then …

 you  you  bastard 

upon leaving a wild sea’s turning

just you wait 

wait until tomorrow

then you’ll see …

nebulous

 nebulous 

look

a nebula (red)

nowhere to hide 

from the enormity of our insignificance 

the light spinning slowly

everything is spinning relatively slowly

the fastness of the vastness of the 

expanding upon our misunderstanding 

of the singularity in an inverted mind

the depths of despair in the shallowness

of seeing ourselves in the universe

or are there parallel parables

that can save us from our insignificance

but then again   i suppose   perhaps

our ability to register our insignificance 

might turn all this inside out

implosion 

does a hermit crab see the sands

or the oceans or count the stars in the nebulae

can anything beat the comfort

of a snugly fitting secondhand shell

breakfast at dawn

 breakfast at dawn

the asynchronous pendulum of the wind

has mouse leafed across the pebbled yard

hardly a moment for the wren to dwell

or the dunnock to peck across the cat’s

stare than there they go all of them

in the dawn spin of leaving with not one

thought between them except breakfast

an apparition

 an apparition

the time of aphorism is over

brutal has been brutalised

abroad the don’t know who

is doing don’t know what

and the hand of aphorism is twisted

it no longer turns the keys to the works

the cogs are stuttering to a standstill

our stares are distant indeed

they no longer focus on anything

for the end is beginning and we fear for everything

now that the uplifting winch is broken

the weakest link is all of them now 

there are ditches without lips to reach

no stars to look up upon down the 

inches becoming miles in sliding

no brakes to slow our fall

and bugger-all a poet can say

will do bugger-all 

at all

no doubt it is

 no   doubt it is

when reading  of  all  of

those poets who killed themselves

walk their lines with care

lest we too slip

        down

the unplugged plug hole of faith

through which all sense is drained

leaving

in the trap 

DOUBT   such a dirty word

subliminally smiled away by the clergy

their sweet waters flowing

where no one has ever been

for the waters only return when there is a storm

and there 

in the deluge 

comes the regurgitated bile of doubt

and so we start another poem

for it seems that in the last one  

we lost our footing 

another famous person dead

 another famous person dead

and all i see is a cold body

lifeless in a morgue in a drawer

clattered in with the light on

i see futility 

i see all my concepts of them

as little as they maybe 

is there more to see

there never seems to be

history a list of futility

the convoluted euphemisms

and algorithms of faith

of what it means to be

is lost on me

cold in a drawer

the light on and off

she said you wouldn’t understand

 she said you wouldn’t understand 

she boiled my white school shirts

in a saucepan on the gas ring

she did i tell you

and the wooden poker got smaller and smaller

over the sweating

boy were those shirts white

and in the night she thump thumped

the iron over them sharing the heat of the coal fire 

she did i tell you

other stuff she scrubbing-boarded

in the zinc bath after i got out

she did i tell you

there was a blue bag of whitener as i remember

and artic snow in a waxed pot for chilblains 

how white these memories are in the draught

at the bottom of the curtained stairs before a toasting fire

with snow at the windows

  she cried i tell you

often

she cried for everyone but never for herself

she was called upon the lay out the dead in the village

where the doors were always left unlocked

she would not have understood that cliché

but she understood the sanctimony of the church goers

in their fox stoles and lucky rabbits feet edged with silver

as her smile snuggled me watching them from her bedroom window

 she laughed i tell you

not as often as she cried

laughing leads to crying she often said

           now how sad is that i ask you

i could tell you lots of things but she said not to

they were our secret 

and she took those to her grave

   if i told you all she told me 

you wouldn’t understand 

but she did i tell you

just saying black is white

 just in saying black is white

dropped like ash

grey white like thoughts

wet with beer

and said

do you hear 

here 

         where

there and back again

says it again

and again

curls get oily like the voiced 

gravel of the years

spent now

of course

we read into it

what maybe was not there

but there you are

that’s time’s evil way

isn’t it?

christmas eve swim

 christmas eve swim

i went for a dip down there 

i went for a dip down there 

       i went for a dip

i went for a dip

i went for a dip down there 

there were big waves down there 

there were big waves down there 

                       there were big waves

there were big waves

there were big waves down there 

christmas eve swim

 christmas eve swim

i went for a dip down there 

i went for a dip down there 

       i went for a dip

i went for a dip

i went for a dip down there 

there were big waves down there 

there were big waves down there 

                       there were big waves

there were big waves

there were big waves down there 

an awful lesson

 an awful lesson

it aches like a waning moon

walk away from it and it rises again

just a sliver of silver of the other’s dark side 

waxing spluttering a gain in the rain

again and again  

and again it still

aches like the waning of yon moon

there 

it’s settled

hunt’s bay

 hunt’s bay

and by that curve

the small of your back

rotundity there and there

dusky in thoughts all at sea

at the peninsula of point

love’s horizon says 

hunt’s bay ~ hunt’s bay

well it is to me you see 

what is dark can be anything you want

do you want that

do you hunt that

let’s say it is

happy centre

this 

  epidemic 

       is the

         epicentre

            of a

               tsunami 

                  of

                      professors

poet cetera

 poet cetera

am i a real poet 

or a pretend poet

and

if i am a pretend poet 

how do i become a real poet

and 

if i am a real poet 

then why am i pretending

i remind myself to ask myself

on looking at gareth’s tenby

 on looking at gareth’s tenby 

the easterly wind waves 

curling into the harbour with

no thoughts of snow now

that the westerlies wait

to enter stage right under 

the noses of the coloureds houses 

galleried as his photographs

hanging the nightlight lowering

the blue-black lanyard-rattling masts

of the town’s ships

log to the base men

 log to the base men

            i run away from me

            into my arms

it’s all in my book

kids we were

sitting on our favourite rocks

  on the hillside

    above the river

when the log floated down

and 

someone jumped in

and 

someone did the trying

and 

the crying never stopped

where is she now

his mother

dead i suppose

like that boy

in the river

now

where was i 

early one morning i closed my eyes

 early one morning i closed my eyes

my mind is blank

infinitely blank

except for that door 

infinity small

and moving

here one minute and gone the next

virtual in its being

except for the tapping

the pressing

when the eye flap opens

a lance of light

attests the sugar

and then the wren thoughts

in the corkscrew

there one minute and gone the next

unlocatable 

in the hedgerows of my mind

beneath the shroud

stoned and ghosted

hand on brow falling

forward sitting back 

my breaths a picket fence

deciding how far one should dare

cross the snowfields 

the thin ice of the wearing

yes

the hushed voices hushing the voices

on the other side of listening

another mind in the wings

waiting

the prompt waiting

on the stage a new backdrop 

the audience hang

upon a soliloquy 

that has its hand upon the door

but It is in the non-looking that we find

that the door is locked 

is in fact not a door

but a blankness 

oxymoronic in its depth

deaf to knocking

open to a turning away

here one minute and gone the next

the hand 

on falling upon it

will never grasp it

will never grasp that the blankness

is 

as a matter of fact

it

is 

as a matter of fact

not a fact at all

not at all

all

and then upon reflection

 and then  upon reflection 

write a poem on a pebble

and put that pebble on a seat

on the seaside promenade 

when ‘they’

‘they’ know who they are

want to sit they have to 

move it

and when they pick it up

to move it

they read it

and it moves them

so they put it down

and look out to sea

and then  upon reflection

they see

and there

 and there

where the innerings of the fields converge 

by long the falling of your way’s desire

rest you now from all the toils of day

around the hearth of nighttime’s lonely fire

lay your heart to rest its winter’s load 

and simply sit and longingly wait content 

until the bulbs of spring emerge

although deep they lay below this snowy sward 

where many a hope in earnest overstayed 

never again to open up upon another time 

but lay forgotten and forgotten lay

and long forgotten there they stay

what and who

what and who

what language does a tear speak

what nationality a kiss

the upturn of a smile

can my arms embrace the whole earth

what girth does tomorrow’s baby make 

and who will correct the final mistake

the sighs of hollow laugh

who is big enough 

to be small enough

to ride the moon away

whisper it to me

my