Thoroughfare

I was driving home from my work it was mid-afternoon on a grey sky day in late May I was listening to Willie Nelson's fine album Spirit

I began to have great empathy with this singer-songwriters songs of failed and ended relationships also of relationships broken and restated

I felt a need to write some words myself so I turned off the main road down a country lane named Thoroughfare after about a mile or so I pulled onto the grass verge this was farming country fields and fields and yet more fields

I wrote of misunderstandings serious misunderstandings with  disinfected understatements I wrote from often mistaken memories I wrote of love of joy of deep ache and undoubtedly I wrote pulled back from the grip of pain

I wrote because I felt I needed to as though Willie Nelson's songs which I know you cared for had opened up my long closed heart

I worked up four verses with a deal of repetition a great deal of repetition based on the workings of yet more repetition before I moved on to reputation our reputation and our love

buy the book at createspace

listen to christopher read on bandcamp

Light

There is a place I think Leonhard Cohen sang about it
There is a place where the light gets in

The watch says that it is between 5:30 and 6:00AM I should still be sleeping I had closed all the doors I had drawn all the curtains I had turned off all the electrical illumination I had done all that I could to create a blackout

It's hard to say what first woke me I had been dreaming that I was a compère in a small club introducing a group of young musicians who had gone off into the bar next door while their mums and dads shuffled well late first through the iron gates and then on into the clubroom

The dream had lots going on including my microphone not working which maybe broke my sleep that and the pinhead of light entering through the keyhole that and the daylight which worked its way into and through the muslin and the cotton hung up at the windows

That and the light-stream which travelled from the Velux in the bathroom ceiling through the door opened due to a call of nature that and the light in my mind the light the light which always does in that place get in

buy the book at createspace

listen to christopher read on bandcamp

Pilgrimage

On this day on another day
To this place to another place
A desert of a distraction such that I might hide away
A reason or force for subtraction to end or to begin my stay
Purposeful strides to the inside space for looking out
I slide by the Henry Moore decide to keep that photograph
Laugh out loud how the long walk clouded your vision
How the decision to come on foot from your mothers
It was a thing your brothers found hard to believe
But believe me you were one of the first
Your thirst for expanding your horizons caused you to burst
Upon this space with your anger and your rage and your love

Yes above all love that final shove the push
Which pushed you out of your uncomfortable comfort zone
That desire to roam to leave your home of half a life
To leave your wife and your children willed to find
With unfulfilled haste that chase to expel the waste
Of simply trundling on your own pace now unrelenting
The obsession presenting itself at each and every turn
Yet yes yet yes yet what did you learn
Whose favours did you earn
How did you learn to churn to burn the past
Faster yes way faster than the last time
Faster than the words you learnt to mime

buy the book at createspace

listen to christopher read on bandcamp

Estuary

We travelled across the low bridge the one of many arches to reach the car park of the Ebb Tide public house

The sun was up but the day was still yet young you wore a white cotton blouse which gifted to me a thinly veiled view of your belly and your breasts it was a temptation not to be missed

We waded out to the small rowing boat the water was cool but clear something else somewhat inviting my jeans became soaked up to the knees I didn't mind I had no reason to complain our day was going well

The hem of your short pleated skirt bobbed just above the water the salt lines on your suntanned thighs showed the high tides water mark

I climbed aboard first then held your hand as you joined me on the simple cross-seat I put my arm over and around your shoulder you smiled then kissed me on the lips

The relative calm of the still water was broken ever so slightly by the movement of our oars yet soon we were a good distance from the shoreline forever entering deeper waters

buy the book at createspace

listen to christopher read on bandcamp

Consciousness

I was not happy when I was picking potatoes it was autumn it was cold it was raining my wellingtons were covered in mud my hands were covered in mud and when I washed my hands under the hot tap my fingers suffered from hot-aches

All of these recollected feelings as well as some that I have doubtless forgotten conspire to convince me that I was not happy when I was picking potatoes

I was happy laying out on the grass it was spring it was dry it was warm there was sunshine and the nearness of the sea I was wearing one of my favourite shirts a soft fabric with quite wide stripes of green and silver

I have a photograph somewhere of this occasion and thanks to the feelings which I can remember and those that have slipped my mind or for some unknown reason I have excluded combine to convince me that yes I was happy laying out on the grass

Somewhere sometime between the being happy and the being unhappy I have sought out the joy and the solace of pen and paper I am reminded to do so again now as I watch Carl Jung's The World Within In His Own Words

buy the book at createspace

listen to christopher read on bandcamp