The Charity Shopper

<Audio>

All the bits and pieces from

someone's treasure chest unlocked,

are colouring my rainbow now.

Courted in prisms here and there,

their love requited, and taken home.

Donated by a multitude of people,

their secret places raided

for all their precious blings.

A culture carefully curated,

a society of things.

The sum of more than its parts.

Isn't that what they say?

Well my culture of artefacts

is growing by the day.

For I am, it is true to say,

a charity shop vulture,

soaring in my way.

Kinks in Time

< Audio>

Am I turning a memory of you

into a pastiche of the days?

Those endless days,

those sacred days,

when Kinks said,

believe me.

Did their light really shine so bright?

Or did they deceive me?

Did I long to kiss you, long ago?

Your hand today in mine says yes,

they were those sacred days,

those endless days.

Receive me.

I will not forget them today,

thinking of the ways,

and all the days

that I loved you.

Believe me.

More today, I would say,

and though they are gone,

they will never leave me.

Do you believe me?

I'm thinking of the days

from this end of life,

remember when

I took you as my wife?

You believed in me.

Thank you for The Days,

for you are mine,

and I am yours.

We believed in we,

didn’t we.

Every way,

in every day,

believe me.

PS.

I'll not forget your single Ray - believe me.

The Midnight Mantle Clock

<Audio>

The Midnight Mantle Clock

Dead of night. 

The Westminster clock chimes like a kitten 

cry-pacing on a mantelpiece at the edge of the world,

alone in the wide-eyed dark and pining up the stairs,

"the starlight tears are singing on my face".

But all we hear is:

"Twelve o'clock and all's well".

Counting up the quarters and down the hours of dawn,

each hammer strike, on each winsome metal bar,

goes haunting in the wan wee hours.

Each a voice abed in a cold and lonely ear,

as sleep slips onto the floor, and pulled back

settles slowly into "One o'clock and all's well".

And so it chimes, 

   and so it chimes.

All's well.

   All's well.

      All's well.

I am not a diabetic.

< Audio>

I am not a diabetic.

I have diabetes - you see?

I am not obese,

I do not smoke or drink,

I am a hungry vegetarian,

and I swim in the sea each day.

Then you shouldn't have diabetes?

But unfortunately, it doesn't work that way.

My dad had diabetes and

it was his parting gift to me.

So I have made friends with my condition,

it calls me son and I call it Pop,

as I pop another pill.

I treat him with every consideration 

and we do love to get it right.

My doctor treats him with reverence

and prescribes only the best wrapped gifts,

to assuage his temper, and hopefully one day 

will inject some realism into my insinuation

and oft repeated question,

 "Oh why dad, why? Oh why?".

Now it ought to be OK? You say.

But these bloody auto-antibodies 

go hunting in a pack.

So another pill for cholesterol,

another for BP, 

I know these rustling popper packs 

will be the life of me.

But I am not a diabetic!

Repeat that after me,

and then maybe you will see,

that whatever my glucose status,

it is me you see - yes me.

So please don't stick a label

for now you know the truth.

You know that I suffer from diabetes,

as you might do,

one day.

Just a Book of Poems?

<Audio>

Put your nose into the pages of my book he said,

and I will talk to you from my faded-papered grave.

I did as the poet asked, but all I did was sneeze.

A dusty, musty, pocket inside-out sort of sneeze.

Touch the parchment words of time asleep

on the park benches of my mind, wrapped

in sheets of words, rustling and warm.

Run your fingers over them, he said.

Run them over the dry-stone walls around my poems,

and stepping on the turned-down corner pages,

climb up gingerly and peep into the fields

of my wildflower words swaying in their heyday.

Count my candle birthday pages, slightly ripped

with ageing, where fingers have thumbed the days.

He says it's where all the emotions have stained

the pages, watermarking his milestone ways.

Notice, there's no silk paper to hold a fine pen line,

but blotted bleary wide the black ink seems to say,

of course, these words have been placed this way

by the hand of my mind and troweled into place.

See my sad photo on the cover? See my dark eyes?

Do you see the dark pleading there?

My words were sculptured long and hard, he said.

Hearsay? I dare say. But that's what he said to me.

Well there you are, I thought. What could I say?

But indeed, there he was. He was right there, indeed he was.

Oh, my word, how his words, when stirred from slumber,

kicked my words right back at me.

I reached inside his jacket pocket (he asked me to)

and lifted his half-hunter watch, ticking of his times.

It beats in my hand now,

and with his hand upon my brow,

I know what makes him talk.

With fingernail ink he has clung on inside

this book that shakes with rage, or weeps,

or hugs, quivering with love. You'll not

shake him out, however loose the pages,

for as I squeezed, he squeezed right back.

For he is buried here enshrouded in his voice,

and enshrined within that voice was ...

ME!

Susan

<Audio>

The longing is smouldering, sinuous in a damp

halo around a street lamp on that lonely lane

from the faraway places, across the sea.

The angst aches in wave upon wave of

hi there, hello there, remember me? And blurring

they suck upon the rocks, their tears as guilty

as the night that draws down the wick of day.

The volcanic ash of Eros settles down the pulse

in the breath of a dying day, so far way,

thinking of you thinking of me.

Oh, pull the rip cord and jump!

Float into the arms of my thoughts of you,

enfolding the candle's shadows in a dance

of dark congealing, with no feeling in my fingers.

Slip away into the miles, still looking back

as smaller smallers down I frown and groan

inside the treasure box plundered the while.

The faded picture pouring dust and

must it have been that way. The other day

when I thought of you so far away.

Another day, another city, in another country,

your breath in my sails away the smarting tears

upon the breast of a wave and flung back

into my face turning once again to you.

So far away and raising the ghostly hairs

on my neck of leaning upon your shoulder

and whispering come back, come back

across the sea of mind how we fall

into each other's arms in the thought

that this was never meant to be.

That I am here, and you are there,

far away across the sea.

So, put your hands in mine and crossing

over the sea, and wrist over wrist we'll

spin the dance about the allotted spot,

where hearts meld and minds merge,

and you and me are me and you

once more.

Orbitinerary

<Audio>

Around the girth of the earth

flung star-wards, darkling day,

on and on our longing, 

is streaming far away.

What wonders on our infinite journey

will ache in memory where they lay,

for we may never return to say, 

there was no berth upon the dead star,

way down the time-funnel night,

where a solitary obituary lay,

a signal twilight signature

upon a broken contract,

a black parody that pardon falling,

and calling, but never belonging,

in all the blistering light-years,

forever and a day.

A Poem is

<Audio>

A collection of bird’s eggs,

nestling in cracking colours and blown.

A shoal of coral fish turning in a flash

of emotion in the instant of an eye.

A tray of butterflies pinned in dust,

bereft in the dusk of death.

In the seam of words, mined and picked

in the lamplight of mind, by my hand

says the poet in the pocket of a poet,

just fine, and now they are mine.

The hooks of words hang the flesh

to sit ageing on the lines of the pen.

For grains of gold the arid dunes are sieved,

prospecting for the glint in their eyes.

The facets of a jewel down the cataracts

of thought, electrified and executed,

yet alive to the words that have to be said.

So many words to juggle and fall

scattered, gyrating and honed,

to sit forever in the mosaic of a poem.

The butterfly suns and bat moons pirouette,

until netted and metamorphosed into the

sedimentary strata of a poem, poised

to unleash that seismic event - I see!

Each word tweezed, and placed,

and tilted and in turn entwined.

Betrothed, one unto the other.

The embroidery of glossy words shines

as the story unfolds in perpetuity.

Gossamer webs spun and peopled,

trapped and bound.

The poet's neurones penetrate the reader's

guts and spill their feelings on the floor.

Their haruspicy preordained by the words.

Fossils re-fossilised.

Spinners re-spun, lures lured.

The crystal ball inverted looks out.

A mirror shard of a mirror shorn,

echoes in the mind, and calling back implores:

you saw, and I can see what you saw.

The chains forged in your smithy say it all.

The words linked and welded,

annealed and melded in thought.

I think the link is what I think.

So, lay it before me now and go.

Now let me see ...

My most visited / read poem on YouTube

"Beside Myself" Illustrated audio

Please share ....

https://youtu.be/UvrxSd_k6fs

Spring Tide

<Audio>

A cat morning pauses in sunny repose.

Jostle-tailed breezes in a conversation of trees

stirs the flotsam cherry blossom, and poppies well ablaze,

to cinder down upon the paths, smouldering in

the delicious thought - which way today?

To the bay where the sea is calling out,

or in, or seething and teasing

the nostril's assaulted horizon.

So off we go, must not forgo

our daily swim, preordained,

and consummated, in full flow.

New poetry book "100 poems"

 £8 on Amazon 

See side panel on right.

Kindle version £2

Blue Pool

<Audio>

Waiting on Blue Pool bay

for the sea to vacate that seat,

slipping its fingers reluctantly,

caressing the sand with a

curtsy to the drying sun,

leaving a wet frisson of emotion

quivering, then calming to a reflection

of the children looking down at a depth

indiscernibly dark, with a silver bottom

shoal of ghostly fish dead and deep.

Jump!

In!

Gasping in the welcome panic,

cold thick salt air towering dark-sided

but what's below? Don't know!

Black weed sides squeeze in

and push the swimmer onto the lip

of the basin's trickling jump to the sand

in the bay of amusement in a summer still.

The next and the next, toe their reflection

devastating the mirror's magic

time and again and again.

Weary and nearly done we

sit in the sun that sets in a forge poker

from Tenby, through the knave's triangular eye,

squinting on the salt glistening bodies

of the children of sighing with

the generations who have found

Blue Pool in their days of daring

and running across the washed bay

dodging the bombing gulls, screaming

all together to the dying day glowing

in the mind's eye and sand feet skipping

amongst the starfish heaven on earth.

Climbing tired-sloped back to the sky

grass and bracken moor dunes

pushing them all the way to supper.

Blue Pool calms to the reflected stars

to wait the sea's thunder.

Tomorrow? It's a date.

.........+

<Audio>

Last slide.

It's time to go.

The last sweet.

No more ice-cream.

No more cake.

No more sand castles.

Switch off your iPad.

It's time for bed.

Just one more?

No.

Grow up!

When the prognosis is terminal,

it's the last goodbye.

Golden Days

<Audio>

Hand upon the shoulder of my heart.

The smile at the tears of a smile.

Tunes from the sunny days,

of parties walking horizons,

cuddling beach guitars,

until the stars are gifted,

by one unto the other,

and the ring around the moon.

Fly Tipping

<Audio>

Password of their personal data,

the sick sack that makes them tick tack,

spilled for us all to see and tread upon.

A tissue-match and fingerprint of

the consumerisation of all their desires.

The antigen of our allergic recoil,

the DNA miss-match of our desires. 

The antithesis of the pheromones

of our self-ingratiated individuality.

Do they have no empathy for personal space?

Or do they not (sod you!) care?

Do they not realise that they exfoliate

the scabs from their shingled nerves?

The herpes of their ripped plastic bags,

spilling their guts for us to denigrate 

under the boot of our shoo!

Why not let it pile up to high heaven and

drown the whole world, suffocating the cortex 

of minds animalised with snarls, and relegated to

an army-ant, forest-floor, detritus-eating,

retrograded amnesic, anarchy.

No escape on the rosary of a plasticised ocean.

No breath of fresh air, or even that final dust to dust, 

for all scream toxic! Toxic! The LD 50 siren sounds.

Fly tipping their putrid puke, has rotted our salad days,

and screams of our inability to cohabit in personal spaces 

and orderly paths undulating from cradle to grave.

Now thrown out of the window of passing through,

as they pass through what others have thrown 

out of the window of their passing through.

For fly-tipping our lives in piles, 

just here and there,

is where, we will surely end our days.

Lords and ladies of the flies,

will you (must you),

will we (must we),

sore wallow,

tip wallow?

So what!

Pennard To Three Cliffs Bay

<Audio>

Castle on the ledge of the day's lunch,

breathing to the undulations of the small river

snaking into a sea of haze and levitation.

The valley tussled with spring bare trees

budding in an ivy sauce, drizzled and gleaming.

The heady sun of a gorse oven cooking

dreams of butternut squash summer pies

their crusts crumbling on driftwood in repose.

The talcum paths drought it will rain today.

Lay a mind on the satin horizon where

the seam between sea and sky is unpicked

by a sail-ship unzipping across the bay.

High sighs upon the cliff top peeping down

where barely a wave stirs the rock spittle,

or wiggles that skipping rope to the

breath of the channel's lowing whisper.

This grassed sea of sand dunes and

beach adventures to rocky points,

or footprint stumbled paths that climb

the bean-stalk halcyon days

of all our childhoods fastened in full sap.

Then we spot the first hot lizard,

basking aside this honey path

from Pennard to Three Cliffs Bay.

Pause to think.

Was there ever such a day?

Grammar School - Beta minus

<Audio>

A trapdoor of school magazines, faded blue,

has me falling and never arriving, 

because I didn't "take advantage". 

My fault again. Sorry.

The school year in summary - was I there?

Debating society - I didn't, no argument.

The cricket XI - where? Stumped me.

Rugby squad - packed away and rucked.

The glittering speech-day prizes?

I saw them shinning in the shop window,

nose against the pane (pain?) where we did not shop.

Overseas visits exploratory described - I never went.

So many. Funny that I never went on any?

Abroad? We did not go abroad,

my family, tear-lisped amidst the slag tips.

News of city society - I walked past.

But recent history was ingrained on my knees

and under my fingernails.

Detritus on an industrial scale.

Nihil Sine Labore:

"Nothing Without Work"

was the Dynevor school motto.

Well my dad voted Labour,

and he worked as a labourer,

hard to pay for my school uniform.

Well it got him, and me, nowhere.

I failed of course - they all told me.

Meritocracy ticked the clock of the days,

when, on arrival, I was placed in class C.

Seems I merited that – see?

But my contemporaries in class

went on to university, preordained 

by family aspirations. To their merit.

What was our tradition at home?

No opinion, working class, try your best

to pass on a pass in class. Uh?

Prefects' photograph perfect - no space for me,

just a disciplined nudge along the corridors.

Forever marching to the tune of: 

see if you can keep your head above water

and get the answers right. If you do then ...

But I was never told why the answers mattered.

Only the fun of maths and science aroused.

Stone walled, the chalk master’s gowns gliding

along the corridors of woodblock floors

and doors of looking in on lessons rowed in desks

gouged of years and oils of brows in blackboard

lines from books of all that was ever taught

to the boys soon to be the men that they knew

they would be in the society of the 'morrow.

I didn’t.

The four houses - what, why, where, and when, were they?

Where we competed in sport, or in the Eisteddfod, standing

self-conscious in group recitation, irritatingly alliterated.

There were poems in the school magazine,

and amid the anonymity of words, and with legerdemain,

I impressed upon the they, that I had spoken.

But what right did I have to hold the school magazine?

It was "theirs" not mine, you see.

I did not see beyond the school badge.

Heavy upon me.

Passed the eleven plus I did.

No secondary modern with the failed kids.

No roughing up in the school of life for me.

Just my cap thrown on top of the cricket nets

and bruised right palm from the fives courts.

Gym came, swimming whet again my inability,

and games up the Gange's playing fields

trampled any head-up thoughts I dared.

Stratified in the mud of also ran.

Stay there and wait.

Sour grapes? Well they do hang low.

The glittering prizes were hanging too high for me. 

Form C reiterated that it was not to be.

Winners are from another world.

Light years away from me.

Educated beyond understanding.

Such a shame.

Remember Rock and Roll?

<Audio>

Dewey eyed o'er the do wop bop,

and the big bad boom.

Taught me beauty,

all nightly.

Said it rightly,

almighty.

Took and inverted, that negative,

black and whitely, moody broody.

Say! Listen, listen? Move it, move it!

All gone now and I cannae prove it.

That big bad sound,

how we loved it - loved it.

True and fruity, all drank it.

Down and outie, to righty.

God I'm crying. Bug it, bug it.

My heart's a breaking,

go dam lightly,

down, and a down-down,

down, down, down,

go way back and

black down throb it,

throb it, bob it.

Hit it, hit it, 

already written,

written 'n' smitten.

    Yeah, yeah!

Your yesteryear.

     Your yesteryeah.

A wham bang boom ......

Early. April - sitting quietly

Take a look here:

http://swanseanewsnetwork.org/environment/early-april-sitting-quietly/