Bounded

Even asleep the heat overwhelms

To wake with perspired skin

Here then still the prisoner

On the final journey

A courtesan about to fly

A writer to hold the broken lead

One last time

Outdoors it is marginally cooler

The draught floats through the open door

Into the courtyard, into the library

Across the road from Grand Central Station

Back along

In bars and sherbet fountains

We were glad, expectant in high summer

Mad with excitement, pretty dresses

Long, long legs, friendship and gaiety all around

Surrounded; life closed in on all sides, leaves fell

Thank heavens for seasons, a reason for last winter

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Grasp

So soft and still the irony

Times pasture’s thrill I mean

Rosebuds then my tulips

Corn on the cusp, on the turn from green

Youth was never ever lasting

Passed there in between

Here and now and casting

For the love I need to seem

The hay loft and the stream

Stickleback, fox and trout

Hopefully then I duly dream

Quiet, quintessentially without

The shout of silent

Understanding or understatement

That no one knows

Just the thing I mean

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Not even frustrated

The downbeat town

Otherwise known as Beirut

The cap and gown frowned

Otherwise known as shoot on sight

Noise, a racket or unjust interference

The down of depression is killingly real

Deadbeats, downers, druggies

Half life’s of those even less hopeful

This needs a bigger question

In need of a bigger picture

Way wiser than local government

It is inexplicable

To the ordinary man

Caught here among its midst

I though don’t even feel it

No chance that I can say it

No way for me

To contribute to change

This is not a poem

It’s not even coherent

What or why is all that is left

Undone, hopeless

Nothing

Out of however many

You wish the score to be

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Dialects

Afternoon

In East England

Lincolnshire, or some other

Back water

Out in deep and quiet country

A farmyard

A pasture, or some other

Roadside stable

Old patient

Younger nurse

A driver without distinction

Or any other clues due

Except that they were in college

At Oxford or somewhere other

They spoke so so very well

And often together

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Redeem this song

Smile, always and forever

The first kiss of late evening

Anticipated excitement, fingers touch

Missiles miss, so so much

Thank you, now or never

The first engagement of assistance

Unexpected, the unusual is tough to come to

Unusually rough to endorse

Wriggle, trip the light fantastic

Fandango under the moons of so so many colours

Detected introspection is uncovered uneasily

Unease, yet easy and plain to see

Together we collect the love of human kindness

So much in love, life seems to redeem so so freely

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