This Could Take A Long Time

All around

Yes, both nearby

And far away

The discrepancies arise

Nothing is

As anything ever was

So why think to repeat

The thing you thought was only quite good

Better surely

To strike out for the new

To take the adventure

By the scruff of the neck

But how to do that

The Algarve; entirely by chance

Ireland; a real leap of faith

Atrium Prestige; no personal recommendations

Other than 

All of those memories

About Leonard Cohen

And his muse, and his music

But back to now; the yellow and blue

Or anywhere nearby

Is surely off-limits

As also is crossing that airspace

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Hope And Damage

How to dismantle

Such a thing

As I alone

Have constructed

To take a mallet

And a chisel

To the white block

Of plaster of Paris

To take a wash

Of a darker colour

To the study

Of plants and flowers

How to disassemble

Such a piece of work

As I alone

Have created

To take a sonnet

Or a limerick

To the free verse

Of another’s life

How to destroy

A lover

With the obsessiveness

Which I alone created

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Sworn To Wander

A new citizenship

For an old citizen

Of the other place

Boxes ticked

Facts cross-checked

All parameters sworn into

And what of the status

Does it allow the purchase of a home

Or a position of permanent employment

That you should meet their criteria

Shows how quickly time passes

Or how slow is my distant recall

That I always returned

To this island, nay county, of my birth

Shows a marked lack of real adventure

That this is your third island

Of substantial habitation

Perhaps shows a stable wanderer

Yet, for me, as a writer

Every day a new citizen

Every day an old mantra

 

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Commencements

The first telephone conversation

Would likely have been in late September

Because we had examinations in mid-October

In between those dates

I had been on a revision weekend

In Gladstone’s library, at Hawarden, North Wales

Tears

And pain

And love

Love

And pain

And tears

We had been

Together, and apart

Apart, and together

The first departure

To call it such a thing

Was without determination

Hello

And hello

And hello again

Goodbye

Yes, goodbye

Or may it be au revoir

The first kiss was in…

On a campus university

At an OU summer school

I had been

Beside myself with certainty

I hoped you would understand

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Decoration - Conversation

Another clock

Which also does not move

Though a bronze coloured lampshade

Hangs symbolically beside it

This is the old warehouse

With a pen and ink sketch

Of horse and cart

Beneath the pulley

I take a ginger flapjack

As Lou Reed sings

Take a walk on the wild side

Surprised by the coincidence I sip

My piping-hot black Americano

And take a call from my daughter

Who is on her way to collect her children

- I am her fallback conversation 

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