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250 · Jan 2021
New Year's Day
A W Bullen Jan 2021
brought no bell,
or call-to-arms,
no rush of Prussian
blood to head
the ball into an
empty net, no change
in current sea levels...

no harm befell
the coppiced shoots
of brutal resolutions,
proving atheist
relationships are
worth their weight
to any fool...

and
no-one but
the very best,
would deign
to chance a
second guess
of getting into heaven

on this first day
of the year.
249 · Dec 2021
Azimuth
A W Bullen Dec 2021
And I shall
flinch the brittle creature
from the rock face

proclamate,
proselytize,
with frightening
euphoria

to your glorious embrace,
I must comply,

perching
vulturine, delirious
impervious to pain

near that place
between excitement
and all possible regret

I will go by
249 · Feb 2023
Patience..
A W Bullen Feb 2023
was a virtue
gentle and benign,
she offered up her qualities

but no-one had the time..
247 · Sep 2021
The Bends
A W Bullen Sep 2021
The kirlian singe
of a kingfisher
wins me round ,

slaps me from
my prole malaise

his cobalt-button, blazing buckshot,
nervous surge of gaudy purpose,
willow- hurdled Catherine wheel
whirring ...

is something of the infinite
disposed in our positioning

both impish lairds of nook and fen
don hedge-smoke caps
of leafy tan

by coveting his oxygen,
I'm coming up
for air too quickly

bursting round
the cockling brook
of rain-sung river bends
246 · Oct 2021
Hounds
A W Bullen Oct 2021
Rarely
can I make this
whole thing sober...

Historically
my tendencies repeat

The overbearing drudgery
not drug enough,
to satiate,
an Oppenheimer heart
diseased and dazed...

Descend/Ascend
to keep me keen and craving,

my acts of upshot mummery
beget the beg of cleansing

Unpack
the hounds that call me
by so many other names

Let them run
me down to sweet
disintegration
246 · Sep 2023
Bone Idols
A W Bullen Sep 2023
Long time - no sea

and feelings of the ocean-pull
have gained the upper hand,

There is nothing here
in writing,

just pigeon- breasted
righteousness,
increasing stipulations

All that meadowsweet
and moonshine ran,
to desert sand androgony

sank lower
than the daily dip
of fire's head in middle distance

Dizzy social densities
imported inner-city syndromes
proffer only impotence
of temporary reprieve

seems hard to bed
the disenchanted,
sickening for cigarettes
for solitary epithets

-ennui-

So, hide away
demands that breed
the need to know the answers

Been peeking
round the prism bars
empowered sense of self defeat

For sugared-melon hedonism
far too many lines have soured

Long,

Long time - no sea...
245 · Nov 2017
Hagiography
A W Bullen Nov 2017
I found myself smiling,
a telescope finding my
own private Jupiter
cooped in the noose
of a bulb

Yes,
its stupid to measure in hope-
-  this I know
but I’m told it's the last
thing to die....

So why would
I sully such luminary
wisdom...

.. . In  kingdoms of
merciless churches I find
myself smiling

  ...the search is still on
for a cause to believe in

but I shall be biding
my time.
244 · Oct 2021
Godless
A W Bullen Oct 2021
When I met a girl
called Trixie

I knew
The World
was Godless

Her second name
was "Smith"

I had prayed
it would be

"Hobbitsies"
242 · Mar 24
Churches
A W Bullen Mar 24
Tapping
sleepy gathers

in the bombed-out
church of expectation,

fundamental frequencies

too cynical to pray

Because
the senses crave
mistake

I worship
from afar

these days,

when everything
that's ever loved

leaves something else

betrayed
241 · Jul 2021
In Extremis
A W Bullen Jul 2021
between extremes
the meaning leaves

a state that we abhor

to scheme a pretence
sense of peace,
it seems
we must have war
we will fill the god-shaped hole
with new monsters of our making

"A cause- a cause!...my Kingdom for a cause!"
240 · Jun 2020
Iris
A W Bullen Jun 2020
Dark circles drew my eyes to be,
downcast by curse of present time

Bewildered, would I watch and follow
aching for the lost sublime....
239 · Jan 2023
Resolve
A W Bullen Jan 2023
On
this crest
a learn of words

From the ruby
throated humming
burns a burst of brittle
somethings loved

as we remember
better times,
from vicious
days that were...

At the falling
of its maker,
promise ends

for the bravest
of our betting
is but pennies
in the fountain

take a moment
to attend the honour
promises deserve

then return into the light,
a brighter soul...
January
If we are not careful can collapse in on itself.
To some, in the darkened hemisphere, it can be like standing barefoot in a bucket of cold water staring down the bleak North wind, salted eyes, seeing nothing more than an accident of birth.

Divorce and suicide rates run high in this first of months.

Nothing, is always, as , always is nothing and we were born to feel something in between the birth and death of everything.
Sensorial, corporeal, our matter is a moment  to no-one  but our minds.

Be careful in/out there...

Mind how you go
237 · Aug 2017
Last Century
A W Bullen Aug 2017
I would swear
we are the last of our kind,
blinkered end-time visionaries
perhaps.
Implausible romantics
shaping formless
ideology with exhausted
sensibilities

And

I know we shall
not reach outside
this century.

Yet there remains
that perfect space

between my fingers

for your hand.
234 · Jul 2021
Killing Time
A W Bullen Jul 2021
Throw
me down
the ropes

I'll see it
that they're
put to purpose,

taking up
the slack, I'll choke
the life from all this nonsense,

Be sure
to leave a note

make it something
inappropriate,

on outcomes
and inconsequence

to show
we're killing time.
Humanity- such potential

currently a waste of time and space

less division- less egoism

need to redirect our energies toward something unifying
232 · Oct 2021
Now..
A W Bullen Oct 2021
Is
not
these lines
just written,

nor
is it the
length of time
it took you
to consider them

Now,

is but
a slipstream,

a continuum
of reverb

a synonym
of echoes

in our vanishing
of space
The paradox of now,


"All aboard the ouroboros!- Next stop doesn't exist-" tickets please!
228 · Oct 2021
Longships Road
A W Bullen Oct 2021
And on this sluggard
mattress find me

slipping
from a cast
of frazzled intrigues...

A continental tiredness
has undermined
all frequency,
alleviated
monologues

and more...

Gone
overboard,
abating, freighting
ingots by the pocketful

To soothing leagues
of mazarine,

I

dolphin

down

invisible




While
off the prow
of Longships Road,

the morning wades in tall

A nascent scent of wet light glares,
cetacean skinned.

Invincible.
sleep
A W Bullen Jan 2021
The exercise
was " Charity"

an essay on ,"That
which we hope
to receive".

I,
half-asleep
had misunderstood,

submitted a paper
on "Blow-jobs"...
226 · Jan 20
Hark
A W Bullen Jan 20
The hearth had yet
to warm a toe, an hour
before the paling

The rain had gone

now comes the cold

profound, inactive ,cold

Assumed a duelling clarion
across the mustered aerials,,

slung, humboldt in the jangled dark,
inanimate
In the hush of these ice-bound mornings,
sound travels,
The local lesser-black backs have
a regular tear-up with a couple of herons
that kip down by the frozen willow,
On low-pressure mornings, it's all a bit windy
and lost
In the cold-high-overs it hovers
forever, cupping the lowland with voice
224 · Jul 2021
Buzzin'
A W Bullen Jul 2021
I feed the Bees.

the Bees feed me.
sweet..
223 · Feb 2021
My ol' boots
A W Bullen Feb 2021
Won us big
the ol  stank yard,

saw Maggie
over twice the shy..

Good girl
she was
and ever
will mean

nothing
to the lads
mind...

Glee to blade
all smart
an *******

gave, em glass
an brought em
gin, just

couldn't
stand
the rags
she danced
in....

left her
bounce
around the Elm

done well
my rigid
preacher
roots....

shone
my ol  boots
and
kept 'em
marching

frightened
fools
that we be
reaping

bringing out
the shift
and moving
on....
222 · Dec 2020
Experiment IV
A W Bullen Dec 2020
When waving
to passengers
on passing trains,
I have observed
that a I elicit
a more favourable
response

when I remove
the clown mask and
put my clothes back on.
'T'is The  Season
219 · Jun 2020
Halo
A W Bullen Jun 2020
She, is that flower unopened,
in quieter moments,
she washes him clean,
a theme behind secrets
unspoken,
not of ether, nor clay,
but of somewhere between.

He, with his pallid complexion,
loves nothing of Earth,
even less of the air,
for all that are given
direction,
are places or houses
that she cannot share...
218 · Sep 2021
Fieldcraft
A W Bullen Sep 2021
A while to get the eye back in
reconstitute the faculty
for feeling without
touch

-the repetitious ritual
makes for cover on the open road-

A villainy of tree-lined habits
camouflage, dissimulate,
reject the townsmen fidget

and all must age inside the barrel,
thicken in its oaken recess

slivered for the minutes
of its instinct
206 · Dec 2017
Secret Birds
A W Bullen Dec 2017
Lost leaves ago, before
the bark- clad savage
ruled with iron lung,
when  laurels of
a one- room den, grew
sleek with wet- lid plunder
my sauntering in tousles of
a quick and crease-less happiness
percieved the gifted wish of secret birds.

birds that combed the milking beech
in lemon centred madrigals
to cove their Egypt orison
from dragon banks of slippered fern
Who threw their mooted sermons on
a shivering uncertainty that bubbled
through my vernal rut of optimistic blood


Such useless pleasure, I was told
That I was not a Father's son
yet bore his term an absolute.
As all my nimble colours ran, I
wore his pungent bitterness
Became the thing that he preferred

Before the dungeon keys had turned
basket weaving weeks of youth

I took the gifted wish
of secret birds.
204 · Jul 2020
Crimen Exceptum
A W Bullen Jul 2020
Whist now, love
speak quietly,
and keep your symbol,
close about you.
Only meet in darkness,
while this zealotry
prevails,

for they will
raze the sacrosanct to
filth of unkempt alleyways,
in mutilated outrage of
their tyrannous brigades...

Pray,

stay your song
inside yourself,
go placid into nothingness,
say little of your learning
hood the wisdom of your word,

They will come,
these new Inquisitors,
with torches for their narrative,

our difference is a Witchcraft,

and the Witches must be burned...
"Crimen Exceptum"
199 · Oct 2023
Out of focus
A W Bullen Oct 2023
All this life
has left me staring,
passed me by as I was standing,
hands in pockets, thinking,
planning, something
I'm unsure of.
197 · Apr 20
In to Blue
A W Bullen Apr 20
Under this
is nothing new

flown


over my dead bodyweight
the sky reprises peace...

Though trauma grows its
root in dream,

I clover on a pearl
of sleep

upended by
a tender sun

gone


falling into

blue
?  once,
196 · Nov 2020
St Joan
A W Bullen Nov 2020
Watched
you in white.
How you crossed your
sceptered body, glazing
ludicrous contortions

Supple-legged exaggerations
***-shod, patent platforms
towered, figure-hugged
and cut to high indecency...

Ah, the slow-cooked
incandescence, that you
struggle to contain....

though pay no mind
to likes of me,
a letching scrag
who yearns to see you

set yourself on fire....
tag'em
bag 'em
burn 'em
turn 'em
in to Saints..

Ah, the righteous poetical justice of Catholicism
194 · Nov 2020
Rite
A W Bullen Nov 2020
Come mid -winter
they will wait

wait to hear
this lease of life,
call, frost-lipped
on the shortest watch...

To crystallize
the pent unmowed
with isolated vocals,
I draw breath...

address
the talling Solstice
as some celebrant
of picturesque...

I shape the names
of absent faces

warm against
December sky
193 · Dec 2019
Liberty Belle
A W Bullen Dec 2019
It's
the little
things,
my Liberty..

that day we caught
the train, you pressed
your lips against my
startled ear, insisted
you were soaking....

...laughed
at my confusion when
I said it wasn't raining,

your impish
observation ceded,
light, for me, dawns slowly..

...waited
for the tunnel thrash
to sit astride
and show me....
187 · Dec 2020
Egress Atrium
A W Bullen Dec 2020
Tolled
one-rolled-bone away
from sweet inconsequence

thereby, the flicker
of an exit-sign, the
grand idea of life's
unlearning flirted

hinted
hands around
the throat of fate
were ultimately mine...

and to the
suitably anesthetized,
the rubbing clean
of canvasses,
the pulling down
of blinds,
appeared enthralling...

a cobbler's thumb
of fumbled ruse,
the blueprints
to a master-plan,
a calling card that
meant no other morning
after all...

Bowled
one-rolled-bone away
from all that greatness

an acolyte
invertebrate, upended
in some milky way,

the lateness
of my dragon-chasing
thawed all rude persuasion

reanimating appetites
in dubious remains.
186 · Oct 2020
Carbon
A W Bullen Oct 2020
All abound
in crimson throws,
low lamentation
bids farewell,
for beaten folk, who,
troubled tread
for light has failed
to find them.

Endorphins dull
the sting of use
as fractured boarders
pall away.
Three times removed,
yet leaving nought,
save footprints
far behind them.
183 · Oct 2023
Dally
A W Bullen Oct 2023
Pre somnabulation
I would taste the breeze

tease
the dew-lit louche
revealing airborne revelations

tingle,
soft of foot, divining
cool uncomplication

drinking deeply of
the hill-born wood
contented

in
passive eccentricity,
I celebrated unison

a humbling becoming
only dignity condones

When transitory laxity
forgave my foreign callowness

I took the private brook
to where the quiet rooks row home..
once  upon-a -time

louche/ absinthe
182 · Jul 2020
Outreach
A W Bullen Jul 2020
Shovel out
the rook-black rain,
best travel light,
a cause unlaboured.

slavered at
the kissing-gate,

for sights that pull,
these paper hands
through cataracts
of fuddled scurf,

a road to chance
misunderstood,
and all because
the footsteps hurt...

it's Love and Hope,
those well-worn soles

that lead us ever onward...
177 · Oct 2023
Ember
A W Bullen Oct 2023
Wind
has banked,
-grown little teeth-,
portentous new alignments
meet , exaggerated,
weather veined,
behind impatient
branches

Flames divine
entrancing shivers
breath, a ghost
an omen passed,
fragments carried,
Icy river
Holly-crowned,

She dances
173 · Jan 2020
Yen
A W Bullen Jan 2020
Yen
But when the Sun
is done with us

and dust has
earned its Earth,

I will meet you
in the morning tree

when we come back
as birds......
172 · Jun 2020
0!0
A W Bullen Jun 2020
0!0
"Helmets back on"

sighed, Fox to The Owl

"the lock-down is lifting,
they're coming back out...."
Take your ******* home.
171 · Jun 2020
Guilt-edging
A W Bullen Jun 2020
...and there are days
           when Imagine you
in ways, I really
          shouldn't do..

But, ****!.....
         it feels good...
171 · Oct 2020
Id
A W Bullen Oct 2020
Id
Can pick a Sprawk
from six blocks down,
its diagnostic flap-flap glide
is dialed-in

embedded

a wing-flash on a Bonxie,
in the wild race of channel swell,
pronounced against
the leaded screed
of unforgiving
energies

seems simple


then see me
with the photographs,

those passports
to the pastoral...

unable to identify


i turn my my face away
Sprawk- Sparrowhawk
Bonxie- Great Skua
170 · May 2020
Flowed...
A W Bullen May 2020
yeah,
locked-down
but loaded,

got me
go-to beats
of Thievery



..... ain't no such thing
as too much sunshine.....



Snowed-in by
the blue-sky walls

apparently
the coast is clear......

time redefines reality
and drifts on outta here....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvRsn-5SqSA

for years Thievery Corporation have propped my go-to stash of  kick-back tunes- musical therapy  and plenty many-mucho eargasms-
Caught them twice in London- brilliant live...
Love to hit that play button, dip my toes in warm- palm beats, curl like smoke on the give of an old sofa,... and float out, blissed into the waiting cosmos...

Honor among Thieves
168 · Oct 2020
Gone South
A W Bullen Oct 2020
Shot loudness
from the crowding shout,
the posing packs of people
taking photos of themselves

got time to pick a slick
of litter left by those
who tell me that
my life has left
the planet broken

         - "please!"-

I could break
your gastric banners
in a manner that this show deserves,
embrace my inner misanthrope

and ***** off South to be with trees.
Context required:

I agree with the message behind the protests- who doesn't?

But a billion people making small differences can amount to extraordinary change.

Let your green spaces grow wild.
Drive less
Fly less
Eat less red-meat.
Walk
Cycle
Less time using the net
Read more
Educate ourselves.
Consume less- in all industries.

Small changes x billions..
Stop pointing the finger and start making informed choices.
Ultimately its up to us.
166 · Aug 2020
Birchwood
A W Bullen Aug 2020
It was there
we ran like
lambs to laughter,
loved by landscape
further faster,

faster than
a smarting starlight,
hoofed in dew-soaked
volleys from our meadow
kicking feet..

and onward, upward

beat
those tracks
of flattened rye,
then took the dry-stream
bed by storm,

leapt the dams,
with air-sprung ease,  
and wore our leaf-haired
voices wider

quelled our glare
in sky-torn ponds
at peace,
  
with
our surrounding....


so
where, to, now
the Birchwood boys,
our atoms split,
our cells dividing

chided,
from our
founding frolic,

gone to chase
the last day down.
165 · Mar 2020
Basal
A W Bullen Mar 2020
" It's why
these things
will always be
bigger than us"

        ......

In truth it's been
a long time coming

Something only seen
beneath the scrutiny
of microscopes
has found us out,

undermined
our house of cards
and sped us to
our place
of fear

Now
fighting
over pasta
milk and money
we appear no more
than primitive....
This pandemic has given rise to testing times, but what has shocked me is the hording mentality of many shoppers.
A picture taken of an elderly woman, with a shopping basket looking at empty shelves, really ****** me off. There is no need for this to happen at all!
We should be absolutely ashamed of ourselves, at this wanton display of greed...really!!!!
Some of our older generation can still recall rationing- and our avarice has subjected them to this- it's ******* disgraceful !, our knuckle-dragging first-come, first-serve attitude needs to be binned off, right now!!!

Fair play to the Supermarkets who have set aside specific hours for the elderly and the emergency/ health workers.

Shame on the people who made these specific hours a necessity.

Get a ******* grip!!!!!!
164 · Aug 2020
Twist
A W Bullen Aug 2020
I have
elemental
emblems,
tattooed
on my knuckles...

there are
days she loves
to feel the forces
stirring deep within...
163 · Feb 17
Some Golden Ratio
A W Bullen Feb 17
Shouldered cold
bent deep in grims of collar
turns to maddened hash
of blustered sleet

the walk to wear
is work itself,

A solemn
adamantine morning, pleads
me to ignore the well of failing
human kindness,

by this hand I try
to see

predicaments of alder
whip lacuna from the
mindless face

that beauty
is but symmetry

thus ,crudely overrated

and then again
there's Winter Jasmine,

understated, famined stem
emblazoned with the gemstones
of its flower

now the winter sour, sweetens
cracks the lip a timid noise

pouring forth,
some golden ratio,

sulphur trill of banished voice
163 · Oct 2020
Untitled
A W Bullen Oct 2020
too soon
they are in everything
both in and in between
the knowing.

treasuries of episode,
the elegies of reparation,
somehow, going, lightly,
when a calibrated wind
vows warm

gone
grateful to this
small of mercy,
swore, there to be thankful
where a poorly driven splinter
can not take the best
of all they gave...

this saviour
comes, circadian
to set these fraught
emotions down.
an apogee of
deep-green-sleep
that pays the ghost
to rest.....
161 · Aug 2020
Resolving Host
A W Bullen Aug 2020
The shock
and awe of
ordinary mornings,
saw me,
hat-in-hand,
plans slipped back
to the protein grain...

for
all my
false geometry,
the same
old pseudo attributes
exposed,

cloned,
sky-clad,
in this laughing gas
of dissipating
aspiration,

nothing more
than occupation,
poked in fear
and sold unease...




they never said,
the way would lead,
to any place but here...


but here
is where I'll stall
to find particulates
of dream.
158 · May 2020
Fatherland
A W Bullen May 2020
You remove the joy
then as sure as endings
faith will follow..

It takes time to beat the boy
the young can mend,
are resilient
but persevere
the cracks will
widen.

Fill that space
with fear,
shame
ridicule,
despair

let that
fatten.

Marinade
in isolation.

There you
have him.
Have him
beaten...

So kick him out
as Man.
Out
into the plan-less
waste of living,

Then watch the fruit
of all achievement
cast from your
own spiteful holding

rot beneath
the tree
from which
it fell....
not gender specific

there are many shot down by the starting pistol.
155 · Jul 2020
Thoughtless
A W Bullen Jul 2020
Threw the pebble
into the sea,

a billion years
in to a billion years...

a stoop, a grab,
a swing of the arm...

thought nothing
of it...
155 · Jun 2020
Portraits
A W Bullen Jun 2020
Myth explodes
in tinted showers
spectrums gather hidden forces
God-led powers coursing
through these vibrant linen layers.
 
Pith unloads
sweet minted flowers.
question matter, given sources.
Cadence laced with light, displaced
embodiment of prayer.
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