Modus Operandi

It is my own body which gifts the fear

Rattled and riven with aches and pains

Too too self-absorbed to look outwards 

And then the mind, or brain

Or whatever does the reasoning

Or whatever lacks it

Also caught up in a spiders web of treacle 

Unable to comprehend, or even hear

Another’s divergent point of view

Yet with no desire to convene an argument

The first response is to clam up, to turn mute

And from that impenetrable place

How impossible is the search for a free spirit

How already defeated is the postulated idea

That one could simply wander and dream

The boots are in the trunk of the car

The desire for walking pretty half-hearted

Yet a way does need to be found

Otherwise the straight-jacket

Will not be released, the ability

To turn inwards will always dominate

So start reading the book of life again

And this time

Don’t skip the introduction

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Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Positioning

The arguments in my mind

Or debates if you prefer

Are brought on by my having the time

Which rising early grants to me

If only I was a little warmer

If only when the alarm went off

I wasn’t so so deeply asleep

With little desire for waking

However my meditation calls me

As does my morning pot of tea

That and the engaging prospect

Of living for a while inside my mind

The painting fell off the wall yesterday

So now I look at a blank space

Which will be filled with artefacts

Or photographs once chosen

I hear my head turn

And wonder how to say

That in that doubt filled moment

I didn’t understand much at all

And yes the train may have stopped

As it did for Anna Karenina

But was the poet on board

Or was he observing from the platform 

In any event that was yesterday

Today the story means a little less

It is on the pathway to being forgotten

Before the climb, before the fall

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Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Time Extended Time

An urgency to contemplate

Thoughts desperate for the words

It is as if it is still morning, as if

With the seconds dashing by

Are you misunderstood

You are misunderstood

Sometimes by others

But mostly by yourself

Yet the shadows

And the diary dates

Are the wheels

Which keep on turning

How not to be misinterpreted

On a lifetimes line of continuum

What with so many vantage points

From which to take a point of view

Necessary then the argument

Or discussion as some might name it

Yet the hurt lingers

Deeply questioning the purpose

Suffering of one’s own making

Inhibited by one’s own invitation 

Not then at any frontier

For not one can be reached

Instead the refuge

Of second-half goals

Which brought doubt then defeat

In more or less equal measure

An urgency born of anxiety

With time and space and memory

All but being turned out

In the slow scrawl of morning

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

London Calling

That artist

Who had porridge, a pot of tea, and cigarettes

For breakfast

On his way to purposeful acid etchings

He walked beside you

You walked beside him

Such a pity it was virtual reality

Even on the Outliers

That cab driver

Driving through pouring rain 

To reach

The museum with a radiator

She walked beside you

You walked beside her

Tied up in the domesticity

Of getting to somewhere

How many artefacts

You say too many to count

Yet too few

To grant you solace

Don’t go there do I hear you say

To the field, or stream

Or bluebell woods

Where time will have taken its toll

The book is on order

Wait patiently for now

And remember

The rush is always inconclusive

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Observations From A Room

A past

Which only you know in its entirety

Such a random collection

Of experiences, such as

Wiping the apprentice's steel-clad bench

At the end of a made-up working day

Meanwhile, you photograph the dawn

A blue-black sky with traces of burnt red

As seen through the bare skeletal tree

You remember the farm with three brothers

Across the main road

With highway repairmen and cycling upsets

It wasn’t meant to be a list

Neither for that matter an invitation

To anything other than your own interior

Where walls and windows are your doors

Wrapped all around you

To give presence to your present

That broken hand-made vase

From an art market in Greenwich

Too delicate for my clumsiness to maintain

The warm radiator has warmed the chair

Which has taken many years to understand

Or to come to terms with

To use the light of the table lamps

And sunrises

One glows as one dies

Under a sky

Cleared of angst and anger

If ever there was such a thing

Let it rest now

Brought to an end, by nothing more

Than the bottom of a page

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works