Recital III

I am what I am
Not what I often say I am
You can hear it in the timbre shaking

I can do what I can do
Not what I sometimes say I can
You can hear it in the words wobbling

I go on in the search of self
Not what I maybe care to call myself
You can see that in the superficiality

I don't go where I ought to go
Not where I somehow feel I ought to go
You can see it in the conceit of self-deceit

I want you to know
Your kind words helped me to more than know
I am what I am

I just need
To find the way of the certainty
To discover how to show it

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Recital II

You said
You've got a great voice for poetry
I wondered
Was it the drink which inspired me

You sang and played guitar
Everyone applauded
All night
Everyone applauded

I was ill the next day
Quite some hangover I should say
Yet a small price to pay
For having spoken publicly

I did not have a plan
I had done no rehearsal
Other than the twenty-seven years of writing
With the occasional voice recording

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Recital I

I drank a good few beers
On Kate Harrison's
First ever Acoustic Music Night

I listened to the Ukulele Band of Louth
Then to my friend Peter Conner
Sing his self-penned soul searching
Next up was Jake Newby
Singing about what he'd seen on TV
Before David with his rumbustious trombone
Joined in with Peter and Alan on drums
For a touch of jazz a tumult of improvisation
Then it was the poets turn
I read Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Verses
By the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda
I was there in the moment lapping up the applause
Before reading my own poem Spring In Winter
I was enlivened as I introduced John Scarborough
Who read his light hearted Lakeland pub poem
About two walkers losing their map then losing their dog

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Rowing Boat

Rowing right out into the rip tide
Forcing the tortured oars
To take us over the seventh wave
Flaky paint is all that adorns the outside
Levelling the undrawn scores
Again to take us back to the seventh grade

Faithful by name yet no one stands by
Faith discarded under a rain filled sky
With no tourists there to speak of
Except my lover and I
Walking by the shoreline
Seeking to find out in our own time

Rowing on rippled pond waters
Carrying the weight of two and one other
A belly button of a mother to be
A son a brother for the daughters
The time was near
As if we always turned to see

Unfaithful by name and no one stands by
Faith discarded
Left with no more than time to wonder why

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Alone

Alone
To be on ones own
Away from the noise
At one yet not with the boys
The joys of solitude
Rude awakenings of self
The wealth of a different fortune
Ruminate among the musings
Cruising with the music stilled
Willed on by the love of love
And by the surer love of one other
Mother of all mischief
A thief surrounded by silence
The meanwhile now ground to quiet
The riot at once held back and unleashed
He reached for the stars for those older
Cuban cigars of youth and misappropriation

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