Back Then

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

How to stop those voices shouting
How to stop the calling of the shrink
How to count to ten or twenty
Or even just to stop and think

No one tells you
Except that you ought to know
No one tells you
Except the tears just have to flow
No one tells you
Except for sure that by now you know

How to stop the nagging doubting
How to drop the stalling mink
How to count, or wait to hesitate

Wait a short while longer, take a drink

Back then, back in childhood
Back then, back in teens
Back then, back a young man
Back then, back with dragons with queens

No one tells you anything
Anything that you need to know
Anything that you really need to know
Somehow just a simple breakthrough

Then again a massive step
Then again a massive step

If you've ever been in love
Or lost a close one
Or lost a limb

Well to think that none of that would matter

To think that not a single thing matters
Not a single thing at all

How to stop the voices shouting
Wonder if it's even worth the thought
How to add the noughts together
To fear any single thing less fraught

So damned easy just to write it
To compensate with chance
Or with the intellectual almighty
Of imagined circumstance

What you need to truly feel it
Touch it right there on the nose
Deep down, in the spines kernel

Hear the book words breathe it fine
Pay the teller, tell her to tell her lies
Pay her with the fives and dimes

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you

Tells you what you need to know
At the time you need to know
At the time that you really need to know

No one tells you anything
Anything that you really need to know
No one tells you
At the time that you really need to know

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A Single Dust-Mote Note

Placed above the sterling
Time; placed way above the sterling
Way above the tarnished garnered coin

Don’t want expensive presents
If in any way that brings resentment
Of what has been already spent

Talk from far off places
Stairways, and pretty faces
Climb to these elevated floors

With one door
And one window-stay
Elopers share a care to play

Midnight at ten thirty
Houseplants die
By dust fair dirty

A room with a view
Of a railroad, and a moor
Some way beyond

A radio station misplaced
By a Saturday
Being here on a Thursday

A dial beyond
Way past beyond
My least and last imaginations

Would that this warmth
Was as settled, as the mind
Which it endlessly tries to disturb

This body displaced
Replaced each spring
Again each autumn

Then in winter
Dusted, with a thin fine sprinkle
Of fair-weather, soft fallen snow

A room with a view over a fair few years
A mischievous miscalculation
Lost among a long past matriculation

A song; would that
To pluck one single note
In time, in tune

My only; dare I even say
My only one regret
My missed, single, dust-mote note

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Simple Complications

Don't want expensive presents
Would rather share
What it is already bared

Walk by both the faces
Still and turbulent races
Thoughts more clear

A path to steer
Day by day
Hopes with care to stay

Talk of misdemeanours
Or exclusions from faraway
Long lost conversations stray

Or better; wow, find words of now
More worthwhile
You and I to softly smile

Simple complications
Debates of long passed stations
Hang on for a while

Wait just a moment won't you
Debaters they share, don't they
Caring for a victor, either way

Why then (sic)
Is it in any way nostalgic
To wear a stripy scarf

Or a bead on a wrinkled wrist
To choose again for time
To be of value; time

The essence of being
The chance to gather up
Those years of disparate thoughts

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A String Of Burnished Beads

With a pastel
Or a palette
An artist's card, or canvas

An abstract creation
Of many colours
I opened the door

So slightly
A slit
Upon my simple thoughts

With mellow music
A soft guitar
A singer, or a cowboy

Mystic collaborations
Of many others
I pushed the wedge

To edge my mind
Out west
A little firmer

With words
A writer's pencil
A book of papyrus paper

Inkwell
With mottled blotter
A wisher's list

Dissertation
Of many schemata
Hinges undone

Door swiftly removed
To hang
In its place

A string
Of
Burnished beads

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Passed Beware

In real time
Or replayed in past time
From High Peaks
To East of Lincoln Central

The flaxen fair
Is way passed beware

To steal time
Or misplace those few moments
From absent
To at least just apart

The flaxen fair
Then is almost there

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