Landfall...

a progress
nipped by headwind,
though his bullish heart
has flickered clear of drowning,

so he's dusting down
Saharan surplus, hawking
off the sea-sick yachts,
ensconced in royal chiffon,

appealing for that magnet-tug
along the pollen flyways
pulling homeward..

and
I wonder
if he sees me,
-mid shipped twitter
post Johannesburg-

a gurning
plate of swan-necked
adulation, craning skyward

that I should pin
my yearnings to his
cloud-encrusted orbits
caws of folly..

more fanciful
than summer being
borne upon his wings...

I smile
because I
know what waits..

What fate befalls
the all of us..

our endings
growing closer
even now..


So, should I
then attend my
deeds, embroiled
in abject misery.....


or smile?

In the future
they may scrutinise
the age we mislaid wonder.
Evaluate the epoch
of our long-forgotten grace

Landfill
for the Burial Ground

Trolleys
for the River Gods

Spray cans
for the Painted cave,

and say,

"This,
is when they
lost their way"

Found meaning
lost in empty rooms
The lump of my
impostor stare saw
time collapse
in pixel thought,
reduced to
liquid molecules.

I brought you
out to open water
kissed the lighting
from your head,

Sent fire- ships
to steer you clear
of awful loves that
look for you in places
you can never be.

Forever seems
a long time gone

and this could travel
on for miles....

They'll give me a page
present me a pen

but I'll draw my
own conclusions

Those cranes have earned

their sack of seed

They pulled these pencil turrets

through a sturgeon curd of feckless wet

to leave them where they lay.



Because of this

i sit indifferent, satchelled

in an unmade bed,

a simple- headed almanac

of beige and sable rhetoric.



My heritage;

an Eton mess

of trampled roman candles

left, by careless midnight masses

that come scratching at my door.

High on Tumuli,
Keeled in sways washed out from brazen oceans...

...the birds may have me now...

Prey!..strip this ageing skin, then take my eyes.

Let the Oort Cloud iris break upon
these lakes of trancing humour,
as Veronicas of astral grace
silk down the valley strides.

The form
the flux,
the constant
becomings

the duty,
distraction,
the running
of motors,

the quotas,
the breadline,
the rising
and shining

the hiding
a stupefied look
in your eyes

Light
is everywhere,

it is everything

mirroring off rock,
demolishing
ambit

cat pawed with downdraft,
blustered by gale
the channels scud havocs
of pyrite,

The sky, huge
an impossibility
of blue, defies
description

words are formed
tried and retired
tossed
on a blather
of gust,
unlistened.


A syrup of larks tongue,
-an ash of a song-,

Is all that is heard
on the day..

looked
into the mirror

there was
nothing staring
back at me

could be
I'm free

could be
I'm free

I waved you goodbye, as if
I would see you on Sunday..

Then my Father phoned
at four in the morning...

..and my Father never phones....

There is no cover to speak of
So one cannot help but
break horizons....
This hour-glass of grassland runs
through circles of these optic nerves
to impotent obscurity.

There!...
Three fields out and dangling
in a filigree of  lark song...
Lapwings!
Gust-waft synods of ruffled vicars
from Heaven's addled cashmere, asking
"Did we?..No, we didn't...did we? "

Good is the day
that takes me,
shakes me

sets me down
bedraggled

reeking of sky,
of apple-wood fire

paddled with passion
and grins..

You
are somewhere close
yet dislocated, sheltered
in your centered peace
adrift beside all certainty.

We
turn as apron-ed satellites
in matinee of gentle speak,
our mundane, London-Saturday
the soundscape to your stasis.

Surrendered
to this bastion  of valiant
machinery. Your pillars
in this paradise of waiting.

Head notes

Of loam fringed apple trees,
of near-but- nether fuchsia roots
A timeless travel of ridge top tiles.
Steepled spins of weathervanes,
A sobriquet of pre- dawn rainfall.

Heart notes

Of hornbeam,
of coriander deer path.
Memories of bonfire- hope
in ragwort sprays of yearning.
A hint of feelings half remembered.
Of longbows hewn from churchyard yews.
Of rope swings and of scaffold

Base notes

Of river mist.
Poseidon wreaths of furnace ash,
allied to a merlot tint of afterglow release.
Endings are, valerian,
patchouli heads of linen musk.
A lasting peace of closing lawns
that wait approaching snow.

Have
come to quiet
the voices
to wrap them in
sea-fret,  to set
them aside for a while.
Rest ankles in campion barrows,
to search for the wonder
we lost in the chase for tomorrow.
To smile with the guise of a child,
if the moment be woken,

And, should it arise
from my somber entwines,

exalt in the pleasure of being,
supine in the seconds
of mystical present. Alive
in the genuine time
of my life.

Have
come to quiet
the voices
To wrap them in
sea- fret  to set
Them aside for a while.

To Where Tyrolean aurochs
graze in cools of lapis prairie
, I have come,
In A Balthazar of star- led zeal,
my scarlet hunter flown from
urban zodiacs of anxious ports,
of ailing townships steaming in
their millioned yellow orders,
shackled
sick beneath the mountain's boot.



Through dim grimmiores
of softwood press
I sleeve,
In sympathies of woad to glean
the narrative of under_ storey,
bourne to earn my Eagle .
I  chance to know the trip of wind
kissed, sinuous on beaufort scales
balanced on a fingers edge to
turn October
into wine.

Shingle shook,
these bookish handles
cove your head in herringbone,

It's sewn into
our standard-issue,

dangled under spinnaker

Here,
you and I
will come to terms
the terms of our endearment


a curvature of earthliness,
in miniature exemplified

the surfeit of our inadvertent
vertebrae declined
toward

the wave

Few candles
left for all of this

now comfort comes
in well thumbed books
and blankets..

A twist
of snowdrift hair
that tags you late
for thankless life,

released

a look-back
over years that taught

retreat


From
the cabin
of your fevered eye,
a love that passed you by
still shines,
impossible
in distant vistas

always
out of reach...

I have to smile
At Oystercatchers

Three came batting through
In straight line flight
A blur of chequered wing-brawl
-throwing on jackets
-crunching carrots
Hailing out-bound aqua taxis,

Their nutbar campanology
Disappearing over warehouse roofs.

They have places to be,
Do Oystercatchers
And times they
Need to be there

This
will be a
low colt prayer/
a player's prayer of
sayings dark anointed,

sliding in
to new existence-

trailing disappointment,
from the one that went before

At this
appointed juncture

I am more
or less
the same..

my un-angelic
angles grind
in uninspired
office

from this
I seek a mealy sway,
a speck of strength to recollect

exhilarating dialects
my lovers deigned to speak..

A
flame- doom plunge
of full sass waves
stash tears

harsh clatter drags
dishevelled praise
impeccably receding

The
bloom- lunge spray
casts  spume
rashed chandeliers

Tint
Incandescent
cataracts
intelligent
retreat

The wimpled scrolls recede....
The Authors of the braille sands
leave Northern marrow in their wording,
as sharp as Marram grasses bent
in keening subjugation....

Illuminated Sanskrit kelp,
infused with lust of fallen auras,
scrims the ****-green gartered breaks
now shaken from the glaucous mane,

while fleets of stippled cumuli,
( rain-chartered galleons of the West)
in line astern, prepare for war
beyond the deepened brim.

We,- the town-worn Pages- flutter,
drawn to trace the moiling hem,
to pour away into the water....

Salt-preened minions of the wind.

We drowned here today...

Sluiced along curious Holloways papered in shell.

We knew few colours by name,
Yet saw how they merged, circled, embraced,
to sweet-talk the senses to parley.

Last night the first Redwings sipped the late air
with the high-muffled chatter of Fieldfares passing.

Morning came garnished in far borrowed glories.

The place where we wonder to drown.

Called toward familiar compass,
Called by natural order of a rising vernal rage,
that girdles, as a talon grip, on through the songs
of lust and duel that joust above the battled ground.

This restless tread that aches to dance, to lure , impress,
now,tears its clothes to feathered crepe, explodes in sabre - rattled starts,
A host of self forgotten parts , writhe, steered in Vitus throes.

There is an art to letting-go,
A craft, I hurt to master

I've asked the four-winds
what they know

But haven't heard
their answer

From
An open cage of aberrance crow
the secrets that torment the globes
of doctored equilibrium
watching for that taci-turning
vital sign of change
that onyx collared stare that
needs to drift the dared bubonic lanes
alone.

to skirmish with those corvids
flown from aviaries of reckoning.
To meet with past life memories
in some overrun Gethsemane of
remembrance and shame.

And you know that I am waiting ...

...a warm malaise of liberty that spiders
at the corner of your crumbling resolve
I know  the colour of your squalor,
horoscopes of hopeless coping
written by your every sign and sealed.

I deal in escapology.

I, Corvus Medicinae,
am a Gentleman of medicine.

I shall lace the flavours for your taste
so you will think no more of me.

Until I let you go.

I will always be
that enemy
to myself.

Of loud mind
-Restless-
Of unsound habits.

An anthill scratching
at boiling blood , a
fractious, migrained, timpani
taking high- speed bends
on ruptured grips

My surface slipping
ever outwards.

We
were once
the Spring

Easter voices climbing
from a namesake lane

Early risers,
Windmill limbed and finding
out our simple selves

Nimble, skinny
twitten skippers, wile-aways,
unburdened, burning, spotless
in our pheasant- feather gold.

One decade undecayed
brought all the stories ever needed

One decade undecayed
before the innocent
were sold

Give me
the darkened doorway
the cause behind
the bricked up window.
Indigo shipwrecks
of tatty saloons
on ill lit streets of moody repute,
where the glorious truth of
of all imperfection
is welcomed,
accepted,

made beautiful.

Here I am among my people.

Give me the handshake
of needle on vinyl,
the tannin stained chapters
of Gideon bibles to burn
in the grate of
a derelict crib.

There is nothing as wry
as the smile
of children, in thrall
to the cancerous faiths
they were given
who grieve for the loss
of a parent still living
in legends.

Those
hereditary tenants of sediment means
examining tea- leaves in tardy
canteens off a tenement floor, while
studying fates in a library of faces,
one eye to the weather.

So waltz with the dealing
Phoenician itinerants, clevered
in scandal of travellers tattle,
to bring out
the stories of war.

I embrace Undesire

Come
tambourine laughter
of river Bohemia redeemed
with the nurturing sapphire of gin,
that I take as a galloping flame
to a dry August heath.



We are
all of us ever
but one step from ******,

All of us ever
one breath from release.

I have
not forgotten

-you-

purring, from
the parching tree

Your unassuming
crooning wooed
the willows
of an older
England

earth-smoke

fumitory..

summer songs
of Solomon

A single sweet monotonony
dependable as harvest store

came summoning the daysleep
word delectable.

Fast
too long in aspic,
antipathy for wind-chill
kills the arable concern..

Have
Listened to
the shipping-forecast-
victuals of an Island-race-
recur their little mysteries
from keeping.

Been
pacing off
the Malin Head in
fossil-fueled embarrassment,
deciphering a sense of self

and deepening.

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat anymore...

I will tidy her bedroom
there is unfinished
homework and washing
to do...

The plate on the floor
with the half-eaten sandwich
was yesterday's tea..
I was all she could manage,
being far too excited to eat..

Her first concert!

It's the start of the Summer

So she will
not be needing
her coat

anymore.

The poster read:

“Gone Missing”

The come-back-kid
has failed to show.
The Old Man saw him,
******* by the Rainbow Factory
wall, against the wind,
like a prayer no longer given
to the prism-surfing life.

He said,

“The come-back-kid, might
Not come back”..

He wrung his
swindled heathen, left
with haversack and Macintosh,
hummed ballad in a Sea-King crown,
the colloquy of shepherd lore.
head far too full to sing,

Caught riding
in a burnt out car of
rude December archetypes,
an engine feathered Westerling,
to think.

He went
to where they bury boats,

Where mud larks perk
for potsherd farthings,
red-shanked in the gallon slob
oblivious...

Far off the Ness
He’ll watch them go..

... on meteoric dawn patrols,
a contrast to his built-in
obsolescence.

In provinces
of platitude
He’ll form no evanescent tie,
invoke his tattooed waxwing
back against their lactic
saccharine, to beg
the notion die...

But leavened light may carry,

A bold ceramic dialect
that skitters off
the short-sun marsh

dissipates in linnet banter
winnowed from the winter barley
crossing out the county lines..


The come-back-kid
will not return,
a blue-eyed, fell, Promethean.

Disfigured by the absolute
He’ll beat his way
unrecognised.

Someone
swears

"We'll
never see
the likes of this
again"

The day
withdraws
exquisitely...

Charisma,
only evening has,
coagulates
in orange bloods..

dancing by the castle turrets-

scarlet mixing fuchsia pinks

sinking into psyche ...



How joyously
we raised our arms
raised our arms and sang,

sang deep into the starlit mirth
of everything we ever were

and ever dared to be...

We'll tell the Keepers
of the gates
that guard our varied heavens

-we weren't engaged in cruel crusades-

we just supplied the weapons-

Taste the fruit
of light and rain
admire its cured endurance
bite down upon the tender
skin, release the inner promise,
partake of all prosperity
completed by the seasons,
Such elemental lending thanked
for what this moment gains. Then
kiss the months goodbye once more,
for fairness has no reason
to stay among these changing tracts
while duty calls it South.
In an afterglow where shadows fall
as leaves, i know the parting,
So the taste of what i loved again
fades slowly from my mouth.

Swallowed
by Andromeda,
an alcoholic heart
bleeds neat particulars,

( Spun one spring round
the maypole Star
and even now
the grief is green)

A common lean
to Eden-seeking
hovers on, ridiculous,

preserved between
the pages, in this
Little book of Lost-Things.

The day is hallowed

  A fresco croft of Sunday shire
made Gabriel in stallion- manes,
Decanted into bottled ships
of scalloped Wedgewood
promises.

Trees
***** away in careful rows,

Well- fed matrons
fountain pruned
wear puff-ball cheeks
of flouncing gourd
that curtsey in bewildered
corns of desiccated flora
,
flawed by scorn of August forays
left as unkempt graves
.
Much more than these
stand poplars, ordered
keepers on their plated watch in
ruffled smocks of coppered
lime to tame the knee- worn
names of climate ,buckled
down the yarrowed lanes.

This day retains
its hallowed mien
as I pass through
these borrowed years

I
have
grasped
how cold
it's grown

now I
cannot feel
your hands..

Hooking
bullets from
the muscle, I
took just enough
to get me out,

out of these
discipled digs
of occidental artifice.

Saw virtue, as
a patient bound
found floating
with the carcasses,
in oceans of our
artless composition.

So sickened by
my part in this
repulsive codependency,
I'll charter me another sleep,
usurp the gutless drone

to shave my head
the stillborn dream
I open up my arteries
the garters of my
cartilage and bone....

'Tis a tyrannous
horology that haunts
the lighthouse keeper's watch,
the turning beam he mans alone
splits night for but a single beat.
His thoughts are nothing more than mist
a slow condensing of the airs
that form about his rising chair
and chill his idle feet .

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

Beware the Incredible ******

The One who comes in the night.

He's a fleet footed ******
of minimal morals,

and he will steal your bike.

was a costly equanimity
I scavenged from the wars...

a lifetime spent, inventing ways
to close revolving doors...

Come the Hill
and contact notes
abound

arriving in their droves,
they'll sup the berry-blood
of hedgerows,
in the cheese-and-ale
mist that hove the woodlands
from their mooring

My love for this
remains undimmed,
if anything , intensified,
as in these clock-wise hands
I clutch,

both epilogue and origin..

Taste
new words
to see
it through.


a pseudo
synaesthesia
grown easy
on the eyelet,
fits, apparently
awake

the derelict
convictions
say,
it cannot be
this much is all

The All, we are
to ever have
and less the time
to take

Seems aeons
since the badlands
let, their Agincourt
of arrowheads,

projecting from
the epicentred
tragedies
of Your


a softer
vector
than before

yet, pertinent,
as ever

Their
ambient
trajectories

descending
back to you

Tempers edge the need
for your anvil head to break.

The way back from work saw
Lowry people scrape the pavement.
Dog-leg drags of shuffle, of make-up slide,
mixing flea-skin sweat with pollen rub
into a tincture of stench.

This is image that I do not want

I have
half a mind to **** but I
cannot be bothered, the other ,a
a monologue of delirious ramblings
some" French kings versus
squadron mottos" thing...
and , in truth, I am not sure what
it's going on about.

I am indoors, windows open, curtains closed
naked from the waist down, feeding the freedom
of sprawl- but this is mistake of gargantuan order
a cosmic, foolish, schoolboy- error of judgement.

The sofa is leather.

My scar tangled manners are reports of my standing
an amateur tanners spewed stew of expletives.
In a half-arsed way it seems  
I am to remain

part of the furniture

I search for shorts.. long shorts, short longs, whatever,
my legs and **** seek the solace of cloth.

On the canal a coot needs oiling
what feels like 20 minutes of incessant jar is
tapping with my rationale
Testing my love for all things feathered.

Something needs to give.

I am a Gobi taste of sandal straps and
in dire need of irrigation/ rehydration
I have waited way too long for liquid...
Don't get me wrong, this isn't some test
of deprivation- this is heat swung laziness
that is all it is..nothing more
nothing less..

And so..

We will get it tonight
You cannot pull isobars this far apart to
not have them break..
And that ogrish flat-top is thugging
the harbour side rents..

Ah yes...

"Après moi le deluge"

Seems to make sense, now

At the zenith
of sartorial sloppiness,
frittered loosely in my scruff,

I clobber,
combats, sneakers,
faux-fur coats and baggy t shirts
stuff that wraps me up,
and I'm OK..

You can keep
your first- world
judgement

see
I've always
been this way

part scarecrow, hermit,
vermin, pirate,

all at sea with
modern stylists.

                    

And by the circle of our
strange unwritten rules

for a season, once in twenty years,
I, somehow, become cool.