Pages

Sunday 31 May 2015

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


Saturday 30 May 2015

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


Friday 29 May 2015

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

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

The daydreams were pink eggshells
The night dreams were duck egg blue
Love dreams were of pure white
The farmers morning sun shone bright


Thursday 28 May 2015

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


Wednesday 27 May 2015

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


Tuesday 26 May 2015

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


Monday 25 May 2015

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


Sunday 24 May 2015

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


Saturday 23 May 2015

East Light

Smoke Rises
Buddha Maitreya is abroad
No new popes are expected
The morning is still


Friday 22 May 2015

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


Thursday 21 May 2015

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


Wednesday 20 May 2015

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


Tuesday 19 May 2015

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


Monday 18 May 2015

Roberto + Hermitage

Before the stillness
Among the crazy time

Bound, by papermache
The gluepot
And the paste brush

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

In search of one
A symphony of simple

Cool, calm
Of a tradition

To dream
Of all but silence


Sunday 17 May 2015

Water & Cobra

River boat
Down beside the flat lands
And the bicycle palaces

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

A place to become unsettled
Legs turn, unsteady

Humans, with the voices of birds
Fires, pyres, as screened by poets


Saturday 16 May 2015

Absence

Little girl, sat by her mother
Sips ice cream soda
Through a straw

Today her father
Is elsewhere


Friday 15 May 2015

Mirrors & Bars

Beautiful people
City central vacation
Hair stylists, and beauty parlours

Food routines; for bodies
And soul brothers

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

Plums à la tomate
Generation through generation

A spotted dress
Drinks from my coffee cup



Thursday 14 May 2015

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


Wednesday 13 May 2015

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


Tuesday 12 May 2015

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



Monday 11 May 2015

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


Sunday 10 May 2015

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


Saturday 9 May 2015

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


Friday 8 May 2015

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


Thursday 7 May 2015

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


Wednesday 6 May 2015

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


Tuesday 5 May 2015

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


Monday 4 May 2015

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


Sunday 3 May 2015

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


Saturday 2 May 2015

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


Friday 1 May 2015

Vittles

Less clear
The beer
In the restaurant

No fear
We have taken
Our photographs already