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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
A W Bullen Sep 2018
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....
A W Bullen Dec 2021
As I recall
we watched together,

turning off
the upstairs light

we huddled by our
landing window.

bundled
under burgundy

We stared across
the road, toward

that solitary
street lamp

both silenced,
by the wonder
of it all...



So when
the first flakes fall

I become that child,
once more,

my face behind
the curtain

forehead pressed
to freezing glass,

being careful
with the breathing..

living only
for the quiet snow



some part of me
expecting you
to be here
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
A W Bullen Aug 2021
Overcome
by strange remorse

the sun-dyed pomp
of plaintive hursts
immerse
my soul in colour

Saint Lawrence
sheds his vehement tears
the axis
of the year is shifted,

watched our Swifts
on their way out

the charging weeks
are done.
First stanza a forethought
Although the departure saddens, it heralds change-Autumn and leaf-turn. the second inbound avian wave- waders, wildfowl, thrushes- the raptors descend from the highlands to the marshes.

The Tears of St Lawrence- colloquialism for Perseids- meteors associated with Swift-Tuttle debris mid August

Swifts seem to mass over the bay at this time  "last-in -first-out migrants" could the Perseids be the celestial trigger for their gathering, a seasonal clock-tick to move them on?
Their numbers fly quietly, this time, a contrast to the scything charges that screamed about the old town chimneys as the young birds knew their wings

"Hurst"- Wooded hill/Woodland

"Swift"- "Apus Apus"- "Footless"
A W Bullen Sep 2018
Of late
the sergeant thrill-to-burn,
remains, at best unorthodox,
a cutter’s stock of winsome blend
compiled in slim anthologies.
To date, an urgent threnody
bates, cider- pressed, impertinent
as bargain basement demagogues
renounce their crass belief.

Rude, canon-balled, eccentrics
venting, hurt- inflected metaphors,
unpoured memento-mori, cursing
absence of reprieve.
Misfortune flavoured pockets, line
the boxcar-lite Praetorian,
event amended anecdotes, plied
ammonite in grief.
A W Bullen Jun 2016
In the second hand soothing
of darkest address: frost crawls.
Having crept down the alleys
on  serpentine silvers
to pilfer the vaults of an Indian Summer,
in crystalline raiment
the malachite pavements
succumb to its covering sprawl.

On shellac returns of lamp delta falls
minutiae maraud in bitter sweet symmetry
shattering petals, encasing in glass
the Stella shot run of the vine.
A glacier tourniquet scuppers the mold
an accomplished assassin of natural device,
with icy indifference it hushes the *****:

The Moon, for the life in her eyes.
A W Bullen Sep 2020
he sounds
her name..

it resonates

it focuses
on all she is..

this
love betides
her guiding speak,
her plainsong, warm
philosophies,

inseparable
and binding...

and what
she gives is
immeasurable

a
pleasurable
unweaving of
that self-perceiving
lie,
leaving him
stripped, yet
unashamed

but dying,

dying
to live like
this forever...
A W Bullen Jun 2023
So you identify
as a cat,...

I'm alright with that

come in through the flap
in the back door ,

eat jellied meat from a bowl on the floor

crap in a tray or lay
cables in neighbours
back yards

Shouldn't be hard to tell

you're a cat

Beeline to your feline kin, slapping
the thatch off a whiskery chin
and yowling like grief

treating your mates
to a corpse of a bird
that you hold In
your teeth

lie on the sack
with your tongue in your crack

and I'll back you're a cat

But I think you'll change

in fact,

I'm willing to bet

When you're not so busy,
oh, little Miss Frisky

We're taking a trip
to the vet
just seen a bus load of reality heading South-need to get out there and turn it around- enough of this *******!
A W Bullen Feb 2022
So I gave Bob Dylan
a Greylag Goose

( for his wildfowl collection)

I phoned him and asked
what the bird was up to
and he started to reply,

" The Anser, my friend..."

- get the folk outta here, Bob!
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"
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.
A W Bullen Mar 2021
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..
A W Bullen Jul 2022
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...
A W Bullen Jun 2019
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.
A W Bullen Aug 2021
No such
thing as weeds,

only wilderness
where you don't want it..
go no-mow
A W Bullen Jun 2020
...and there are days
           when Imagine you
in ways, I really
          shouldn't do..

But, ****!.....
         it feels good...
A W Bullen Aug 2018
Up wind- cuffed pathways

chanced and fooled

I saw her, briefly



Her briskly dress, a squalling maul

of last year's favourite maple, horned

in all jurassic passion, met me,

dizzy, by the lee-side wall

with gale-borne abandon.
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.
A W Bullen Oct 2017
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
Mania under lock and key, a slightly shaking pair of hands.
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...
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
A W Bullen Jul 2019
am conscious
of the ticking clock

how
the bleached reef
of a window frame
intimidates,
says
something
of a heed untaken,
propagates the
cloud-seed doubt
with lightly spoken
fallacy,

recoiling
on a layman
tongue.


Am
aware of where
the sentence stops.

where syllables
of rhinestone rain,
call sibylline ,

reverberate

in thick
galactic suburbs.

How
soporific
doppler-shifts of
moving conversation
played me, staring
down the outpost
of my unbecoming
walls.
A W Bullen Oct 2017
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.
A W Bullen Apr 2022
The house bound head
had heard the news

old-money descant
dipped in dog-rose

Tuning forks
for goat-foot Gods
curating song
bedazzled zones

The crown
emblazoned sink estate
retained the annual Pilgrim's rite

where
roundelays
round every door
bore cherry blossom white
A W Bullen Dec 2016
You are close...

There is musk about your scattered limbs,
Sweet silvers on your Southern drawl,
Deep heat pinned papillon..

Let us pull these pearls
A little tighter...

Recite the hymns
That stoke the fires

From bended knee

Excite these summoned energies,
To crave these hearsay heresies

And see.....

Our war- paint , wild existence
With a  freedom seldom known.
A W Bullen Dec 2021
I
have
grasped
how cold
it's grown

now I
cannot feel
your hands..
A W Bullen May 2021
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...
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
A W Bullen Aug 25
When younger tongues
were free of froth
when softened air propelled
the word in hungered myths
of coppice smoke,
that somehow spoke of home...


Alone
but never lonely
in the healing of a wood

befriended
green redeemer stood
a deep fermented sense
of something constant..
A W Bullen Nov 2023
Time..

slipping
from the parapets

a rorschach night
laid out below

If mine
is but a little while

then yours is not
for me to know

so, glittering
away, we leapt

from all convention
disavowed

restoring
golden folklores

with our whispering
of owls
shhhh
A W Bullen Dec 2022
My trepid step
has long abandoned
carefree whips of youth,

Thus, gingerly I test
the bridge for traction,

A full beam darkness
buckles back
the harness of my shame

misleading
ever older bones
across this gaunt canal
fleshing the knuckle of the conversation that started with, "The bridge, by me is ****** with ice"
Caution is a boomerang, that, once thrown- may disappear for years- but it will return, and return hard-  
For me, it's in my early 50's- approaching a decking bridge, slick with ice, reaching into my pocket  and thinking "****!, where did that boomerang come from?"

I crossed the bridge- it was pathetic- thank the Lord and all his bearded chums, it was dark...
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
A W Bullen Jan 2017
As above...


...Your sky-dial feline mind, unzips
Bold rose-hip teems of fervour, kept
On ice, throughout the needle of
the duty-bound laborious.

You have geared the slug of
greased machines have
waited tables overseas,
have moved your shoes
to rythms of inconsequence.

So below...

Call talons from your lava skin,
in tracings of a milky way, step
ladders through the cotton fields
to set aside a broken string.

Float, leaf, about your symetries
to crook your spine in Gothic arches.
Sovereign , deep in quicksand warmth
through paths of least resistance.

Dissolve in waves of ageless truth
dashesd amber over Roman tiles.
In wild writhes of curling fern,

Your body shines obsidian.
A W Bullen Jul 2022
.
In this
asphalt
halitosis,
growing tired
of my kind

noting doltish
bovine, influence
as drivers of despair,

I fair
impossibly


To think
my smaller feeling
called the villagers
to prayer,

two hundred
miles East of here
In wealds of hop and apple..

How
I wring these
calloused grapples, well,

aware of my atrocities

confiding to be someone else,

sometime away from this
A W Bullen Apr 2020
Of course
it has to end
one day,
it always does..

but not like this...

so, now is not
the time to lose,
that bright and burning
will, that serves you well
beyond the quarantine
of rich imaginations.

And, should those
feral torments run,
then face them down
assured, for you are
stronger with this love
that coves, your everything
and more....

Of course
it has to end
one day,
it always does

but not like this..

then,
to the sound of bells
we'll tell of days we braved,

together...
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!"
A W Bullen Jun 2020
It comes in easy

this
espadrilled hegemony
that nibbles through
the idle clag
of unimportant
words...

the first
acerbic adjectives
drag sadness to these surfaces....

run, tampering, with dials
of a slow,
                   unworldly,
                         progress.....



enrolled
b­etween their  cursive loop,
we live a life in service
to these no-uncertain terms.....
Pavlovian responses,
Influences,
Illusion of free will
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,
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....
A W Bullen Sep 2021
..I'm
running
dry

stagnating
in these crude resides

too easily
this wind-farmed face
betrays my base emotions

As the alleyways incarcerate,

their nauseating politics
unqualify my
sympathetic
ear


Therefore..


If I appear
uninterested
its just
because


I am
Cogito ergo sum- 4 yer Mum!
A W Bullen Jun 2021
drank
too much
again last night,
bred fury
through the bars
and taverns...

fed,
the maddened
cannibal, on
vaticidal unions....


came around,
down early bells,
head, supercelled,
expedient..

could not
believe what lay
beneath the subways

of Jerusalem
working title
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
A W Bullen Mar 2021
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...
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.
A W Bullen May 2020
Gone sparingly
about the lane
as I have laid some
cause to rest

had turned
the tide of thought
to leave me grateful

then I look to you,
as if I could,
to find you there,
the where, you would

alive,
among the latter
days of April......
2 years ago today.
A W Bullen May 2017
We will know no sorrows here..

Dark matter poured taut
in ebon plastic,
elegent, limber, perched on spikes.
Confined in chosen monochrome,
so lithe in gritted temper.

Full fraught on waves of jaw - smoke,
tumble nails from this wretched pelt.
Enscribe my will
on soft , ribbed, levees
Spread and buttered oysters
downed , your earthy spices ground
against my viscid grin.

Now raise the dead in frantic transport
Sound the depths of this cracked voice
Imagining....

We will know no sorrows here.
A W Bullen Oct 2022
Leave
in peace


this gull-bone light,
to beechwood feasting
vapours,

And may it be
a paper ship,

our languages
of liberty
borne sea-ward
by the falling water

thoughts
to mean the World
for those who languish,
foamed in contemplation

bending
from their tree-top
forts to bid the fond
farewell
A W Bullen Feb 2021
Dear Viennese Art School Tutors of the early 1900,s

If a highly strung young chap turns up
with a strange flick haircut, a dodgy
looking tache and laden with canvass,

Please dont tell him his paintings are
****, and that, perhaps he ought to try
and express himself via another medium.

Could save us all a spot of bother
in the long run.

Cheers

Signed:

well....er,.."Everyone"...actually.
A W Bullen Nov 2021
looked
into the mirror

there was
nothing staring
back at me

could be
I'm free

could be
I'm free
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