Amplification

Much of my poetry is an attempt
To amplify those experiential moments
The ones which I share with myself

Those slight glimpses of the past or of the future
Which enter unannounced silent
As a thought or indefinite as a vague fleeting image

Which require the crystal-set amplifier
Of amplification to be turned up to the very top
Such as if Roger Bacon's magnifying lens

Might be used to inspect the cell
Or the Jodrell Bank telescope may be used
To interrogate the stars or the cosmos

Imagine now if you will that deep meditation
Which realises itself as a visualisation
However with no Polaroid or such device at hand

It would surely fade as easily as it arose
Becoming obscured
By the mere transience of life

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Yorkshire

Sat on the real stone steps
Sheltered by the Hawthorne and by the Oak
From the prevailing wind

Or should it be
Sheltered by the Bougainvilleas
From the ever fragrant breeze

Either way the sun shone
And the gardener mowed the grass
With his rather noisy eight-bladed machine

The children
Now as then and then as now
Engage with the sculptures

Perhaps see something of themselves
Reflected in the works of art
See something of their future see something of their past

And the visitors from near and far away
Jostle with all of a vacation's excitement
They hold hands as they walk down the pathways home

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Excess

As one way to counterbalance your self-congratulation
You had a day of extreme over-indulgence

Beating head
Sweating skin
Severe indigestion
Counteracted by more and more ablutions

Then by chance to find recovery
In the many-fold dreamscapes

Old friends
Old lovers
Obtuse fanciful situations
Exaggerated by more and more awakenings

Yet almost without a pause
A few moments of nostalgic reconstruction

Unsteady in mind
Unsteady in body
More than a touch of anxiety
Differentiated by more and more promised abstentionism

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Elsewhere

Is where I might have been
Or where I might have been thought to have been
Even where I might have hoped to have been

Yet I was only there for a moment
Before the vanishing trickster
Performed his vanishing trick

Moving me on elsewhere
To where the good drummers drummed
To where the good vibrations vibrated

And in doing so seemingly caused the dogs to bark
The lawnmower engines to start
And the roll-along refuse wheelie-bins to be collected

I want to be elsewhere I silently chanted
To be where I might have been
Or to be where I might have been thought to have been

Even to be where I might have hoped to have been
Where I would have hoped to stay longer
There I would no longer have searched to be elsewhere

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Years

New folders old poems
New boxes old letters
New beginnings old old endings

The table all three tables actually
Are covered in the old stuff
Sorted into piles year by year
There will of course be
Some misplaced works
Some misconstrued emotions

I will read your poem again
Where you fear for your future
As you drink your red red wine

I will see as if I didn't already know
How prolific I became
From the year we parted in two-thousand-and-five

The year before I met Kate in two-thousand-and-six
The tray of crystal goblets with glasses for the water
Finish off the scene a treat
They give it a sobriety
Worth it then to take a photograph of The Years
Rather though for posterity than for nostalgia's sake

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