Connectivities

I know nothing of Greek mythology
Yet smile as I read of Ortygia
And the ground she led him to

I guess the writing was queer
For there is talk of homosexuality
And friends dying of aids

It is not criminology
Which takes me to such books
Or to the authors who write then

Indeed it is a trail of coincidences
Piled as high as logs for bonfire night
With gaps for readers to pinch a way through

No one reads or believes the stories
However often they unfold
The books remain virgin, seriously unsold

This one was from a public library
Some town named Fond du Lac
And numbered 821.914

I know nothing of social anthropology
Yet smile as I understand
His leaving of England for America

I guess the writer was gay
For I have heard of that artistic type
Through charities and emotional TV appeals

It is not though missing biology
Which takes me to his mathematics
Rather there is progression to his thoughts

Calculations of my very own
Piled as high as Pythagoras’ theorem
With mistakes which invite the reader's truths

No one reads or believes the poems
Whether typed in fine or bold
The poetry, my offerings, remain severely cold

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Country Music

How many broken-hearted love songs
Can this broken-hearted man dignify
How many last drinks on the highway
Can this one cowboy ever hope to try

To be on the fly, flying solo
With eyes for me oh my
Reading those books of Rollo
How deep is love to philosophy

How many torn-apart troubles
Can this torn-apart man signify
How many silent nights of silence
Can this soulmate ever hope to cry

To be on the fly, flying solo
With eyes for me oh my
Reading those books of Rollo
How deep is love to philosophy

How many double-back riffs
Can this double-back man magnify
How many sails, upon the stormy seas
Before the swells of love are there to glide

To be fly flying solo
With eyes for me oh my
Reading those books of Rollo
How deep is love to philosophy

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Ramp Up

Walk slowly, breathe slowly
Today I want you to join me
As together we tread carefully
Mindfully, towards the light

Step gently, breathe lightly
It is a day for love
As we make our way side by side
Into the gradually emerging silence

Skip playfully, breathe happily
Let arms link in arms
As no longer alone we move forwards
To rediscover the joy of ourselves

As you step out of your step out shoes
The blue-silver streak is twice reflected
As you give out you give out good news
The guidances of space are thus detected

As you step in to your step out shoes
The vapour trails are reconnected
As you shake out the shaved in truths
The commentaries of feast are infected

Do we know who we reach out for
Do we know who we reach out to
And when we find solace my friend
Do we know whose eyes
We are looking through

I go there to go nowhere
I go there to explore the wherewithal
Others say that I seek to be elsewhere
I say that I cannot help how you make the call

And I do remember calling
At nighttime, later, towards the fall
Stretch out words into the lateness rolling
Inviting you, just you, to the New Year ball

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
of his Collected Works

Battles For Balance

How to understand the hope of hope
How to navigate
Through the thought of thought
Simpler questions may be sought out
Though the satisfaction
In their solution will be nought

The optimist within me leans towards hope
Though together the two may delude
But I give them every opportunity
To lift my spirits
To put me in a positive psychological mood

With the long view still some way
From the horizon
The need for choice is ever more apparent
Which path to take, and for what reason
Are there among the many options and talents

To focus on recovery
Is the highway to recovery
To disarm all those bodily aches
And mind-filled pains
To search unrelenting
For discovery is the way to recovery
To charm your way into the place
Where your lover reigns

And I saw hatred
Where hatred there was none
And I sought vengeance
When the vengeance had already gone
Those few exercises
Will they make a difference
Well they have made a difference
Or at least something has made a difference
Though it’s still not right, not by a long shot

Do I write so as not to be lonely
Or do I write to be alone
Borne by the loving address
That love which wobbles
Along the precipice only
Where we know ourselves
To be free of loneliness

With such arching
Overriding aims at complication
Never ever knowing, not showing what it is
Which lies beyond the reached for implication
Or way yonder
Where the longing no longer exists

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Causal

Only by the inferred
Can I be deterred
Only by the colour of the hunting-jacket
Can I realise the world of the rotting racket

Not starting out the way I intended
How else to be remembered
Than by the felt-trimmed fedora
And your father’s dalliance with the lady Nora

Why then to think of the impassable roads
Covered by the tide and the irascible load
Why edge towards the bets on losing horses
When truth more often lies in deeper courses

Not moving on in ways recommended
How else is that life then to be extended
Other than by the ex-army overcoat
Or misunderstandings which are always afloat

Wherever the grasslands and peat bogs meet
Young men and companions lodge their feet
As time keeps time in a dangerous dance
We follow the lines awaiting one last chance

Not ever reaching the eventual turning point
As they turn out their pocket and their hearts
The joint in the road where spiritual folk anoint
Searching the place where the restarting starts

When you come back, will you come back
With anything to gift you real fulfilment
The same as when you thought of the lack
Of anything other than wish-fulfilment

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Inception

Sometimes you have to write
Even when there seems to be
So little to write of
Then perhaps to remember flying the kite
Or to think of memories to write thereof

Some days you have to rely on
Brian Ferry singing
Or to light the Jasmine, Chamomile
And Rosewood candle

Especially if it is too far to walk
To hear the bells a-ringing
You can rest in your lounge
Wearing slipper or sandal

Some ways you know are shorter
And some ways ever longer
The garden path twists and turns
Beneath the blossom tree

The tree whose leaves and blossoms
Once were stronger
Before the autumn and the winter
Asked that they go free

There isn’t anywhere really
For this poem to go to
My mind being freed
Of all thoughts and repercussions

So back to the cricket field
To recall your boundary throw
Or to football in the snow
After negative family discussions

Sometimes the past
Is not the cure-all after all
When the images do not bring
Good cheer to the game

Better then to let the present
Make a welcome call
When what is to see
Is the beauty of the beautiful flame

Some days the song is just right
How to say, somewhat tight
Is it that old Tom Waits, in a most
Ingeniously theatrical guise

A life reflected from Belgrade
Out and onto the Eastern light
Giving indeterminate pleasures
Such is the entertainer’s prize

Some ways you have to begin
With your hands in the sands
The roads to the beaches
Having been rolled over and over

Silver Birch and Aspen become
The joy-spreading strands
After the sycamore and oaks
Over by the four-leaf clover

The wasn’t really anywhere
For this old poem to try to go
And who else will hear, or see
Or know of the background

So back to the photographs
And the old stories going slow
Or the magnanimity of the roar
Of the less than silent sound

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Reluctantly

I thought I might try close reading
Close reading of my own work
Just to be sure of the cognisance
Both for myself, and also for others

Although it is not strictly true
To say that I thought of this unaided
No, actually it was after a critique
Another sense, or meaning of success

Also, and this was of my own doing
There were typographical mistakes
And my back to front isms
Did not always ring true (pun intended)

Anyways I listened to David Whyte
Who I have heard many times
And I realised how often he uses repetition
Today’s words are yesterday’s words and so on

Then I turned the oven on
Almost exactly as instructed
(In preparation for cooking the turkey)
Thereby proving that my memory still works

Yet soon I was back to writing
Writing about close reading
Which I have done with others works
But never before with my own

Is this a glorified form of editing
I ask myself, two times actually
Still I do not start, some force holds me back
I will call it: The unknowing of the unknown

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Confirmations

I’ve posted to you
I’ve posted to I
I’ve posted to everyone

I searched for you
I searched for I
I found you and I in everyone

I looked for the flow
Was I, or was I not
Already in there

I read the messages
I watched the videos
I was enjoying simply being

There is desire
There is longing
Yes, it is true, there is everything

And now the singer sings
There is going to be a big one
And who am I to argue

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Working Back

And so I ask you to write your life story
Instead of asking that I write my story

And I ask you to be clearer with your poetry
While not saying
That I should steer clear of ambiguity

Yet, when asked who is the you that I write of
I am at first reluctant to say, but eventually I say

The you is many people throughout my life
The you is also I
That is I in its many incarnations

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Allocations

I have brought my focus
I have brought my concentration
I have brought my coffee
I have brought my mince pies and biscuits

I pay full attention
To taste the fruit in my biscuit
Similarly, to the coffee
In which I dunk my biscuit

I think about the Swami
Also the Gita
But most of all
About the words of Patanjali

Who said something to the effect
That my new project
Would breathe life into me
And so it seems to be
As I devour my second biscuit

On the side table
There is an empty can
Of caffeine-free Diet Coke
Which was one of yesterday’s projects

As was also writing a love poem
In a book which I cannot now see
Yet I can believe in it
For it contained focus
Concentration, and attention

That is for all of the while of its writing
There was an awareness of moments
There was a feeling of emotions
For how else could it be written

Now I have to tell you that I distracted myself
So it is time to return
To the coffee
To the mince pies and biscuits

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Defender

I take pleasure
Doing what some, or many others
Would see as a waste of time

My spirits are uplifted
By the images of Tumblr
Or the short quotations on Twitter

Of course I do agree
That this is not a full engagement with society
Not at least in the old sense of the words

Yet, if after a year or more of communal posting
Someone, who you have never met
And whose real name you do not know

Wishes you
A merry Christmas Christopher
Isn’t that a good thing

And so I do return to the well
As often as  to my meditation
Even more so on some days

Take yesterday for instance
A dark, dull, wet December day in my locality
But, on the web
White sands, blue skies, inspiring words

The activity is also a means of avoidance
I let the news (which I’m told is mostly bad)
Pass me by
I do bypass my physiotherapy exercises
Reasonably often

I am doing that right now
By talking out in defence of social media
As I might easily have talked
Of other means of escape

But come summer I will walk in the meadows
I will find beaches to stroll upon
And I will take photographs

Pictures to post to my followers
All images entitled never a day…
I might even post a photograph of this poem

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

Critique Oarsman

Into the darkness of the day
Came the light of grace
That is, whatever for you defines grace
I said that if your intention is to say that
Then there must be no ambiguity

Your words need to be sure, secure, and clear
For only with absolute clarity
Can your voice be passed on
To meet with the next man

I could see and sense the unease
Your brow ruffled
Your lips quivered
Being tied down is not your kind of thing
Always desirous of space in which to move

Nevertheless your desire, or hope
For your words to be understood
Perhaps even widely transmitted to boot
Ensures some level of acceptance
As other's guidance becomes palpable

In the lightness of the mood
There was a casual consensus
About how the previous four poets
Had all placed themselves
At the very beginning of their poems
(As if all had been students of Fred D'Aguiar)

And they had all introduced
Something ever so slightly
Out of the ordinary
In such a way as to turn
An ordinary phrase
Into a poetic utterance

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

The Meditators Alternative Songbook

It didn’t happen that way the next day
Then I was observing the meditation
As opposed to being in the meditation
I was wanting to confirm my experience
As opposed to allowing
The experience to flow into me

I had said, a couple of nights ago
That if we each took time
To concentrate deeply
On a period from our past
Then we would uncover
Many well-shrouded memories

And music may well help that
Especially if happenstance or choice
Might provide comforting
And inspiring sounds
Or if chance and doubtfulness
Find another pathway to follow

I had spent quite some time enabling the iPod
Such that now I feel obliged
To listen to the songwriter’s sad song
Yet I feel for him
That it is a recollection of beauty
Or for the seeker
Who seeks a purpose for his life

And meditation, or surrender, may help that
Especially if the mind’s silence
Becomes present in the moment such that
I can follow the strands of the story
Just as occurred with The Lark Ascending

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

The Good, The Bad and The...

From Spring Vale to Cutting Edge

From Jiving K Boots to Percy Sledge

On Tuesday nights and Thursday nights

Following the mobile discotheque

Young girls losing their cares

Young boys saying what the heck

Tuesday and Thursday at the discotheque 

Spring Vale to Cutting Edge and what the heck

Would you dance with my friend

She fancies you a lot

I’m only asking because she is quite shy

Would you dance with my friend

Go on give her a shot

I’m only asking because

I don’t want to see her cry

Tuesday and Thursday at the discotheque 

Spring Vale to Cutting Edge and what the heck

So we danced and we danced

And I walked her home

I was smitten

Truly I fancied her quite somewhat

So we danced and we danced

And we were no more alone

I should have asked for her number

But I forgot

From Spring Vale to Cutting Edge

From Jiving K Boots to Percy Sledge

Dance with my friend?

Not a chance, not one jot

Dance with me you inexperienced youth

I can show you

How to taste and sense the sweeter spot

Dance with me

I want you to be wild and uncouth

Tuesday and Thursday at the discotheque 

Spring Vale to Cutting Edge and what the heck

So we danced and we danced

And we didn’t go home

We were rampant together

Were we not

So we danced and we danced

And we clung to the bone

I should have asked for her number

I know that was the plot

Tuesday and Thursday at the discotheque 

Spring Vale to Cutting Edge and what the heck

No one to dance with

All to do is stand and stare

They are both with boys

Of more than equal to your size

No one to dance with

So try to look as if you don’t care

Let them know they’ve missed

Their greatest prize

From Spring Vale to Cutting Edge

From Jiving K Boots to Percy Sledge

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works

A Reflected Poem

Now I understand the spectrum
Yes, the colours of the rainbows
Yes, the tones of love
Yes, the care in those eyes
If only to follow

To follow without thought
To follow without hope
Taking on board not one thing
Yet overwhelmed by the beauty

Confounded by oneself
Without reason
A life otherwise dictated
Caught in a vague recollection
Of once before
Being subject
To a seasonal fallout

A harsh sentence
No more to it than that
So, as Chumbawamba sang:
I get knocked down
But I get up again

I can see
I can breathe
I can move
I can rest
I can do anything I want
Well, almost

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Studious Daydream

I have this openness
This easiness
I am in that place
Where distractions
Haven’t yet engaged me

But I can hear birds
Both chirping and squawking
Some in bushes, some in flight

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

In This Time

There is a calm, a peace, a quiet
Which silences the longing
And prevents the breakthrough
Of the darker thoughts

It is however hemmed in
By the walls, the doors, the windows
Which provide a formidable barrier
To prevent its escape

The sunlight, even if not appreciated
Gives a warmth to further engage
The body, and perhaps the mind
In this somewhat settled state

Of course this is the exact
Atmosphere that the thinking
Seeks out; for what better place
To hold court, to sway

I do offer some resistance
Don’t go there I say to myself
Yet just as quickly strikes the ego:
Go there, go there you must

The shadows, the pictures, the memories
Once the floodgates open
The floodgates are opened
And all we can then do is to submerge

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Non-Verbal Communication

We approach each other
In our automobiles
On the narrow country lane

I pull into the side to let you pass
You do the same
Then flash your headlights
As if to say, please carry on

I drive forward
As I pass you I wave
You do the same, then move off

We haven’t met before
We might never meet again

After this short, but pleasant interlude
I return to listen to Pink Floyd’s
Obscured by Clouds

They sing that there will be war
They sing that there will be peace
I say to myself: such is life, c’est la vie

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Best Wishes

Dr Joe said he could change me
So I bought his morning and evening guided meditations

His idea is to train and build our mind to think of the future
Rather than dwelling on the past

Then a strange coincidence
A messenger message
From someone I have never met

But a writer, who had a poem
In the Gregory Anthology 1985-86
Which I took to psychology summer school

A big part of my past
Which I may now wish to drop altogether
From my projected future

Began at that summer school
Is this simply a coincidence
Or a happenstance warning, in disguise

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Process

Sometimes just a few words
Sometimes a complete sentence
Always words eventually for the page
Always seeking change or rearrangement

For several nights
Or rather several mornings
On the cusp of waking
On the escape from later dreams

I cannot recollect the words
I cannot remember the meaning
Except in a way I saw it as a question
Except in a sense I felt a rebuttal

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Wrap

One more beach cafe Americano
In fact my last, for today we leave
Which is tinged with sadness
Yet also serves as a freedom

Free from worry about my sciatica
Which has claimed most
Of my sleeping time
For the past three nights

Claimed with the use of surreal dreams
Claimed by the forays into delirium
As one imagines was regularly abroad
In the previous generation’s asylums

You might have visited
Such a place yourself
Or seen one of the many exhibitions
On dystopia, which toured the UK

The bill is paid
But the utopia will remain
Well after we are gone
Though will we still know of it

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

Treasure

A description of the sea on our last day at Atrium Prestige

First to say something about the sharp line of the horizon which goes all the way from right to left, also from left to right

Then to talk of the flickers of sunlight which shimmer in the same V formation as a skein of geese in flight

As if they too are heading for the shoreline cafe where I take my daily Americano

Now I have a desire to write about you; you are the sea, the sea is you, you and the sea have bonded

Just as have I been able to sit in the shade, to pen a few words, without fear of interruption

And just when you thought it was all superficial I must tell you of the nearby shipwrecks and lives lost

Also of the deep-water divers who now act as environmental policemen to keep watch on those who would pollute

Yes it is azure, yes it is blue, yes it is ideal for swimming and diving, yes it is why I write what I write

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website

More Ways Than One

One way is to be seen
Another way is to be discreet
A third way

Is not to decide for yourself
Nor neither
To let others decide for you

Should we focus on the flies
Or the tea with biscuits
Which, for the moment
Are separate entities

Instead to focus on the sciatica
And the back pain
Which, for as far as I can feel
Is as good as one and the same

One way is to become known
Another way is to remain mute
A third way is to determine

That your expressions, your grimace
Should say all of that
Which needs to be known

Available on Amazon

Christopher's Collected Works Website