Breathing

In extremis
Lust after your voice
Urge, for your written word
Sunk by the thought of a smile
Sallied forth into that nightmare
Of the breath from nowhere at all

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North West of East Hewish

Leave behind the blue sky
Leave behind the distant flame
Leave behind the rose-tinted spectacles
Strike out for the open road
Let the rarefied country air
Flow through your nostrils

By way of escape
Give time to the imagination
Do not berate the Italian man
Who sold you half-cooked chips
See all nutrition as of some value
Treat all people as with love

Look out towards that distant land
Look out across the bridge slung water
Look out, for tomorrow is a Friday
Blue skies will return
With an impressionist's accomplice
Rolled up, flame-red, magnificent setting sun

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Address

Mist hides the field head road
It lies in wait
For spring sunshine to burn it away

Freudian slip, as sixty-four degrees beckon
Freudian, Jungian; all the friends
Who have relationships with the psyche

The partridge picks away at the rape-seed
Oblivious to psychology and its drivers
Prone only to the trigger of instinct

Yet, what seems to be his best friend
(I always see them together)
Is a bird of such fine and loud plumage

Much as I, as a teenager
Wearing lime-green pantaloons
Backcombed auburn hair

Under a mauve fedora
Left the family home
At forty-one Field Head Road

I hitch-hiked
To my first ever music festival
On an island of music, and intimate love

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Morse Code

Numbers
Read out slowly
Nine, zero
Seven, four
Six, six

Then slower still
Nine
Zero
Seven
Four
Six
Six

Here begins musicality
Nine, zero, seven
Four, six
Six

Wrong number
Caller to collect

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Gentleness Of Warfare

Take these times
Take them with you
Let them travel
Travel in your carriage

The time
Of overheard overseas voices
The time
Of flags and fireworks and long walls falling

Remember the square in Belgrade
You, a younger man
Way out of your depth
Buying your first Tom Waits record

You sought out
And visited Nikola Tesla's Museum
Stroked his Van der Graf generator
Thought yourself too, someone special

It was a time of many misunderstandings
Yet tonight as you retrace the mourner's story
Think of the flowers placed at the roadside
Think of the flowers placed at the perimeter fence

Remember forever the flowers
For whenever
You are, as a traveller
Way out of your depth

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