Clean & Sparkling

What happens to make love happen
Who chose to put love
Into the throes of dreams

Batten down the saddened hearts
Close off the intimating strangulations
Fragments of the o so true

I was working
In the financial services industry

When I say I was working
Well I was on trial
I hadn't yet got the company car
Or the all expenses paid credit card

I was a salesman
Paid purely on commission
But I was good at it
At least I would be
Once I made my first sale

I was shopping
For a razor and shaving foam
I went up and down the stairs
I bumped into an old work colleague
I didn't care for him then
And neither do I now
He handed me the cream

I was sat at the top of a very long escalator
It was outside, probably in London
I had come up with this idea
That people would be far better off

Not knowing how much they were saving
Not knowing how much money they had
All I had to do was to convince people
To buy into my plan

I woke with such a start
As my mobile alarm-buzzer sounded

Available on Kindle

Composed Whilst Driving II

Poems without hope
Dreams without end
He wears his duty
Upon his sunny sleeve
A sure-born entertainer
She smiles, as others grieve
There it is...

How easy to be mournful
To pour scorn
Rather than to find beauty
To walk to the crease
Feeling ever less hopeful
Ravaged by the needs of duty
There it goes...

Look out on the trees
The windmills slowly turning
Sat in the queue
No one looks, no one is learning
All is straight ahead
No one gives, all are for earning
There it is, there it goes...

Available on Kindle

Contour & Contrast

You too are complicit
With the uneven answers
Wedged as you are
Heading to the precipice

Then to fall back on beauty
Hard snows, black rocks
Winds across the old moors
Warm sun, blue skies
Breezes over the salt marsh

Even in the lonely hour, with
Only the mind and the pen
Ever then the happiness
The calm of confusion
Reaching for the stars

To still believe in love
Good news, white light
Letters in the boxes
Expansive, with clear hope
As ink flows from the fountains

Available on Kindle

Beds and Brocade

In that awkward search
For more open space
You find yourself
Backed into another corner

All around are triangles
Formed by walls, ceiling beams
And four poster furniture
Not squared up at the outset

Available on Kindle

Wander In

I was in London, walking beside a big lay-by, which gypsy wagons had pulled into, I climbed over cars covered with juice…

I found myself walking down a wide alleyway, I came upon a door to 'an experience', I entered and climbed the narrow staircase…

There were lots of people, in smart casual dress. They logged me in, and put me with a group of five or six…

I said I was an engineer, another guy said he was a builder, a long haired chap said he was a poet…

I was looking forwards to our conversation, but the group soon broke up, and I found myself eating a roast dinner…

I checked out; the explanations for the receipt were bamboozling,  the 'experience' had cost over seven hundred thousand pounds…

I caught the train home.

Was it a dream, or was it two dreams. All I know is that there was lots of joy and laughter. I was very happy, and only a little disappointed not to talk with the bohemian poet. As always there are people, as always there is a refectory. Oddly this was an almost all male collective, apart from the girls taking the money!

Available on Kindle