Sexton’s Beast

You gave me something to chase

You bore our child, from a cottage

With a lane down to the sea

If sex is the physical, thank fuck

That we fucked

Yet it’s still the residual that holds me

Unfolds my weaknesses by the shore

Ever to the open door, deploring

My absent moods, how I did brood

The interlude wasn’t seen, a mean

Head for the silver screen, lay back

& be led; be led, let it be said

You gave me something to chase

Your roar along the promenade

A race with indiscriminate pleas

If lust is the miracle, good luck

That we looked

Yet it’s still the indivisible that holds me

Withholds my meekness evermore

Never to restore, scoring

My reticent grooves; how I moved

The certitude isn’t clean, a dream

Stead for the sepia sheen, stay back

That I may be led; be led, let it be said

A poem written after reading Anne Sexton’s poem The Beast

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Pictures

Entente Cordiale

A sort of dialogue is begun

Backslapping, thin & light

Yet a beginning for all of that

The programme is installing

With what hopes

That the photographs

May be recovered

The database is upgrading

A peace of love

Such fleeting, moving stillness

That brings a facial likeness

To the new morning

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Strike Back

In this early hour

Woken by the dawn’s chorus

I feel a lightness

Love comes from many places

I am fond of written words

Yet respect the view

That they are a departure

With the dishonesty

Of being quietly considered

Not spoken, in the rush

Of conversation; their

Stillness hides the passions

That might erupt, which

Have erupted in the past

Slower words are a safer haven

Yet still so full of absoluteness

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Unjust

His body was bruised, and distorted

His friend took back the large, green

Two-hundred and fifty pound note

That he was about to lend him

I was in questioning mode

Already though I had condemned him

He didn’t look good

I didn’t feel good

This is how a father dreams

Of his son

After reading the first chapter

Of A Road Less Travelled

For I did abandon him

I was short on love in his direction

& now I don’t know where to start

To make things any better

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Finding Ways

It didn’t ought to be called love
For how can love follow
Abandonment and estrangement

To justify the inference of love
I have to back off, soften from
The black and white of leaving

That’s not easy for this engineer
Whose use of mathematical logic
Is cast in stone as right or wrong

To then walk towards maybe
Offers up a trepidation; but also
The excitement of pastures new

As I write my body feels, oozes
The energy of the release; freedom
From those past archaic notions

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop