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

Available on Kindle

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Withdrawn, also exited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

Available on Kindle

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

Available on Kindle

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

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Swing

Sat by Infinity Bridge

Eyes cast across the water

Canoeists venture out

Cut through the breeze blown tide

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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

Available on Kindle

Lapped

The words change
Not that love or nature
Are any less strong an influence

Although the form is affected by technology
As well as further external abstract restrictions

To break out of this mode
To search again for deep man words
May require the creation of unknown paradigms

I can see my fingers
Little else is self evident beyond
I can hear my shirt ruffle
Yet no sounds of air conditioning

I could think of precise moments
Delve instead into the beauty of emotions
I could tell of power interruptions
Yet sell instead the 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

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

Available on Kindle

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

Available on Kindle

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.

Available on Kindle

Human Dream

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

All of humanity
In the smiling eyes
& the schoolgirls crush

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Travelled

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

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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

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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

Available on Kindle

Good Guys Guide to Getting Going

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

Available on Kindle

Conscious

Into the deeper
Explorer
Venture each day
Minds rich wilderness

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Base

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

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Hold On

Take these half closed eyes
Not yet ready for their pennies
Take me with them, half way
Into your kaleidoscopes, & all, or
Half way to the modern-artists crimsons

Take these de-mystified lenses
Not yet to concede, or give in
Send them half way to paradise
With your surprises; rampant
Rapturous crystals piled ever high

Available on Kindle

Cabin

Hemingway you said
Read a little Hemingway
Listen to some old Buddy Rich records

Perhaps a bite to eat, smorgasbord or the like
All of this sat by the log fire
With flames away up the chimney

Outside the snow falls
The pathways from the woods are iced over
Those once lively animals have settled

Into burrows and nests, there is no wind
The tufts of grass are all but hidden
By the settled flakes of joyous alimentation

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Opposition

Sun sets
In deep resplendent red
Over the distant range
Of silhouette hills

Geese chuckle madly
Through the cusp
Of day and dusk

Somewhere
The evening primrose
Commences its rapid movement

The night at Emerson College
Is thus remembered
All the while I try to calm myself
After a workplace altercation

Available on Kindle

Filmic

Russian meadows, Yevtushenko's wolds
Orthodox church for all of farming stock
Idyllic imagery in slowed down slow motion
Sorrowful sorrows; ten words are ushered in
I am having a child, but it is not yours

Broken, taken at that instant, loss
Immense loss measured by desolate means
In union with the desperate soul who feels the
Crushing burden; the raw words of loneliness

Smiling eyes, cheerful conversation, an interlude, then
Death, comatose after the abortion, unquenched pain
The unrequited absence, loves abstention in abstensis
Our own destructions, laid bare, to flagrantly destroy us

Available on Kindle

Countryside Café

All those times I drove along this road

Times when you were not open for business

Or times when I did not have the time to care

Today I took the time to leave my workplace early

It's already been a week I've been away from home

Time enough, time for the daffodils to flower

Time for the lawns to be more than my own

Available on Kindle

Influential: I Don’t Think So

There are a good few of you out there
Neither in this phase or the other phase
Not fully included nor excluded entirely

From one day to the next in uncertainty
Past masters of being sat on the fence, though
Safe enough from being hung out to dry

Thanks to no real responsibility, no authority
No executive decision-making powers
A sideline commentator, a part-time visionary

One who points out the cock-ups before they happen
But a man powerless in terms of prevention
Not great for a CV that’s for sure

But who ever got anywhere
Using the unmitigated truth
C'est la vie

Available on Kindle

K

Life begins as near on earth to a miracle

Through the screams of birth 

Life ends as far on earth from a miracle

Through the screams of death

Between near and far, between to and fro 

Between scream and scream

Between you and me and anything goes

Physically anything, mentally anything 

Anywhere, anytime

Anyhow, anyway

To imagine, going to do

To doing, remember having done

As in kiss

Kissing, kissed

Available on Kindle

Advance

Wake with work in your head
For the sake of your soul
Take positive steps
Refresh the urgency of youth

Shake out the seed pods
Focus on the photographic plates
Settle the emerging turn of sunset
Sleep with a love of life in the air

Available on Kindle

Friend

Friend

One who always is there to smile for

Better friend

One who is generous to a tee

Best friend

One who often sends you home a little tipsy

Best best friend

One who welcomes your friends as their friends

Friend

Who you shed tears for tonight

Better friend

Who you smile for as you cry

Best friend

Who is there to help however you need it

Best best friend

Who cares with such caring care

Friend and friend please to read this together

Better friend and better friend for you both to roar with laughter

Best friend and best friend; aren't you awful in your southern girlish drawl

Best best friend and best best friend take yourselves a tipple; take one more, for the longer road

Available on Kindle

Waver

I could talk of the beauty of the morning
Of how the trees & hedgerows rejoice
Thanks to the refreshment of overnight rain

I could talk of the nights dream:
Suspicions, surveillance, shop windows, sex
Secret steep passages, string linked doorways
Darkness, death, and the unwavering love
Of ones own mother

Here a time for contrast
New life, old uncertainties
Draw down your own conclusions

Available on Kindle

Sea Facing

Line of sight; cliff-top to cliff-top
Fog settled over sea and land
Echoes of a more confident time
Once majestic four storey terraces
Face proudly towards the shoreline

Their grimy cracked windows amplify
The corrosion of their iron balconies
Their dust covered doors welcome
Only the most unwelcome of guests
Time to turn, and about turn; no

This is not the joyous image
Conjured from strong accents
Reflected in sepia tone sunsets

This is not the leisurely bolt-hole
Where a days work might be rested
Where a nights dreams might begin

The search continues; inland I fear
To be away from the anticipated gear
That one assumes to surround decay
The dismay that is of a lost confidence
A lost purpose on the nations stage

Better the better people be found
I am not the man for it; too big a task
Needs immense imagination, boundless
Energy; for days, and nights, and weeks
Many months and years of rebuilding

Or children and parents & three more
Generations; all washing, washing
Their hands of the struggle, washing
The struggle right out into the sea

Available on Kindle

Overdone

All the chic of the city
In a moorland village
Chocolate and beige
Monsoon purple stripes
In the style of Rothko
Yet antlers above the fire

Mostly they are young
The staff that is, as befits
This swipe at modernism
But neither youth nor
This extravagant whim
Are in truth sustainable
The numbers don't add up
I sit alone in a tabled room
Set out for forty-four covers

It might be different
Come Saturday night
But the farmers hereabouts
Know that one swallow
Does not a summer make
More's then the pity

Available on Kindle

Stuff & How to Get Shut of it

First you have to have been married and divorced twice, or at least to have fallen out (big time) from a serious long term relationship

Next you have to have retained (or found) your sense of humour, your love of life and your desire to have another crack at it

Then you must collect together all your self help books, especially those on personal psychology and any that use the word 'journey' - but keep the ones on sacrificial bonfires, they will come in very useful later

Now take a trip to IKEA, look carefully, and closely, at the machine made imitation wooden bookshelves; look again at the recycled cardboard organisation boxes, and then say to yourself (and to the whole store if you feel so inclined) "No I don't want any more of this stuff, no, no thank you!"

Available on Kindle

Worn Tracks

Dark outside
Friends, loved ones
Over land, under night sky
Pages turned, numbers dialled
Ease the throttle on imagination

Traces; worn tracks erased to dust
By bluebell skies the day after tomorrow
Sing on Joan Baez, sing of Diamonds & Rust
Faraway the closed caresses of sweet sorrow
Into the ether of spokesmen we no longer trust

Wait awhile
For the pain to subside
Blessed to be in this quiet
With a Cuban song in my ear

Available on Kindle

Out of Sorts

Signs of civilisation

Open prawn sandwich

With a ginger dressing

Sunglasses on top of her head

Glasses perched on the end of his nose

He browses a quality broadsheet 

There are younger couples

And retired family groups

There are ladies who lunch

And me

Being someone 

That I'm not

Available on Kindle