quicksand frozen by sunshine
love
like the heart
can be sliced
by the microtome of life
frozen in sections
multiple recipients
effectively nascent
time will tell for
the giver and the taker alike
neither has choice in the matter
giving hate it can be perceived as love
and be reflected back with a smile
cheeky chops
it’s nothing ~ forget it
sometimes we glimpse it
nothingness
and the glaze fractures
the tracks of neutrinos’ opinion us
nothing escapes the orbit of our minds
infinity creeps up behind us
we turn and turn
what colour the spin of nothing
falling is meaningless
myth explodes belonging
we say our goodbyes
ready or not
contemplation of an artists website
this is art to become fearfully lost in
for the desire to return is also lost
upon contemplation of a realisation
that within your eye and the burnished
brows of becca’s brush strokes
lies a true revisioning
a reappointing of focus upon
the arrival of a lost belonging
or twice
once
my late father told me
how he and doug used to laugh and sing
and how once
when they were working in a church
they saw a poor church mouse
so they feted it with cheese
placed under the huge pulpit bible
propped up with a stick and string
with a long wait
he never said if the mouse entered heaven
but boy did they laugh
book six
where the fabled child was lost
and found nothing
that could be put into words where
thereafter bore no resemblance to before
except for an excitement that a
teller of tales had cause to write
and we wonder if
social media ~ just a moment
a moment is defined
by what went before
and by what may come after
but in that moment
there are no thoughts
of before or after
it is a vacuole
in the continuum
of thought
that came to me this very moment
before i read what you said
after what i said
well you all know
where this moment of inertia
is pointing at
autumn web
all the baby words
glowing
rushing in every direction
until the husk of the poem is left
degaussed of attraction
ten thousand new webs form
trapping ten thousand readers
but you knew that didn’t you
you said we would say that
and so we do
a poem fattens upon its readers
and
flattered by a pregnant pause
it is springtime again
the glass cabinet
infant school’s first lesson
there were drums in the music cabinet
they gave me the triangle
to ding ding ding listen
the world is a shop window
and you have not the mental money
and yet ……… ding !
come back
oh come back to my past
and ride a three wheeler with me
i’ll call you by another name
and you can call me silly
but its not silly is it
please say it isn’t
to peddle a dream
an old dream of a young love
but it wasn’t you
was it?
mirrorball
turning in the fast music
turning in the slow music
always at the same pace
reflections come
reflections go
with stuporific regularity
images imagine images
imagine a mirror ball
sharing nothing at all
but everything in the dance hall
is spinning laughter’s daughter
and sunny boy sunny boy
maybe tonight maybe
it takes an age
at 6 you want to be 7
at 10 you want to be a teenager
at 20 you just want to have fun
at 30 the car the house
the family
from then on etc becomes etc
then at a certain age
you no longer have an age
just thoughts
about the past
but mostly about your glasses
the book of times
observe
how quiet the dust is
settling light
a prodigal thought demands
the vellum of the fatted calf
to bind yon book of parables
leaves rolling upon stoney ground
or waiting upon these ebony shelves
bending reads in the winnowing of time
a long sigh at the end of a finger
pointing at the inner sanctums
that books hold dear
so quietly is a quietly finger
running down the faded golden spine
of a book of all our times
locked by a grasped clasp
AI Man
Iron Man an update of an old poem
AI
the arrival of the iron man
AI
they’ve brought in an iron man
that’s what dad heard the old men say
when he was a child
taking the bread and dripping down
to his grandpa in the tin works
it took two men to throw the tin sheet
over the rollers and the hammers
AI
but now the rat science has sneaked in
and bitten off one of the men at the
knees that poked through the dungarees
and brought those knees to unexpected prayers
and angry tears that would never roll further
than the dust
no further than over the doorstep
no further than a slump into the fireside chair
the shift hooters laughing from the vault doors
of the iron master's ruddy cheeks brandied
and bred in the west side’s sweet sea air
fed by the sweat in the smoking man hours
whose only collegiate clubs were the pub
the pigeons and lurchers and back gate philosophies
of the futility of hope
the iron will being annealed in those very tears
quenched in the damp graveside nodding at
another life run its short span
buried in the drab sarcophagus of the village
pinnies and scarves and shinning doorsteps
of pride and injustice polished to a sheen that
history would reflect down the ages of oppression
and pride at what muscles and mind can sustain
through human resolve and the restitution of time
AI memorial
