You wake,
Startled by the sky,
Wonder if-as senses
Implode-

A flash of Awareness
Can carry Infinity
And be gone.

We crumble ash,
Still warm,
Between our fingers-
Bonfire of some
Extinct Star.

We sleep-
Holding hands,
Cool ash trickling
Between our fingers-

Nothingness pie
Held together
Sheer with inertia-

Unstuck by
Suffering entropy
Anyway.

We wake,
Startled by earth,
Supporting
Overwhelming weight

Of dreams

Today
Older than puny
Time

I laugh in the
Face of the gods

Who made you ashamed
Of your nakedness?

And why?

Toe-nail clippings fossilize
As they fall

Stone-set by rise and
Evaporation of a
Million Seas

Water becomes you.

Cold lake fed by small insistent falls
High in Cretan mountains.

No Goddess, you,
Young Woman
Vibrant
Fleshy and real

As scale and gill
Animate your kick,
Your stroke, water
Laughing in your movement.

I stare
Narcissus fractured in
Your ripples,

Ek-stasis
Solitary bubble burst.

No fear of Minotaur-
Our innocent frolic
Protects

Stiffened by wind the
Canvas White
Glows on glittering
Scales of
Shallow Sea,
Salted against ice,
Resisting decay
Through sheer, restless
Movement.

All else is Blue-
Homeric
Wine-dark banished,
A brilliance of
Sun-Flowered-Yellow
Lights the view.

I sent this postcard with
Puppy love and
Grandchild
From Palmy beach,
Mother.

You demand a
Spreadsheet

You sit-unmoved-
In your Mountain fastness.

The tree Spirits frolic,
Hiding, slipping trunk
To trunk until, uncertain-

Your Belief transcends.

A single tear ploughs
One runnel down a silted
Cheek
And the Flood some day

Shall unleash a grim
Vengeance on those who
Forgot-

Our place in Nature
Ruptured,

We hasten toward
The failing Cliff

Your wart,
When it went-

How I missed
Kissing

Your little
Blemish

A grotesquerie of time
Sculpted faces
Litter the landscape.

Classical columns stand
Jagged and broken or lie
Forlorn.

A soft oriental anxiety
Hangs in clouds over yhe scene,

And all the waves of
History fall.

The shift proceeds-
A drunken monk
Misdeliberates his
Kung Fu.

All is change
All balance is wobble-
The sun sets-uncaring

I always choose the losing side

They wear the prettiest silk
Woven clothes
And die

In droves

Mighty Oak
Grows tiny acorn

Talk of Tomorrow
As if it were a
Thing

A clay malleable,
Made to some Will o'
The Wish

No tomorrow is
Nor can be,

Tomorrow, Yesterday
Cannot exist.

Just This
Now
Synapse
Arm
Pen

Winter return-
Briefly-

Thorn
Blood drip
Drips onto snow-

One harsh word
From you and
I
Is undone
To
0

Please-
Gentle-
Return the Spring

How slowly the barges moved

Until they stopped

The view from Olympus
Is partially obscured

By cloud, wispy
And sad against
The elongated Drought-

But I see Them-
Kicking up dust-

Thrusting their tiny
Toothpicks
Pointed and tipped

With rust
Or blood.

The horses blink
Through Armour

Longing for the Plain...

Aegean glinting-
Shrunken by
Lack
Of Rain

Deep dive into
Molten core

Ask Vulcan
How to pour

Old iron into
Novel moulds

Make grief
An object

A wonder

Wander Earth

Seek a good place to
Die

Return body to soil

And spirit to
Sky

From

Nowhere

To

Nowhere

Grew too big for home

Out you go

Fly or die

Hototogisu

Who stole my life

Which starched white
Matronly apron
Dropped a basket into
***** Thames-sordid Times

Who rode my Charger
Bedded my Princess

Who drank dry the
Dank cellar of my
Being?

And why

I painted your Myth onto
A cave wall

Until she atrophied

I scribbled our story
With a stick in White sand

And then the Tide.

So long gone,
I see in Dream
Your Face in
Moon Cold night

Your heat on soles

The Harvest of your Hips
With another.

I blame the moon.

Her sinuous rhythm
In tune-
You move to her
*****-
Her Face your Mirror.

My Gravity slips and
We tumble Cold
Into Space

Slept on Thousand
Year deep moss-

Woke with Spring
In the Steppe

Last leaves swept
Pile

Years heaped

Wan smile

Listen to the Pre-verb
Listen to the Dis-chord
Listen to the Dancers out
Of Africa with drum and trumpet

Even a little is too much
One word
One note
One flex of foot

Listen to the Before

When scalpel sliced through heart

Your butterfly emerged flapping
Blue red blood against
Sterile white


Good to see you free from
All those years locked
Within pulsating muscle

Perhaps the painting
Will survive the blast

Or paint peel as skin
Revealing space

Intoxication of the bee

Dancing lavender
In the hive

Sqirrel dug
1958
Buried a nut

Forgot

Today sit
Tree canopy
Shelter

Forgive

That lazy foraging

Tussock
Small
Grass,
Within
Mammalian tremor-

Mouse alive
Without

Vastness of Space

Light and wet
Meet broad leaved canopy

Dark and moist beneath tendrils
Coil softly
******* soft decay from sodden undergrowth
Lush and dry

Howls of monkey, flashing bird
And life oozing through every porous
Ant hole
Leaf loop
Trunk of wood hard grown, soft in death

This is the Jungle

Corner of the room
Crevice of mind the
Womb forest of warmth
Of home

Soft succulent home
Tender as bruised fruit
Fallen from high
Nourishing the nut
Seed of new delight

Fallen space makes crazy yearning for the light
Wet width of green green
Soft soft soft growth

Rivers spring up unannounced from the
Jungle
The Jungle is home
Home is soft green filtered light and wet wet
Water

Soft coils hammock me gently in the
Jungle
Home
Jungle

I saw your children
Playing
In the Fiery Pit

Unscorched


How the honest
Innocent

Survive

1
Tidal grief
Wore granite
To grain

Vapour plume
Sprays as Spirit
Does

Soaring-

Ether and never
So close together

2
Angels may climb
A ladder to
Greatness-

For others

Self soaks wings
With oil
And sinks
Back
Through soil-

Heaven/Hell
All spoil

"It is not quite finished"

"Well
Neither am I"

Kisses hot weld
Some cracks

Filigree gold fill
And line

Some iced crevace
Open sore

Olden heart not wholly pure
Yet not beyond repair

Beneath,
Worm wonders at
The taste of
Waste

Segmental separation
Breaks the cycling of
Soil

Seed that ***** at
Nourishment lies
Forlorn

And all the sun and rain

Bell peal
Through fog

Wake up
Seek the mountain

Beneath the thatch
Cozy
Relaxed

Legs stretch out

The gap between
Fire dance
And log

Summer twilight
Blushing colours
Merge and swirl

Subtle reds yellows blues

No brush visible-
Breath of god

My Lady must be near
Xylophone spine chimes

Touch of her Angel
Wing

Grey white
Gulls

Red chimney
Stack

Every year

Ark Ark

1
Drawn into the vortex
Of your life

By a formulaic
'How are you'

Hoarding memories
Like misers
As if identity were
A Thing
A Table, measured
And crafted

2
Or Self-real
When the very
Galaxies with
Dizzying speed

Belie the very
Notion of
Being

Amorphous time
Boxed,
Bagged fog pieced in
Handy seasons

Anniversaries
Of Nothing,
Events
Commemorations,

A drubbing of history
And nullification
Of failure.

3
No lights dim
City life

No Spring
Penetrates the
Screen

Plato sits in his
Cave
Weeping darkly,
Counting
Bodhidharmas
Eyelash
Over and over
Again

Tried to write
Wordless Poem

Perhaps succeeded

But could not share
So

What is the Use?

1
The spin of
Light and dark
Will stop

And following-

An overflow of
Red love or

The blank stare

Of nothingness

2

One day i held you

It is enough

3
Never and again
Will darkness spill
Over the edge of
A bowl
Shimmered into
Light,
Vibration of the miniscule
Energising the mighty

Pigment earth
Water
Tree paper hair brush
Hand eye brain
Trillion particles
Foot root head sky beyond

Mark on paper
Connection

Infinite time
Space definition

Mark of possibility
Existence being
Or gone

Stained and left
Forever to
Decay slowly

On this cave wall

Today

Two trout on a line

One struggling

It is

Making a path

By walking

Cold then hot the dish
By turns evolves a decadence
Of Death.

This blue green fungus is
Culture,
Renaissance can wait for
The Bloom of Dissolution to fade.

Hand dissolves in
Mind eye
And Survivors pick over the
Will of off-white Bones

****** of crows caw
And claw memorial at Westcliff prom

The Heroes
Mostly dead or
Dismembered

Whisper why on
Atlantic wind
West and why
Why

Strange how suns burn out
Tired of the light

Emerging from the Cave

Sunshine

Blinking
Drops form

Blue sky

Deep breath

Freedom

13 Pearls
In the sands of Arabia
12 got lost

Now where is the other