Old Factories and Smelters

<Audio>

Dead down a cracked window's dusty cataract,

streaming cold a long wind cobweb shroud,

dry as the crusts that bite the stone blue floor

in mildew strewn of whence they are no more.

Men’s gnarled lives screaming from the days

long oiled by their touchstones of meaning,

flowing in the metal gleaming upon their grime,

their time gone sadly missing.

Dare to elect but just one thing,

to point and say "there see it",

would never be the “it” of it,

the it that stains these walls.

The machines, frozen in rust,

must, when you look away so chatter. 

Eh? Where? Stares blank - nowhere.

But those men did live, did matter.

It seems the machines have bound them,

even time, on parole, has yoked them.

To what?

Dust to dust answers the floor

as we shuffle through, and nudge

the bits and bobs, and strange

things incandescent, do you feel it?

Dead as dead dodos, 

or were, for inside each other, in times

and banter, of hard men shadow boxed

and chinned with left and right the

pain of be gone! 

Must carry on. We have to.

The brassed off tap in an ageless drip,

sobs for lives that were leached away.

For wife and child the poorest hay,

harvest of an even poorer day.

Then doors unhinged beckon 

into rooms that devour rooms

marbled by the labour pains 

of birth and death confined.

Furnaces cold, metal tapped no more,

and fire hearths in rest rooms eaten away

by time and again we see them chewing

on their bread and dripping lost in thoughts

so weary in one’s own world of thoughts

of naught, or of everything that tattooed

their minds and blue pumped their arms and

fire fisted eyes stinging in the dust. We must

turn away and spin around to scan the scene

of what had been the factory floor, or a works

spitting fire and brimstone (or so it looks to us),

and listen to them call, all souls darkly.

The derelictions of our recollections perforced

by bated breath in trespass alighting on

this sarcophagus made precious by

the death of men, who by other men 

were so enforced to dwell.

Never again?

It would be wise for you to reflect

in the cracked metal-case window panes,

on what you, outside of this dereliction, do

to earn your crust as you turn away and drop

another crust in another day of dust.

Must you?

Compose yourself

Infinite stands the permutations of the words ... STOP!

Take it.

Here it is .....

Check out this Welsh Government tweet

https://twitter.com/welshgovernment/status/864084258763264001

The Sea Beach

<Audio>

The Sea Beach

Jazzed upon some summer bathers' tide,

that glides in reflections running gloss,

across the sand and star-fish prone,
under the bluest of blue skies.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Kaleidoscope of children waves,

shriek in dash, spittle snarls and roar,

explosive, their electric oscillating scares,

annihilate every chasing footprint in a flash.

The Beach Sea

Paul Llewellyn – antiques, art and badgers.

<Audio>

Surrounded by the bloody impudence of living antiques,

soft sitting and wheezing alongside his stick,

so mysteriously carved of his person.

With sparkling eyes, tussle-hair uncapped,

cravat wrapped in a silver beard grin.

The rock of ages in a cracking man.

Ailing in body that pain invades the mind,

voodooed into every ancient artefact,

real ancient, care come, look see.

The lore of lords and of the people's people,

reborn in the telling of their aplomb.

Sweet oil of sweat glowing in the each of them.

The house is weaving a spell web

down upon your quiet breathing and deep

into the sofa of warm wood hearth and home.

A time machine.

For time it is, as we creak to our feet

for the badgers are awaiting, awoo.

The owl-quarried woodwards path and

down the night into the night

we roll deep, we do, we do.

Sit there he says, the pavilion porch,

hush and dip your light, for they come!

Moon-striped and black as pitch.

Dumb quiet, tree delled, and grass swarded,

fox dark on the daisies wane.

Magic it is.

Deeper into the garden dark and

deeper into the night he calls to them.

The wary hello badgers guzzle in for supper.

Wrapped in dark and by another path,

his heart hangs runcible on studio walls,

carved in art, and dream catapults for kids.

From the child in this man they see 

the magic running to time way back 

when it was - oh boy it was!

In the lone night when the deep pain insists,

his heart returns to art wood-edged.

Alone in t'wee hours fired thoughts and

music lying on the blinking night.

Fireside music and be damned! The pain is easing,

and so in damp grass steps to bed, perchance?

Fathoms deep in artefacts

that hang here and everywhere,

and peopled there within,

by name or touchstone tactile feel.

His jackdaw eye will never relent,

to have and to hold them, all iridescent.

It was a privilege to glimpse his creative verve,

which did this poem so to make.

My visage singular of a singularity,

burning in an epoch of never may care.

And so he does. 

But ...

... like so many stars in the firmament,

around which the black dog swirls,

with doubt undoubted, dwelling there too long, 

does drag down the joie de vivre. 

The joie de vivre that is so far away

in the lonely hours, in the still of night.

Carving away at the black dogwood,

or sculptured in his ceramic dreams,

all we see is the beauty of his stoicism.

Recruited we are fellow buccaneers, for

when the black dog howls at the raging moon,

golden bound we holler on the tumbrel of life

In all these things he holds THE secret.

Do you think he knows it?

For, by my soul he shares it.

We see it in his towering mind,

in artisan hands that carved a life,

that sculpted the man that is ...

Our dear Paul Llewellyn

Anonymous on the Omnibus?

<Audio>

Personalities chewed in sideward glances,

recognised on stops along the route.

Snatches of conversations " ... a good funeral".

Damp shakes on a wet day,

or patting down a windy day,

all smiles in the sunshine.

Cigarette smells, cooking smells,

high perfume and the unwashed hoi polloi.

Steamed up windows wiped with sleeves,

or bracingly opened to be closed by frailty.

There's no pleasing everyone. 

Move right along now please!

Up and down the bus the seats preferred,

and conversation shared on journeys of the mind.

Sitting back above an infinite range of hair,

and hats and colours and decorum,

the timetabled world goes by.

Happy drivers and grumpy drivers,

noisy kids and kind.

Bells the stages of life, and woes

and so it goes down all the roads

and routes and destinations infatuated

by the bus pass to heaven

for all aboard the skylark.

"Hello dear, how are you today?"

"Not so bad love".

Ding.

A Cake Stand of Nostalgia

<Audio>

The aroma of a cigar, platted on the breeze,

rolled on the harvest of a sun's tropical thigh.
Regal, asleep upon the eyelids of summer,
or stirring the azure pipe smoke folks in lore.

Inkwell Welsh hats inverted, dripping, and shinning black,
spluttering on desks by the crossed-nib wooden pens,
blotted Dalmatian upon a snowfield's inkblot story,
or sucked in a daydream that fast tattoos the spittoon.

Guitars slow sundown on a beach of boy / girl eyes
adrift on horizons dressed with cheese moon ribbons,
to wrap a perfect day of angst and hope,
of young love misty for everyone, everywhere.

Fishing on a jetty of moorhen creaks and coughs,
watching the float hypnotise the reeds into a
synchronised paddy-field of coarse fish hides.
A lunch of great reedmace fluff on this perfect day.

The caves of childhood bifurcating the days,
along the secret tunnels of mischief,
exploding into caverns of gleaming loadstones,
erupting into laughter, hell bent on tumbling down.

Childhood homeward plods with a sun kissed neck,
and God grassed knees from the prayer of play.
With but one thought and that of dinner,
for it was a long adventure down the day.
Of fingertip butterflies and elusive nests,
stag-horn beetles and newts supreme.
Onward, onward, the next corner turned,
until dinner calls, and dreams abed,
floating to the stars.

Dad's hand strolling along the whistle of a day
swinging to the discovery of the essence of it all.
He knows, and he will tell you what he knows,
as the day unfolds in a rich inheritance.

The compartment train clacking to the tracks.
The window steamed open in tunnel gasps
and smutty jokes from the engine around the bend.
Six minds in conversation build their day.

A majesty of Grandpa in grandchildren eyes
knowing there is grander scheme of things.
That you are a link in the golden chain,
a nostalgia for their future in your past.

Oil Change

<Audio>

The sat nav of the Gadarene swine 

is pouring over the oil wells,

one last fracking fix.

The metronome of extinction

is ticking off the species

in a migraine of shanty proclamations.

The departure board can

delay our departure no longer.

Go to the gate at the end of time - now!

Obesity has supersaturated 

the graves of wait and see,

but we can no longer digitise 

the juggernaut.

The cadaver of Gaia is fasciculating

in the morgue of sepulchral space,

so dread and dark, and infinitely cold.

Dancing in close at the witching hour

we are lost in each other's embrace,

all-consumed in the last tears of regret,

at laying the stuff of evolution on the pyre 

of no return - ever! Never ever!

For there will be no one to remember 

the polluted extermination of mankind,

to deny the quicksand, even as the 

tar sands choke in every orifice,

or refuge from the truth just out of mind.

Mindless in an hypnotic eternal sleep.

The tank track grinds forward,

crushing all in its path,

and as the tracks derail

we tumble into the abyss.

We have blown it all away,

every last thistle of the mind.

When the last phone stops ringing

we know there will never be an answer.

There will be no lastpost played

at the going down of the sun

or on the morning of our demise.

So burn forever, hell-bent in your

don't care, don't care! 

Lucifer has won.

But you will care. Smouldering.

For as you sup your one oil for the road,

that demon spirit in the Gaderene swine 

will drive you into the abyss.

When the very last life form dies,

so will the history of everything,

gone forever at the end of days.

In this one world that is.

So that's it - Isn't it?

Vote

<Audio>

Dot's it all about? Susie.
(dedicated to my muses)

It's not about personality,
although that's the human way.
It's hard to say, but it's about policy.
Choices for tomorrow, made by you today.

Historic is not a histrionic,
this is a pivotal time.
In a mousetrap world neurotic,
your cross upon the line

is needed for tomorrow's world.
For your kith and kin and mine,
are reliant on your flag unfurled,
your place within the line,

will make or break this nation.
You HAVE TO decide - it's time!
To stand up and be counted,
to experience the elation
that it was your vote, and mine
that decided, not discounted,
but contributed to democracy,
our voice, the history of our time.

So, read the manifestos,
and decide to make it happen,
to place your cross upon the line,
and vote it into being.

That is Dot's it all about. Susie.

A Child's Chapel Hall

<Audio>

The boy’s steps on God's black stairs, muffled in dust on the must of the communion wine, and mindful of all His (or Her's or Ms's) reputed forgiveness. The boy's own dark mystery an irresistible magnetism pulling legs step by step to open that long-unopened cupboard, to discover the crockery of parties past that were set on trestle tables and white paper clothes, with ham sandwiches in ivory white bread, piled with red pop bubbles and sticky bun fingers. Bun feasts that have long turned to fasts in the vastness of time run out of short trousers. Another door, as slim as a pencil box, opened into the back of the organ! More wind in the boy’s gasps than many a hymn to high heaven in those sentry cobwebbed pipes. Frozen in those pipes and tubes were many a retreat voluntary, while the congregation-facing silver pipes, with their black gapped teeth over pouting lips, sang in shivers. The next few steps into the unknown we knew and recognised as the upper circle of the chapel, asleep in the deep dark with not a sound.

Black as hell it was, as the boys clung to the riddle of the Holy Ghost's benevolence however malevolent a naughty boy's cunning plan. Now is the time. Over the balcony onto the polished ledge and down the north face to the pulpit of Olympus. Spread eagled, a cruciform star he was, in the dark matter of this astral enormity, with the chapel clock opposite tutt-tutting disapproval. When suddenly! The light of heaven split the night into a singularity of time, and the voice of God pointing said "What the hell are you doing?". I swear he swore even though I was levitated in nail-splitting suspension above the pews of phews. But it was the deacon who had spoken - thank God it was not God, for we knew the deacon was a parsimonious chapel mouse in a moth-balled suit and platitudes of love in circumlocution. But the adventure had been ruptured. The board's we trod sadly back with plodding heads, down into the light of the moaning church hall under the radiant bricks of gas fires hanging high upon the walls and pulled by the rusty chains, clanking of sufficiency. Boys will be boys, but these boys were parsimoniously down-trodden by the girls ignoring their ignominy; and then Band of Hope spoke. Onward Christian so_o_oldiers / Marching as to warrrr …

Later, stealing down the toilet stairs, as dark as pee stains, into bowels of the chapel, on another escapade resplendent in conspiratorial smirk. Past the toilets, the chancel door condescended to open, as the light switch quietly spilled across the purple velvet tablecloth of the high priest's bible classes that whet the sisterhood's knickers or pulled down their tears upon their rugged cross-laddered skin-flaked stockings. Peddling the foot pump organ's bronchitic phlegm, the toe-curling sound caused a "hush, hush!", and the carafe of communion wine winked in the night-light, as “Let’s go” won the day, and the exit door led back into the chapel. Or on an aside turned into an anteroom, sky-bared against entry by miscreants, but a room with nothing worth stealing, as we stole back into the hall being packed up for home.

Under the outside light of the damp grey sky of sadness that clings to every chapel wall of the valley of the shadow of dearth of fun. Bandorfhope what did it mean? We ask as we play the week away until the evening of the next meeting. The chapel scratches down to sleep in all the rooms of this dusty mansion of God.

Suffer the naughty children to come unto me - tried and tested to destruction upon the thin ice of childhood.

Poetry book review

Check out a review of my book of poems on Swansea News network 

http://swanseanewsnetwork.org/poetry/poetry-book-review/

Check out my “Early May nature diary” on Swansea News network

http://swanseanewsnetwork.org/nature/early-may-nature-diary/

Good Morning?

<Audio>

Stroking the cold thigh of morning
as it culls the curtains of dawn.
Wide-eyed the window stares back
as we shudder upon reentry.

Re-pegging the tent of a dream
flapping in the reverse twilight.
The magic carpet has morphed
into a threadbare day.

Sitting on the edge of the abyss
between sleep and awake,
rocking in undulating understanding 
that fibrillates in slippers unsure.

Awake-walking in a pallor that
smacks in the silvered mirror. 
Cantilevered, the plum bob night
balances the ingot sun.

Eyes holding mirrored eyes,
the train of thought speeds around 
the camber of dawn, to finally 
annihilate the plasma of sleep.

The stairs, in a sludge of gravity,
treacle down, as the banisters rise to
the launchpad of every night's journey,
now refuelling, steaming sinister and cold.

The serial cereal is brimming over
with the milk of human kindness,
when the radio says "terrible news"
and the bubble bursts.

Lanced, the matter of fact flows,
until the pus, desiccated on the day,
burns in eyes awash, and drooping,
back into the silk red coffin of sleep.

Nice review of my book of 100 poems

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1545397333

Good Boys

<Audio>

As the candle of his mind slowly melted,

the truth shone in sangfroid.

Alone in the nursing home's crowded noise,

an armchair appendage, just sitting and sitting.

His bemused eyes radar-scanning in waves

that cancelled in resignation upon his face.

The sieve of his recent memory, irritatingly infirm,

pill-rolling the fossilised rosary of the past.

Hello Pop. Huh, replies the smile communing

longingly for the bonds of a lifetime.

Conversational blah, blah, blah, jousting

with eyes intent on platting two worlds.

Asking over and over where are the boys

now that they have grown worldwide.

When our pride replies,

his pride replies,

"good boys, good boys"

and we all agree.

Good boys, indeed they are.

We leave him scanning the scene,

before he submerges below the storm,

asleep in the deep again.

Goodbyes, goodbyes.

How they ache, bleary in salt.

Sniff.

Dream Upon a Village Childhood

<Audio>

A patina of grime on the vanes of mind,

yawing with the wind of villagers out of sight,

shaded and turned around corners of the past.

Whispered the siren call, come find

the invisible ghosts crying in the night,

of that bloody last-supper howl,

why?

   do I return somnambulant?

My skeletal being leaping from the top,

of the top, of a day way back,

when the blood oozed perambulant,

annealing in the fire of a sunset crop,

or a diamond-dusted coal sack,

burning

   in the emptiness of a whiplash sear,

as I turn to say to ... to ...

But they were here! They are here! Hiding

in the eye of the seldom seer.

Sapped heroic as the tricycle boys who,

spitting on their bleeding knees, go sliding

grassed

   forever flashing in their bejeweled tears,

shrieking in the devil may care

of a shimmering summer’s day.

It was as if a galaxy of light years

had rimed our bumper-boots where

running wild sent the marsh marigold spray

flying

  back onto the window seat's last bus,

where beside every mother's warm hand

the night flows by, and all the imagined

boy's own darkest thoughts, must

press heavy on the eyelids of time's grand

design, to sleep down upon the marriage

of

   a child's glad confident morning,

golden on the haywains,

and the vertiginous edge teetering,

at the crumbling of the days.

May this poem be my pillow,

as I lay down my final dream.

Readers

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jim@glycosmedia.com

Jim

The Word Is

<Audio>

Down in a burrow of words,

wrapped in a nest of lines,

I curl naked and shorn of worry,

mufflered in down hibernation,

and meandering cosy of mind.

Way down below the tumult,

away from the dust to dust,

where the (specious?) end of our species,

has them running and chanting

 "Unjust!"

Down below the lexicon dessert,

polishing my harvest store of words,

I quilt snuggle them all around me,

in a coloured antithesis of guilt.

Tucking stray fibres back in place

and unknotting quite a few.

Safe within my thoughts in thoughts,

I will never leave this pew.

When all the world is ended,

<recite the ways to the end of days>

I will leave behind this midden,

unbidden and hidden,

a hermitage of words.

Cultured in the rise and fall

of a civilisation doomed to die.

As they all eventually do.

So, as elderly fingers demented,

unpick my fibre of verse,

readily, steadily, defenestrating

all the golden tapestry words,

I will dream on upon the halcyon rhymes

from better times, when

words could enrapture the world.

But.

Relegated to the underworld,

where thoughts unfurled are

nibbled from the nest of me.

At the end of these shredded times,

can you think of a better place to be?

Than in a narcotic slumber,

of words mainlined,

with a word much maligned,

and that word is?

... Poetry

Immortality in Words

<Audio>

Where are the words of immortality?

That unbidden stir the heart.

So many are called,

but few survive the winnow.

Chaff says the golden poet,

the words must be just so and so.

So deceptively simple to garner,

to lay in an easy row,

this sequence of sequins,

and all just so and so.

But when you pin a butterfly,

the next one has to be,

similarly coloured, complementary.

Or a contrast battling beauty for

one’s eye on a museum display.

One that calls: Look! Look at this one!

Look, look! See?

A pair of butterflies dance a jig,

tied in a secret grove,

at once resplendent in a drove,

they take a sunbeam's breath away,

and there in another grove,

another thrumming arose.

This sets the scene,

words in consanguinity.

Here where the sea lavender

prickles amethyst,

shy under the sky.

In a whirlwind romance,

where words court words,

and couples couplet,

and verses, averse to loneliness,

cohabit in a stanza, when …

Abracadabra!

A train of thought,

an express mail train,

is snatching satchels of words

to be sorted in the night,

and delivered by first light

on the day of saying,

and addressed to so and so.

Unfurl the fans of lace

into a peacock's tail,

where the beauty surely

proclaims the watchmaker’s face.

But the bards they bartered,

didn't they?

Bet for the bequest of forever,

in a monument of words,

where souls in rage,

upon the page,

burnt to the end of days.

So, start another poem,

here, I've netted a butterfly.

Send it soaring in a story,

with another one,

tinkling from the sky.

Atoms in a molecule,

a crystal poem on the nib,

all poised to say.

See how I chose the words?

It is you who hold the gavel,

in this immortal deal.

So old! You hammer.

Sold another bard

to the Golden Treasury,

and laid to rest,

I do attest,

that in his or her words

they will live forever

and a day.