Wednesday 31 August 2011

August 31, 2011

In sheep cropped pasture
where clouds chase ghostly shadows
sun brittle bones scream

Free Vortex

Not quite the Maelstrom,
Nordic destroyer from Poe,
but when I grow up

What Makes A Poem

It's gotta rhyme
else it ain't worth a dime
though I strongly disagree
with this philosophy...
...awww crap

By A River

Amidst dewy dawning
and distant lowing
scrambling over
tangled root stone bedding

neath hillside glowing
from cloud stalked
cold shock
to sun burst warming

flows river umber
running iced tea
tarnished and malty.
To this tumble

comes happy dog
snout near rabbit deep
wary cottontails peep
from behind mossy log.

While hedgerow and tree
with gummy slap
and spittle spray of sap
shed and share their berry

bees, silver backed
full droning bluster
drain all they can muster
before dragons snap.

Damp ochreous sheep
like tea-bags spent
connote what ferments
this tawny creek

Steaming hummocks
draw up the eye
to a full weighted sky
where the swifts run amok

through a rising feast
and with like minded purpose
the bubbling surface
is equally policed

Soon, oh too soon
throughway is blocked
each gateway fast locked
by authority oppugned

from this unfriendly zone
we turn on our heels
retreat cross green fields
to man's enclaves of stone

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Runswick Bay


Through stair-rod rain such
precipitous descent leaves
breath in short supply

Over warm wet sands
swallows run low to the ground
feeding black arrows

Stone finned sharks encamp
below the beach awaiting
careless tourist feet

Wind scoured detritus
rewards each searching foray
fresh discoveries

Wave chiselled dark caves
Invite exploration of
dank interiors

Stone cast dead shadows
ciphers from Earth’s callow bloom
lay broken cast-offs

While the village sits
atop its haven of rock
in pretty repose

Hill fed lees stream down
shit littered weathered causeway
in doleful disgust

Monday 29 August 2011

All The Time In The World

Hewn in antiquity
of fire and ice
rough fell born
in flash and fury hurled
from the high ground
fountainhead

set in motion
artlessly impelled
downwards tumbling
by such attraction
that demands all
obey its draw.

But my life’s course
stretches far beyond
your mortal grasp
and moves at a pace
measured in millennia
as you count days

I may rest bestilled
in quiet backwaters,
with fragile gossamer
dancing suitors,
a heavy quilt of moss
my besplendoured bed

Then torrent and
boiling spume,
surging anew
cast me seawards
towards a destiny
you cannot follow

I may reach the ocean,
traverse the abyss
arrive diminished
on alien shores,
or waste away
before that mark

But beyond your
temporal sight
I will subside toward
that searing core then
enkindled, compressed,
emerge once more

Sunday 28 August 2011

Whitby

I came, Demeter like,
silent amid the mizzle
save for the seas salty breath
in the dead rigging.

An alabastrine jig and reel
trails suspended on spectral strings
to the gentle pitch and roll
of my progress

towards the enduring
granite blocked cove where
I slide under the stoical
gaze of twin Cyclops sentinels.

No mournful bell at sea
accompanies me. I live,
but wraithlike pass over
the thronging cobblestones

to leap some two hundred
steps of dripping flag
to good St Mary’s
broken toothed orchard of stone

till at last with aspect overseeing
the wild Ness and Burg,
in the shadow of Dane sacked abbey,
I sit where Stoker sat.

In collaboration with my daughter (it's true too as I am suffering the injuries still)

We went on an adventure
me and mum and dad.
Went places we shouldn’t,
were a little bit bad
But when we were caught
and did as we were told
dad only went and fell
down a six foot hole.

Friday 19 August 2011

Spider


Once I knew a spider
wore Doc Martens on his feet,
eight hole on eight hairy legs
he wasn’t too discrete.

He rode a lengthy shadow
while he stomped round the floor
this micro muy macho
unabashedly cocksure

I trapped him in a glass one night
And told him at the door
“My wife she doesn’t like you
don’t you come around no more”

But spiders rarely listen
and ignoring my request
next evening he returned
our octo- booted guest

A Glowering

How long is it since I really smiled?
A beam that lifts my ears and wrinkles my eyes,
shoots the corners of my mouth towards the sky,
draws the blood up from my leaden feet,
and pumps my head full with a giddy heat.
Dear friend, it’s been far too long a while.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Starkey Raving

Enough!
We can
ill afford the luxury
of the
invidious
intellectualism

that each
oblique
pseudology
pitches
to the bigotry
of a nation

Garden of Delights

I mark,
with covetous eyes,
a green-fingered passion
rendered into a desirous earth.


Wednesday 17 August 2011

Eye

Dare not blink
Lest you miss a new world
Nor close your eyes
While this mystery unfurls





Six Words

Consumerism’s covetous consequence
capitalism’s condign collapse

Tuesday 16 August 2011

An Absence Of Sleep

No slumber
for this leaden head,
with heaving chest
my psyche adrift
gripped in a cyclone
of foolish reverie.

Vital sprites
brand my minds eye
planting chimera roots
of inarticulate desires,
sowing seeds
of wanton confusion.

Such perjury
of my heart. What lies
this spirit now denies,
ignites afresh
an abhorrent chemistry
that piques my craving

Sunday 14 August 2011

Ghosts


Now those eidolic dread horses
have scarred your slumber
and even your furniture
has silent, open mouthed nightmares
of the too soon dead school friends
who never ended their crossings
where there she stoops in shroud
ghastly knelt as in prayer
and you can see through the tricks
of the light that say “she’s there”
your crumpling chest boiling
as the bones in your legs atomize
while those without body cross
the empty room, no need to surmise
that which lies bereft and restless
may yet have something to say
and you are the luckless soul
who lives within their byway


Thursday 11 August 2011

You Are!

August spawned a raging storm
Four nights we watched our TV’s burn
We wrung our hands in shock & shame
Then looked for someone else to blame

I turned that smoking TV off
And saw reflected the one to ‘cuff
A rapacious servant of generation me
“Guilty as charged” my contrite plea

Rook





Wednesday 10 August 2011

Right?

I can see the day where
I’d throw a brick
run headlong
and aim a kick

at the flashing blue
and the line of shields.
I’d resist and fight
the way they wield

their batons and
their heavy boots
but I can’t see a way
I would ever loot.

Of course that’s so easy
for me to say
while I can still
feed myself each day

Monday 8 August 2011

A quick reflection on Tottenham

Gazing over the fresh grown rubble,
the long term bounty of borrowed trouble,
it begs a question with which we have to wrestle.
If it’s only the threat of burning petrol
that can make the truth of now more palpable
then my friend, no matter how unpalatable,
is it not time to make this field more level
and burst the bubble of those too comfortable?

Saturday 6 August 2011

Baking Saturday Apple Pie

slice and dice
and
sugar and spice
and
hubble bubble
oh
here comes trouble
now
knead and roll
and
empty the bowl
now
butter that dish
and
make a wish
and
mould your base
then
pastry encase
now
throw in the oven
and
await such heaven

Friday 5 August 2011

Cold Radiance

skinny dipping
on sopping silk
a cold pooling
of lunar refraction
steeps our
summer drowsing

ghostly fish,
lustrous slivers,
skip across
tumid fleshy belly
I kiss that
soft arousing

lip traced
phantom trail
silver shimmering
wandering avenue
to a mellifluent
moss dowsing

maybe one more verse to follow

Thursday 4 August 2011

Summer Rain

Cool midnight rain
seduces my tiny eden
leaving her flushed
in a post-coital ardour

of musk steaming
foeniculum fusion,
her passion exploding in
open leaved splendour

Jacked



Swearing

I like to swear

and I don’t care

whether

you like it or not

cos it’s big

and it’s clever

Devon

This is why I nearly didn't make it much past my 19th birthday

Amidst a sultry warming
three boys, stood
in the thrall
of a Devon dawning,
with no words of warning
saw no cause
to fear
the sirens snare calling.

Surf gently boiling
trimming the shore
with silver pearls
then throatily yodelling
and backs arching
three boys
cast their bodies
into the brisk and brining

blue, who’s welcoming
embrace extorts
gleeful gasps
with her cooling.
Arms now wheeling
three boys
set their sights
on a distant rocky shoring.

Bare, hot feet dancing
on baking crust
they fashioned
a clumsy landing
and while lizard basking
three boys
fail to grasp
the tide was swiftly changing

Where there was nothing
two vivid flags
now fiercely
fly, extolling
the limits of swimming
a zone where now
three boys
can see they’re clearly breaching.

Panicked hearts racing
they throw themselves
at safeties shore,
arms and blood pumping
but with riptide pulling
each drive alee
three boys
foresee their drowning.

With the last breath gasping
of a final push
they hit the beach,
landed fish flopping,
lungs stretched to bursting
where three boys see,
in thankful eyes,
no words need speaking

Tuesday 2 August 2011

Terminal 1

Arrivals secrete

through such a malodorous

welcome to England

August 1, 2011

Pretty girls litter
this jejune town
awaiting the charms of a
knuckle dragging clown