A W Bullen: Poems

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A W Bullen Jun 2020

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"Helmets back on"

sighed, Fox to The Owl

"the lock-down is lifting,
they're coming back out...."

Take your ******* home.

Acrostic

A W Bullen Mar 2017

Acrostic

A
Little
Piece
Of
*******
Wood.

Get back to me on this one...or not....Smoke on, drink on, be one XXXX

Against the Sun

A W Bullen May 2016

Against the Sun

I have to unhand her, unhold her,
spell a widdershins wander
to unpick the stitches of time
sewn together.

I have to unlive her, unlove her,
-muster a fiction, a line of defence,
a charm of protection, a cobbled pretence
to convince that I'm better without her,

- but to court a dementia
that summons a shade
to centre upon the mistakes
that we made-
is, itself, a deceit.

For there were such pleasures
embossed on the soul
to remain in forevers
that cannot be changed.

Anticity

A W Bullen Jul 2021

Anticity

No wonder
ants have flown

a ***-full of this pitiful metropolis
has seen them blow
their savings on a thermal

made them dinner
for a ministry
of manic snapping mandibles
who,wheeling on the gables
of the capital amenities

cannot believe their luck..

reeling high in my eleven
is a one-stop- tuck- shop
no-*****- given

as I'm peeling
off the sitter
on a forklift truck

Ants flew today!!

Arc

A W Bullen Jul 2022

Arc

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

A sermon on, "The Mount"

A W Bullen Aug 2017

A sermon on, "The Mount"

Beware the Incredible ******

The One who comes in the night.

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

and he will steal your bike.

what an absolute incredible bike-stealing ******

I'm good...it's all good...

Astir

A W Bullen Feb 2023

Astir

Slowly
it begins..

tiptoes down the bantam
skin, one bird awake

water holds both
cold and oldness
somehow fresh

and freezing air
grows, unaware

that yesterday
existed..

A lorry carries
off the stars

The barking dog

demands,

demands,

insistent as the car
alarming movement
at the window

Awen

A W Bullen Mar 2017

Awen

Cold stoles the coast in geisha voiles
of pawned Atlantic mourning, where

The plangent skirl of larids
carry through the vast exquisite
plains of February emptiness.

Aloft on coronal ruin, she flew
in free form falling, between the spheres
she grew in brightness, and by her stroke,
the moping shale, appeared , as if transformed.

She blessed the face of stained glass saints
hung loud on hallowed walls, From a
palisade of glinting brinks, she
hauled deserted chapels into
parishes of lambent wake
their majesties , reborn.

Axiom

A W Bullen Feb 2022

Axiom

I note
the bird sings
beautifully

but does not
sing for me

Azimuth

A W Bullen Dec 2021

Azimuth

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

Basal

A W Bullen Mar 2020

Basal

" 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!!!!!!

Birchwood

A W Bullen Aug 2020

Birchwood

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.

Birder Blooz

A W Bullen Jan 2021

Birder Blooz

Bet you that
the jet-stream brings,
the split ends of
old hurricanes,
pensions off
their stroppy baggage,
coughing up their
weeks of rain.

Feels wrong
without the cold

without Siskins,
without Redpolls...

...no outside chance
of white-winged gulls
appearing down
the bay...

Bone Idols

A W Bullen Sep 2023

Bone Idols

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...

Bottled Blackbird song

A W Bullen Jul 2017

Bottled Blackbird song

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.

Boundaries

A W Bullen May 2016

Boundaries

No sound disturbs
The cloud curled steeps of sea green pines
whose clinging oceanic thoughts
are freed, released from malted slopes.
Respired slow , the sallow spirals
herd to high, still, corrugations,
Their purse; a billion brooches
For their keep.

And, then a Raven
Barks its gloat across the drab pavilions
A dauntless hermit sculls away,
on myth buoyed strokes, to beat the bounds.
Carried from the pinioned ridge
away to secret monasteries.
Climbing from embroidered
oriental looms of Beech

An Autumn day in the Eifel region of Germany. The verse is really just selected field notes.

Buzzin'

A W Bullen Jul 2021

Buzzin'

I feed the Bees.

the Bees feed me.

sweet..

Canton Sirens

A W Bullen Jan 2017

Canton Sirens

When the torque of speech is such
that stapled teeth would seem a wiser lot.
When thought is but a hemlocked lash
of passionate disdain..

..then to the water I return...

A sack of cats for Naiads, hatched
about the reedy bridge, I’ll give
my all to them.
To cross their palms with lighter steps
I call to them from oily depths of
worn illumination.

Here, patience sees them come..

In winter cools of briny shift
to press their vagues upon the lips
of tinkers, by the flotsam slum..

..As Canton sirens pilot tension
through the gentian-violet haze,
so distant trains commemorate

a quiet absolution.

Carbon

A W Bullen Oct 2020

Carbon

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.

Chagrin

A W Bullen Jun 2018

Chagrin

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.

Chance

A W Bullen Aug 2021

Chance

We were only ever
moving through..

A transient
encounter pinked
in sprinkled serendipity

had synchronised
our step

and having met
before the bested peaks
of all that seemed unlikely
we stayed close.

Through
needless plays
of problematic metaphor,
we laughed and wept,
deplored enforced morality,
embraced a great unknown,

explored the cultic
sympathies, arrested
in our infancy
and swore an oath
eternal to the greenery
regrown..

..while knowing
well, the day will come
when one moves on
alone

take and embrace your chances

Chime- Hours

A W Bullen Jul 2016

Chime- Hours

The melting toll of empty hours,- chaste

Among the dry-stone steeples,-stirs

The cobbled rune of foetal wonder.

Forgotten waifs, in teasing, see

The scheming torpor of our ways

Then mingle in the vaults of our regret,

Through half closed eyes the

Unremembered rise on drafts

Of innocence, to spell their names

In Spirit in these scuttled, pin drop Realms.

The utters of an arcane tongue that

Whittled horses from the hill, now merge

Into the chiseled henge of lanterned Citadels.

Those born in the " Chime- Hours" were said to have " The sight"...

Chimera

A W Bullen Nov 2016

Chimera

A Robin, sang by lamplight,
unperturbed by herald evening’s
gathering throng..
As if gloom could be dispersed
by an almost, fragrant burst
of poignant song.

The carriage clocks whirr
now the hour has spoken
it ceases to be..
Oh to placate those
untouchable hands
of fortune and destiny.

Churches

A W Bullen Mar 24

Churches

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

Closing Time

A W Bullen Nov 2021

Closing Time

Leaning more to
Winter now,

I set a silent
time aside

become a thing
crepuscular,

led in and out
of twilights.

This vintner's loss
of glass-blown height,

too intricate
to comprehend,

like promises
we occupy,

leads meaning
to an end.

Cloves with a "T-H"

A W Bullen Oct 2021

Cloves with a "T-H"

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.

I recall a mate saying, that, come the weekend,
me must go shopping for some cloves,
This seemed a bit niche, almost a bit too leftfield, but then , hey! , maybe he was going through some grit with an iffy molar, or fancied early ( as in August-early) pipes on some mulled wine

"Nah, Bruv.."Cloves wiv a "T-H"..

Schooled, I was.

Consolamentum

A W Bullen Nov 2019

Consolamentum

Took, passing, as
my chosen word
a comfort-food of preference,
celestial confectionery,
indulgent mewl of movement.

It's a prudent lie
I stir myself

this spoon
of porch-light parable,
a home-brewed benediction
simpers, intimate angelica

infallible
as love....

Cornered

A W Bullen Oct 2017

Cornered

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.

Corvus Medicinae

A W Bullen Aug 2017

Corvus Medicinae

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.

Cov-ideas (1)

A W Bullen Feb 2021

Cov-ideas (1)

Disposable face-masks
make excellent hammocks
for Bohemian hamsters,

perfect for them to unwind,
while practicing their music
on those little hamster flutes

So, take it easy..
shin back and smoke out
those sunny afternoons
with the haunting
scuffle of hamster-jazz..

Crab

A W Bullen Feb 25

Crab

Old skin,

I swore,
I would not make

But here I claw
In all my flaking majesty...

Some sordid Lord
of all Misrule,

a gruelling fool
inglorious

anathema
to pitiful anatomy...

Craig Cerrig-gleisiad

A W Bullen Jun 2016

Craig Cerrig-gleisiad

The beryl high land smoulders….

Where skinny manes of cloven trailing, cuff
the rake of jumbled scree,
a porous crux of timbered carol
matins from the mossy shrine
to urchin on the bluff and draft
in nooks of birch and bilberry.

On that high dais, Corvid tribals
potter on the reeks of gale.
Fell boatman of the troubled storeys
quarter in some sleet cabal
to throw their onyx gauntlet down
a slating arc of fallow sky.

Crimen Exceptum

A W Bullen Jul 2020

Crimen Exceptum

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"

Crux

A W Bullen Nov 2021

Crux

In
our culture
of elusive truth

I
place
my faith
in doubt

Curlews

A W Bullen Nov 2016

Curlews

"...What other sound could be like this?

Which other note could trespass on
to where the likes of tears are formed?

What else speaks so well
of wilderness, of loneliness?

Which alternate voice could manifest
this desolate deliverance?

Such trifling themes as life and death
are kept in Curlew's calls..."

Curlews!...Heard one call in a white-out, not seen, just heard..stumbled across the corpse of a fresh ****, ..there was blood on snow,...shock breath mingled in the vapid loss of horizon.
We , like Curlews, will always feed on the margins of the everyday.....
If my voice could be anything like theirs...if only....I would swallow my share of lugworms to know their truths....

Dally

A W Bullen Oct 2023

Dally

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

Damascene

A W Bullen Jan 2021

Damascene

That we
are even here,
in this strange
existence, is
incredible enough

but of our peculiarities,

consider love...

You see,
I'll wager
love needs more...

and,
despite knowledge
to the contrary,

when our time comes,

when all
that I have shunned
and scorned, comes
home to haunt...

I will convince

myself, some part
of us endures,

that we go on,

reformed...

Drawing out the days

A W Bullen Jun 2017

Drawing out the days

It is
a lazy nod of orchid shift that sees
the poppies lean in times, where
glockenspiel lanyard clings are
goat herds on a Cretan rise.

Sweet boat-words claim a beltane fare
that calls to mind all Summers gone
in spools of warming solitude
that talk of when the Earth was young.

Bee Orchid
Goat bells/ yachts
Crete
Mortality

duck bored

A W Bullen Jan 2022

duck bored

Today is a duck
sort of day,

grey and windy
with waves
on lakes..

good for choppy,
bobbing,
not so great for
dabbling

but ducks find ways...

see,
to our
stuck look,
they're doing
duck-type stuff,

just as
the text book said

or

while they paddle
are they pondering
their station in the universe

expanding on the mysteries
of bread.

Dwells

A W Bullen Jul 2021

Dwells

The house has gone

that box that grew me wrong
is now
the storage for another's lot

and may the crate be good to them

Let them bring
it love and further, turn
the pile into a home,
to fold the walls around themselves
be welcome in their sanctuary.

God knows
the place deserves it..

but open doors
and windows first,
to set the spirits free,

For I wish you not
the likes of mine
that cowered
in its secrecy

a house is not always a home-I hope it now becomes one

Egress Atrium

A W Bullen Dec 2020

Egress Atrium

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.

..eh?.

A W Bullen Mar 2022

..eh?.

I was going
to text you

to let you know
I have your phone

but I have your phone,
so I couldn't text you,

but I guess you
didn't know...

I tried
to call you

you were out,

left a message
for you, bro..

like, I said,
I have your phone..

Ember

A W Bullen Oct 2023

Ember

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

Equinox

A W Bullen Sep 2021

Equinox

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..

Excelsior

A W Bullen Aug 2016

Excelsior

Toss these brackened antlers
to a Babylon of early crows
where slim repels of cirrus
lace the marches of Orion.
I wore you as an amulet
hard pressed upon my pestle arm
as charms of montane lunar drift
rebelled about your peacock gaze.

There is balsam on the Eastern run
in piquant writs of clementine ,
where jubilees of Persian mote
reveille in the waiting still.
As hieroglyphs of scrying palm
lay wraith about the cindered pane
you harried in ancestral bell..

The name of some forgotten God.

Experiment IV

A W Bullen Dec 2020

Experiment IV

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

Faith

A W Bullen Nov 2018

Faith

A quarter past
The afternoon,
back on the chair
of bevelled legs
Baffled
with the hex
of number
Tested
by the brooding
threat, incumbent.

Never been too
good at tables,
Better that
I eat alone
Seen, faceless men
in grim apparel
waiting for
a chance
to come,

Convincing
with their
bare contempt.

And, I
the part
of all my sums,
cannot explain
where it went wrong.

Sat playing
with the cornerstones
of new denominations.

keep title simple

Fatherland

A W Bullen May 2020

Fatherland

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.

Fieldcraft

A W Bullen Sep 2021

Fieldcraft

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

Fire Ships

A W Bullen Sep 2018

Fire Ships

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....