I guess we’ve all met the kind
who unwind at the bar
after travelling far.
Their journeys by car
are of time and of space,
but their faces reveal
that the distance they feel
is not one of miles;
it’s rather the smiles
of separation from self
which light up their eyes
with whys that inspire
a wish to enquire
Where are they from?
Where are they bound?
What have they found?

Could it be,
that like me,
they are lost?

© James Rainsford 2010

A nun in the sun
Was moved to declare
She was as hot as
A bun with a cross to bear.

© James Rainsford

Tonight a candle consumed itself in vain.

For in this plush, lush atmosphere
Of soft lights and music sweet,
It’s just to eat
I sit and wait.
And; a half empty plate
Is my sad view.

Instead of you,
I must make do
With waiters who,
Though willing,
Perform to an audience of one,
Instead of two.

And where are you?
You; who
Are required to lend significance
To this occasion where,
A bare place
And empty chair,
Prepare me for the loneliness to come.

I’d like to know,
That even though
We are apart,
That for you too,
There is a space unfulfilled.

Tonight a candle consumed itself in vain,
And reflected in its flame was but the pain
Of separation.

© James Rainsford 2010

The end begins,
not with the first stain
of red sputum on a white handkerchief.
Nor by fingers grown numb with
seizure from the heart’s decay.
But, with an act
that leaves a toy discarded
in the nursery of early choice,
reviving for abandoned deeds
the doppel-gangers of dead youths,
clothed with reproach and unfleshed
figments of the mind’s high hopes of
futures fenced in a child’s green field,
that now is hedged; and ploughed,
and grown bitter with a
named and known crop.

© James Rainsford 2010

Last night,
At the moment between sanity and dream,
The conjuring I had acquired to keep you caged
Was cancelled by a stronger spell.

For even after years,
You came unbidden to my bed,
And tempted love into regret.
Even here; within a bedroom you were
Banished from by my desire,
You found a way to lie
Your ghost beside me,
And possess the still and sleeping form
Of yet another stranger by my side.

When you first left,
To live apart through our
Shared motion of the sun,
Destroying days with dark mementoes,
And nights with savage wakefulness
Where all alone, I had invoked
The Furies, to pursue your faithlessness
Through every hope you treasured
And held dear,
Fear of my wish for your decay
Had marked each day,
With lies to mutual friends,
Who heard I wished you well.

Yet even now;
I burn within the hell
Which I unleashed for you.

© James Rainsford 2010

The women who amaze me most
are those who boast a body
close to perfect.
Then, elect to dress in less
than is required to prevent
my tired eyes from rising
to observe the tantalising curve
of well filled blouse, or
arouse my baser feelings
with revealing sight
exposing, toes to thighs
a glimpse of leg which begs
my chance unhurried glance
to pause, and cause reaction.

But, the action which they take
to quickly make some small
and fake adjustment to their dress
reveals the sweet distress
my eyes caress has caused.

They are aware, their choice attire
has stirred desire, and yet react
with tactile skill to close the split
which tempted it to surface.

I’d love to **** their expectation
for a thrill inducing chance
to show their slow, deliberate disapproval
of my supposed unwelcome glance.

Yet, just like less self conscious men
I find myself ensnared again,
to render satisfaction to their skilled
and ancient action, to elicit a response
they can wantonly reprove
with one smooth and practised
movement of a hem.

© James Rainsford

Mountains may seem unscaleable,
Whilst you appear available.

Both suppositions may be frail
when it’s just the fear of
failure that prevents events,
and wents only remembered
as occasions that occurred.
From all I’ve heard reality
requires risk.

For death demands that a degree
of dare be spare,
For living to be less a chore,
and more a rare affair.

© James Rainsford 2010

Where is the child
Who has moved through thirty winters
Since he watched his father
Try to bowl a cricket ball
And who, by careful coaching elsewhere
Understood, that the action of his arm was wrong,
Scribing through the child’s unblemished run
Of seven faultless summers, a clumsy arc,
Which sent the ball too wide,
And called from restless slumber
A spectre of uncertain shape and size.

Where is the child
Who saw his father’s failure
Force derision from each watcher’s eye
And shared their scorn, yet was ashamed.

Where is the child
Who learned too fast
The legacy of adoration,
And impotently sent imaginings
From fevered nights to boil
Each mocking eye in blood.

Where is the child
Who felt confusion; anger,
Then, the dormant seed of virulent contempt
Germinate, strike root, grow, bud and bloom,
Finding instantly, a fallow vein
In which to flower for his father’s sake.

Where is the child?
Where is the child now?

His desolation lives between these lines.
His uncomprehending eyes plead from every word,
At each full stop he mutely tries to speak.

Just once, his hand stretched from this page
To touch my own.

©James Rainsford 2010

How easily,
The irresponsibility
Immediacy requires,
Begins small fires.
Which turn to pyres
Before reality enquires
The cost.

© James Rainsford 2010

My three year old daughter
Bubbling with laughter
Sang to me a sweet song
In a long ago summer.

Fresh washed and brushed blond hair,
A pair, of bright white shoes
With heel and unformed soul combined
To give this girl in new blue dress
And eagerness for lucid life
A twirling grace, that framed her
Face with swirling curls, which spoke
Of innocence to win the race
By perfect form and fortune born
Of a pure and guiltless mind.

Remind me; despite my tender care,
That this fair and loving child
Was an embryonic wild and wanton woman,
Whose finite measured days of fun
The sun disdainfully allowed to run;
Whilst guileless beauty, golden, turning,
Passed the infant hours of learning
Unaware that time had planned
A moving of the hour hand,
To end the promise
Of this fresh faced start
In pain the coming rain would surely bring,
Filling these growing years with knowing tears
To slowly stain this new and true blessed heart,

And force; this singer, and her long departed song,
A long; long way apart.

© James Rainsford 2010

I journeyed to an unfamiliar place,
To frame your known and lovely face
Within the small yet feeling space
Between the fond intention of my hands.
And, had no plans for you to know
How time dilates the slowness of
Our separate days, where we both stay
Disguised, among the wrong established choice
Which younger voice; thought right.
Yet for tonight, you let me see
How it could be if others claim
To own your common name; were through.

Why then, should I feel blue,
Now that at last, you’ve said
“I love you too?”

© James Rainsford 2010

The intensely loved and cherished child,
Can suffer late.
Waiting innocently through,
The too few summers
Spent in total love.

Above him still, the parents’ strength
Prescribes the length
His loving years shall run,
Before time’s taint reveals his ancient face
Beneath the slowly peeling paint
Of pictures placed
To keep the knowing day at bay,
And stay completion of the plan
To mould the clay, in such a way
He grows a sold, and silent man.

Unless time slays his shining sun.
To extinguish all sensation
In one swift and savage stroke,
Before a doubt is spoken,
Or, disaffection’s woken
From his learning touch.

He perhaps, expects too much.
Such is the faith of infants
Safe within their fragile skin,
So thinly wrought in thoughtful art,
That the heart’s wild wishes can depart,
But disenchantment can’t see in.

© James Rainsford 2010

Infinity might be a lie.
Know! You and I will cease to be
And all humanity, eventually shall die.

That time and space
May race to singularity,
Can give a freedom
Which eternity denies,
Loops chains of hope around
Our scope for action.

Cosmic reaction to the gravity
Of mass despair
Will make a solar flare
Seem small compared to ends
Which physics teach.
Though we could reach
A billion, billion years,
Still, human fears,
Banish tears enshrined
In finding reasons.

Sufficient seasons notice change,
Time, for rearrangement of the wrong.
Prolong the outward song
Restructure stars
When farthest worlds are fried,
Inside the sphere of solar death.
The breath of life can last,
But not surpass the final fate
Which waits,

Expansion, or, Collapse?

Perhaps; we’ll live as far
As light from farthest stars
Has yet to run.
Begun to know
How atoms grow
To complex double helix,
Mixing mind and space
In the same race,
To glean some meaning
From our cosmic place.

While some ask why,
Let you and I,
Sigh “Just as well.”
Fulfill our now with
Simple shrines which
Minds like mine can comprehend.
Face the feeling all shall end,
By sending song of this small race
To chase along the space
Between the stars.
And, confront the final days
With humble words of human praise,
To raise amazement;
Even from the gods.

© James Rainsford 2010

To Martin in Memorium

There was a moment when you seemed to reach perfection.
When expression, word, gesture, touch, look, understanding,
demeanor and desire coalesced, creating for your friends,
an envelope of hope.

Such wholeness can’t endure.
Nor could we witness, or preserve its force
with meagre words.

But even though the moment, like you,
has passed beyond recall,
One friend at least, remembers when
Your presence altered space, slowed time,
bent sunbeams, so we moved in light.

©James Rainsford 2010

Reasons like seasons are changeable,
And bend to fit the action’s needs.
Reeds swayed by summer breeze
are often more substantial
than the ‘whys’ we give to
those, who wish to know the
causes for the pauses in consistency.

© James Rainsford 2010

Some minor character in a TV Sunday play
Was asked to pick a day, (just one mind you)
That he would wish to live through once again.

And, do you know what?
Even though he seemed quite sane
He could not think of one.

Yet, don’t think this odd,
For even God (speaking on a late night show)
Was slow to answer.
And when He did, admitted that the question
Had outwitted even Him.
“The past’s been grim.” He said.
Adding, that the question was an unfair test.
But that, if pressed, He guessed
The best was still to come.

©James Rainsford 2010

Spring has arrived here again;
Growing its colours across
The quilted countries of your truth,
Finding in each waxing moment
Fresh fertility, to form anew
The atlas of familiar fields.
Fields, where you had grown,
Enduring many seasons of time’s pulse.
Learning as you grew,
That even here, where in the mist
Of last November’s thin grey rain
We left your winter mound unmade
Spring would return; to conjure
From your fading flesh
The irony of birth.

Growing from your final bed
The transmuted beauty
Of posthumous flowers.

© James Rainsford 2010

Humanity, whom I have never loved
Can leave me with dismay
At its array of triviality.
Normality is hard to bear
When I’m aware
That sometime,
Somehow, and perhaps somewhere;
But more especially someone
Can make the fun,
Provide the light,
That makes the sun more bright
The night more right,
And gives the fight to live
An edge that’s often blunted
By the boredom of the birth
Of ordinary days.

Hey!
It’s not just praise that satisfies,
Who provides the prize should realize
That what’s required
Is not retired minds
Where finds are difficult to make,
I need a risk like gamblers take,
Where the rake-off could be high enough
to make the sky seem small.
So that even when compared
With all that is or’s ever been,
The momentary scene could shrink
the total cosmos to a single wink,
and encompass in an eyelids twitch
The which,
The how,
The when,
The why.

So that;
Just once before I die
The reason for the pain
Is plain.

© James Rainsford 2010

Beyond the limit of what can be said,
Is this terrible pain in my heart.
In my head,
Move the words which I fashion
To carry the weight
Of a knowledge
They weren’t built to bear.

They buckle and bend
Into cliché or worse,
As I try to make verse
Tell all that I know.

Beyond language
Lies a loneliness
Too profound for words.

© James Rainsford

How many thoughts depart
each time a mind goes out?
How many brilliant, or dull dreams,
does death disperse?

Who will wonder why
when we’re all gone?

© James Rainsford 2010