I once tried to write a poem
(or was it prose?)
About two so in love
(was it you and me?)
That they couldn't kiss because
Each time
They looked,
They smiled,
Then grinned
At each other and their all,

And just their teeth met
Click.
And they laughed
Just to be.

How did I love thee? Let me count your teeth.

You watch the words with me no longer.
They left in early sunshine
Neither of us
Wanted.

A seeing that conjures what it most desires:
A solemn gathering of words that lift
To music always waiting listening
For you.

The words are  there to find
At heart of matter in the pristine time
Our imaginations inhabit yet -

But now in recollected stillness.
As I watch you walk away and fade
Between the trees,
And tangled undergrowth of waking life.

Herding flatly in the heat of streets
They rise up
Expecting rights and comfort all around.
But there is none.

Well, as a matter of fact there is some
(Thanks to Matt Cook we can all be more honest now
In poems.  Gear-changing - so much fun)

For instance, take 1 - 4 above.  
It's about groups of people in cafes and bars
In a hot evening city.  I wasn't feeling
Like Joining In.
So,
They were all irritating gits in my eyes
All condemned therefore in writing about it.
Then and afterwards
They were sad desperate zombies, so they were
All looking for a fix of pleasure, distraction, coin
Of their toil exchanging misery for oblivion and so

Doomed
Doomed
Doomed.  

But they weren't really
Of course.

I expect many of them had a truly great time.
Staggering laughter, blow-out fun, exuberance
Of release - and dancing through the
Smoke and din and drink and clashing colours, scents.

Maybe in midst someone of special poise  
Looked felt words across that bar that
Roared and rocked them far apart.  
Then laser quiet unites:
A magic channel switching out the noise.
Later they loved.
It tasted good and lasted.

Years, children, garden, wins,
Losses, and still some Mayhem Friends -
'Remember that night, and the chap
With the crash hat
Who just stood and looked?

I wonder what happened

To him?'

I wish you could be here now
Waiting for the winter dawn
-too early yet -

Outside - cold black and thin treed
Hard by the Dark River

But here the glow touches each to each

You rise to draw a curtain slowly
- night clothes open softly to the screen -
And I am briefly jealous of Peter Mandleson.

Sometimes I can go to that place where everything
Is beautiful
Or fascinating
Or wondrous.
Even my father's encroaching depression,
Following us
Up the green sweeps of the golf course
As we tramped together
With the words slowly failing
Between us

I could cry at that now.
I could not cry then.

Finally it stood beside us
Baleful.
Then coldly with us
In the back seat of the car
All the way home.

I have not eaten properly for weeks.

I have ignored the offerings of little things
In hesitations, turnings round to look again
At light, and waters, glances, steps and whispers.

Instead

I've trudged to no avail the barren flats.
Sought pretended safety among the many
Many in their repeating teeming empty worlds.

Almost believed in them. From time to time.

Then I cleared a space.
Saw the table of the day,
Looked up.

There.  The trees.
The blue sky through the trees.

I walked into the rain. And, turning from,
I watched the curving flight of a bird that
Noticed me the high trees in mist across the valley.

And now,
Birch log in hand I open the stove door.
A rush of radiance. Intense comfort.
Like someone's hands about your face,
Forcing eyes to meet in urgent reassurance

Of human warmth and purpose.

A splinter of time is felt in carpet treads
And your smiling question look
When you know exactly what it is
I want
As you are always there in tails of light
From ivy shining gold on
Waiting trees in evening's thinning presence

As I wait now.

And from this place I watch myself
And see the knots and pain so clear:
They are all the meals I eat that
Parents ate that all the silent unnamed
Faces round this table now
That were and breathed and tasted morning air,
And are not.

Breathe through me.

Now feel all they meant to say.

I stroke words with mouse's arrow -
But feel no easy daylight common sense,
Blessed and cursed to know
Elating separation from the scrabbles
In shallow city seas of present
Struggle to survive and breed.

And yes I know there will be more -
More fresh and blue high wakening days;
While earths of slow engendering wait
Content to breathe alone until I
Stop

To breathe with them.

'And do you think these words are meant for you?'
She nods and looks a moment far beyond the room.
'I think some may be - yes.  Not sure I want
To know'
'And how do you feel about that?'
'The words or the uncertainty?'
'Either. Both. You playing games with me?'
'Believe me - no.
But maybe words must be the only bridge
Between us now.'

She sighs. 'We go our ways, we play
Our roles and mime to expectations,
Others' and our own,  to puppet-please
Through low-lit trudging slabs of days.

But deeper common streams of time
May spring from separated human years,
Make symmetry of selves and find
A breathing river loving all our lost and found.

That we may always know.'

I mean this ‘Rigmarole’ word well.
I place it on your path like flowers, rain
For you to see and know that
In your comings,
Goings beings fleetings in the greater Swirl,
I feel your wonder in the day-to-day
Of all our days.

I start my day my room my world I root
Around my fumbling life for clothes for
Pen for phone, for all my pointedness.
For time. And clattering down the stairs
I clock the walls of me, my life my purpose
And toward the course the road my prize the voyage
I leave.

The cat walks slowly out of my iambic lines.
Listens to the rain.

Need you away.
Pure, like scour wind through skeletal hedges
Stark upon a skylined field.  No leaves.
Gone.

Want no shelter.
Want no easy sooth. The words themselves
Are blown: Beside the point. Always
To exasperate by nearness,  not
Quite near enough. So go.

Just the way you ruffle up your hair
Would grant your words a tree ring life.
So stopping in a year's walk winter wood,
I will remember -

Count back to seasons of past dreams.
Time is rain and sun and solitude of sap,
That can in quiet, etch rivulets down the years
To where we stand.

Your latest lover leaves the train.
The pattern on the seat interrogates.
No answers warm now emptiness is all.

The wings of possibility are burnt
Ammonia stenches, clouds.
No taking light of eyes agreed.

The window is still there.
You always were a window-watcher, you.
Now there may be something.
Maybe something new.

My love returning from the field of other.  
Gently gently to the nearby time.

I cannot see you, feel you. Where you look
Is not for me. I know a word
Will come forth when you sleep.

Take your saying to the opening day - to speak
- To see - a better world.
All the everything you are is now.

In this next breath.

Plane wheels slow, a last half turn, and stop.
Fading jets, ignored companions for the miles,
So loud again in silence.

Their ringing absence leaves a sliver of clear sight.
As all unwind from one life to another
Searching in a tiny 'and' of time
For the pieces they must carry off from
Now to then.

You hold back a little from the crowd,

And look away and see beyond the
London grey, a tree in fullest height of green.

And in that fragile moment's grace
Heart and mind leap through to fields, to water
And to empty skies that have nothing,  
So have all.

You rise and walk along the aisle.

You smile.

Green leaves at the window submarine my room.
A drift of wind, then still,
This waiting,  haikued day.

All the journeys in the world are waiting too,
For our telling and retelling, rummaging for words
To pleasingly adorn, but pointedly, the page;
Voices for another life to hear, maybe, and find their road.

Till all the storms of self subside,
Our ghost voices left to breathe from shades,                                                                
And whisper on a wind that always knew the lines,
As others ride the chattering of their days.

So come with me, to silence. Stay.
- There are no words for truths of Being With.
The million little brush strokes of the willows -
They simply say: just dance today.

For MWF
Summer 2014

Sometimes I think that the only thing
We will take with us
Or leave behind

Is poetry.

Fragments

Of what did not make sense in life

But was beautiful.

In some ways I like your silence. The rainy skies
Of days and paces felt more clearly, closely,
Keenly.  Although my blinded snail horn hope recoils
At touching nothing, you are still there:
Gaining me the world in higher pitch of sight.


So I more readily accept the poorly pins,
Tacking stitches, bits of tape of self
With which - for now - the falling hems
Of finery or rags are held,
As we craft our strut or shuffle through a life.


Till Sunday-weary of all the spiralling conspiracy
Of selves and shells.  We stop. Finally.
Naked, cherished, and accepted all for all.

I lay you down as gently as I know
Uncover all, and all my words
So simply fly away.

No distance now. We are the sunlight
Touch and silent ancient speech of
Leaves and rainy roads that weather back
To sky and fields and streams.

The melancholy is there alright
But real unreal in sense of simple
Thinking wrong right turn?
Who knows?

Some future state of economic social
******* that leaves all free to breathe
With sun and joyful rain at every turn.

And dragging selves that wrap themselves
Against the slowing rain
Are gone.

But here we are, and here it is
Rickets or gravity
Little difference. We are left
To ourselves.

Footfalls in a street of light. A
Wondering.  A slowing to the pace
Of searching for beyond - beyond
The gated places. All such places
Come to grief.  

But grief as leaving, grief as seeing.
Grief as necessary arcs in rainy skies:
To help you wonder
Help you see.

Your hair pulled back to bun,
Your focus on the phone.
Head up for inspiration once,
Then quick return to frowning words.

I watch you from across the train;
An elegance of tassled shawl,
Faint scent, disdainful glance
At passing green. A sigh.

Much later in the journey,
The reply.  Temples briefly held;
A hand that comforts
And despairs.  

Those careful words that did not work.

Running round the Isle of Wight
To keep up with the boats.
- Is that all I ever do?
But rocks and lonely beach
And distances - are pilgrimage
And race with self
As much as waves and sky.

This morning's rumbling train from Heaven sent:
Now words are my salvation.

A tightness in the mind, the waist.
But also freedom of a voice to say I care.

For many faces near, but known not kin.
Their contrasts trace a line of thought
To you.

New smoothness of a plastic place
Rough words do good to shake, to shake -
And give the world a grain again.

I cannot find nor want to yet,  our
Dwelling in an archived hall of thought
However sweet.

No - I will seek for now, and to the end -
The always newfound world
Of any two that find a voice.
And meet.

A lifetime would hardly be enough to listen
Long and talk to you, as here we sit
In newly plastered swirling pink
That might look cold, but so not so -
For we are wombed by warmth of voices
Ours, through us - remembered others -
And a ghostly third.

Dark lines mark the pallid page to life
And start to sing
Of glooms and brightness; heavy steps
And light.
To a final Overwhelming.

- So we talk and write of Death.

But then the wind rises. The leaves now
Lift again, though 'Sit by you sit by you'
The Death bird sings by day by night.

The words welcome the sounds,
Listening in their fields of white
- all my good shepherds -
In the high fields, lanes and valleys of my life.

You really never write a poem
They write you.

You rarely ever write a poem
They humble you.

Maybe the only good we ever know:
The hunger for the strange.  

Our inheritance of otherness
In the wandered rain of words.

I asked the cat if it had a muzzle.
It gave me a look. Got off my lap.
Came back and sat
In profile.

The snarling shouting mob of skin and bone
Howl me raw your sure sublime trajectory of rage.

You arc with more and more and more
All held within your careful Monday self;  

You are legion now:  a fiery crowd of verbs
Unanswerable with spitting inspiration.

The beauty is too bright to see.  I run

Before the meek warm waters of apology
Drag you to bedraggled shore
And dry sense.

I think many people fall in love with you.
And through you, something in themselves
They never found, or more likely, lost
In all the trying to be true.

Times trying to be better, love in turmoil.  
Find a path, to please oneself and other.  
Neither all too often.  And at

The ending of the light, contemplate
A little life, meandering to its close.  

And then there's you.

Tides and Seasons. Enfolding and Release.
The strengthening breath of Autumn calls
Our light to soften -
Quieten.  Quieten now,

As simple bore and stroke of days
Rolls the year along its darkening
Pathways, rich with blinded leaves:
Our deciduous words of change.  

Inherent meditation of the time, the place -
The single leaf that drifts across the pale
Cathedral's face sees and is this loving light
On fields, on houses, ponds and streams.  
Lie down with you.  Watch you
Close your eyes.

Looking up, I set my mind to wander
From the work in front of it towards
A deeper now.

The rain, the endless exhale of the laptop fan...
And then I touched the paper. Found a tunnel
Back to me.

We saw someone together on TV
She was called Sunny Quick.
The camera followed as she ran - so light,
She danced - down stairs.  

We both thought - but you said it -
"Good name".  And it was so exactly
Right. The thought, the pause, the
Words. So right that I knew then.

And still do

Off on one side in my head. Only
Way to say it. Christmas does it to me
Every time.

I'm dangerous now. Squad don't know
But Inside hardly soldier anymore.  
Standing orders, tactics, kit and all

That stuff replaced by unmilitary                                              
Wondering at the sky,
Or the beauty of the brackets of the forward sight
That frame the blade, the 'I': the part of me
That is my target every time I fire.

Still, my private holiday tomorrow: I will
Close eyes on blinding sand
And wake in chilly splendour of
A Northern wood with bracken underfoot,

And  streams and lichened rocks,
And lowering clouds, a scattering of birds across the wind,
And peace.

Just staring. Gazing. And waggling
A foot. It's what I do. And what I'm
Supposed to do Is just this. Now.
Sometimes I sing.

You can hear me.

Sometimes.

Babies are Right.  Down cobbled streets
Is me.  
The cool desktop, the smooth pen
Is me.
The whole world

My page days turn too quickly.
Flighty meanings - reach to catch a word.
Half seen, half felt, half heard.
But might have saved for me a bright and lovely second.

Perhaps a fleeting truth is only right
For this, our running whispering,
Grave paved life.

You're still not seeing it
The master began....
I know I said
And shot him dead.
I can I can I can.

You have to face it as a sin against your friend
- The easy lie. A stupid comforter - 'I was about
To stop anyway' - half way through the run.

Not true, not true. I only said it to make you
Feel better.   But neither of us did.  Panting
On the road, with the untruth between us.

I saw the  heavy angel of the bell
And heard his plainsong clear.
The length of fleshy life he showed to me.

I walked away and all steps were bell-notes
Telling me a silent truth of in and out.
Clapping hands that followed, filling

All the valleys of my mind with mother joy:
A grace and blessing of no thoughts
Just ringing life and clouds and air.

Now is the very time. The most high.
I tell you all to stand.  There is the sun
Of freedom.  There, see.  
Stand up and speak, be heard, be seen
To see it.  Spirits stretch to light
By nature, by all of us in eyes that
Meet in quiet powerful crowds.

We may slowly, sadly walk to home.
But we will ever each be keeping close
The open, breathing words.

The shadow of action covers you
As a brightness creeps across the world.
Your hair a forgotten pointing
As the stride to battle stirs.

Not now the toys of words.
The smell of belted metal purpose
In your hand. Fly to find a man
To enter and to ****.

The green, the brown the folded
Cold of stiff cloth will warm soon
Against you. How soon cold
Again? No matter. Off you go.

Watching the rain. Is it for the first time in my life?
Little squalls across the road.
A patch of time.
A single note
Before the glass doors open,
And in to buy.  But now, what do I need?

Not for you the opening bars.
Sit back, fold hands, a little smile
At the beauty of the others' notes, familiar.

Now, you feel it coming. A caress
Of knowing fingers, lips. The flute rises
To an acquiescing nod, and

A black speck. Tiny mite. A life.
Floating past the mountain of my face.
Scale of things, and poorly words to say
Anything at all.

It is enough, maybe All
To watch the fire, the flame. And see,
With no words, the Heavens,
And the earth.

A fear of warm false certainly of tiny mind built days.
- Let me climb me out of me -

A wooden rule - dead measure of my time to leaving cold.
- Listen to the gusts of now -

Books take their second life as rooting trees entangling my thoughts.
- I find a space of me to fly a little -
It's all I need.

Alot to be said for naked existence.
Alot to be unsaid, for the same.
I consume the moment. Ravenous
Beyond all appetite. Beyond all time.
Beginner's mind to the end

I am new to this, and will always be.

It's the wonder of the words that dare
The world to be. Levitation of the blurring
Dance of eyes and flashing hardnesses
Of walls and trains and roads  Words must
Witness by their mutual rituals, all
The gentle glories of a touch.

Words falter do not falter
In face of decay.

The ever changing marks
Are ever shaken

Speaking in the turmoil
Of time that always never

Slips away.