Sleep-walking

Having landed here from a far-off isle
And feeling upbeat in my pyjamas,
I follow sleep-walking signs and enquire
About the garden of Hesperides.

A dragon appears, and I stand rigid
In its shadow. I’m present in body,
But wholly absent in spirit and sense.
The brute is huge and I’m beyond weeping.

The golden apple tree bids me onward,
So I send flames from my sleeve and wave my
Arm as though I’m using a wand; I can
Surely banish this hideous monster.

Three women dance around the apple tree,
Causing dusk’s golden light to fill the sky.
I blow breath into their dancing and my
Pulse causes their memory to vanish.

With gusts of air, I decrease the light and
Increase the passing of hours. Then, spraying
Lyrics into the air with a fine sleepy dust,
I sing a lullaby that prompts their sleep.

Like an angel, fearing to tread, I make
My feet walk to the far distance, past the
Lullaby, and find a path through a gale,
Keeping an even keel with my head down.

When I spy the apple tree, the calm night
Welcomes me to its realm. I’m now truly
Ready to be amazed by the golden
Fruit or anything suspended in air.

In the moonlight, I head for the apples,
Never putting a foot wrong; I’m walking
On a moonbeam, being a star, reaching
Up to the golden globes in the branches.

Weighing gravity’s authority, I’m
Poised, ready to pluck my prize, so I grab
A branch, get pricked by thorns and hear my wife
Complain that I’m ruining her roses.

Dithering sleepwalk

Another year gone
And still I languish,
Drinking in memory before it dies.

Attending to dreams,
Neglecting the house,
Leaving the garden to butterflies.

Sleep is quite hopeless.
I am a scarecrow,
Standing stock still, with buttons for eyes.

Haunted by nightmares,
The road without rest,
Searching for you to undo goodbyes.

Dithering sleepwalk,
Past the dull wasteland,  
Lost, but still eager to fantasize.

Leaving no traces,
Frozen winds blowing,
I cherish the dream, despite the lies.

My hopeless yearning,
Hits fading echoes
On distant peaks and never survives.

The vibrant firmament

I want the full range, devotion, fervour, zest and
A collage of bright hues that can fill the heavens.

I want incisive action that prevents my cursors
From converging on conflicts that inhibit dance.

I want this world, this excited sphere, to be  
A magnificent stage set that isn't improbable.

I want music of shared gaiety and pleasure,
A song that will light the vibrant firmament.

I want the delights I imagined in earlier days,
An eagerness and a zeal that are everywhere.

I want to flavour my outer limits, to add new
And exuberant expressions to my vacant gaze.

I want deep red waves tipped with honey
And passions of every rhythm to swing to.

I want quick-eyed adventures and long slow
Embraces, giving reign to unexplored desires.

I want days of crazy randomness and not have
Urgent signals demanding that it’s time to hide.

I want to live in a smiling house of sensations
Where talk is an incessant wealth of cadences.

I want the floor of my sad defeated heart to be
The place where only vim and vigour explode.

I want hostility to end, the world to mend and
That peace which passes beyond understanding.

Under the Bridge

Do you remember that shaky, old bridge
With massive stone buttresses where you
Roused me to the glories of the underside?
You accepted the green slime and mould,
And declared this mythical mass, beautiful.

We gazed at the shadowy world below,
To the opaque water, callow and deep,
Where the vertical and horizontal meet,
Where firmness and fluidity reassemble,
Fixed yet flowing, a haunting, terrifying
And beautiful metaphor about what? Us?
Our culture, our ideas, our unconscious?  

I had no idea how the word beauty could
Describe this odd assortment of material,
Or how you knew that obscure vegetation
Grows in the depths of this stuff; its black
Flowers only blossoming in the darkness.

You converted dim matter into gentle reverie.
Mysteriously, you knew all this, while I, lost
And shaky, isolated solids, abandoned them.
Artefacts in my dreams were immobile, inert
Stuff, foreign to my nature. I left them dangling.
After our time on the bridge, material was no
Longer an imaginative deficiency I suffered from.

Someone said we have to go down to grow wings.
I was born borderline. I knew it could go either way.
Life was tough, so I went the hard way, it felt easier.
That’s OK for now. Who knows what happens later?
We just prepare ourselves for stories and changes.

Three Sonnets - out of Keats, Shakespeare and Coleridge

True minds for you

When I have fears that I may cease to write,
Lead me not to the marriage of true minds,
For the melodies will clog up my ear
And my pen will join with my teeming brain.
Admit convolutions; song does not sing
Like mawkish romance, or the murmuring
Heard from a wall of earnest, hard bound books -
Sounds alter seasons, while judgement must hear
A hornet’s nest on the first day of Spring.
Risk it for wonders that can fill your core,
Bend with removal men, freely add more:
Rhythmic sounds of sev’ral senses will change
The dark starry face of night, while thinking -
Having aimed it straight - will sleep near the mark.

A fancy fling

If your lonely breast rouses a mindful tear,
A huge cloudy symbol of high romance
That looks on tempests and is never shaken,
Then treat forlorn thought to a fancy fling
And know that you will never have to trace
Every wandering star back to base.
Find fragrance and dew under fortune’s wing,
Mix shadows with the magic hand of chance,
Whose worth’s unknown, though its rule is taken,
And play ‘til your sickly doubts are drooping.
After you feel the fairness of this hour,
Sing not the fool through rosy lips and cheeks,
Blossom anew and thrill at the news that
You can turn a lonely breast to fancy.

Love shifts your age

Bend his sickle, invite the compass more;
Duty’s strains keep you in memory's dream
Where bright fairy power hardly ever goes.
Love shifts your age, not by filling up weeks
With pale forms of past delights lived by eyes
That can’t reflect on zeal in the bedroom,
But by building lights round your edgy gloom.
Paint a peach on love's pale cheek, try surprise,
Start anew in the wide, wide world and think…
If this be error and upon me proved,
That pleasure’s smiles are faint and beauteous lies
Voiced to cut love to nought before it sinks,
I never sang, nor no man ever loved
Or pictured a rainbow over a stream.

Rumours for Tumours

It is rumoured that all objects
Living in you and out have an
Intrinsic imagination.
This is talked of in fairy tales.
Think of your forebears who escaped
Sorcery with the ancient art of
Projecting identity; they could
Settle their endangered soul in
A tree, threat free, to return again
When calm times favoured connection.

Could you now proceed by walking
Buoyantly into poetry,
Where your body cells commune with
Matter’s unspoken narratives?
Could you remove tumours using
This ancient intelligence?
Trust objects, call them your allies,
Teach them to listen and fight for you.
Inspire healthy cells to pester
And break-up your foreign bodies.

To make your body a safe haven,
Forget sympathy, breed great love.
Take all the sunlight you’ve fed on
High above the clouds, load it in your
Heart’s light-projecting ray gun and
Shower the tumours whenever
You have the energy - always
Imagining their surprise and
Magical dissolution, like
Wet snails melting into thin air.

The Human side of Nature

John Ashbery and Janas Salk both said
There’s nothing specific for us to do;
Our wisdom arrives by necessity.
Some growing is crucial, but this we do
Inherently, just by evolution;
We can simply submit to acceptance,
Learn how to anticipate the future,
Track the rhythms of growth and submit to
Inclinations that dance fandango for
Well-being and flamenco for the cells.

We can hear through bones, as well as the ears,
And the spellbinding, multi-layered tales
Told by old shamans cultivate benign
Instincts for our future’s broadmindedness.
When frequent blunders become more acute
It is time to start swinging from the heart.  
As new loves are born, there is no need to
Immunize against the negative swoon,
The old way of judging is out, it was
Never kind to flowers or buoyancy.

Having experienced the infection,
Shun old paths and the acceptance of fear,
We’ll easily recognise the pattern
Of lethargy when connections increase.
Keep open, keep scanning, grow a thin skin,
Have a bird's eye view and a worm's eye view,
Elbow out the dominance of cash flow,
We’ve no need to carry investors.
Merge with the creative neutral misfits
Who practice positive simplicity.

Discontent expresses the driving force,  
But constant interference is the norm;
Let the next evolution process be
Upon us, in us, with us and through us.
Make affection the newfound bravery,
Multiply magnanimous attention,  
Send reasoning to the intuition’s
Department, observe the new unfolding,
Assist what’s unsupported and learn how
To breeze with time at perception HQ.

Attend wholeheartedly to unlearning,
Start giving evolution a purpose.
We’re ripe for falling steadily into
Ourselves, making each new day a life-span.
Anticipate the future; it’s fine now
To stumble upon self-consciousness.
We had wisdom, without too much knowledge,
Then we developed fear, replaced benign
Casualness with scary risk forecasts and
Stopped the good old carefree buzz from humming.

If we have no wisdom to govern the
Knowledge, let the custard pies be our guide,
They will aid the inception of slapstick.
We have the right genes for this and they will
Activate fast when people are ready;
This affirms the collective certainty
That each of us has a different purpose.
Anything is only worth the candle
If you make frisky hearts the starting point,
And celebrations of beauty the norm.