It could be the end of the world as you know it,
When change is a crisis that decolours your life,
If you choose in your blindness to only see grey.

You know nothing has changed, and it’s just
Your perspective that turns day into night, but
It could be the end of the world as you know it.

It’s hard to see good when the news is so bad,
With everyone nervous about what is to come,
If you choose in your blindness to only see grey.

Go back to a place when colours were bright,
Unless you can see that things are not really grey,
It could be the end of the world as you know it.

Try recolouring your life with Instagram intensity,
And switch back and forth to see it’s your choice,
If you choose in your blindness to only see grey.

Repainting your world with your mystical mind,
A perspective that is more balanced than true, or
It could be the end of the world as you know it,
If you choose in your blindness to only see grey.

Why
Worry
Muffled up
Falling silent
White on grey road
Treading on tyre treads
Winter naked tree skeletons
Icicles seem to hang from my nose
Footprints crunch across the ****** crispness
Smoke rises from drink happy crowd
Slip sliding home from the bar
Sneeze freezing friends
Alone at last slán
Breathing fog
Sit down
Sleep
Fin.

Grey skies, contrasting bone-white tree skeletons,
Trudging home for Christmas is an endless nightmare,
Second night hotel-less on a Heathrow bed-less floor,
The crisp white snowiness of home but a distant hope,
Media revels in this travellers’ misery, so switch off,
I think I will head home somewhat earlier next year,
This snow bound, homeward bound, hopeless man.

The time when the fire of love,
Becomes the warmth of loving,
When the electricity of touch,
Becomes the comfort of a hug,
When the pleasure of passion,
Becomes the marriage of minds,
When the frustration of routine,
Becomes the wish of escape,
When the distance of absence,
Becomes the need of closeness,
When the freedom of together,
Becomes the perfection of us.

Rain-blinded laser-focus on lights in front,
Always one second from impact, or worse,
A zombie living death of three more hours,
Slow down, let the mad and the bad pass,
Blindingly oblivious to their impending end.

This driving rain seems now inside my mind
A black cold cloud wraps my beating heart
With its unforgiving tendrils, it is a mistake
To think  that it is always better to travel,
Than to arrive, in this driving, dying rain.

Without you……

Loneliness is a selfish word
In empty corridors and cold beds
But I have never felt so close to you
I can feel your smile soft caress closeness
Distance is a nanosecond in light speed loving
Sleepy Sunday waking wanting wishing
Sad dreams now pastoral pleasures
Desire the reality of past love
Happiness beckons hope

…with you soon

Reflections of Saturday night by the pool bar
Fans cannot cool the Christmas sticky heat
South Pacific beers in Port Moresby cool
Raskols in the streets and Indian in the Palazzo
Friendly staffs serve apartheid ex-patriots
Sunday diving in the deep blue sea
America is almost always yesterday
Europe is night and sometimes day
Home seems very far away today.

Weekend beckons as work crazy week ends
Winter fire, relaxed dinner, wine warm glow
Couch cosy snuggle, TV moving wallpaper
Later virtual dog and neighbour walk to pub
Bar wisdom sets the world to rights again
Depression, recession is one drink less
Striding home in no worries happy haze
Warm bed snuggles with my best girl
Week ends wonderfully again.

Like a still small voice in an empty room,
The quiet nightmare of my lonely bed intrudes,
Remembering our togethers, now so far away,
Staring into the darkness at a hungry mosquito,
My endless hunger that only you can assuage,
His endless hunger a ****** angry morning itch
Absence makes the heart grow fonder methinks.

Taxi from El Alto spirals towards the clogged streets
A thousand metres down from hell to high-rise
Thanksgiving in America a daily struggle in Bolivia
Street lamp effigies signal certain death to thieves
Two bodies on road surrounded by yellow tape
Hombres sleep-like stillness an uncovered curiosity
This morning neither knew it would be their last
Fifty police listen to chief behind mahogany lectern
Death brings them 15 minutes of news-time fame
Cars and peasants pass by with unheeding speed
Is death the end or just another part of life in La Paz?

After three drinks, I sit and focus
On the night in Santo Domingo,
Like Greene’s Honorary Consul,
It is “the right measure” for me,
Beckett reads Beckett remembering.
Where he strips man’s inexhaustible
Search for meaning to bare bones.


These thoughts aided by a smooth
Handmade cigar and Carlos Primero,
I wonder as I focus on this scrap of
Scribbles should I keep it, or leave it
On the table, for some ***** to read,
While he smokes the dog-end of
What was a reasonably good cigar?

Dinner, Dafney hot, courtyard cool and civilized,
Fettuccini fabulous, guest glamorous and glowing,
Eyes starlike smiling, pulpo carpaccio savoured.

Reality will bite in next week’s  jungle game.
Imagination runs riot, perfect picture of dinner
For ants, ambling in forbidden places, ouch.

Coiffeurless, bad-hair-day, dishevelled demon,
Boredom, book, arachnophobia perhaps, escape.
Red carpet missed, pampering needed, tranquilo.

Chica cailiente, straightest hair,
Image rich, asset poor tonight,
**** sirens, seeking Mr. Right.
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

Single fathers with kids, eager
To earn a weekly happy moment,
For all the mistakes of the past,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

The other men are here hunting,
Searching, looking everywhere,
But, into their partners’ eyes,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

The girls here are too young,
The men are twice their age,
Desperately looking for love,
On this Friday in Santo Domingo.

Wanda greets me with a “Hi” and a hug,
?Qué hora es el vuelo los lunes¿ she asks,
Touch-less communication is absent here,
“Ocho y media” I reply in almost Spanish,
To be sure I email my itinerary for pickup,
“Tener un buen fin de semana” she says,
As a parting hug ends the conversation,
On my visit to the right side of Hispaniola.

Crisp white waiters serve you smiles in Haitian time
Going native on Saturday night with Lambi Creole
Ti Coca rhythm band beats the music of tonight
Running fast will be a heart attack in this old town

Red neck cops dine with plain Jane UN girls
Touch in weekend lust and hopeful smiling eyes
Local white eyes shine in contrast colourful love
Slow down chill out and move to the music now

Pétionville to Paris seems a million miles away
A tense post-carnival gloom sets into Cité Soleil
As naked kidnap victim runs free in desperation
Different worlds in this blinkered rain-soaked town

Montana shoeshine man has ***** shoes,
Billie sings “That Ole Devil Called Love”,
The sun is shining but rain falls over me.

Occasional internet frustrates all work,
Every problem is someone else’s fault,
A Groundhog Day of daily tasks undone,
The black dog is with me in this place.

Is it me or is it them I ask myself again?

Today I cannot even die enough to cry-
Guess it’s those old Haiti Blues again.

Sunday-empty Auckland my pre-breakfast escape,
Sheep-spotted mountains in early morning mist,
Whangarei marina for a cauldron of cappuccino.
Shop of metal sheep starts a day of Kiwi weirdness,
Of customer requesting glassblowing lessons, and
“All Blacks” silk boxers, unworn by players I hope.

Driving to Dargaville for Mr. M. Ujdur museum treat,
That late gum-digging, Esperanto teaching, vintner.
Beside a colossal collection of accordions with muzak,
Playing an instrument-impossible Whiter Shade of Pale,
Plus coins and buttons and stamps and Scotsmen,
Left feeling stunned, like I was tripping on acid.

The possum cull with prizes seemed almost normal.

Oatmealed and omeletted, start to a dull grey Seattle day
Mutual “Good morning” yawns wait the elevator gruzz
Cheery maid vacumates my room in a swirl of efficiency
Brundling my notes and my PC together I walk to work
Strumphing along beside the fumes of the grundling traffic

Email mountains confabulate the uncoffeed hordes
Typed kerattle the calm before the budget storm
Subterranean stocks desphorror of legal gamblers
Bonehead logic meets dumbling marketing aspirations
Now silent nerbling excuses of cur-whipped executives

Micawber’s message crystal in strangression of promises
Fundamental economics the only possible bankerage
Blood will flow in abattoir of management incastrophies
Doe-like and frembling in the light of impending execration
The stapression painfully personal as reality bites as last

Beer time comfrunks gather early in a huddle of hope
Sheep-like they absorb the tendralations of others’ fears
Remonstressing their misfortune in a depression of dinner
Relaxed at last in a hopefindation of beer goggle logic
Sleepfully staring at the mortgage arreared ceiling

My thankful escape to the Murakamied Sputnik symphony
Harmony in the silence of solitaricious nightcap with Hilton Mark
Wishing I was home now with my cuddlicious girl again
Grateful for loving and living in this aventacular world
I quietly srift off to sleep in a snozzle of sweet dreams

Running rings around thirteen hours of opera
I sit spell-bound absorbing the angry music
Suppressing an urge to re-conquer Poland
Music a direct expression of world’s essence
**** passion means Israel is Wagner-free
Tristan and Isolde unplayed before Ludwig
Love and death and passion for Mathlde
Eros and Thanathos that predate Freud
Arthurian love story interrupted by Minna
Overwhelming influence frustrates his peers
Worried that his brilliance is simply anger
That guarantees you feel undead tonight.

Here is life and love, pain and pleasure,
Ten years traversing those steps,
Tired waitress, twelve hours hell,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

Too-jolly Australians on a budget,
Eating soup and dessert, are missing,
The pasta, the best part, it seems,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

Miscreant male constantly corralled,
By his Austrian authoritarian aunt,
Filling her face with a pasta mountain,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

New lovers lost in each other’s eyes,
Carpaccio di salmon slices sharp cold,
Their Gaja Barbaresco lust blood red,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

Old lovers holding hands in silence,
Pasta warm feelings of Taglioni Fratelli,
This Chianti Classico two will soon be one,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

Married couple, on different planes,
Broadcast to their neighbours the plans,
Of loveless friends in lifelong *******,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s.

Meal memories of two and more,
Of friends and family, work and play,
Life and love and unforgettable moments,
I am facing the door in Fratelli’s

Old Year on last legs staggers slowly towards midnight,
Memories in our pockets are like butterflies and stones,
A deep dark lake of forgetfulness swallows the stones,
Some sink deep, others shallow, a source of pain again,
Butterflies now free lift our spirits in a tapestry of colour,
Flying high on past pleasures and treasured moments,
New Year born in a carnival of gluhwein and pink pigs.

Mid-winter solstice, cold dawn,
The shortest day is the longest night.
Day grey skies, walking on rain empty beach.
Night bright carolling and mulled wine warming,
Friends’ festive mood balks bank depression,
The world turns and the days get longer,
On this 3rd rock from the sun
In snow-cold Dublin.

She sips tea with her son in a Tunisian tent
Orange and blue scarves sun-bright in summer
Mitsubishi motors mandatory for desert trek
Sardinia is two hours and a lifetime away.

Pensive thoughts on a desert dune heaven
Life can slip through the fingers like sand
Grasping the chance to live in the moment
Arabian nights’ stories for next week’s kids.

I sometimes go back to my time before time
The past was over and the future was yet to begin
All moments since merged in a jumble of living
Slipping like sand through my fingers each day
Could I have known what the future would bring?
All the highs, the lows, the loves and the hates
Does it seem possible that all of this stuff
Just happened to me without reason or rhyme?
But when I look at my boys who weren’t even born
Those unforgettable ripples in the pool of my life
I know then that everything is real and worthwhile.

The moment of capture frozen, red-eyed, real
The playing of children free, magic, mud-filled
The conundrums of youth Beboed, carefree, cool
The adventures of travel, pink, tanned, taciturn
The history of love smiling, promising, pleasures
The marriage of minds trusting, glowing, giving
The responsibility of two eager, anxious, angry
The coldness of career tough, real, redundant
The birth of babies screaming, fragile, forever
The parties of New Year old, new, necessary
The death of life tearful, premature, passive
The optimism of hope fresh, green, growing
The world of pictures captured, mirrored, mine
The memory of forever posed, startled, stunned

Perfected spending ideal day off
Prepared a hot breakfast in bed
Procrastinated Java or Columbia
Perused the paper cover to cover
Perplexed prayer over crossword
Pampered by bath-time bubbles
Phoned almost forgotten friends
Purchased Murakami on Amazon
Polished off a lunchtime martini
Postponed exercise with siesta
Perambulated the beach slowly
Pushed the boat out for dinner
Preferred Barolo to Barbaresco
Panicked - work again tomorrow.

If you feel imprisoned today,
In factory, office, school,
With woman, parent, child,
Just the groundhog day of life.

These words can set you free
From your private prison cell –

You can walk along the shore,
With sand between your toes,
And salt-caked cracking lips.

You can fly a million miles,
With sea below and stars above,
And wind-watered streaming eyes.

You can be your inner self,
With dreams and touch of love,
And razor-sharp passions edge.

Let the inspiration of my words be
Like the rumble of a small earthquake,
Or the flash of lightning thunder,
In the whirlwind of your future.

You can ....

Trees whisper with a lazy-leafed murmur,
Starlight strange in this shadow-land stark,
At night window-watching, wanting, wishing,
Empty black winding road, without you.

Wind moans soft and branches knock,
Ceiling alive with my shadow nightmare,
An acre of bed, listless, lonely, longing,
Soft white sheets unruffled, without you.

Rain rattles like a rasping smoker’s cough,
Spot-lit droplets make snail shadowed walls
Staring solo awake, alone, alert, alas,
Boredom-struck insomniac, without you.

Narrow single fall-out bedroom fear,
Four poster dreaming fantasy love,
King size suite is playing-field empty,
Twin queens wondering if just for queens.

Hard or soft, big or small, no fun alone.

These sleepless thoughts caused,
By ever increasing jetlagged jetlag,
Which now feels more like hangover,
But incurable with a walk or hair of the dog.

Sympathyless disbelief when I complain again,
Delays are the balance for the glamour of flying.
Nine hours in Sao Paulo while the ATC strike,
Eight hours in Vienna while new wheel flies in,
Seven sins would be justified by this purgatory,
Six times six hours from CBB to DUB last week,
Five hours sweating in Port au Prince plastic chair,
Four hours for rain in Miami seems not so bad,
Three hours in Shannon for bomb threat search,
Two hours sitting in Seattle with mad dash in Kennedy.
One would be happier walking, swimming or driving.

Woke up this morning feeling empty,
Faster than fire, slower than standing,
So far from home on this endless road.
Blue horizon slices this workday dawn,
Vapour vortex trails my hellish journey,
Living in very long seconds on this plane.
Hours to go before I sleep with you again.

Coffee and texts Happy Birthday
Snow outside makes it a brrrrday

Slip sliding to colleagues’ bonjours
Your fixed smile will be de rigueur

Tonight your turn to buy the drinks
Friends will all be there methinks

You hoping that their thoughtful gift
Will give you a twenty nine candles lift.

Depressed and bored but not paranoid at all
Marvin had all the solutions for the Universe
But he was sad, with a billion years of boredom
Waiting tables nightly at the End of the Universe
While awaiting the arrival of his Heart of Gold.

We meet our paranoid Marvins every day
Friendless beings fearing mortal threats
From us, the great unwashed human herd
Suspecting everyone, enemies everywhere
Unconscious of their need for a real hug today.

A nurse’s care replaces impossible independence,
Too short heaven in a “delighted to see you” smile,
Lifetime of living remnants in a fragmented mind-
The woman becomes child of the man for ever,
Ten minute memories in oft repeated questions.

Picture book of life a set of disappearing moments,
Flashes of insight, questions prescient in perception,
Family names confused but still recognised for now.
Does love die or become caring for the living dead?
Will a God preserve me from this same living hell?

He had sunken, slightly disappointed, kind eyes,
Illness barely gave him 3 score years and 10.
He always expected that God would intervene,
To prevent business failure after Biblical 40 years.
Trusting faithfully to the end – a gentle man.

“Look after your Mother” – his last words to me.

Half a million miles a year,
My carry-on is my home.
Living in three shirts, in
Indifferent cold hotels,
In far-away lands is like,
My shifting sands in life,
Until I see you again.

Sometimes I get homesick,
For places I’ve not yet been,
Where I will feel at peace alone,
Everywhere I make my home,
But without you this is like,
My shifting sands of life
Until I see you again.

She gazes down on a daily sea,
Of expectant lesson hungry faces,
The teacher uses a carrot not a stick,
To prove these cast-off kids stomachs,
Will love them when they cook creatively.

Vogue-like poet on the catwalk of life,
She sees life in little things each day.
Weekend dates in the big smoke,
Will blue suit and red shoes work,
With him again, again tonight?

She gazes down on a daily sea,
Of expectant lesson hungry faces,
The teacher uses a carrot not a stick,
To prove these cast-off kids stomachs,
Will love them when they cook creatively.

Vogue-like poet on the catwalk of life,
She sees life in little things each day.
Weekend dates in the big smoke,
Will blue suit and red shoes work,
With him again, again tonight?

A dog is for life
A duck is for dinner
A dragon is for barbecues
A friend is for inspiration
A fish is for relaxation
A frog is for kissing
A cat is for ever
because it has
nine lives that make
it ideal for experimentation

Cohen liquid music trickles into the holes in our lives
It’s four in the morning at the end of December
I came by myself to this very crowded place
Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women
The walls of this hotel are paper thin
Everyone knows the dice is loaded
I loved you for a long long time
I stepped into an avalanche
The door it opens slowly
Baby I’ve been waiting
Like a bird on a wire
If you want a lover
But I am not lost
Snow is falling
Love is a fire
Silence
…..
…
.






Excerpts from Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen © 1993.
Published in Canada by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
Used with permission of the publisher.

I know that I loved you,
And more than a little,
But now you are gone.

I feel...

Too heartless to beat,
Too lonely to need,
Too empty to cry,
Too raw to bleed,
Too heavy to lie,
Too cold to be,
Too sad to try.

Please...

Come back to me now,
You are the love of my life,
The part of me missing.

In dreams we feel the impossible is easy
In dreams we flee the burdens of this life
In dreams we fly to worlds that don’t exist
In dreams we find the love that cannot be
In dreams we follow a path that never ends
In dreams we fall forever in a nightmare chase.

In dreams we live the jumbled fragments of our lives.

I might have been a poet,                                                      
                                                who was dreaming of the stars.
I might have been a scientist,                                                
                                             who was inventing nothing new.
I might have been an honest man,                                        
                                                      who could not pay his bills.
I might have been a millionaire,                                            
                                                    who was jumping to his end.
I might have been a criminal,                                                
                                                        who was living like a king.
I might have been a terrorist,                                                  
                                                    who was fighting for a cause.
I might have been a politician,                                                
                                                  who was playing ***** games.
I might have been a lover,                                                        
                                                  who was lost in search of you.
I might have been a failure,                                                      
                                                     but you made me what I am.

Imagine the  world ….                                                                                
                                                                ….if you had never said “Hello”

Imagine the space….                                                                                  
                                                                 ….where you were meant to be

Imagine waking up….                                                                                
                                                                            ….in a forever empty bed

Imagine the absent closeness….                                                                
                                                                       ….and perfect pleasures lost

Imagine a time….                                                                                        
                                                                        ….before your tender touch

Imagine the future….                                                                                  
                                                                         ….if fragile friendships end

Imagine the energy….                                                                                
                                                                    ….we must spend to stop this

Imagine the heat….                                                                                    
                                                                     ….that our love will generate

Imagine the reward….                                                                              
                                                                          ….of this lifetime together.

Head throbs, I want results, I need results, today,
No dice, I want a gun, persuasion, for results, now,
Idiots all around, is it me or is it them, I wonder,
I see them dead, better than Red I think, but,
Why so hard I ask, always the same, pain again,
A voice inside says, that is why, I still get paid
Big bucks, to take this strain, and not complain,
I need a cat, to kick, humane, because it seems,
It will survive with nine lives, and I have only one.

The guilty truth is we choose to deceive,
Sometimes to please, sometimes to win,
From our five hundred Facebook friends,
To that convenient little lie on our own CV.

And we think ourselves the un-guilty ones.
Why, I wonder, do we succeed in deceiving
The deceiver in this manner? Is it because,
We are at heart black both inside and out?

How fragile is our small world today,
Living in this glass bottle of our life.

Where guilt is the fear of discovery,
Where silence is the hope of salvation,
Where greed is the reason for everything,
Where lies are the stones that shatter,
Where love is the desire for peace,
Where hate is the anger of envy,

How complex is our small world today,
Living in this glass bottle of our life.

Shoes shined
Suit sharp
Shirt white?
Beard short
Breath fresh
Hair trimmed
Nervous sweat
Handshake firm
Remember names.

Three minutes is..
..all you’ve got
To win or lose..
..that new job.

1 simple set of instructions
4 heavy flatpack boxes
5 square aluminium legs
27 painted pieces of wood
100 ridged wooden dowels
101 white plastic ***** covers
102 blister-causing screws of various sizes.


Assumption that no unter or ober
Equals drunken waves of shelves
Sadly means finished is unfinished
Reworked masterpiece complete at last
Male ego boosted by admiring plaudits
Value enhanced by effort expended
Flatpack frustration in 4 easy pieces.

Your old blindness
Now crystal clear
The world around
Now light bright.

It’s not just vanity
Friends assure you
And you look great
Did you get face lift?

No just new glasses!