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.

In the future
they may scrutinise
the age we mislaid wonder.
Evaluate the epoch
of our long-forgotten grace

Landfill
for the Burial Ground

Trolleys
for the River Gods

Spray cans
for the Painted cave,

and say,

"This,
is when they
lost their way"

Sometimes
when unoccupied
I hear the cries
of my lost legions

skin dispels
its drops of poison
to the tunes of lies
and treason....

Discomfort
pinches as regret
denies the liberty of
forgetfulness ....

Love in Evolution

There is obvious futility
that lends a potted stoop
to the crippled angles of
our misadventure.
Full- fledged in low obedience,
we are marketed as free, yet
we stumble in the attics of the lost.

What can ease the burden
of our constant measured amble
as we strive for recognition,
or survival- God forbid.
Who can say what matters
in our endless daily questing,
also if it really matters
and if matters ever did.


There's love
in evolution, kid..

Be ******, if I can find it....

To She
who whet
the corven wing,
her skin pulled back
an open firth unraveling
her scarlet mood

the first
among the thirsting.

To Her
that swallowed whole,
the rye, the blade
that clipped the startled shoulder,
carpal deep in gleaming brine,
who shivered time a potent pleasure,

Garlanding
the golden hurt,
that life was
never hers..

Beholden to
a tethered ransom
rivered in her stars...

Too much thigh to go
unkissed
so wet-look fabric
has my tongue
in swollen lip bit
thirst..
A sunrise skirt
eased over arches,
modest drapes of stolen
passing showers...

Your pointed mouth
has come undone, to
curse the moon in
quiet hours, running
with the liquid thought
that through your thumping mind
becomes, the preaching
of the screaming sea...

Heels, held, high over head,
A bristled language empties
you of easy , urban drag....

Martha

Your kin still fly
uncaged and called

young November sky
                   scored countless

      For three high days they came
                                     great in massing
                       climbing, radiant
                       fire-milk lariats

           gaps in blaming
rain pursued.


When leaf-cull doors
                      low fruit to fall

                implores the motley
      parkland bronze



Your kin will fly
                     uncaged and called



Your legacy
lives on.

Seen
them change,

as I have done,

this pace
I cannot remedy

let the
the slow, insipid
disconnect, bring
something of
it's incidental
tenderness
to hand..

(run far enough
to understand that
days ahead are fewer
than those days played
out behind)


then
maybe I'll
design a way,
appropriate
a fantasy..


sat, watching
all arise and fade..

transforming
into poetry...

I have to smile
At Oystercatchers

Three came batting through
In straight line flight
A blur of chequered wing-brawl
-throwing on jackets
-crunching carrots
Hailing out-bound aqua taxis,

Their nutbar campanology
Disappearing over warehouse roofs.

They have places to be,
Do Oystercatchers
And times they
Need to be there

I waved you goodbye, as if
I would see you on Sunday..

Then my Father phoned
at four in the morning...

..and my Father never phones....

High on Tumuli,
Keeled in sways washed out from brazen oceans...

...the birds may have me now...

Prey!..strip this ageing skin, then take my eyes.

Let the Oort Cloud iris break upon
these lakes of trancing humour,
as Veronicas of astral grace
silk down the valley strides.

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....

What is it she whispers?
Outside..
The brittle bleach decor rustles shy applause
Inside….
half encumbered slumber wins
The aching World to part made play
Arcadian chapels hover in folds
That form in the fields of gathering grey

and still she whispers.

Damp calico dales murmur and shift
in the twist of a tremor.
A cold palm press upon temples that pulse
for the touch of another that passes
high over the way…

What is it, she whispers?

Witch-fingers lift at the filigree latches,
saltwater patches salivate free…..
..lasciviously.
beneath the list of chalking blinds
rim- shot eyes scour windswept causeways

Always searching,

Always waiting,
For some unknown.

And still she whispers...

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.

Profanities,

declarations

bombastic, love/ hate sprayed, whatevers,
beer-stained brutalist underpass

the lake, a paper-mill, stink of pulp-steam,
dog-**** minefield ,fast-food cartons

park-and-riding, egg-fried verges
turgid outflow,

Down this squeezed tube,
of dead algorithm n' *****,
blue-green algea ,wetland gangrene,

come Nightingales..

Meliflous revelry,

distinctive dichotomy,

obvious opposite

oddity

Beneficent Mediterranean
medicine chugged via
secretive syrinx

sweet,

sweet

sweet unplugged jugular

thick cut clarity, every
note a pearl-dropped hope for muddled

ditches, creeks and jetties, broken
wings of football pitches

blood of oak and bluebell
soaking smoke above the muddied tracks

and clearing,

clearing all
before their song

Stop

       Writing


                     "Notes to self"

You

       attention-seeking

                     ******

They'll give me a page
present me a pen

but I'll draw my
own conclusions

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

A singeing bleak...

Eye water, colors from thistle gripped nothings
Numb from a dissident space
Absence is minded by pale phased etchings
Embellishing braids of cinnamon briar, while
flushing the tumbles of Old Man’s Beard.

Mercury drops...

a Starling backed brush to the blackening fields
all riddled with meddling shoals
Turned ermine surrenders a rumour
Of solstice, remembers the Ploughmen
The tread of the horses that folded the beds
Of the cold, tired Earth,
While, over, the Plovers wheel.

The exercise
was " Charity"

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

I,
half-asleep
had misunderstood,

submitted a paper
on "Blow-jobs"...

Peered through the ideal imagery
of petty dream-spun avenues.
Brushed the quiet tides that rose
in fluid blends of milky down.
The clamour of the Westbound flocks
that scarred the last in pulsing chevrons
told of lands beyond the lay
of harlequin recline.

The lilac swathes that bled to blue
then proffered airs a saintly glow
cooled in easy idiom, the rapid
pyroclastic flow of dry diurnal doubt.

Aromatic night descended,
petals closed on avenues
to the path, the stars attended
cold eternal retinue.
Far ushers of the dew gilt foot
in concert with the silver seethe,
the mist in supple opulence,
an ***** to breathe.

To shake the powdered atoms
from the flaking cavern walls

That fossil horn
has summoned tribes
from different walks
alive tonight
Loose trousered hounds of pedal drums
are swilling bass for rocket fuel
All spastick in the rinks of treble,
  animating vertebrae
  draw talismanic creatures
rolling planets from
their shoulder blades.
Into the gathered sound

The ritual breaks a rip- tide sweat
A chance to wake the daemon
through those coronets of frequency
for stussy armoured Sufi
whirling
pneuma to humidity
A circled dharma rhythm-grasp
a knowledge passed from
Astronaut cartographers.

Acoustics of the standing stones
the hunting party hill-top chants
a triumph in the sacred groves
two hundred thousand years
of dance,

Have brought us here.

There is no cover to speak of
So one cannot help but
break horizons....
This hour-glass of grassland runs
through circles of these optic nerves
to impotent obscurity.

There!...
Three fields out and dangling
in a filigree of  lark song...
Lapwings!
Gust-waft synods of ruffled vicars
from Heaven's addled cashmere, asking
"Did we?..No, we didn't...did we? "

All this life
has left me staring,
passed me by as I was standing,
hands in pockets, thinking,
planning, something
I'm unsure of.

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...

was a virtue
gentle and benign,
she offered up her qualities

but no-one had the time..

was a costly equanimity
I scavenged from the wars...

a lifetime spent, inventing ways
to close revolving doors...

I grind all religion

Into a powder

Put it to flame

So we can be Human

A World Undivided

Perhaps...

Once again.

I hurried...

a hooded scrape
of epaulette through
rhododendron corridors
an exit to the brace.

All tradition is mine
so I threw her a peace sign
that caught in the ivy

both long-tooth
and way-tied

I walked....

a slow Nantucket sleigh ride
to the field where she waited,
tall,
sheep- skinned in her cuneiform

We talked..

Met, smoking by the ringers net
sequestered in the biscuit verge.

Too long into the bison grass
of Pompeii afternoons, is how

We slept

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.

Shimmy on an Amen break
belle époque, rockstar
belly dancer.
Hitched up skirt to
crotch-ripped nets , choke
ziggurat louboutins.
A Stratocaster, glitter Sheba
on Hiroshima shadows pouring
snake-hipped ribald, scriptures
from the swelling of her breast

Kneeling, nylon bound and penitent
in a simony of rapture bought
to wet the rubber stamping of
your  cattle-battered soles
Low boneyard serotonin glows a
candle wax communion as your
henna painted carry rose
the rivers of my veins.
Your Aramaic shoe-shine boy
*** *****-slapped drug Messiah
  So Dear Mary, it is over you
that I must prophesy.
As you feed the pigs of my disgrace that
fill your head with meat and seed
I'll sup that broken bottle heat that
percolates between your open thighs....



I will be there in the morning a
renaissance scent of cannabis about
your mirrored ceiling....

Jesus wept,
Sweet Magdalen
The thought of you will
gather storms within me

As
if from
nowhere,

a dimple
of that far-off laughter

ripples through
the wavered spaces

fainter
than it used to be

indubitably
yours

I need to be inside.

To bend your bones around me,
To fill your throat with rabid flesh
to claw your shiny hide..

I hurt to break your prim veneer,
Your fingers pulled in knots of hair
Your lupine drool upon my hand
Your spike of stammered sigh..

I need to be inside

Stopped
by the crop-dusted rowan,

-the pulpit of Song Thrush,
of gossiping Starling-

The startling pew
of a tumbling hawk
made play for a way reimagined

Over the rising
leviathan ribs,
the sins
of a sea-pulled city,
diving, dividing
the room-cluttered skyline

peopled with liminal grey..

My Kingdom
is a builder,s yard.

A Bethlehem
of measurement
of plasterboard and timbering.
An interwoven sepulchre
of garrulous vernacular.

Expletive-laden badinage,
our handle of the hardstand
is the character of companies
I keep.

And unto these
my time is priced,
my soul is planed,
my name is signed...

but
in the dark
of winter evenings,
watching ancient planets rise,

I contemplate the other lives
another me, might live...

Please,

explain..

Is there a peace,

a deep and swirling peace?

does that fabled light leave
the body ,released
from an anguish
of gravity

Can it be that you
are there?

Sustained,

outside these
small perceptions

even after all this time
the questioning

remains

Fast
too long in aspic,
antipathy for wind-chill
kills the arable concern..

Have
Listened to
the shipping-forecast-
victuals of an Island-race-
recur their little mysteries
from keeping.

Been
pacing off
the Malin Head in
fossil-fueled embarrassment,
deciphering a sense of self

and deepening.

There is regret for the gradual entrapment and brainwashing of the human spirit, via lives of quiet servitude.
There is shame, the recognition of
potential diminished and unrealised, trained and drained for consumerism which is sold as the illusion of happiness ..filling our spaces with needless clutter, shrinking the borders of
individual thought...that last bastion of freedom and the well spring of change.
We are profiled, labelled and categorized, predictable and easily manipulated by systems that govern.

I feel this when the wind blows from certain quarters.
and when the curtain is briefly lifted, and we can look out toward the deep mysteries of space,
I recall the "Earthrise" photograph from the Apollo 8 mission and, still, after all these years find it profoundly moving..." Beautiful" is a far too lesser word to describe it.
It truly is a breath- stealing image...and it's our home.
And what have we done with it?
We over- populate, fly our flags, bang our drums, peddle our religions, burn our forests, pollute our seas eradicate species with impunity,...how, on Earth are we evolving?
We have such possibility yet have traded it all in for a business model with drivers of profit and greed.
and where are the indigenous peoples? ..the, recognized wiser custodians of the planet?
Subsumed or displaced,..turfed off their lands( that also happen to be rich in mineral deposits or ripe for development) largely unmentioned and forgotten.....and yet i cannot help thinking that these are the apex of our species with regards to their understanding of the value of our habitat....their insights far more sustainable and rooted than the bilious reach of our ****** little empires.
What could they have taught us if only we cared to listen....to really listen....
We have lost our sense of wonder, of symbiosis, of reverence...we take our place for granted..not as something extraordinary to be treasured

What is our collective aim?
And is there a " collective"...After all, a communal philosophy that proffers an alternative could prove difficult to subdue, far better the divide and conquer strategy that panders to the subtle edges of an avarice, that becomes our modern way.
While we bury our head in the sands of social media baying for loves and likes, we are drip-fed endless propaganda and advertising..
Outside our window there is a green unpleasant land sprayed with herbicide, insecticide, devoid of natural diversity by the sweep of our constant chemicals..
Where now , the fresh air ?

The curtain falls and I’m back in my day job, paying over the odds , but grateful of income...enough to get by..i have sorted the bills and might treat myself to a couple of t- shirts i have seen in the sale- (less than half price- you cant beat a good bargain) ….Will have a few beers while watching the game and cheer on my team...there is a chance of silverware this season....
I am suitably anaesthetized and gently returned to my conformity.
It seems easier this way....


This isn’t the search for some utopian cloud- kingdom, more of a quest for a balance of sorts.
I do not consider myself hard done by...I am more fortunate than many and will always place laughter above tears
But I am of an island race encircled by powerful waters....as they appear to protect, then so do they threaten...

I have no manifesto,...I am the product of my age...and I sleepwalk through this gift of life , but as i sleep so too i sometimes dream
dream of a pathway through and out beyond the high rise, over the weather- won tides, that leads to somewhere different, somewhere we have never been...

Begin beguiling day
Let night rest in chambers
way beyond the lifting light
warm the Moon-chilled air
and there, conjure up
the down-closed eye.
Return dream pieces
to their space, while
prizing strength from
comfort's clasp.

Now at hand
the time to take
the awaiting day
to task.

Lord, help me please
to stay awake,

For I cannot
be arsed.

The wimpled scrolls recede....
The Authors of the braille sands
leave Northern marrow in their wording,
as sharp as Marram grasses bent
in keening subjugation....

Illuminated Sanskrit kelp,
infused with lust of fallen auras,
scrims the ****-green gartered breaks
now shaken from the glaucous mane,

while fleets of stippled cumuli,
( rain-chartered galleons of the West)
in line astern, prepare for war
beyond the deepened brim.

We,- the town-worn Pages- flutter,
drawn to trace the moiling hem,
to pour away into the water....

Salt-preened minions of the wind.

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...

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.

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

Time again
to notice things

glad galaxies
of primrose from
the window of
a taxi going back
to where I started..

to seek
the sound umbilical,
Spring lintels
at the hinterland

symbolic
of a simple need

returned.

When,
the being, surly murks,
hobbles, heart-bulb hurt,
in furtive mist,
obscured

when
fields of the falling mind, pine
sight-less in a fog-banked shawl,
lured, hurriedly by nothing
more than fear

-I will still believe, it's somehow, there-

that sailboat
with seabird halos

gliding, dearly
down the dusk

with just enough
to love

Sea breeze
leaves my reasoned lips
a baffled map of goodbye kisses

wispish curds of milky-weigh white horses
riding out bespoke and breaking
making shore...

this day will never come again..

tomorrow
but a glib Gomorrah,
sorrowed in some foreign fold
of muffled do's and dont's

There is alchemy in  Blackbird song
an opal paean through early doors
of infant sensing
Sprung limpets of the broad leaf crowns,
Will, heliacal, from chimney spires,
A crocus bowl of canticles
unwritten in the Latin blush.
of uncorrupted eloquence.

There is prophecy in blackbird song
from red Victoriana glance
those rippled satin auguries.
Sloe philharmonic oracles
untie the mellow chords of rest,
to sing as they have always sung
in allegories of days to come
beyond the headstone houses.

Mood

needs trimming,
handling,

thought

beseeches management,
preventions of digression

Yes,

I know these abled tangents,

-peculiar obsessions-

how they float up, moon- mouthed,
dream-lacquered vagrants,

Superlative deliverers
of profligate insistence

Their cool what-ifs
pontificate,

the vacant-eyed
rhetoricals,

excited by this delicate
existence

A
flame- doom plunge
of full sass waves
stash tears

harsh clatter drags
dishevelled praise
impeccably receding

The
bloom- lunge spray
casts  spume
rashed chandeliers

Tint
Incandescent
cataracts
intelligent
retreat