I Hear You Breed

Aloof from my own self

Erect in my mistaken identity

A panic attack of supremacy

More than merely alive

A catch for any maiden

A soldier to make you cry

A latch to open for the laden

Boulders that stall to stratify

Proof if it was ever proven

Detect; I hear you breed

A panic attack of supremacy

More thoroughbred than steed

A match for any haven

A shoulder there to amplify

A patch to blind the cursed raven

Rocks that crave, with needs to pacify

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Fuchsias or Freesias (Scream Not Heard)

Now can I get you to smell this stuff

And if so how

Burnt Skin

Roast on human spits

Smoked over oil flamed leaves

Diesel or Gas

Exhausted 

Float off before the fall

Thin return

In early winter

Eerie atmosphere

How can I get you to smell this stuff

Would it be easier if it were your mother

Kick, crunch underfoot 

Stand erect, breathe slow 

Remember 

No more white berries

My Edwardian friend

Down Broadway’s broad walks

Each different house

Today expect the bay

A front room for the dead to lay

How can I get you to smell this stuff

Would it be easier if it were your failure

Missed it

Must not able to afford

Explain to them

The aroma

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Corporate Clothes

Heartbeat in your cosmos lee

Take me

To your meditation retreat

Take me in all innocence

Heartbeat across the sea

If you have cared

To read along, join together

Sing a simple sensitive song

Heartbeat across the oceans

Take me

To your ceremony's defeat

Let your silk swathes set me free

Heartbeat in the stars and streams

If you have cared

To read along join together

Sing our simple sensitive song

Heartbeat across the oceans

Heartbeat across the sea

Take me

In all innocence

Let your silk swathes

Set me free

In your ceremonial retreat

Let your silk swathes set me free

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No Defence

Sunlight, stained glass

Interned upstairs

Shadow, artificial light

Infirm are down below

Country lanes

And thistle fences

No defence

For crept in thoughts

Trees out of leaf

Clung with ivy

No rungs for jackboots

That daddy brought

Children or spiders

Snug inside

No bug for those elementary

Liquorice-all-sorts

Parcels, presents

Delivered on time, by then

To open, to close

To return, to intend her

Impending desolation

Only hesitation cares

And words, to open

To close, interns beware

Available at Amazon

The Cold Days After Summer

Where are you now

Still of flight, in your bed

Where are you now

Was it untrue indeed I said

It is almost not a moment

More esprit de corps

Less time

Than the evening primrose

Takes to open

Less time

Than to run

For that last late-night bus

Where are you now

Settled, set in your flowerbed

Where are you now

Was it undue, that I misled

For words to envelop

This play or plight

More phrases

Than metaphors incline

More dandelions

Than summer wine

More incandescent light

Than generated cadence

Where are we now

Are we lonely instead

Where are we now

Alive, although misread

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Clay Ball

Ball

Of moulded clay

Grey as the squirrel

Textured as the elephant's skin

Don’t

Forget my impression

Pressed as I rested

As I contemplated

How

A clay ball

Could cast the

Memories of ages

Ball

Don’t

How

Then, or now

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Sunshine Before One + Places To Be Sacred

Lilac

Sunshine strikes, before

And after one

Photographs

Memories of pikes

And pickled persimmon

Poppies

Haze that raised

The shades of vermillion

Candles

Skies lit by the grace

Of readers defiled by Gideon

The words said no reminders

And you send none

To remind me

But I enjoy

Do I not

To think of you

Remember

You send me

Spaces to remind me

The words said

To burn

A sacrificial letter

I sent to you

The dust, it was

My super sacrificial gesture

Available at Amazon

If Not Used

Tonight, not quite

As darkness falls

The frost not thawed

Or if thawed

The frost re-frosted

The bronze

The marble

The tin and tambourine

Land of winter’s

Silver screen

The thoughts

Not thawed

Or if thawed

Thoughts re-thought

Soldiers, statues, fields

Of fallen clay

Tomorrow

Not quite

More any other day

As darkness falls

Ammunition

Unused

If not used

At least you tried

Or did you lie

The iron

The stone

The crimson

Canteen

Lost land of winter’s

Mist on mean

Chords of electric

Wire, unused

If not used

At least you plied

Or did you try

Available at Amazon

Town Folk + Side Stage

The platform straight and true

The locomotive there to take me to

Causeways of red and white and blue

The ticker-tape

The Shangri la

A countryside stream for my weeping jar

Railway porter ought your trade to pass

Not along the lines to slaughter

Away from wind lost lass

The ticker-tape

The home come welcome

I’ve missed you so much Ma

My townfolk

My northern star

You could have been…

The darkness

That lonely room

Useless space, frustration

No more to achieve

No other voices

The musicians

The magicians

The harlequins

Still and noiseless

Covered in dust

Despair enters

From the dark side

The stage lights

Are turned low

The gods also out of sight

As stories stay to remain untold

Available at Amazon

Who Goes There Goes There + But

It is not so dark now

Even in the darkest hours

That dark despair of despondency

That death of nights and empty gestures

The sun on my shoulders

The frost on the trees

It is not so dark now

Whosoever goes by

Who goes there goes there

I stand in my own place

The warmth through the blue sky

The peace of patience to share

You could have been…

But what about your brother

Yes, you could have been…

But what about your mother

Oh yes, you could have been…

But what about the others

Such a shame, surely you could have been…

But what about our band of brothers

Well perhaps instead, maybe you could have been…

But what about those fucker mothers

See you’ve seen, what you could have…

Available at Amazon

What In Truth You Never Stole

You sing

Another tune to me

Through years of carers work

You’ve built around immunity

I am

Outside the you of me

After years of tyre tread to work

I’ve replaced me in the community

Credit a last line of mine

You have given me my soul

Given me my time

Given, what in truth you never stole

Perhaps money, or favoured possessions

On occasion others of apparent doubt

And distance too, so far from my pension

But with a voice I will work that out

So what is left for you

Where do you seek your surety

Your space so full of reason

Where do you go for your purity

With your cancer cross

With your poverty band

With your counsellor's hat

With your helper’s hand

Now I see it is not me

That’s trapped at all

Despite

My lack of confidence

Compared

To your lost romance

No, it is not mine

That tap on Duchamp’s wall

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You Push Me Further + Vanishing Point

You pushed me out

And now you push me further

Today I thought I’d figured out

But now I wonder

What had I done

To so so securely hurt her

Back in my calmness

I expect it really is of no consequence

Not worthy of much communication

No thought that she might hurt me

And I guess the word would be sorry

If I should care once more to point it out

Her tendency to be tactless

She deals it straight not roundabout

I thought I’d reached equilibrium

A balance

A full stop

Such that I could begin anew

Now I see

It was just a vanishing point

A pale horizon of mid-sight blues

A pit stop

For you to let me know

Just how much it is that I am screwed

Available at Amazon

Lover Of The Great Outdoors

Sway
Lay a prayer mat
Down beside
To guide you

This tree
Will surely fall
Who but man
Would here insist

A counterbalance
A bench
To sit upon
So near the precipice

Stay
Lay your coat
Down
To unhide you

In memory of John Jones
Lover
Of the great outdoors
Nineteen twenty-five

Up to
The millennium
Often
Words alone are sufficient

Dwell
Settle
Rest
Be blessed

In this
The final place
The expectant place
Of rest 

Available at Amazon

Before The Book Before The Thought

Admirers of abstract painting

Always, from as long ago as I can remember, before the book, before the thought

Free verse

No, that’s a new concept, or was until a few weeks ago, now I find it is what I’ve always done, before the book, before the thought

Corbusier Armchairs

Was it Conran, or Habitat, anyway it was a good while before IKEA, before the book, before the thought

Houses with plain walls

It began with Anaglypta, after the flock; but pretty soon it was painted plaster, before the book, before the thought

No ceiling Roses

We had to wait for technology, even now, sunken spots, not easy, not before the book, nor before the thought

——————————————————-

Admirers of abstract painting, free verse, Corbusier armchairs and houses with plain walls and no ceiling roses

Linda Grant

Sexing the Millenium1993

P36

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A Walk In The Park

A place to convalesce

Take the waters

Less the wine

A place for more than rest

Take the quarters

Less the line

Broad walk in the fall

Autumnal colour

Peace remain

Soft talk in the hall

La Femme Pressée

Romance refrain

A place to recreate

Hesitate or wait

Less is fine

A place to infiltrate

Through ages of lime

Less steep incline

Market place they call

Fruits of the land

Body maintain

Landscapes on the wall

Mingling with Ringling Art

Sensuality sustain

A place

Appropriate

Please may I

Stay

Available at Amazon

Parallelism

It isn’t that I wanted to focus on those two things

But they did have to be sorted, and now they are

I didn’t have to do the online shop

But I had thought of a method, and I used it

I could have gone to the garden centre, it is allowed

But to be honest there would be little point, or purpose

I have though found a film to watch, from Hungary

I will report back, possibly tomorrow, or as soon as

There was a closeness, purely imaginary of course

The film was slow, deliberate, one might say clunky

The happy ending was retained, it was how I wished

Yes, there was a closeness, and I still feel its presence

Available at Amazon

Consequences

And so I think of the lake outside Vienna

Also the Buddhist Monastery, on the outskirts of Berlin

Both being places which I visited via virtual reality

So should I begin another story

Take a trek around my mind and my music

Or travel from Lisbon to Sagres, staying by the coast

Should I play that kind of jazz

Which reality never would allow me

Or should I be more concrete

Rebuild memories of listening to Lyle Lovett

As I played with oil pastels, and moulded clay

His absence from making music may be my metaphor

For what has gone missing

Or what was never even there in the first place

Which is maybe an inch or so nearer to the truth

Available at Amazon

Sequential

The ideals, they have not lasted

Even their commitments

Have faded away

Where now to find new inspiration

As the upstairs floorboards creek

And days apart are all we have

How then to light a new candle

Place a writer’s desk

In the space of new hope

It is early summer

How much more

Might we sustainably wish for

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Referential

I used to be a near-on champagne socialist

Now I am almost a champagne Buddhist

No commitment then, back then

No commitment also, here and now

Would it change our memories

If summer was one day long

If summer enchanted us

With its beauty all day long

The same for autumn, winter, or spring

If we fully tasted that one day

If we could cast it wilfully

Into our one day of consciousness

I used to be in the woods

Or on the beach

Yet now, for many reasons

I am in my mind

Available at Amazon

Planted Out

This house is not my house

This garden is not my garden

I do feel this

More and more each day

I do not have my own space

Nor doubt I ever will

I am always in a shared space

Even when you are still

I also am often still

For with no room to go to

And no row of beans to grow

I stay away from horticulture

Available at Amazon

Tactile

I place an egg-shaped stone

On the arm of the garden seat

It is not a great or grand thing

Though it gifts me a smile

And as I write that

The sun comes out

To make the reflection on the paper

One of intense light, immense energy

Yet I press on

For I know shadows will arrive

Either from the clouds

Or from my presence within

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Clothes Horse

It is the middle of May

I am sixty-eight years old

I didn’t go to India as a younger man

Nor did I become a Buddhist

When the opportunity offered itself

I wear a sea blue polo shirt by Superdry

White denim jeans by Gap

And turquoise, colour-burst

Cotton socks courtesy of Sock Shop

My auburn hair is permed, though not yet

Washed or brushed or combed today

It is several days since I shaved

And it will be several more until I do

I have walked down the garden

To write these words

I hope you approve

Available at Amazon

Let It Lie

There are other places to write

Yet, right now, in this Twombly book

Feels like the best place to write

Maybe it is because this book

Is nearing its end as a place to write

Soon I will have to start another book

Yet this book, it has been a good companion

I care for the feel of the cover

Also for the smooth pages within

There will be a sadness when it is over

When it is stored away

As another part of the year Twenty-Twenty

Available at Amazon