Unbelievable Facts

I was sat on a bar-stool, in Long Beach, California

It was October 17th, 1989

I ordered a beer, and asked the bartender

What’s this on the television

Oh he said, that’s an earthquake

We have them around these parts

I suppose not so so often in England

He served me the beer 

And moved on to his next customer

My colleague came to the bar

Look Ray, I said

The highway is bending and quivering

Ray ordered a beer

And asked did I want to eat

Available at Amazon

Harder Facts

What is the point of continuing the struggle

Would it not be more comforting to be alone

And do I have to write it to even think it

Do I have to pour out the angst to get over the angst

What is it that inspires such opposition

What am I not being told

What must I discover for myself

Yes, there is heat and light and space

But wouldn't there be that anywhere

Because with such disregard for my ways

What is the purpose, where am I heading

I want to be in society, but I am not, not there

Available at Amazon

Facts

Just on halfway, see the white line

Made with a roller and a bucket of lime

A groundsman, with a steady eye and gait

And perhaps a bowl of rolled out twine

Remember the school playing fields

Running tracks and cricket squares

Where precision, and circumference

Both came into play

Running in at a heck of a pace

Then stopping, precisely, as the ball was released

Or taking a leg-and-middle guard

Before tapping the willow, behind the crease

Available at Amazon

Because

Slowly, yet surely, the dark side fades

A new joy approaches, given the opportunity

We all have spaces open for recovery

Thankful to see the daffodils

Beside the driveway at Blackladies

I was cared for there, I was loved there

A small sadness enters

For my hosts will have passed away by now

Gone off to their promised land

For they did, together and separately

Share a faith

Which served them ever so well

Available at Amazon

So

We met on a London street

Three, late middle-age men

I was just a bit apart at first, with my notebook

But then I joined Patrick and Gerard

Patrick, pristine in neat Irish plus-four tweed and brogues

Gerard in a well-cut, navy barathea blazer, as befits a Bretagne man

They were old friends, socialites from the Sorbonne

Patrick had bought a place in St Johns Wood

And thought I was just the man to help him renovate it

I told them a story which I had heard on the radio

During my train journey to the capital from the North

Apparently each time a golfer putts a golf ball

His putter is layered with psychic memory

Eventually the energy levels of the layers combine

And now the putter will not putt, however much the golfer tries

Available at Amazon