Afterwards

It doesn't have to be like that
The disingenuous one
The simpleton
The alley cat

It doesn't have to be like that
The beauty gone
The angles all wrong
The socialist art statistic

Misfits, and implicitly
Prescriptive; subsidising
All those easy riding
Past and present mystics

What right have I to say what fits
Sticking to how it knits together
Leaving out the lonesome bits
Believing love lives, goes on forever

What right have I to pace and rage
Standing aloof of the human race
Chasing fame from my own perspective
Thinking aloud, of criticisms irrespectively

What right have I, an irksome sod
With no beliefs, or grounds to call
Hooking all, with the line and rod
That's rock and roll, that's all there is

Freedom from the work of stuff
Silence for the classroom tears
Making firm, so brave and tough
Music, poetry, and o, just those years

available on kindle

Tipping Point

Driving in my car I listen to Runrig’s music, on the radio; I am going away from where Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire all meet

So there I am, leaving the brutality of the Pennine Moors for the gentleness of the flatlands; the Wolds, the coast of, peaceful, agricultural, Lincolnshire

So there I am, I am leaving my past and my present behind me, as I head out to my present, and to my future

And with this message in my mind I observe the skies; passing over where Larkin’s Whitsun Wedding train may well have travelled

To the East there is greyness in abundance; I think to email my new found friend, of the frames of our world renowned ‘big skies’

To the West, and South there are pinks, and golds, and fleeting glimpses of that boldest, brightest blue; that oldest blue of love, which is all that I can say of love, in this precisely precious moment

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Optical Confusion

I wiped a tear
Ripened in the field of melancholy
I wiped a tear
Frightened by the fear of yet another Monday morning

I wiped a tear
Enlightened by the sprigs of mistletoe, and holly
I wiped a tear
Heightened, as if near to the deepness that is dawning

Power lines suspended
Between the marching pylons
All my life upended
By the feel of your fear

Grey skies open-ended
Above the motorway escarpments
Passions that descended
Into the flawed life department

I wiped a tear
Forlorn as the raindrops on your brolly
I wiped a tear
Born again, with a smile; o gosh, o golly

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Container

Four crows to a sapling
Autumnal winds thus blow
Ambling through my mind
What brought my eyes to glow

As old thoughts rose again;
That put down by the teacher
As I chose to play the fool

The pressure and the pain
Unexplained absences
Forged notes for the school

Without now of competition
I search out for what I yearn
Not though born of discipline
Rather, it is the love to learn

To learn that I am happy
As I guess most people are
For a moment in the spotlight
Praised from near, and from afar

available on kindle

Monday

I have a night-light, to share the high-life ethereally with you
Through the skylight, the twilight of stars burn themselves blue

It is absolutely true, that in the swan-song, of our fabulous years
Smiles replace frowns, making us downright free of our fears

With clear paper and pen, and the now and the then, and with zen
We appear set for the journey; with tourniquets behind to impress those dear

Nearby, the Egyptian Cotton, begotten of toil and strife
Laid to rest out a life, our celebrations are denied of all but love

available on kindle