Luz

Some places feel comfortable

Almost in an instant

One feels no need here

For leather bound notebooks

Instead to scrape our names

Into the shoreline rocks

To chisel, as might a sculpture

The story of deep love

Within its sea, as viewed

From the cross on the hilltop

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Energies Amore

A practical label; for the time and the place

That surrounds the beautiful cusps of sleep

Around the time of awakening

Again today such stirrings

Collaborations of line and image, half sounds

Forces, exuberance; sense of a distillation process

Unable to fathom, unable either to entirely recapture

Instead to write of trees and grapes, of soft warm skin

Heavens scent, chased wildly through open vineyards

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EP

Soon as you rise, so soon you begin to fade

The veil is drawn, drawn for self protection

In the pre-existence of the grey-green leaf

There was the rich soil & volumes of water

Let then the thief be taken by jade; runes

Of our own insistence; to escape detection

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Two-Handed Shuffle

A night of cards

Old rules, once forgotten

Brought easily back to life

A clear leader emerges

He succeeds, despite the wilful

Acts of his friends & compatriots

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Splash

Half dark, half light

Enough of doubt

For your silhouette

To dance, unknowingly

Through the shadows

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Black and White

The arched palm sways; again it says I am triumphant

As if, within itself, it has found the very essence of flexibility

Such as aimed at by architects 

& constructors of the worlds finest

Bridges & most modernist recreational houses

Messages, airborne communications, indiscernible

To the discerning holidaymaker

Late afternoon; altogether warm

A wind that whistles

As though thoroughly broken teeth

The mosquito follows its own unique & clearly

Discernible, rite of passage

A wind that crosses itself

As though a fresh new pop star

On that Apple Studios zebra crossing

What then the consequences of an all out attack

On the inflexible sources of irritation

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Forget Me Knots

Red tips of the strawberry boy

Serenade the fated rose

Her petals all but discarded

Her flourish of second youth

Heads towards a certain

And finitely definable end

It is evening

Early evening I grant you

But still evening all the same

The days wind has blown itself out

& the swimming pool surface is so settled

That the laburnum now reflects my true colours

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It is Sunday

Not yet night

Not much to do

No rush to do it

Empty beer bottles roll across the tiles

Roll into & under

The discarded laid back sun loungers

The last waft of sweet music

On the breeze of sweeter marijuana

Seems a substantially long time ago

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Towards Clear

The roar of the sea

Settles my disquiet

The warm wind

Fettles my cobwebs

No more the old stones that crumble on causeways

Here there are no walls for long forgotten portraits

Yes, we could join in

Set aside the words

But I am unprepared

Still there is a tightness

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Transparent

I will start with the cloud

If only because it is unusual

Then again, also because

It sharpens the horizon

Whose thin line

Of deepest serge-blue

Cuts straight across; divides the sky

And the sea; it partitions the sea and sky

Between the horizon

And my shoes there are many shades

Of blue, blues that merge

Merge blue to green

Which then

Through many shades 

Of greens, merge to white

Before the orange splash

Of sand; a soft colour

Very soft indeed, in sharp contrast 

To my luminescent, fluorescent

And super-phosphorescent, purple socks

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Collected

That moment of joy

Over the sand dunes

Past the restaurant

Down the worn out steps

On to the sun-drenched beach

Skip freely on the sands

To the sea - all full

Of splendid waves

& the foam

As they turn and crash

Unrestrained, unbeaten

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In place of DIY

Less of a search for memory, we leave the pictures

Of distressed doors and windows behind

More in a hope for future self-expression

The thought is to create rather than buy

Although right now the plan is to navigate

Past Portimao, to the sands of Praia da Rocha

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Cortes Real, Paderne

Incessant chatter

Out among the dry trees

In the acres

Of interminable scrub

A life’s work: of space

Colours, hues; backdrops

Of washed-white walls

For giclée prints and

Idiosyncratic objet d’art

Above me, as a shade

A triangular canvas

Suggestive of the voyages

Of more adventurous

Portuguese artists

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Divide

The blood blister is expanded

As though the pool of ozone treated water

Had infiltrated the final layer of skin, passed

Through the membrane to dilute the purple puss

& thereby facilitate its further hold around the finger

There are five shades of green; from lime

To grass, to fir, to laburnum, to mimosa

There is only one pink, that of the solitary rose

Planted, one presumes, with a certain purpose

Perhaps to the memory of a prematurely lost love

And so the flies land on the skin; drawn by the sense

Of victory, or drawn by the same death as witnessed

By the fallen and dried leaves of the bougainvillaea

An old climber, that trails haphazard over the pergola

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Long Player

Might I name this breeze ‘The scratch’

Like the sound of needle on vinyl before

The singer or orchestra make their entrance

The sound of the formula one racing cars

As they take that long corner at the far end

Of the two hundred miles per hour circuit

The sound of the sea washing the shore

Though we know the shore to be too far away

For the wind to carry the rush of the sea

It is the sandpaper in my own mind that generates

The internal sense of ‘scratch’; sandpaper which 

I would willingly rub over those f’ing mosquitoes bites

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Moura

Beneath the skin a poison

An irritation, not life threatening

Yet a disruption nevertheless

That also spreads to others

The urge to scratch is withheld

A similar dissatisfaction

That I imagine for a hunger striker

Within the confines of a prison cell

Yesterday we visited the vast water

From the balcony at Amiera near Alqueva

We looked out on our own Lake Isle of Innisfree

But to live here, how am I able to contemplate

When my mind is focussed on the bite

Rather than on the refreshed vine plantations

Irrigated by the man-made dam that also powers

This sparsely populated, but firmly historical region

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Pinpoint

Sting, sting & sting again

Three stings

From yesterday night

Transitory annoyance

How not to have seen

How not to have heard

That certain little blighter

Who helped himself

To myself; more of

Myself, than I ever could

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Unsettled

In the night I have been stung

Thus I am woken, not only by love

But also by the resonant throb

Of the mosquito’s poison

Now it is the minutiae that attracts me

As if F Scott Fitzgerald’s own despair

Was a fundamental part of this occupation

Founded on ants, this place named Algarve

Is throng with their movement

Only the water, of which there is ample

Only the water diverts their passage

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Chill

I am sat inside

A warm breeze, spills in, through the open door

Tickles the hair on my thin bare legs

I have carried a song

Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Brooklyn Bridge

Carried it all the way from waking

John Berger’s Bento’s Sketchbook is by my side

I bought it four weeks ago, especially for this vacation

I am high with expectation; pray no disappointments

The breeze whistles in the chimney

It reaches here, after having moved with grace

Through the gently-swaying, flowered blue mimosa

On the patio, beside the pool, there is conversation

Happy voices, easy with their laughter

Talk of antique shops, in country villages, & the like

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Ogle

After the afternoon shift have departed

The serious bathers set up shop

Books

With sufficient words

To last

The all of summer

Enough bare skin to captivate

The most discerning of lookers on

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Marinha

Scents of the sea

Sun soaked and shaded respite

Symphonies of waves, lovers at play

A nation, in conversation, within itself

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Noise

Rework

Old sores poured over

Pavements lined with leaves

Perhaps the laburnum family

I kick my feet

On the surface of the pool

Create waved reflections

Of the open blue sky

Ever to have such certainty

That the angle grinder

Would surely have to grind

That as workmen, we work

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Sound Sea

As if the sound of Cadmium Red

Amid the drone of Shostakovich

Would improve the reflection

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Set to Landscape

On this line, plunge into cold water

Roll back the excesses of yesterday

Be refreshed by a word; zest. Pen

Pressed against the ultra fine paper

Pathways through art & love & you

Tokens prescribed beneath the pines

In the hold of the breeze. In the hold

Of a need for a slight definite distance

As if the footsteps on the sands are the

Only waves that can break our hearts

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Snapshots

Press the shutter

With a deliberate certainty

All of time thus withheld

From your creation

Shades and shadows merge

As do the layered conversations

Occasionally a quietness falls

Only to be broken

By those with a fear of silence

To talk of previous families

The development of generations

Each with their own closure

Some had stayed in the shadows

Odd ones had strayed to fame

Less found the unlikely fortune

Then of course there are

The ones we don’t talk about

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Sing Up

History implies a gravitas

Though not for the karaoke bar

Whose moment in the spotlight

Whilst heavy with hope for some

Is, for the majority, destined

Only to be lived in that instant

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Cupboard Love

What took them to part

Stretched enough to break

Gold rimmed porcelain plates

Sign off those affluent times

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Wrap

My skin is cleaner

I kissed your lips

You smiled, joked

About my person

My profile is ungainly

I nestle up close

Your warmth, welcome

About my person

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Placed

Seagulls make their call

All over that old song by Procul Harum

How close then the sea I ask myself

What distance to the gleam of salted water

Bentos Sketchbook lays on top

Of the ladies golden-handled carrier bag

The bag is embroidered, festooned with brocade

I wonder at the time taken in its assembly

Tomorrow it will carry beach towels

Suncream, a few very personal nic-nacs

To give the day a surety of purpose

On Wednesday next we will go home

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Pond-life

Hesitantly I enter the pool

Take refuge on the inflatable ring

Paddle, with hands and feet

Side to side, end to end

Body and water become at one

I swim several lengths

First slowly, without cutting the surface

Then at pace; frenetic, wilfully insurgent

To be pursued, so I read, is to lose all fear

Thus encouraged I take a position at the deep end

Dive, or plunge; for at once I recognise

I am anything but a torpedo

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Boys

As if more than the ether, sounds 

& methylated vapours evaporate

From the tables of nail varnish

Good vibrations

She’s giving me excitations

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Stem

The water flows over

With a regular burble

Tonight it will be the cicadas

That we hear, but until then

To rub ones fingers on the lavender

Focus the camera

On the singular pinkish-red rose

That stands at the otherwise side

Of the sparkling, and inviting

Fusion-blue swimming pool

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