Barrier

Have the sense to use those other mens words
Such that your own sensitivity is protected
Hold back your empty tears with their thoughts
Such that your scars will wash off easy as mascara

Let those wandering poets shake the blossom
While you are magnified by the blue skies
That they may talk of doubt and grief and longing
To depths that your imagination needs not imagine



From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Still Life

The artist suggests that the image is a stillness; for myself the image is a precursor to movement, a springboard to set the emotions flushing, a kick-start to the stories of yesteryear, a lambast for tales of even before the time of time itself

A small back doorway; room enough for two to shelter, from the swift and short spring storms; room enough to stand alone, with wetting eyes, as the garden brush is fired in the dry dirt of summer; room enough to laugh on ones return home, after the birth of the prodigal son; room enough for two to part, over the spilt milk possession of a gas bill; room enough to have held all those times, yet passed them over for a new life

The artist’s stillness is suggestive; he opens you to way more than the entirety of all my wasteful words; he asks of you to enter, to stand in his space, a holding point that is less than a passage, less even than half a passage; he asks you to wait there, perhaps to hear Vaughan Williams’ timeless Larks Ascending waft on the breeze from a distant room

You do wait there; as you endlessly waited for me; as you stood alone, with shaking hands, in that vestibule; your salted tears streaming of self recrimination; you, a worn and sunken soul; you in search of the storm, that would forever fire you into oblivion

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

On the Run

That light

The same light 

That I saw with you in Lyon

Before the town was awake

As we escaped to the coast

Make the most of it

The poster with our names

Will soon be bringing fame

The song as you will see

Remains just about the same

That light

The same light 

That we fought over in Lyon

For our love and for mercy's sake

We faked a telegraph by the post

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Interior Designs

Thankful for the rattle bag that passes for my mind

Mindful that I can juxtapose

The beautiful loves of my life

With little or no scene or argument

Grateful that I can let them be sprayed together

By the early mornings warm sunlight

Rarely does the bitterness rise to the surface

My mind has a smile that dilutes the pain to nought but

A dried up river bed, the sort you might find

Beside that idyllic country house, in the Pyrenees

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu

Morning

I won't ever sit

In that quiet room again

No one knows of those times 

That I sat there contented

The ten fifty-five train rolling by

In the deep cutting 

Across the sedentary road

The half-staggered walk home

From the gastro-pub

After Ascot Day at York races

I follow you through your houses

Cat sitting or wallpaper hanging

A loving, rewarding relationship

Today another quiet room

I absorb the wide open country view

Through your new house's window

I feel contentment’s approach

From the Collection One Crow to a Tree - Love in Separate Houses available from Lulu