the sea’s beach
the tides that brooked no reply
to the incoming of emotions
the flight of a gull’s mind
roaring away
feathered castles and moats
sea-weeded and tended with care
walking the tightrope of tomorrow
it is today everlasting
unless we decide otherwise
we will ride these tides forever
inquisition
death ends death
the whole universe can be held in a mind
but time and space ends with the death of that mind
nothing is a concept that nothing cannot contemplate
therefor it does not exist for someone who does not exist
my concept of you is ephemeral
beware the imposter
not an epigraph
mum waited
in the cemetery for far too long
dad had not arrived
on the bus with his legs for most of the way
in the way he was coping
taking the independent way
the short cut that ended up in someone’s garden
incredulity doubled up
got there in the end and was scolded
not quite ‘you would be better off dead’
for the wait had been cold on a warm day
and an epigraph seemed inappropriate
when arm in arm laid the flowers
and turned for home
and yet
and yet
all those pinpricks of light
galaxies, supernova, stars
and yet
like the millions of corpuscles
wizzing around in my blood
they are not a heart
supernova a broken heart?
the sun’s warm warning
and yet
immortality is in the zillions
of our thoughts
visiting dylan’s new york
oh to walk the steps again
where the man strode his ware
and where was this and where was that
and why did he go that way
did he have to
did we make him
oh to ask the streets and hostels
tell me of that man you knew
for he and she have gone away
and here am i today
so say
rotten luck
life is rotten
why else would it rot into life
only to rot away again
into lives eternally rotting
dark and light and dark and light
the train on the fast track to oblivion
reflects the one face of query
moment of inertia
that moment of inertia
between life and death
between death and life
infinitely long
infinitely short
possibly timeless
only time will tell
if it is all a dream
piss artist
i’d love to be an artist
but i’m just no bloody good
i’d love to be an artist
i would paint on wood i would
i’d love to be an artist
but i’m just no bloody good
see ~ i told you
surf
that roar are the bubbles bursting
time bursting i call it
the throb of the salt pulse
through all the bones
of all the bodies
down all of time
their voices bursting
upon the shore of today
slaking the dry dunes the
flotsam runes of tomorrow
they will fire the bloody suns
and if given half a chance
they’ll drown you
dandelion and burdock
burdock
bobby buttons kids
now
after all these years i see it
the burr
docked on my jumper
but still i am that kid
dandelion and burdock
black fizzy and from the bottles
the pop man delivered from a lorry
here you are kid
catch
it’s a memory remember
treasure it
Pictures in the summertime RA summer exhibition
and they pose
for reflection possibly
see the beautiful ceiling frieze
it has seen them come and go
the gilded ones
the lost and the foundlings
hang it all
the eye is in the beauty of it
wordplay
the combinations are infinite
in the way the words play
off words and associations that are
carried by words and the way they play
in crossing over each other
genetically gently
they modifying the meaning
and through it all
the flow of emotion
becomes a tributary
becomes a river
the lake a thesaurus that overflows
the cataracts ahead
from the head of the headwaters
a single word can drown you
derivation
beat the editors back with the stick
that rattles the railings of childhood
where were they
when you were there
asking the walls to play your game
the dereliction to laugh an apology
for being what they are
dirt under your fingernails
never the haute couture of distain for the
spittle dust of time’s limed walls
the same walls that fell
bricked in the randomness of the annealed words
that will untie the gordian knot of memory
and thereby rebuild dante’s furnaces
in the heart of a reddening past
now then ~ Dylan Thomas’s boat house
the place where he was
but no longer is
what he made of it
now a shell of imaginings
on the ebb and flow of indecision
the water rises
in the anteroom the forgotten
in a reflux of his words
the brackish marsh waves
to the union of his goodbyes
on a photograph of Seamus Heaney's grave
the gravel words
white above that dark realm
the deep brogue of the trees’ bark
defiles the grey marble
the smoothing of this visage of death
but here lies a poet
who’s epigraph does not confer
that singular right to voice contrary views
dying does deny or defy a voice
deep field
deep field
every colour of a far imagination
beholden at this moment
in the light of a new dawn
the swoon of waves
of light having travelled
from beyond imagination’s time
a picnic on a rug weaved
of the delights prepared
to receive a feast
again
beyond any menu
this preparation of fine wine
so many suns on the vine of time
decrees the perspective
around our rocky vineyard
what has unfurled today
from the gingham wrapped bundle
in the matrix of light’s horizon
but the glint of imaginary worlds
now shining in the bending
of the branches in the tree of knowledge
this is our picnic in the shade of the past
where once an apple fell
the lensing around the gravity of a thought
shining in the focus of a tear
falling down the cheek of our youth
never question this angst
but kiss the knowledge unfurling
in a relationship growing in time
and given the space that affection fills
it is not an affectation to say
never was so little known
by so many about so much
and now so much further
because we share James Webb’s picnic
at the edge of a golden field
Spring
The birds are singing in the rain,
and although the sun’s gone in again;
Spring! Spring! Comes bounding in,
blossom dressed, decadent as sin.
Summer
and thus does summer talk to me
merging the pleasures there you see
two butterflies or maybe three
dancing dancing there under that tree
under a sky so blue or in a shaded lee
now this is how summer is meant to be
Autumn leaves
Dawn's slept breath upon my window lies,
truant in the morning sun,
and sliding wraith-like from my widening eyes,
inveighs of Autumn, dare not go on and on
Winter falling
down trees upon the water
where no paths go
the pendulum frame
as each poem is added
this anthology of verse
cadence rhythm rhyme
oscillate in time
the poet’s time
the reader’s time
all the time in the world
past present future
tensions
the strings of words
of different lengths
never to entangle
yet of course
they do
the dinosaurs …
between the back kitchen and the outside toilet
the felt-roofed lean to
where the rats got into the saucepan cupboard
that is where we kept the zinc bath
… are dead
teens
angst was the word
they used against itself
as strange a word as a wall could bounce
it took us
yes
but how many requited
did not requite a loss
as deep as the sky
as high as a dark well’s falling
for no flight was
and longing hangs there now
always destined for looking back
this drag of a feeling in my guts
was i really there at all
the day beegins
a bee
fresh from the flowers
comes in through the front door
all a buzz of a news buzz
out through the back door
to tell the other flowers
"he’s awake you know"
breakfast in the garden
with a cup nice cup of
bee
yet again on another day
it does not seem possible
that i am here again above the sea
breeze
across the bracken turning sky
as warm as this foxglove bee
rolling a carpet down
to that remembered breath
that cacophony of shrieks
breaking over children
in and canute of the water
where a castle’s flag is feathered
a seaweed’s warm crunch declares
on the tip toe of a look
that yet again
it is
the day beegins
a bee
fresh from the front flowers
comes in through the door
this buzz of news buzz
goes out through the back door
to tell the other flowers
he’s awake you know
breakfast in the garden
with a cup nice cup of bee
RS Thomas’s last church
did he melt into the stones
brush the warmth from the wooden pews
leave the light kneeling
the sun streaming
through the leaded windows
did he sail away across the calling
of the sea’s hollow lament
down the long vaulted turning
wall to wall that emptiness
filled at his last behest
retweeting the stigmata
the locked church
to keep sinners out
or god in
i wrote to the bishop
he never replied
it begged the thought
today the crucifixion would be filmed
a zillion phones would flash the news
the bleeding stigmata are in your hands now
ZBIGNIEW
that is what John Guzlowski said his name was
how nice it is
to roll the pebble of a word around your tongue
a gob-stopper that changes colour as you suck
and the slurp sounds mouthing yummy
this name i must remember
i must buy the history of it
unwrap it
keep a spare one in my pocket
never to translate
the syllabic joy
BLOCKED
the waterfall will overflow
the cascade will splash even higher
divert thoughts over a cliff
and the wind will fling them back
into your face
let’s face it
everyone
run your eye down the rainbow
of my misty timeline
are there any sharp stones
let the flow (your flow) round them
there may be diamonds
but a BLOCKED mind will never find them
block the outlet but the thoughts still flow
you know you will not know
now
my invitation stands
shoot the rapids
or turn back behind the dam
and damned
no chips off the old
BLOCKED mind
2,553 followers and rising
will the damn fools behold