write ting
writing is easy
comparing it to anything else at all
is a lost cause
read your own words
share them by all means
but you
the poet
is the audience
are the audience
is the audient
even the consideration of the singular of audience
is so insanely funny
life’s like that, isn’t it?
what a lovely, if sad poem.
life’s like that, isn’t it?
one minute your living
the next you are dying,
and there is no one there.
you say how hard it is, to soften it,
but all it does is sound soft;
now that is even harder to bear.
or so RS said
with no words
or so he says
he has caught what words cannot
and he is gone
before we look around
with a question
he is gone
there is no rejoinder
death here is your sting
for it is my turn next
to cover your words with mine
the sea
we all end up in the sea
take it from me
you’ll take more from the sea
than you take in
troubled waters?
it’s the stress we leave there
the flat sands of the mind
stretch away there
every day is a new day
but the sea is constant
oriental poetics
the poem as a straw hat
on the mendicant in a haiku
walking to kyoto on a rainy day
or across a red bridge in the snow
with a donkey on a leash and a bale of hay
beneath the temple of the blossoms
where the fish stir the lilies
of the frog pond
where they are
forever
our theirs
springtime
every time i see the new lambs bleating
i think
for eating for eating
life’s a gambol in the daffodils
and look there in the corner
the mint is glowing
play green sleeves for me
will you
high tide at tenby harbour
it pushes in and in
until it can go no further
it can go no higher on
the highest of tides
love the blushes
the streets above
pastel in complexion
blues and yellows
falling in love with
the west world’s flow
the sea’s kisses upon
the reddening boats
it is ready
marinas
they are two a penny
but not any are busy
making a penny
for your thoughts
about what made britain great
i have that sinking feeling
all’s not well here
look
just look
he wrote
and there they were
all of my words frothing
along on the surface heading
for the waterfall
a rainbow transient as the fall
then the echo rising
amidst the roar
i told you
didn’t i
them
they chopped them down
they know who "they" are
the price of everything
the value of nothing
all over the world
they celebrate the blossoms
but not here
alas
is a word often used here
they say tough luck mate
i am tempted to hate
but i prefer to blossom
the eternal torment
and the torment
of a mind that knows
that it is in torment
what was sent to quell
the water’s ferment
was sent to hell
and yet is the bridge over flows
that toll the bell
upon the sandbanks of the delta
where every light in the tenement
is a tributary glowing elementa
blather
at the bottom of the cataract of time
you will find many poems washed up
you might find one that attracts you
and yet forget that you wrote it
looking up with sadness eyed
that there is no way back
and still they pour over
the flotsam words
all jammed
in froth
.a poem about a poem
yesteryear
the poem as a turtle
returning to this eternal palimpsest
to lay its moons
under the stretched parchment
where the moist places are
waiting for time’s reader
to release the flight back
to the oceans of your minding
where the deep call is
the word
return
a poem
is like a dentist’s sucker
spittling up the detritus of your mind
stunk ing your tongue sometimes
you know the drill
good heavens
good people
think that bad people are bad
but who says that good people are good
for even bad people think they are good
when riding on the backs of their bad people
inside
the weather is whether to
or not to
go
outside
where
the weather is simply
too
good to stay
inside
a sea swimmer’s winter
darker seas upon these darker days
although the light is lighting greater
the salt same spray is drying whiter
and greater is the whitening breaker
rectitude decries along a lonely ray of
sun from the east across this stormy bay
as the boy walks seawards to claim his swim
at 74 it is but just his whim to declaim
lonesome in imagination’s longevity
each time he dives beneath the sea
and surfacing he is born anew and anew
much lighter he sees this darker hue
and whistling off home his coffee waits
simple the moral is you see
never be an old age sofa softee
. illusive
as with all the great poets
there they are and there they are not
for all their artefacts there is something missing
amis even
a museum walk through a field of ghosts
words pile up but the mould is gone
like the floater in your eye
you can see them but you cannot catch them
south wales
terraced boxes
stone rain
slag black
valleys hillsides
running dockwards
choke smoke
chapels chapels
and chapelled pubs
scrubbed doorsteps
painted windowsills
railway lines
rusty iron
dry sundays
bloody knuckles
choirs of tears
amen o war
down there
underground
stand
look around
listen
all about nothing
words can never capture nothing
but the space around it
bordering on nothing
shines
even when the butterfly lands
on the dog’s nose
it sleeps on
love is all oxytocin
poetry tries to deny
that love is all oxytocin
pivotal upon the reaction potential
the comparing of pheromones
for the fitness for this life
colouring the absurdity of
copulation with the feedback of lust
which is itself the positive feedback of oxytocin
the autonomic manifestation of those feelings
that poetry claims for its own
are at the burning of all that is left
the ashes of self-loathing
that belief was total
and totally wrong
if poetry has not corrupted you
anti-valentine love is all oxytocin
poetry tries to deny
that love is all oxytocin
pivotal upon the reaction potential at
the comparing of pheromones
for the fitness for life
colouring the absurdity of
copulation with the feedback of lust
which is itself the positive feedback of oxytocin
the autonomic manifestation of those feelings
that poetry claims for its own
are at the burning of all that is left
the ashes of self-loathing
that belief was total
and totally wrong
if poetry has not corrupted you
harken
the heart pines
for the settling of a day’s tear
in the setting of the sun’s glow
in the flow of the heart’s tides
lowing the heard gathers
the waves bright upon that sinking
behind yon feeling
the villages of the west fold the
day’s sheets to the seven seas
harken tonight it is
a tenby mews at dusk
bright the lights in the mews twilight
across the cobblestones they shine
mine?
oh no my sweet
walking through to your sweet street
the harbour sirens are singing fine
and all the sailors are drunk on wine
as my footsteps match yours at last
the witching hour has not yet passed
write at the end
the pencil is finished
only the eraser brassed at the end remains
all the bite marks have been swallowed
dare you replace even one word
with another confined to the sanitarium of memory
to be remembered not written
in longevity’s false perpetuity
now there’s a fine word or two
to be remembered in decision
A reply to a poem by R S Thomas
his words can cool
the standing stones at the heart
of a country colder in times going
the bare-knuckled distance
through all the books that tell
of the books that told of
the old time’s people at the heart
of a country’s scree misaligned
at the bottom of it all
intangible
others
insist that your art is bad
that is their failing
not yours
your heart is in it
is made from it
you can depend upon it
others cannot
which is a shame
the currency of love is life
how touching
that the intangible
is just that
intangible
.let’s get this straight
god made the world
so god made earthquakes
we praise god when we rescue a child
from one of (his / her / it’s) earthquakes
perish the thought
.free fall for all
ripcord is the word
under the canopy of this poem
thoughts float
never knowing where we’ll land
hard or soft
the poet plane has gone
over the horizon
we are on our own now
and the sun is setting
. at tenby
the sea pours
as the sky pours
into every crevice
of a headland
dressed for dawn
dressed for dusk
in the colour of thought
the colour of staying
on the lanyard
of the west wind
of the sigh of the times
i have waited here for you
at the end of sitting
just here where
i always will be
next to the bandstand
above the brass sea
at tenby::
snow on the street cafe seats
there are many empty chairs
on this pavement lifted from time
from a winter of snow upon this seats
as the trees stand idly by and the lamps
well they just stand idly by
the buildings are elegant and grand
windowed in a stasis of glance
the wet streets own the reflections
of the pale lip’s efforts
the tables are spaced out
chairs unmistakenly snowed
unreservedly
not a soul but a ghost in passing
for time is not passing
for it is a photograph
stayed in black and white
of no cold comfort or invitation
to linger no longer than the time
missing from this scene
the trees are limb crankled
snow in the elbows and scapula
of collars turned up against any realisation
that no thought lingers in this orphanage
of foundling corners and plazas
for we are at the solstice of no return
the conversations of the wandered
suspended and never to fall like this snow
never to reach the ears of the departed
stopped for a moment
in this photo all your cold anxieties
and hope for spring’s return
summer’s hot hubbub in coloured
by cravats and berets
all hidden in code in this photograph
that the cameraman has mislaid
here upon this page of turning
yesterday into tomorrow’s hope
the streets so clean(ed)
by the someone’s who are missing
missing from this scene
so wet in this thawing
those trees have seen it all before
the liaisons under the new leaves
virginal green
now don’t make a scene
there’s a room there for us
dawn or dusk
it’s not easy to say
is it
don’t you think
i don’t even know if i was there with you
well i was
wasn’t i?
