More to it than that, isn’t there always

My photographic images were taken

In the many places where I have been

Sufficiently lucky to have visited

And so when I want to choose one from 2014

To illustrate a book which I am publishing

I do have quite a dilemma

Who should be pleased

Who could be offended

Who would say that I ought to have asked first

And who might actually say

Christopher this is just not good enough

Do you not ever think to consider

The effects of your actions

But it was just a snapshot

Yes, I know that I have given it a caption

Which might suggest a psychologist in conversation

With her client, the lead character in the novel

Except that it is only a suggestion

Nothing is unequivocally confirmed

And so doubts may still linger

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Songs in the key of life

Two more songs for the funeral

Copper Top by Bill Wells

Which tells the story of a chap

Going into the pub nearest to the crematorium

For a pint on his own while he waits for his mate

To pick him up in his car

His stories reminded me of my being measured

And fitted for my first, bespoke, tailor-made suit

By Mr. Wimpenny in the upstairs market hall

Then The King of Rome by The Unthanks

Accompanied by Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band

Which tells the story of a chap whose pigeon

Wins the race from Rome to his west-end home

Which reminds me of Saturday afternoons

Sat out on the Tinkers pigeon loft

As Colin and Lawrence welcomed their birds back

From Paris, or maybe even further afield

These two tunes to go with those already chosen:

Flower Duet from Lakme by Delibes, Acid Rain by Paul Heaton (the full 8 minutes +), then the Flaming Lips with Do you realise. That’s not to mention Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Spiegel im Spiegel, or Bolero, which were also once on the list

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Socialist Worker

Up at five

Breakfast before seven

My 2006 poems turn the 400 mark 

As dawn breaks

And blackbirds chirp

After lunch there is a tiredness

Thankfully, the crystal in the window

Glows red as if a burning sun

Its energy pulsates into and inside me

Telling me to write, to get writing

In that one moment

I captured that one existential breath

Where the lines of absorbent energy

Became coincidental with the lived life

As if some preordained force of nature

Just as those  Critical Theory classes at Buxton

Could so so easily have been disrupted

If the champagne socialist and artist within me

Hadn’t careered into a Labour Party card-carrying

Member and activist, also the lecturer fo the day

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Figuratively Speaking

I had started there and begun to wonder

About the future of my life

Somewhere between the silence and the thunder

Could I find a guide or sign

The sound of the bell from Plum Village

Echoes through the headphones on my head

Sitting in this morning meditation

Could I find the path of peace down which I’m led

Closing in on the end of my eternity

Towards what some perceive as the final truth

I lose my desire for socialised fraternity

Rather to sit and recall my days of youth

I don’t ask the obvious questions

Seek no faith to suspend or extend my passage

I am here and I am happy

I came all this way with all that baggage

The body itself is some days tiresome

No longer a competitor in the freeform sprint

But I do remember being first through the tape

Those times when schoolgirls wore chequered pink

Yet it is more than memories which drive me

Somehow I gather the power to write

It is my favourite, fun-absorbing pastime

To gift me peace with its wayward insight

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works

Inauspicious

The journey is what takes me

Movement forms the art of letting go

Destination may be the purpose

But it is the travel which lets me know

I did not rise so so early

To be truthful I was feeling rather down

Raindrops and wind pounded at my window

I felt to be on somewhat unsteady ground

When it comes to fight or flight

It is always the fleeing which I run to

When it comes to the clarity of insight

I know I am so so easy to see straight through

Fortunately I have the writing

Which I can use to take me up up and away

No longer constrained by my physicality

My imagination becomes the place in which to play

From the misused chlorine cells of water treatment

On those wasteful West Indies islands

To the inert gas generators built locally and sent

To be installed on fuel transportation stands

Overalls which didn’t fit quite so neatly

Not reaching my steel toe-capped workman’s boots

But I made progress year on year completely

Found my way to pass the ball to he who shoots

Always it was and is the journey which takes me

Progression the faith I pitched my cap at to follow

Destinations only halfway then the purpose

It is the experience, which forges the letting go

Available at Amazon

Christopher's Website
for his Collected Works