Gloss, And Glitter

If I had the time, which I haven't
I would start again
With a fountain pen
And the basic rules of grammar

I might pick up a stammer
To give me time to think
To think I could give up
The drink, but how could I

Would it matter
If on this second chance
I learnt to dance, and sing
Play guitar, that sort of thing

Such a beautiful idea
To see, and hear
Christopher read his poetry
Then go on to dance and sing

And maybe join in with conversation
On the platform at the station
Virtuoso like; stating his case
For a remedy, to his unsociable situation

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VCN 2

I had been on a long train journey, to the South-West of England. On the station platform I bumped into a young woman, who I used to know from my creative writing education in Buxton. She was bedraggled and bereft; half-dressed, penniless, and in debt. She wanted to borrow money, and asked if I could take her with me.

We were in a large rectangular room, newly refurbished, in a modern style. One of my sons was there, I'm not sure which one. The house was on Dartmoor, at Shaugh Prior, a village I boarded in for a short while, but that was a good many years ago.

I realised that I hadn't made a booking (I used to have the flat next door apparently). I was pulling up my trousers when the lady of the house came in, the young woman from Buxton was laid half-naked on the floor.

I asked if it was ok to stay for a few days, I had a meeting to attend, and staying over seemed to be the only option down here. That's fine she said, and asked me if I'd posted her booklet; she said she was relying on me, since the old service had ended.

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Read Between The Lines

Willows in the garden
Daffodils in the verges
So soon to change this life
So soon to discard the urges

There then at a distance
There then in your far off county
There then, just as if for instance
There then you were the bounty

I will write about someone quite different
Someone I thought I knew, or know
I will write about, a circumstance
Of love flourishing, as love begins to grow

For a while there I was nowhere
I was listening to The Eels, singing
Their sad song True Original; it was you
You I thought that they were singing of

And I was nowhere
No more than a listener
No more than a stooge
No more than a bereaved looker on

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Pitch

It was dark when we arrived
Then the rain
Began steadily to fall

It was dark when we arrived
As the doubts
Began certainly to call

It was dark when we arrived
It was raining
When we began unloading

It was dark when we arrived
Then the pages
Gradually started unfolding

It was dark when we arrived
Your voice
So gently withholding

It was dark when we arrived
Your words, so high
I could not find the beholding

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Patch

It's got something to do with sugar, or saccharin, or pretence, or falseness, or rising up to be, to be up there above me.

Setting yourself to be, to be up there, above me; righteous, proper, good, reliable, all of those traits which I never could aspire to.

Setting yourself up, on a pedestal, at a distance; keep away you said, keep away you implied, keep away, keep away, keep well away.

And the crooked branches, of the crooked tree, in the crooked mist, beneath the crooked rain.

And then the light, and then the green-shoots, and then the sadness, left someway behind me.

And then the blossom, and then the road sign, and then the time, for someone new to find me.

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Nothing Firm

I am a little late starting this morning, I suppose I could blame it on the new car, I could blame it on having to fill up with fuel, I could blame it on all sorts of things, but I'm not looking for blame, not this morning.

The new car is going to take a while to get used to, it's a radical change from my small car, a bit more luxury in my life; a life of driving, lived out more safely, for the rest of my working days.

The corners seem a good deal smoother, the rough road surface feels considerably less rough, the music is markedly clearer, the whole thing then way more luxurious.

A tiny yellow breasted bird flies across the road, from hedge to hedge; the highway is almost empty, myself, and one other car, travelling in the opposite direction.

There is a peace, a calm, a sense of quiet; I feel to be cruising, I feel to be at ease, I feel less stressed, about the two hours journey ahead.

My partner helped me with the purchase, I sense she felt the need to let me off the hook; to somehow take a second look at what we both needed.

And perhaps through the all of this you have been banished, perhaps your ability to influence my emotions is critically weakened.

Yes there, up in the blue sky, your essence is almost vanquished; yet still my insincerity bell occasionally goes off, cynically seeking out how:

To turn off the light
To burn out the ether
To wonder, with insight
How I managed without either

Still we follow the tractor
Still we follow the trailer
Still I think of the time
I wrote postcards to mail her

We've past the minor distraction
Heading out to a future attraction
A flashback to a Worthing morning
The Cuban music vividly blowing

The hedgerows are growing to green
Stained grey clouds fade to blue
We're approaching the airport now
I think of those flights, I think of you

It is the second escape
I don't have to wait
For the boarding card
Or the opening of the gate

It's all in the mind you see
These thoughts of you and me
Those times, not now meant to be
It's all in the mind you see

I drive by the passenger terminal
Without a second glance
My thoughts; subliminal, ethereal
You see I know I've had my best chance

I've turned the stereo up, a notch or two
Nostalgia, listening to the old words
To remember that I sat in a modern space
Writing out my lustful thoughts of you

Those words were the old times
The fast lines, not so fast as once forgotten
Those words were the old rhymes
The sort sighs, not short now of going rotten

Almost at the motorway, struth
A cocoon of sounds
That round me back to my youth
No need anymore for truth

When it's only my words that happen

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Lost In The Days I Meandered - Four

Jersey girl how I've missed you
How I've wished
To walk again
On your soft submissive sands

Jersey girl how I've insisted for you
I could not resist
Your love
Held, half-firm, in my clutching hands

Those few islands
Off the coast of France
Those few evenings; a song, a drink
A comfortable conversation per chance

You all know that I can't stand pain
I'd sooner stand out in the falling rain
You all know that I'm really rather vain
I'd no sooner dance than stake a claim

We climbed the boulders by the lighthouse
We tiptoed down the slipway to the sand
You were considerably unsure of me
I steadied you, I held you by your hand

We drove out, in the open topped car
To the five-mile shack, for a barbecue
You had doubts about your suitability for me
I took your hand, I sure was sure of you

You got tickets for the theatre
A poet, without a backing band
You so pure were unduly unsure of me
I was certain, I took you by the hand

We rode ourselves into the rip-tide
We crashed into the seventh wave
The doubts though surfaced once more
This time it was the best we could not save

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Lost In The Days I Meandered - Three

Geldof said that all artists rummage
For a reason, for a vision, for a ruse
Even, to help set them gloriously free

He talked of stealing, reeling out
The words, the reverbs that an artist
Looks for, in and from his muse

And that's exactly what I do
On these drive-to-work early mornings
I look out for every other line, signs
For another way of seeing you

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Lost In The Days I Meandered - Two

It's not long now until I might see you
It's not long until I bring our son back home
I don't quite know how he is feeling
I don't know how much the experience hurt

I do know, for certain, and without bias
That no way has he reached his ceiling
And his love, his love, she will surely wait
His bridges of love may not have been burnt

I'm feeling pretty good about myself
I've lost a little bit of weight
I've left the biscuits in the cupboard
I hardly ever reach for the After Eight

I still want to lose another pound or two
I'm on track, as if leading the railway freight
I have a vision to realise; as once of you
How long, how long will I have to wait

Around the half blind corner
Up onto the lengthy straight
I tried your every door
I stood behind the five-bar gate

I worked myself up in such a way
I was in a pretty hopeless state
I couldn't, I cannot, comprehend
How such love, such loss, was my fate

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Lost In The Days I Meandered - One

Last night we watched a wonderful programme, about WB Yeats, written and narrated by Sir Bob Geldof; he introduced almost every Irish related artist that you can think of, who had been invited to read Yeats' poems.

Yeats, the master of the poem; I learnt so many things that I did not know about him, for one I wasn't at all clued about the depth of his involvement in politics.

Sir Bob told a good old story, about a man who truly changed things; he talked about the need to go on living, about the role of death having so little a role in life.

Yet it is death that changes most of us, most of us have come through, or passed by death, in one scenario or another.

I've written a few death poems, death with you right there in my mind; the death of our relationship, a death, whose purpose, I may never be destined to find.

That death, I knew of no such kind; so much easier to write of the loss, not the death; so much easier trying to displease you, without giving a toss.

But could I put it in a story, could I give it the gloss, could I sit in that smoke filled room, inhaling from the sticks of joss, could I ever save myself from writing the dross.

I write soft porn stories, you are almost always the source, they are neither death nor glory, but of course they are written for you, studying at The Bourse.

I sleep with those images good and close to me, I'm in a semi-dream world, it is half the world I see; there go the morning tractors, we're all on our way to work.

Of course you know so well of the country, how could I have been such a jerk.

From St Lawrence to St Ouens you watched the fruit and flowers grow; yet to say that I was the one, no, that was a love you could not show.

We spent so long together, we spent so long apart, you were in the horse drawn carriage, I was in the potato cart.

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Layers

Twelve steps, no more
To your bedroom
Twelve footprints
In the dust
On the floorboards

I felt so unlike the others
My bothers, my friends
Was I to be your lover
Alone, on my own
Yes, so unlike the others

On the floorboards
In the dust
Twelve footprints
To your bedroom
Twelve steps, no more

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Imbued

Serge-blue sky
Ghost-smoke of mist
Daffodils at Cadover Bridge

Serge-blue sky
The colour
Of my faded, oversized
Apprentices overalls

Ghost-smoke of mist
As if the
Peter Stuyvesant
Had kissed the Blarney Stone

Daffodils at Cadover Bridge
Before the stream
Where our son paddled
In the midday sun

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Frimley Spa

From dark to light
And back again
Into the water
Out of the water

From time to time
And now and then
Why are there women
Mother, sister, wise one, daughter

Words for you
Sure spill out
Words for you
My magical roundabout

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Fog Or Mist

Where does this sadness hail from
How and why does this loss of hope infiltrate me
Is it from the badness that I have done
Is it the bad times come back to berate me
How do I get a handle, on how it was
That you first awoke me
How to understand
What it is about you, that won't escape me
I know it wasn't a time for great happiness
I knew there was an awful lot going on
I know that it was an end, and not a beginning
I'm not, you see, insensitive to everyone else's song
I draw deep breaths, and sigh at the implausibility
I draw deep breaths, and wonder why
At the total improbability
Yet I do have a desire
To rush back down to see him
To wrap my arms around that boy and wish him well
It was wet and misty (mist from the sky that is)
In Lincolnshire this morning
I just thought he ought to know that
The stark trees, against the grey sky
So hard to see, so hard to fathom out why

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Counting, And Craving

One day before
One day to go
Yet at least right now
I am in a good place
At least right now
I am reasonably settled

One more Friday
One more day to travel
To a distant place
Yet at least now
The excitation
Does not overwhelm me

Yet as I get closer
I now for certain
There will be trepidation
The nearer that I get to you
So much more fearful I become
Of the destination

You might think
That I am crazy
As might so many others
But hey it's so damned hazy
The strife and the distance
Between torn apart lovers

The ache for instance
Between past lovers
Before all of that though
There is the home stretch
Yet today, as it happens
There is no one at home

Before I catch myself on the spikes
Before I find myself
Once more aloof
There is an emptiness in my mind
There are no past memories dancing
There is no transference to find

The transcendence
Is not there for the mending
No, it is no longer
There for carelessly romancing
Nor for wastefully pretending
It is just there for chanting, and prancing

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Anniversary

It's eleven years since we met
Yet we still loved and laughed
This morning in bed

You bet we've had good times
Last night, for instance
Unable to remember the details

We set sail now, once again
For adventure, for love
For what we each have given

A rose, from the garden centre
On my first visit
Into the Wolds of Lincolnshire

A compiled compact disk
Of your favourite songs
Slipped under my door

With a letter

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Seven Days A Week

Let's make love in the long grass
Let's make love at the fair
Let's make love on a Sunday
Let's show ourselves, as if we care

Let's make love in the sand dunes
Let's make love in the lair
Let's make love on a Monday
To show ourselves, brutally bare

Let's make love on the soft sands
Let's make love at the Curious Affair
Let's make love on a Tuesday
Let's show ourselves, as fondly aware

Let's make love in the rowing boat
Let's make love on a bar-room chair
Let's make love on a Wednesday
Let's show ourselves, as gladiators glare

Let's make love on the ocean
Let's make love dancing with Fred Astaire
Let's make love on a Thursday
Let's show ourselves, as devils who dare

Let's make love under the moonlight
Let's make love as a soothsayer
Let's make love on a Friday
Let's show ourselves, to answer a prayer

Let's make love in the cosmos
Let's make love without the need to beware
Let's make love on a Saturday
Let's show ourselves, as the most elegant pair

Let's make love in our hearts and minds
Let's make love everywhere and nowhere
Let's make love forgetting the day
Let's show ourselves, we are enabled to flare

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Silence

Gathered souls, gathered today
Collected from the many, to gift away
On the breath of the leaf

That one petal, afloat on the breeze
From one winter, and towards one spring
Without noise, nor neither disruption to leave
The silent flower, from bud did begin

And out in the distance
She walks by moonlight and snow
Posting the photographs, of absence
Of the silence which she hopes to bestow

And up in the dales
With dark skies, and pours of rain
He catches the light, neat light
With the silence of such slight refrain

Gathered souls, gathered today
Collected from the many, to gift away
On the breath of relief

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The Date

Every day we communicate
Friends of quite a distance
Interested in interests
Communiques to become

Tonight, listening to poetry
Words spoken, of touch
Touch of quite a distance
Poets to become

Studies draw to a close
Summer ahead
Itineraries to explore
Spring each step so fresh

Tonight at the cinema
Remember New Zealand
Tell
Of all to know

Every way
Care to wait
Rate
Lives so dear

The dates of chancery
Coincidences
Are caught
In the cheese-cakes taste

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Whatever Page Frames Meaning

The trauma is receding
As middle age moves onwards
Whatever rage came leading
The sage has bound the bleeding

Some lives begin at twenty
Some lives never do
Some souls have more love
Than any brothers blue

The hairline is proceeding
As middle earth returns
Whatever page frames meaning
The cage has found the feeding

Some lives begin at thirty
Some lives never do
Some calls have more love
Than hurt, as if forever knew

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Your Mother, Fair Maiden

Out there
Out in far distance
I hear your voice
Fair singing

Of carousels
Country belles
And troubadours
Still clinging

Of wishing wells
And Tinkerbelle
Bracken boors
So bringing

Your mother, fair maiden
Alive on fairest ground
Your mother, rare laden
Thrived upon your sound

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Back When You’ve Gone Away

What did you say
About downtown
On Saturday
Would you so play

There on the bank
The brink of fair happiness
Dressed in mink
She winks, and walks on by

Hey now, they say
She'll be back
Wait for time to take
The rough cuts and the malady

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It's Early, How Are You

Other singer's songs
Are singing in my head
It's eight in the morning
I'm more alive than dead
I've woke and it's quite early
Sleep came as such a fake
I've spoke to no one lately
But smile so soon I wake
But smile so soon I wake

Other florist's flowers
Are garlands posed deep red
I wait for early warnings
In all the words I've said
I wake within the bird song
Fawn as the love of life is led
I wake in the early morning
Look back at what I have read

It's early; bird's are singing
It's early; I am bringing
Bringing you
Back into my bed
Cocoa pops and cider
Lay right down beside her
Smoke that slow cigarette
Pluck the strings so slow
Undress again my blue
Undress my beauty baby blue

You came to be my lover
You came to be my life
No shame you said to smother
No blame or sacrifice
Other writer's words
Walk easy in my land
Other talkers talk
They seem a happy band

I've woke and it's quite early
Sleep came as such a fake
I've spoke to no one lately
But smile so soon I wake
But smile so soon I wake

Other chartist’s showers
Are sprinkled now unsaid
I wait for curlews blinkered
On the entire world I have fed
I wait with soft words fingered
The gift of life is bred
I wait, as lightness
Herself still lingered
Love, laid back
On the weeps of wed

It's early how are you
It's early how far you
It's early my star you
Come
Back into my bed
Your entrance here beside me
Come back into my bed
Your fragrance clear beside me
Calm inside my head

Jelly tots and liquorice
To do with as we wish
Talk that fabled sensuality
Flex my tummy kiss
Undress again my lover
Undress again
My zoobie zombie miss
You came to be my lover
You came to be my life
No name of any other
Past flame to patronise

Other painter's pictures
Are laid upon their stands
My mother's footprints figure
Set soft there in the sand
I've woke and it's quite early
Sleep came home as such a fake
I've smoked for no one lately
I smile so soon I wake
I smile so soon I wake

I've woke and it's quite early
Sleep came home as such a fake
I've choked for no one lately
I smile so soon I wake

I smile so soon I wake
I smile I ache
I smile so soon I wake
I smile for you, I ache for you
I smile for you, I ache for you
I smile for you
I smile so soon I wake
I smile I ache
I smile so soon I wake
I smile, that so soon I wake

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Love

Where did we go to
Where did you take me
Where did I take you

Passions rose wide open
In time spoken with breath
In time spoken with depth

Our names chose with hope
So gently we touch our touch
So gently so much I touch

Walk with me in the moonlight
Whisper in my ear I love you
Kiss my ear above you above you

Hold hands with clear clear smiles
Stroke me with your soft soft fingers
My I linger - I feel so high we fly

I nestle, I snuggle no struggle
You take me with your lips
I sip of your sweet wetness

No fret, let with full on livingness
We unfold our soft soft skin
So bold we hold to go within

Or we may in a little while
For now we smile
We move our all, unfold a little closer

Soft red lips kiss soft red lips
Soft purple skin
Caresses soft purple skin

Juices
Juices taste lovers juice

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Orthopaedics And Vascular

Estimated painted face
In renovated railroad space
Cappuccino fairly frothed

With chocolate cake displaced
Excavate the far off taste
Of this generation's race

And scream out loud
Venerate the
Forensic investigator

Precise with the time
Precise with the rhyme
Inclined to start afresh

The breasts at rest
Blessed the brickwork restored
All for the better, uncovered

Except for a fresher light
Of night scented stocks in
Amsterdam, or Rotterdam

Crimson
No, a brighter red
Than that

Fabric hats, and earrings
Seared for vast feelings
Hearing the echoes

Near to
Our other maker
Kula Shaker

Mickey taker
Take me home Morag
Smile in my face

Morag
Just roam Morag
The world

Morag
Your place Morag
Orthopaedics

And vascular Morag
Our ward space
Your place

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Back Then

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

How to stop those voices shouting
How to stop the calling of the shrink
How to count to ten or twenty
Or even just to stop and think

No one tells you
Except that you ought to know
No one tells you
Except the tears just have to flow
No one tells you
Except for sure that by now you know

How to stop the nagging doubting
How to drop the stalling mink
How to count, or wait to hesitate

Wait a short while longer, take a drink

Back then, back in childhood
Back then, back in teens
Back then, back a young man
Back then, back with dragons with queens

No one tells you anything
Anything that you need to know
Anything that you really need to know
Somehow just a simple breakthrough

Then again a massive step
Then again a massive step

If you've ever been in love
Or lost a close one
Or lost a limb

Well to think that none of that would matter

To think that not a single thing matters
Not a single thing at all

How to stop the voices shouting
Wonder if it's even worth the thought
How to add the noughts together
To fear any single thing less fraught

So damned easy just to write it
To compensate with chance
Or with the intellectual almighty
Of imagined circumstance

What you need to truly feel it
Touch it right there on the nose
Deep down, in the spines kernel

Hear the book words breathe it fine
Pay the teller, tell her to tell her lies
Pay her with the fives and dimes

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you

Tells you what you need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you
At the time that you really need to know

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A Single Dust-Mote Note

Placed above the sterling
Time; placed way above the sterling
Way above the tarnished garnered coin

Don’t want expensive presents
If in any way that brings resentment
Of what has been already spent

Talk from far off places
Stairways, and pretty faces
Climb to these elevated floors

With one door
And one window-stay
Elopers share a care to play

Midnight at ten thirty
Houseplants die
By dust fair dirty

A room with a view
Of a railroad, and a moor
Some way beyond

A radio station misplaced
By a Saturday
Being here on a Thursday

A dial beyond
Way past beyond
My least and last imaginations

Would that this warmth
Was as settled, as the mind
Which it endlessly tries to disturb

This body displaced
Replaced each spring
Again each autumn

Then in winter
Dusted, with a thin fine sprinkle
Of fair-weather, soft fallen snow

A room with a view over a fair few years
A mischievous miscalculation
Lost among a long past matriculation

A song; would that
To pluck one single note
In time, in tune

My only; dare I even say
My only one regret
My missed, single, dust-mote note

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Simple Complications

Don't want expensive presents
Would rather share
What it is already bared

Walk by both the faces
Still and turbulent races
Thoughts more clear

A path to steer
Day by day
Hopes with care to stay

Talk of misdemeanours
Or exclusions from faraway
Long lost conversations stray

Or better; wow, find words of now
More worthwhile
You and I to softly smile

Simple complications
Debates of long passed stations
Hang on for a while

Wait just a moment won't you
Debaters they share, don't they
Caring for a victor, either way

Why then (sic)
Is it in any way nostalgic
To wear a stripy scarf

Or a bead on a wrinkled wrist
To choose again for time
To be of value; time

The essence of being
The chance to gather up
Those years of disparate thoughts

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A String Of Burnished Beads

With a pastel
Or a palette
An artist's card, or canvas

An abstract creation
Of many colours
I opened the door

So slightly
A slit
Upon my simple thoughts

With mellow music
A soft guitar
A singer, or a cowboy

Mystic collaborations
Of many others
I pushed the wedge

To edge my mind
Out west
A little firmer

With words
A writer's pencil
A book of papyrus paper

Inkwell
With mottled blotter
A wisher's list

Dissertation
Of many schemata
Hinges undone

Door swiftly removed
To hang
In its place

A string
Of
Burnished beads

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Passed Beware

In real time
Or replayed in past time
From High Peaks
To East of Lincoln Central

The flaxen fair
Is way passed beware

To steal time
Or misplace those few moments
From absent
To at least just apart

The flaxen fair
Then is almost there

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It Is Just An Idea

Inside
The stone
No way to know

Of haystacks
Engulfed
In spontaneous combustion

There
Though the rain
Bounces off the flat flags

And the aircraft
Outside
Of the dust-filled hangar

Where the late sun
Casts
Its long and lonely shadows

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