleep
But I have been awoken by painters
Poets and writers talking of wild swimming

I will buy Hughes’ book of the river
Paddle again in the streams of my childhood
Tingle my extremities with the touches of water

Everyone celebrates Roger Deakin
He was infectious with his desire
To let one share in his excitement

Though boy o boy we didn't expect
The skinny dipping
Or did we

Intoxicated by water, water on skin
Skin glides through water, intense
The immersive other place of water

It was one line, spoken with little
Conviction; five words, no more
No less: "come and see me later"

In the past I would have been ecstatic
Right away my whole body
Would have trembled

My mind in an instant
Would have been fuzzy
Frazzled to the core

Then I would be hanging
On to her every word
Instead it is the swallows 

& gliding house-martins
That bring a smile
To my less tired eyes

I don't think of her on waking anymore
Which says something I suppose
About the passing of time


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Thursday 20 February 2014

Swing

Sat by Infinity Bridge
Eyes cast across the water
Canoeists venture out
Cut through the breeze blown tide


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Wednesday 19 February 2014

Verminous

Listen to the crows
Feel the scrunched up skin
That says you need to sleep

Forget the dreams
Of work place disorganisation
& mixed up appointments

Those guys
They were just trying
To catch you out

You don't need
Those sorts
Of so called colleagues


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Tuesday 18 February 2014

Labour

The lads set off up the fairway
They must have started before eight
There looks to be a bit of banter
The bar will be busy till late

The mower trims the greens
Blades all sharp and true
He's been a lifetimes groundsman
He returned, as just one of the few


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Monday 17 February 2014

Interwoven Nights

The lights here are down
Your crown lies unadorned
In time of scrub and thorn
Pour scorn on sweet surround

Darkness knocks at my door
Holds herself steady by my window
In the yard
A quiet candlelit conversation

I have no way of explanation
To explore is purely conducive
The reduction in pace
Is surely partly seduced

By tips of steel on stone
In this place not home
Roams the mind, kindly
Sign the art as untouched

We said as much didn't we
On the way to implication
That to explore is conducive
To the boy child’s birth-bed

Dark of night outside
All along the sea front’s fret
Pain, anger, joy, touch
Delirium, care, guidance

Parents to be by chance
Uselessness personified
Seaside, dark of night outside
All along the promenade

Mystic; myths in the making
Aching to scream; yes, yes
Father, son and mother
Uselessness exonerated

I can see my fingers
But little is self evident beyond
I can hear my shirt ruffle
But no sounds of air conditioning

I could think of precise moments
Yet delve instead into beautiful emotions
I could tell of powerful interruptions
Yet instead I sell rights to curious commotions

Aircraft engines are louder in the silence
Joyful conviviality is drowned out
By the absence of light or movement
The shadow-puppets loom with menace 

A table for eight my dear
We were a little late, but no matter now we're here
A bottle of your best white wine, mon frier
& a pint of finest, frothy, German beer

Our bodies warm to one another
Arousal is imminent
We stroll to the beach-side bar
Quaff the ice cold draught Peroni

Served in their neat one pint glasses
We listen to upbeat feel good music
You and me girl, now and always
We are the good time bar people


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Sunday 16 February 2014

Reverence

Every day a colour
Even when that colour is black
All of time to cover
You know he is not coming back

Brotherly love
In the diner queue
The days move on
With Irish stew

Every day a colour
Even when that colour is black
No point mistreating her
In the roadside lovers shack

This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Saturday 15 February 2014

Tented Silk

I was on a hill, a hillside of single storey shops and offices; it could have been India but it was Milton Keynes. We (but I didn't know any of the others) were looking for a particular solicitors place of work. We found him in his back office, which had canary yellow walls and ceilings. It also contained stacks of full height mahogany framed mirrors, and a lavish double bed covered with jungle coloured silks. The entrance to the office was through a matching shop, matching, in all except the bed and desk, that is.


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Friday 14 February 2014

Slip

I was scrambling on a mountain side in England's Lake District. It was one of two ways that I had found into the bar of an Open University summer school. I had made the trips several times already but on each occasion I found myself back on the mountainside. 

A party of Americans approached, they asked if this was the only way; before I could answer I felt a rock slipping, I screamed at them to get out of the way. Calmly I took hold of the sliding slab, I steadied it's progress, then slowly guided it to rest, against and between two, more solid outcrops.


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Thursday 13 February 2014

Human Dream

All of humanity
In the shirt not ironed
& the hair unbrushed

All of humanity
In the smiling eyes
& the schoolgirls crush


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Wednesday 12 February 2014

Travelled

All of hope
Where waters part
To observe the joke
Through the viewfinder
Of life's twisted periscope


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Tuesday 11 February 2014

Embattlement

I was in Brixton, London, approaching the time of dusk. A human shield of mostly volatile men was beginning to form around our hotel. I left without you to go to the station, the men let me through but did not serenade me. I faltered and returned to collect you, I heard you running along the balcony to our bedroom. Hurry I said, we can take the car instead. You lifted a much younger child into the back, he cried at the vomit, which was now like expanded foam, I cleaned and scraped it off as best I could. Don't worry I said we will be home in five hours, yet now we were leaving South Wales and heading for Yorkshire.


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Monday 10 February 2014

Length

I am often on my own
Yet I yearn to be alone
I am often in silent reflection
Yet I long for peace, and quiet


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Sunday 9 February 2014

Club

Someone has to work it out
Fill in the duty roster, allocate the tasks
I put myself down to be the wandering poet
A sort of absent-in-extremis wishy-washy role


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Saturday 8 February 2014

Return to Sender

Thirty-eight letters
Not sent
Half of them
Neither truly of their time

The folder (colourless)
Is an ever open receptacle
Ready for the futures
Mood swings


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Friday 7 February 2014

Twists of String

I poured out my sadness
On your soft submissive sands
Sunrise and sunset 
I sidestepped all along your shoreline
If then to know the sufferance
Of a deeper loss
As your choice of parting
Came again to haunt me
Wandering painful
On my own coasts and moors

Thoughts of gardens and butterflies
Bathed in the afternoon sun
Turn to night-time studies
Of my study
Covered in cobwebs and moths

Caught in this retrospective reflection
There are sections
On the psychology of love
Not I hope as deflection
But more for my own understanding
Of things over & above
The simple priorities
Of flesh and blood

Are we each and all
Drawn to more than one other
Does motherhood bring
It's own yearning
Is there learning to be had
By being more than simply a dad
Is the churning of our partners
A case of returning to the source
Of course always a time and place
A chase where the face fits
The mood and conversation race on
Into the night
No time to fight the temptation
The sensation of lust
Is enough to wade
Into the rough and tumble
The humble times of separation
As we waste away
In preparation
For the doubtful times ahead

As sure as the machine
That drives me through
There I left the security
That one gathers with two
Yet the impurities we carried
For then to eschew the weight
Of friends from in & out
The worldwide family zoo
They are where we are from
& where (mostly) we are going
Their traits are our traits
Their frailties are in
All our ways of showing

From our kingdom
From our inverted castle
We walked in dreams
You showed me
Your stillborns grave
In St Aubin's chapel

Let me in I pleaded
Let us, as we, begin
I persevered
Chased the glorious sin
You relented
But not without due
And fair and rich chagrin
I answered all I could
Didn’t know if you would
But should say I was let in

Back to the one room flat
With all that watching brief
Fights out from Herons Reach
Sat listening to the Cowboy Junkies

With pastel fills
Alongside oil paint stills
The lonesome nights became
More my mighty
Own-some rites
Set out tight
On to the enlightened
Flights of fancy


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Thursday 6 February 2014

Good Guys Guide to Getting Going

Yes a frost
Also strong sunlight
Rashers of well grilled bacon
Cups of, sweet & strong, hot tea


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Wednesday 5 February 2014

Conscious

Into the deeper
Explorer
Venture each day
Minds rich wilderness


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Tuesday 4 February 2014

Base

Approached by stones
Frost laid on open ground
Touched as we wake


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Monday 3 February 2014

Wireless

Late night words
Cling to the absurdity
I heard your voice
Return from obscurity

Leave well alone
Ring borne of insecurity
You had a choice
To deal with my immaturity

Don't make too much
Sing down the dawn illusory
As with James Joyce
The day is a tad delusory

Just say goodbye
Back to the incredulity
The crickle-crackle noise
Feign time wasted on surety

Late night words
Lingers of past perfumery
Turn thoughts to sensual toys
Schooners of sexual buffoonery

Leave well alone
Just say goodbye
Don't make too much of it
Just say goodnight


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Sunday 2 February 2014

700th Second Chance

Back to the bubble
As if on a wished return
To true love mothers womb

Thin as gossamer skin
Translucent shades of the rainbow
Float on the familiar warm breeze

Ache for this cocoon
As if its shelter fits
The damned and the doomed

Unstable as the Zeppelin 
Fearful of passion and flame
Plummeting through the sky

Yet one more try
Flawed belief in faith
Warmth of miscast imagination


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop 

Saturday 1 February 2014

Preoccupation

On and on, relentless
In the slimmest of downbeat moments
Her august remains remain true to doubt

It is of course an anniversary, of sorts
A night of immaculate conception
Brought on by dance and determination

He wasn't why we parted, more why we started
To move from the cast aways dreams
To the schemes for abject survival

Twenty years on, in a motorway cafe
On of the fine rim of daylight despondency
It is the deep dark bowl of love in which I swim


This is a poem from Filmic: Love of Our World of Purples & Blues

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book with audio cd from  poetryshop