Articulate

Are we mutually abusive

Or do we work, exclusively

Towards our own failed assonance

Are you in my groove

Or do you move, reclusively

Onwards with your own persistence

The last night of vespers

The last night of compline

Take me to your pictures

Are we getting there

Or do we have to drift further

Towards the planetarium

Are you in my curved air

Or do you kiss the Berger

As you step out of the sanatorium

The last night of dining

With the monks and brothers

Takes me to their pastures

Are we any wiser now

Or do we still

Have mountains to climb

Are you in my sentimental plough

Or do you move, at will

Inwards with your thighs to grind

The last night of this single bed

The last night of lights out at nine

Take me to your strictures

Sleep Is Good

I talk to my meditation teacher

About falling asleep during meditation

She gives the thumbs up

Indeed she says it is a good thing

So what do you know

If the very next morning

I don’t just go and fall asleep

And put another hour

Onto my Insight Timer record

If this is me being open

Expressing my fears, or restraints

Might I apply the technique in other areas

For instance if I write about my constipation

Might my movements

Become easier and more regular

And, if Lily Allen is to become the spokeswoman

For women’s masturbation

Might I apply for the men’s variate position

Also, now that I have come across

A rhyming dictionary, isn’t it time 

That I got off my high-horse and started using it

Of course all of this is skirting the issue

For I am damaged goods

I have been hurt, and not found recovery easy

Which is often why others wonder

What on earth I am thinking about

When clearly I am not in the present moment

Accidents Will Happen

Instead of the abbey

A man troubled by drink

And who knows what else

Crashes his motor bike

Almost in front of us

As we walk to the shops

I held back, until told

To ring for an ambulance

You, on the other hand

Rushed to the casualties aid

I failed miserably

With the 999 call

You, on the other hand

Had remained by his side

This man, out joyriding

In his dressing gown

On someone else’s bike

He turned to blasphemy

When more help arrived

Maybe he is addicted

Unable to restrain himself

Perhaps his taste

Was for Buckfast Tonic Wine

Before endangering a suburban street

  

Sketches

The many trees
The river in spate
The few trees
The almost still canal

The footpath to the abbey
Or to the cafeteria
For Americano coffee
And treacle tart with clotted cream

  

Do Does, Don’t Does Not

The dance, this year

Is not a line-dance

Nor a quick-step

And certainly not a waltz

I do not pick up the leaf

To twirl it in the sunlight

I do not read this year’s

Inspirational Book of Days

But I do

Rearrange the bookshelves

Move myself one step closer

To knowing who I am

The walks, this year

Are not meditations

Or pastoral observations

Neither do they go to my writing seat

I do not sit and gaze

Or contemplate a cigarette

As a means, if nothing less

Of beginning a conservation

But I do

Write these few lines

Hold myself together

As a signal to my true faith