One

Yves Klein Blue (John Christie)

Your book gave me Klein, also, thankfully
It gave me Matisse, and Yuri Gagarin

Won’t each layer of colour
On a flat surface
Change both itself
And the colour beneath it

In the same way that geologists
Take core samples of rocks
Could we not have a sideways look
At the many layers of blue

And does not each layer
Allow the artist
Another hour of contemplation
To bring his blue to the surface

Then John, to light that plane
Which will now neither be
Flat nor true, yet we are able to imagine
A whole lifetime in that one colour

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Star Filled Skies

The Red Whose Father Is The Knife (John Berger)

At first reading I thought you were on speed
Or that you had taken one too many
Of your painkilling drugs

But then I let your words slow me down
I discovered a new wavelength
I saw, and felt, your continuum

From white, to red, to black
Exactly as it is in life John
From birth, to being, to death

Best of all though, you took me back
Back to my childhood bedroom, where
Model aeroplanes hung from the starry ceiling

My father used to sit on my bed to tell me
The names of all of the colours in the world
He was the first to give me Cadmium Red

He spoke of red being an emotional colour
Indeed the highest of the high emotions
Coming along, at the beginning, and end of life

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Scunthorpe Cemetery

Cadmium Red (John Christie)

A funeral is a good place to find colour
It stands out, ever so strong
Among the blacks, and the greys
And the nothingness of passing

Also John, as you were in a crematorium
You might imagine the fierce red flames
The painting of Vesuvius erupting could come to mind
You know, by that Earl of Derby chap

Is it carnations that don’t have any scent
I think a strong note is a good guide to colour

I have asked my paint shop man
To make me up a tin of Cadmium Red
I thought it might bring some life
To the alcoves in the study

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A Different Introduction

What a good day, the first Friday
In November 2017
The first blank page, in a new blue book

And so what to write about; well, next week
I go to Buckfast Abbey, in Devon
For a four day retreat

I will write while I am there
Profusely I hope
I will write in this book

But the poems
They may be published elsewhere
Under the auspices of Abbey Poems

I am having keyhole surgery
On my frozen shoulder
On the first Saturday of 2018

No doubt the build-up
The event, and the aftermath
Will generate some words

But will they be poetic
Last night, in our writing group
We responded to artists letters

Specifically those between John Christie
And John Berger, from their album
I Give You This Cadmium Red

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BBB Poem 98

There is missing and there is missing
There is longing and there is longing
There is loss and there is loss
There is bright light in abundance
And there is hope
Yes, always there is hope

There is doubt
Doubt and the depth of deep delusion
There is also a music
A music though which for some does not sing
There is all of this, in one singular lifetime
But I ask you to believe me
There is hope, there is always hope

There is the sacred
And there is the purple tint profane
There is the blinding truth
And then there is the other game
There is the obtuse, and the downright barmy
But there is hope
And hope lives on, lives on in our name

There is hard work
And there are easier pickings
Some days they may seem to be the same
The toil of honest labour
Or the rolling of the winning dice
For there is hope
And hope is so so happy that you came

There is breath
And there is contemplative breathing
There is meditation
Instead of going to the football
There is a nearness
And a further distance still to fall
But there is hope
Hope which asks that we make the call

There is skin
And there is fabric
And there is skin
There are the living
And the heavenly ethereal bodies
There are shrouded myths
And the legends of the soul
There is hope
Hope which asks that we make the call

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