Shout Out For The Joy Of Love

Lift up your head damn you man
Smell the sea
Feel the sand between your toes
Breathe in the air
Shout out for the joy of love

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Not That I Want More Religion

Sat in the cafe I felt good, in my old black linen jacket, in my brand new striped cotton scarf

Something of a bohemian I thought to myself, I sure could take to this daytime coffee-shop society

Yet my home town has nothing so, how can I say, nothing so inspiring nor of such an intellectual bent as where I sit at in this present moment

Where Spanish Christians talk on their mobile phones, about how to encourage more youngsters to take up their religion

Not that I want more religion, I just use it as an example of what kind of people could be attracted to in a town with a university

A growing town with a history of wealth and social justice and royal patronage

Should I move here, or should I move my false pretences is the very next question which I ask myself

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The Sports Shop Proprietor’s Wife

A worrying dream, set in my old home town of Holmfirth

I was being summarily discarded
After spending a passionate night with an old flame
A girl from my youth, who indeed
I had similarly discarded, as a much younger man

My car had disappeared from the car park
It was a big old Lexus
Which my brother said
He'd just seen some people messing with

He thought that they had pushed it over the edge
Out from the car park
Down the steep fifty-metre bank
Then across the river, to behind the hotel

My biggest, most irrational fear
Was how to go home
To explain my dalliance
To my wife

In point of fact it was my first wife
Who I was feared of
Which in itself is a conundrum
Yes, the whole thing was all actually quite odd

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Washing

The shirts are dry, the underwear too
Soon it will be the time for the ironing
To discover, to deepen the colour blue

The blue that speaks as in the Speakeasy
Jazz nights at the Upper George, or down
The stainless steel road, at the Silver Fox

The blue which inks, as Pelikan ink stains
The letters sent to a lover, or the words
Penned by one, yet meant entirely for another

The jeans are dry, the wool socks too
Soon it will be the time for the care of folding
To organise and to tidy the altogether neater you

The you that changes, for to change comes easy
For dinner at the Idle Rocks hotel in St Mawes
Or for Ladies Day at Glorious Goodwood

The you that struts his stuff or poses as the flaneur
Finely cut; by a tailor or by an experienced brute
Worn as a suit-jacket with silk stockings and brogues

The morning was dry, the afternoon so too
Soon it will be the time for the drawing in
To phase out the summer, to give me another clue

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Inkblot

For instance that Rorschach test taken at university, did it really show that we were heavenly bodies, soulmates on a celestial plane, forever compatible, to our dying days

Did I let the imagery or the initiation ceremony lead me on; was it simply blue-black Pelikan ink splashed on vellum paper then folded and pressed, to give an indication of a lifelong, hop-along symmetry

Yet of course, not an exact duplication, for the forces of time and the dynamics of fluidity coupled to the symphonies of slippage all took their chance, to make minuscule though not insignificant changes.

Just as the plum tree, try as it might, cannot evenly balance its foliage, having early on in its life suffered a terrible misfortune, where its parent fell over and then died leaving the young sapling to fend for itself.

To lean away from the prevailing wind, to find the place where the sun shines the brightest for the longest hours of each and every day.

That I might understand this, from the science of horticulture, does nothing to take away from me the fascination, nor the intrigue of that first seminal inkblot moment.

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