poetry

chasing laughing

When laughter presupposes its response
While humour wanders through a building
and the elevator carries air, metal, insects, bodies - up

Pressure bears weightily through unlooked at skin
Its bearer speaking to herself of him
To himself, distortedly, an extra rib, an extra limb

What are you asking of me? How do you live?
Is there anything you want? My brain is a corroded sieve
I'm listening, I'm on hold, give me your company, your trivia

Your five feet eight or nine and I'll find mine
If I can find it somewhere, where did I put it? I dropped you a line
Was it minus four inches, I mean the female, what's her sign?

Dashing through the building, hands on the wall
Hearing your breathing, watching her fall
Listening to her echoes, aren't you curious at all?

Hello? Air, have you any air there?
Where are you? There? And that is ... where?
A smell of tobacco crawling through sieved air

chasing laughing 2

The time can be told by the first emotion that good as gold
bit itself hardly, barely, no pressure first hold
It's no too old contest, it's fast release, I told you - no!

Particles reassembling torn off limbs
Taken from him, he handed them out with a packet of pins
A suggestive silence, a sweet song, a promise to take the heat out of her din

Cacophony in her mind bleeding out in rays of disassociation
She couldn't sign up or join, nationalise, rage or assassin
Her miscast relief messed up in all honest hopeless best fashion

There's no poison, no goose shamanic power animal asking this:
What do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Do you want a birthday kiss?
Can I have a, not a bit of, not this or that, I'm blue, I'm gold, too old, never scold - miss?

Wait ever long pretend not nor hit
Miss me and backwards never lied no shit
It was five thirty one and she wanted, it was eleven thirty one and he lit up. Done.

fear nation

Awoken and closed in the midst of non-penetrating green force
chewing nuts and seeds, unable to move
a blanket of dense matter as thick as it is obtuse
holding in outward impulse, uncontrolled and unsoothed

Frantic might withdrawn from life predetermines opacity
a railway carriage with its wheels taken off that used to travel inter city
rusting nowhere, disappearing everywhere
the only drama that had ever gone there a bomb scare

No before, nor after no fond memories no resignation
descent, no windows, dirty mind and guilt
half procrastination and the other half done and undone reconciliation
half repeated, half deleted and there's still use crying because the milk hasn't been spilt

Great big proud nations wait in the wings
while one heart, two heart hold breath
will light ascend? will cherubs sing?
in immediacy a pause, there is mechanical silence, there has been cowardice enough

caught

she lay panting across his open hands
she lay across his open hands with panting breath
he held her across open hands

she was nearly extinct to her own self

across his hands she held her open breath
panting self she crossed her self openly
her breath panted across his hands
open he breathed across her hands panting
she lay open across

breath life yours never divide
take across your open hands her life breath
never met never crossed passed across your eyes
a breath on a warm night promising neverendings avalanche left

hurt

She is trickling out of a thousand cuts made in self's secret bowl
by broken mirrored fragments of a resident soul

she has become molten she is all flux
her eyes melted she could not stand to watch
her own self's dissolution
as ashes absorb her wet strangulation

there are no old answers blowing on the wind
nor whispering grass on wild prairie of free mind
lemon scents sting the brave
but she is far away from naive salve's saving grace

memories of a place with no name
back again back again tame
taken and given, wounds outpouring
absorbing self deploring brief resident alluring

too hard, a cry in wind heard fitfully
as fearfully a dead child dies again annually
a saved race? a divine face to find us all?
now the wind has calmed, dead heart ash full

dead past

preoccupied on a frosty morning with a thought that runs away
when you try to catch it without laughing

preoccupied on a frosty morning
the work of hands is alarming
mourning a guilt felt loss
it was all dross
a whole life of all waste all real
the taste of it dull funeral
a wake that won't begin
a dirge rolling ad infinitum

bring me beer bring me fizzy wine
i need to celebrate the lavish days when you were mine
and our time breathed through
every line i wrote new
every morning dew, you are
light and wet in my eyes, oh you were a liar

dead past 2

you were too tall
your pupils were too small
you couldn't see long term
your ashes did not even have an urn
grey dust in a plastic ice cream box
marked s____

while your son was polite
to your wife
and i had spent all morning doing my hair
if i'd cared less and looked better, oh if if my, his, our
too much over, too much

bring me beer bring me fizzy wine
oblivion's dive you made mine
in the doped nights i lived through
awake, more, awake, more, awake continue

there's no over, no no more to loss, to guilt
i can't blast out what i felt
i can't spring clean you in frost
it's cold here and i can't find your ghost

dead past 3

you lived wild and reckless roaring crazed
while i sacrificed sensuality, debauchery, rage
was quiet and tried to be normal it didn't work
i feel dirty full of grit, in my veins, your dirt

unhappy wanting me more than loss
and no less than the most of its green moss
spreading over my blank earth
will you let me go now death?

p1 p2

amnesty international

bleeding influence teething prayer
constrained military repair withheld delight
hands clasped and badges awarded as layer by layer
fright cloaked white mouths muffle battle bitten hindsight

once bitten, twice fried single sons wear big guns
horticultural profuseness admires media inspired colour
the gem of the dream prostrate drowns mum
poisoner with no antidote swore blind bespoke horror

dwindling green force out there somewhere everywhere unseen
unknown yet felt only in the psychic sky
imagination's reasons/sons why for a job lot of what it all means
cut up kidney drunk forked path apple pie goodbye

is that what you wanted when you folded up your briefcase?
did you know more than someone was telling you?
he was told too by someone else, look at his face
lines marked by proud nations to this nothing peace whispered escaped

amnesty 2

sun shields unknowing bunny rabbits
hopping under storm clouds
chewing nuts and seeds in natural habitat
white tails, burrows, no crying out loud

just the yearning mass of undreamt pressure
bearing down beneath the knights' swords and hooves
unwielded and decisive, a torture lesson
masterclass moved north and banked unpreserved loaves

there was no point in insisting there is no point
no measure and result in speaking from the heart
there is no route on a track for an obsolete machine, oil anoint
nothing nowhere, make a flame for us all torn apart

after neverend

I love you I hate you I love you I hate you I
muttering and mumbling I should be dead I want to die

lake is molten metal in the never dark
a red light shock bright and lamps glow in the park
industry bleeps, burbles; telephones mutter and squeal
the glisten murk blind mixed gloaming colours appeal

to the death mask across a pretty eye full
weeping fuel until the floating swans senses lull
annul abstraction. Black scratching tendrils - there are aliens
in the body in the body clawing up the worst and best liar

I love you, this is after fire, after getting higher, after peace
I hate you makes this legend, grows these evil friends
dancing after hours with sharp toes finger grease
neverend never dark land a cure nothing never mends

abdominal cuts could be better, better to pull me open
right up spilling out in greyness garden
I fathom no lies or truth nor black nor white all blind big
your never my my distant fury our all cultured, well versed, complete

going home

on a cold misty verge a ghostly mother
and her boy only half of this world
stranded
I pick them up, take them out to the coast where they live
fog descends
I take a wrong turning into a park, hit ice, bump a tree
slide into a fence, bump
we get out, push car out of groove
mechanics appear, I bump again when I should stop
bump bump like a pinball game

I couldn't help them, anybody, I just harmed my car
the mechanics agree - not serious - not serious! full of dents

get out of that dark icy park, no good
he the idiot
he is an idiot
he is stalking me

outcome out

bastard vice personified slipped victim's wrist slits
head over noose no sight hood slipped low wit
cattle graze daftly in field of mud
all along the shore line ripples lap

bingo numbers called to half win across smooth air
where bats nightly feast on spare nature's insect dish
compare the swoop of wings and a goose hiss
with the inside wish that all was resolved compare

an old soldier's battlefield memory
with angst hidden inside rich resentment
why are you hurrying like a true sedentary?
why are you pursuing bunker contentment?

go slide down air and stop your seek out
you are found, be beloved it costs nought
but a cliché for the rich the rest for the rest of us
found out, dug out, come out - in trust

about worth it hardly

a collection of nine poems written in an intense period November 13 - 31 2004. After much preparation and thought

The poems are presented as garments to be worn with great passion and style.

They are emotional clothes, or coverings, that correlate to psychic armouring - the way we defend ourselves from a true view of self and our world.

They take place in four locations; by a lakeside at night; lost in cyberspace; in a towering office building and looking out of a window with yearning.

Within these scenes the emotional themes of loss, hope, sensitivity and empathy are explored. They take the point of view of compassion towards self, to create a place where the life-hurt self can find hope within introversion and where reality gently inspires.

However, as the series progresses, this self- compassion has a great and growing fear of politics and of society's encroachment, to the point of destruction, on the internal life of the imagination. The poetic voice has a strong impulse to communicate a message of hope, but meets resistance from the insensitive anonymity of society and its politics.

At first the imagination caves. Can it overcome the inhibitions that hinder its full creative forward-thinking expression?

The poems reflect the flux of ever-changing nature, at times as elusive as quicksilver