Glow If You Dare

Flames are lowered

Gentle curve of decay amongst the embers

Turn pages of the picture books

Remember those past  Decembers

Lend her the lyric hooks

Sing songs of joy and tenderness

Suppress at once the negative looks

That is no way to send her

Fend off your depression

Close up the downbeat books

With the light of impression

Share her romantic nooks and crannies

Play her Danny and the Champions of the World

Swirl her on to the dance floor

The more you shout, folklore edicts the damsel fair

Rare as sacred through wild air

Care of the curved decay

Whose lowered tones blend her wishes

Superstitious as she has become

Run now, run your words down to the floor

The core is gone

The story flickered, lest it shone

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Nobody Knows You Slowly

You wear curled up boots

And smoke a slim cigar

You've got a ten gallon hat

And a Buick convertible car

But nobody knows you slowly

Nobody knows who you really are

You sell your soul for money

In half lit American bars

You dream of walks in moonlight

Under a night of silver stars

But nobody knows you slowly

Nobody knows who you really are

You stand to keep your time

Strumming a steel-string guitar

You’ve walked the golden line

Your music’s heard near and far

But nobody knows you slowly

Nobody knows who you really are

She saw you in the drive by

Thought how doubtful you are

She heard you at the movies

With your mournful la la lah

She wants to know you slowly

To find out who you really are

She wants to know you slowly

To find out who you really are

But nobody knows you slowly

Nobody knows who you really are

She wants to know you slowly

To find out who you really are

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Back Light & Egg Light

In too close

Too close to see the distance

Too close to appreciate the long view

As if in a time-lapse periodic table

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The daydreams were pink eggshells

The night dreams were duck egg blue

Love dreams were of pure white

The farmers morning sun shone bright

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Stand Back

In too close

Too close to see the distance

Too close to appreciate the long view

Decades, years and months

That are only captured in the briefest

Of photographic or postcard moments

Places whose constant presence

Occasioned only a fleeting glance

Family, friends and lovers

Whose seven waves

Washed only once over your shore

As if in a time-lapse periodic table

Thoughts, ideas and dreams

That float without fulfilment

As stars across the nights milky way

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Looking Up The Hill

Leafless tree

Sky; grey on burnt red

Friendly, face to face and cyberspace

Complimentary conversations

As the light rises

And the clouds drift

I gather my thoughts

And whisper an inner word of thanks

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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 that unfulfilling full eclipse of the sun

He had witnessed stood on the outfall of Dartmoor rock

Those seemingly few years ago

This transitory light also failed to hold its glow

He was in love back then

He is in love again now

He would care to believe more of love

Than in the intermittent light of sun or moon

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Only Moment

A sharp frost

Loves remnants sprinkled

On the trees and the hedgerows

A silver white

Where has love gone

Morning sky

You are in the distance

Over the rooftops

Beyond the golden daybreak

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Crystal

Turn down the night

As the 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, here your plight

The mirage of worlds here are pacing

Life unfolds the reasons for flight

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East Light

Smoke Rises

Buddha Maitreya is abroad

No new popes are expected

The morning is still

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Station & Moon

Propulsion

We are all propelled

This way and that

That way and this

---------------------------

Low slung moon

Slow sung tune

Tree with shadows for branches

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Interruption

The sun is warm on my face

Although my feet, in stockings, are cold

I browse many images and words

Love is ever a blessing

The telephone rings

An urgent message

Regarding my payment 

Protection insurance

The sun is warm in my voice

Although the shocking pre-recorded warning

Was colder than bare skin in darkness

Silence is ever a blessing

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Windless

It is an encouraging light

Through all eleven windows

In the main it is quiet

Construction 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

Gives a renewal of energies

Browse the poets and the artists

Who each strive to bring beauty

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Hermitage II & Canal Side

Listen

The chink of china

Informal conversation

A European City

Out for afternoon tea

--------------------------

Restrained

Without of understanding

Unsure of belief

In ones own thoughts

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Roberto + Hermitage

Before the stillness

Among the crazy time

Bound, by papermache

The gluepot

And the paste brush

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In search of one

A symphony of simple

Cool, calm

Of a tradition

To dream

Of all but silence

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Water & Cobra

River boat

Down beside the flat lands

And the bicycle palaces

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A place to become unsettled

Legs turn, unsteady

Humans, with the voices of birds

Fires, pyres, as screened by poets

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Absence

Little girl, sat by her mother

Sips ice cream soda

Through a straw

Today her father

Is elsewhere

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Mirrors & Bars

Beautiful people

City central vacation

Hair stylists, and beauty parlours

Food routines; for bodies

And soul brothers

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Plums à la tomate

Generation through generation

A spotted dress

Drinks from my coffee cup

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Recovery

Sit, settle; take a while to relax

Embroiled, so to speak

A cacophony of human voices

To still the aches

Of this one more human

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Rich

Lightless windows

At the end of the day

A strength of blue

Purpose made

For lovers at play

Play on the waterfront

Play in the drinkers bar

Play at the all-night discotheque

Before the moonlight arrives

With the morning star

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Curvature & Recoil

Hand placed

Softly upon your bare shoulder

Fingers that stroke breathless along your blade

Palms that ease to cup your firm bosom

A mind that plays awhile with yesteryear

--------------------------------

I stare over my coffee cup

Take care not to mix you up

With some other me

I share your arm movement

Bare skin of singular intent

Meant for all to see

There is little now that stirs

I defer to my memory

Despair that she is not meant to be

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3G

Poets don't believe in God

Their search for life is otherwise endless

From the lake isle

To the flight of the white egret

Poets don't believe in God

Their quest for faith is otherwise infinite

From the diary pages of fallen soldiers

To the sounds of the blackest seas

God doesn't believe in poets

Do you see me wavering

Stood here shaking my fist

Shouting about the wastelands

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A6

The road leads out to the dales

To look down on a patchwork of fields

Divided up by dry stone walls

The road twists out into open country

From the market town halfway

Between the workplace and the seaside sea

The road climbs the limestone hill

How not to remember her name

How not to be moved by her fabulous smile

The road rambles down the valley

Carved out by glaciers

Quarried by ancient & modern men

The road took me away

Took me away always

From those that I loved and the others

The road goes on

On the road as with Kerouac

On the road as a way of writing

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Storm Psychology

Woken

By the tearing wind

And the driving rain

As if unspoken

The middle-of-night truths

Race around to stain

Frame this once youth

Whose three score years

No more remain

His image left

On the tails of winds

Amidst the thrusts of rain

He’ll restrain

From being uncouth

If that's all the same

Yet the stories

Of his tainted fruits

Still surely lead the shame

If only to explain

Of himself

Who indeed was to blame

Lying here unrestrained

In the tearing wind

And the driving rain

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Day And Light

The forecasted storms did not materialise

Instead a morning of wild and phenomenal skies 

Turner himself could not have painted such colours

Diaghilev himself could not have elucidated such movements

Reds, as true as the blood drawn

By defiant Spanish bullfighters

Blues, as sure as Yves Klein himself

Would have ground from ground

Silvers and whites, as clear and bright

As the most majestic of imagined miraculous visitations

Pinks and greys, both flamboyant and calm

An immense sense of tranquility and stillness

Amongst the highest of transformative energies

A sky formed from infinite layers

As if a thousand deep stage curtains

Each one rolled slightly back

To bring the one in front in view

This then repeated, ad infinitum

Until there at the point of disappearance

A light, a light with all the joys of life in its luminosity

A weightless shining, an emissive source of brilliance

At the very point of brilliance

In the afternoon, on the journey home

Heading south east, looking due west

A length of cloud beyond the grasp of straight on vision

As if a carpet of crumpled white felt was hanging from the stars

An impression of damp felt, with a shower of iridescent droplets

Falling from the universe, towards the mist covered ground

For those on the terra-firma

Immediately beneath the shimmer fine lines of water

They may say "it is no more than a shower”

But to me, these few miles away

It is as if it was the beginning of a spectacular stage show

Perhaps a curtain raiser to Jean Michel Jarre

With all his wondrous projections

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Pull Off

Stainless steel table top

Spots of rain turned into mottled motifs

As one might find on oil slicks or lava lamps

Prickled points of container plants

Dead in their autumn shade

As one might find in Nash's paintings of lost hope

A time, a place

For the last time

For the last chase of words

Somewhere, on the way to somewhere else

A service station

For all of those folks who need a service

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In A Book

Eight days ago

Butterflies in profusion

A warm calm

The end of an Indian Summer

Today the gulls battle the wind

As maniacs in flight

Who knows their destination

Who understands there sense of reason

Yesterday was fire and snow

Love, infatuation 

& snippets

Of vagrant poets words

Before that there was long ago

Humans still told spoken stories

A cold struggle

As if the beginning of civilisation

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TV Movie

Snowflakes, raked bamboo leaves

Flames set to burn the big house down

The stakes are risen higher

With pyre of unfamiliar faces

Races on the intoxicated flyer

Shy times in the distant colony

Stop it, stop it; stop this nonsense

Did you not feel it in those moody eyes

Did you not see it in those smiling eyes

Did you not catch it in those guilty eyes

He takes her, she drives the liar

His twitch begets the stuttered paces

Laces of rum, for our forever-evil sire

Cries of madness, instant felony

Ashes; flaked floats of paper debris

Unsound frames of reference decoupled

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Store Days, Bar Days, And Cafe Days

Holy Moses

How much fun

To be with Children

No, no, no

Yah, yah, yah

------

Just beneath the Jameson

Down the road

From the crocodile skin shoes

Watching the video

Streets of Philadelphia

------

The congestion

More congested

Would a breath

Of oxygen

Ease

The conveyor belt

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The Difference

See

Close up

See

Far away

See

All the flaws

The brushstrokes

See

How it glistens

The composite whole

Enter the storyteller

All turquoise & jewels

Towing a casket

And a cast of a thousand children

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Hist

Words in Amsterdam

Far and away from Zen

This land of smoke and mirrors

Houses that stand, or lean

Front to back, side to side

Five, six, seven storeys high

There goes another tram

Judaism crossed by when

In this hall of talk and jitters

Tales that demand, or mean:

Leave some slack, take a ride

Thrive, fix, why heavens nearby

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Vittles

Less clear

The beer

In the restaurant

No fear

We have taken

Our photographs already

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