You are like a well
of fresh water
in a desert
of desolation.

You are like a warm flame
in the cold night
of dark nihilism.

You are as a compass
in a directionless universe.

You are as a revealing flare
in a sea of distress.

You are as sense
in a maze of absurdity.

You are like a purpose
behind apparent chaos.

You are like an answer
to a long list of supplications.

You are like a surefooted guide
through the muddles realms
of space and time.

You are as a cool dawn breeze
after a night full of fever.

You are as a shining star
in the essence of our beings.

You are like the finest cut diamond
that sparkles in our souls.

You are like the best of wines
that brings solace to our hearts.

You are like a lover
who gives his all
in anticipation
of nothing.

The oncoming night
shall witness the gods
agonising over the destinies
of doubting souls -

bequeathed with numerous
apprehensions painted over
by theatrical lies
not revealing
admissions and guilt.

Bliss.

A
chamber
orchestra
exulting -
with
football
results
coming
in
over
a
silent screen.

Impoverishment ?

The sheen
of sun
on parked cars'
rooves
and
bonnets -

materialistic gods
in many lands.

Windows and gardens
are gradually transformed
into the threacherous abysses
of thoughts evoking fear -

there are avenues ripe for exploitation
as reluctant and innocent
fanciful minds are laid permanently bare;

fatalism in the face of an accelerating
and inevitable sense of doom and dust.

Backwaters.

Violins and pipes
played together
abreast
of different rippling
waters;

Uileann throttling
forward
over hills and downs -
the hunt, chase, ****
or loss;

thrill of being,
spontaneous
in hilly jump,
stream, rock,
hedge, mountain,
mud and pebbled with soup,
partridge, pheasant,
trout and salmon
horizon.

Writing in memory
and distance
of those rampant
fiddles and flutes;
of those swaying dances
over drunken floors
and sailing seas;

the jigs in heaven,
rock and roll,
ups and downs
between a nod and a wink -

the forever being,
cynically, hopeful
in the flux of things
that knock us flat
or cheer us on.

The heart in it's own world
is filled with rivers, mountains
and deep oceans,
currents, heights and depths
beyond comprehension.

Nearly drowning
in dark pools of failure,
guilt and regrets
it beats and breaths again
the joy of the  salmon's leap.

Pulsing forth
through good weather and bad;
one minute pessimism
but more often than not
the resilient common-sense of hope.

Love-shaped, vulnerable Cupid-target;
Hamlet died for you.

You are the betwixt-and-between
who commandeers the foetal spring
and death's heavily laden bed.

The white-horses of the mind,
approaching the shores of the body,
never, ultimately, reach their destination
but break and disappear
leaving time's waves
to slowly erode
our animal allotments.

I humbly ask You to unlock
the hidden silences and secrets
of my fugitive and forlorn heart,
that there may be in this exile
a fruitful renewal,
a new birth,
a total pouring forth
of without cessation worded petals
on the canvasses
of a continually blooming mind
with living acts of creation
in Your most holy of holiest names.

I humbly ask You to unlock
the hidden silences and secrets
of my fugitive and forlorn heart,
that there may be in this exile
a fruitful renewal,
a new birth,
a total pouring forth
of without cessation worded petals
on the canvasses
of a continually blooming mind
with living acts of creation
in Your most holy of holiest names.

O! Sacred Muse
where is Your voice
in this dry
and empty
desert of immensity?

In dark isolation,
this winter's morning,
the heart yearns apparently alone
while the mind remains vacant.

Havig put the radio on
music from a requiem
seems to add to a soul's distress.

I place my pen on the table again.

Presently
You will come
into my famished
heart.

Help me, then,
times
without number,
to reflect
something of Your            
more than ultra radiant
light

in an opaque world.

Alone again
in the nochturnal
hours,
with pen
in hand,
as the music
soothes
an awakening
soul.

The moon
is full
and bright
as the stars
glitter
through gaps
in the clouds.

All traffic
to and from Schiphol
at a rest
as Handel
makes
his joyous
entry -

and I dance!
and I dance!
and I dance
and dance!

Ah! the light
and a day
beginning with Bach;
the clicking of fingers
and immediate dancing
welcoming life's mysteries
yet again -

with joys
and adventures
bearing
new fruit,
new delicacies
for the soul's
digestion.

My many
faces in a mirror - multiplying
faces of one being,
dully and mistily ever changing,
erring
till the death.

My voices of many pasts and buried pangs
looming into the uncertainty
of the fleeting moment's anxiety
for arrest and release.

My memories -
generations flowing into generations,
like clouds of permanent change,
wind across the circles
of earth's heavens

and there are waters rising
dangerously higher
with the engulfing of  unforgiven faults
and tragedies not sufficiently drowned
in tears of blood and anguish

and there is the baptism
in the bath of self-confession
leading to glimpses of patches azure
in a sky of cold and brittle
shining glass.

The mirror shatters into its atoms
and while they escape
I remain
none the wiser
just being those faces,
those voices,
those memories,
those waters,
that baptism

both recognizable
and totally alien.

View from a hilltop.

A white sail-boat
glides along, swiftly,
some distance on a river -

interrupting the reflections
of summer trees
on deep, dark waters.

A great day,
aided
by Mars bars;
out on a lake,
in a small boat,
fishing for all
we were worth.

Later,
retiring to a pub
we spoke about
the big-one
who got away -

the big-one
always
gets away!

Soft rains
falling
onto the quiet
unobstrusive
mornings
as seas lap
gently
against
the winter-weary
shores
of
hearts
and souls.

Buds
sprouting
and shooting
their green-rich
heads
towards
an inebriated
sun;
upwards
and outwards
in the delicate
art
of crowning
the bare bones
of skeletal
trees.

Wet grasses
slowly
changing hue
on desolate pastures
of brown
rot and decay.

Wood and soil,
flesh and blood
animated with an
optimism
going wild
with newborn
joy.

Mad in the furnace
of the mind;
mad in a hurricane
of despair;
mad in a meltingpot
of depressions -
time floods forth
in a total absence
far from reality
as cerebral fires
gust into one
panic attack
after the other -

there is no relenting,
there is no relenting,
there is no relenting......

It is your birthday,
not that you really care -
you  never were a man
for giving or taking presents;
only at heart
you appreciated being valued;
for you the wishing
or being wished
was sufficient.

It is not your will
that I am a self-chosen exile,
devoid of ambition
and with no
visible interest in anything
that you might hold dear.

Yet, like a Polonius,
in the wisdom of your years
you desire for me
what is best:
security, health and prosperity.

Maybe, the Creator,
whom you most devoutly trust in,
does, after all, move in strange ways
like your son
who has begun to pray again.

The spirit
of Erasmus
of Rotterdam
still does
and always
will
thrive
in me.

Music
flowing
in
and out,
around
and around,
weaving
and
transcending
into
eternal-like
circles of bliss
on a new
God-given
summer's
morning.

2 girls
full of joy,
linked
arm in arm
and dancing
down the road -
not knowing
yet
what the future
has in store
for them.

A pea
fell on the floor -
I picked it up
and ate it
because of all the hunger
on this 'green' globe.

Snapshot.

Cheerful
cloths-pegs
of many colours
hanging
against
a background
of bare trees
and a grey
sky.

Hard boiled eggs.

Fill the saucepan
up with water;
boil and boil
till everything is dry;
then run
the cold tap
so that
the inferno
cools down.
Peel
gently,
add
salt and pepper
and
devour.

A
gastronomical
delight
for
anyone
in
a garret.

Writing.

None of this
is important.

The poetry
of flesh-and-bone characters,
immunization from what is -

a comfort
in the recognition of ourselves
and realization
that we are not completely
alone
in our aloofness.

The placenta of poetry.

At 25
still young and arrogant
but with some modesty creeping in

more fully fledged
in the void's vale
of dropping foundation blocks
into pools of quicksand

tenements are always prey
to vulnerabilities of one kind
or other

if someone sneeze
I am uncomfortably cold

one sleeve of my pullover
is rolled up above the elbow -
it is threadbare!

Sandals.

Probably seeing
not much future in anything;
direction, conspiracy or destination
they play ball with indifference
and walk along,
feeling comfortably ignored
and alone.

Wise nouns
who live neutrally
in a downtrodden world.

They have seen
the scratches on their buckles and their hides
outlive
the downfall and demise
of innumerable generations.

I feel
that it is not my pen
but Your's
that strikes these chords.

I feel
that Your's is the abetting
and the glory
of sanity on virginal paper.

Family life.

Great aruments and debates
concerning mundanities
and trivialities -
the all-conquering
world of pettines
and , of course,
the taken-for-granted
comforts and cosiness.

The sluices of the heart
suddenly open
and pour their torrents
into every atom
of my entity
filling the spirit
with an inexpressionable anguish
and drowning even the mind's
darkest and most hidden crevices
in a flood of salinity.

Heaving in my heart
plucked guitar note
send a hopeful tune out
to the limitless bounds
of space and the eternal.

There is serenity
in the realms of heart and mind
as soft-coloured music
flows harmoniously
through the waters
of my iridescent
soul.

The cradle is truly submerged
but the cot lingers there
in a haze of prison-like bars,
painted faintly blue -
mother and child sharing intimately
darkening dusks
as shadowy phantoms dance
and flit on the ceiling and walls
around an open-hearth fire.

Outside my window
the blur of a November fog
hastens up eternal ghosts, Hades-like,
from gardens bleeding with pungent odours.

There are
the remembrances of mistakes and faults,
unexcitably, gone to dismal wastes
and waters of stale and frothy ****.

Electric neon
collages;
multi-coloured,
flashing, successively,
on and off
through the night's
empty
desert of ever shifting sands.

The intangible touches me,
now and then.

It is always gone again
before
I can reach out
and embrace it.

Every day
I drink wine,
break and share
bread
with my family.

It is not a ritual
but a simple blessing
and comfort -
a communion of necessity
and joy.

Time out ?

To set aside the radio,
television, cups of tea,
**** and chat. Sever the finger
of contact and easy content.
draw the curtains, climb into bed
and listen to the rain drumming down.

To
people alone
in single rooms
and countless cities
listening to sad music
with heads resting on hunched up shoulders.

Like an object
lying on the strand
I am tired and immobile
in the dying light
of the day.

Let the tide
sweep in
and carry me off
to the depths
of glistening pearls
and divers' dreams.

Blinded
and surrounded
by light and more and more light
there are no insights, comforts
or illuminations;
only tears raining down
on the dusty desert
of my thirsting soul.

Gliding
through the fresh snowflakes
of my mind;
feeling
warm and sociable
in the taverns
of my contented heart
I embrace this winter's day
as a benevolent gift
chosen from Your inexhaustable
chest of treasures.

I am floundering
in a sea of doubts;
in a mire
of recriminations
and guilt -
for having crossed
the border
into the unchartered
waters of individuality.
Suddenly
an Ave Maria
haunting
my room
in the isolated
depths of the night
prevents
my scream from developing
and startling the entire village.

In the dark silences
of my downtrodden thoughts
there is sometimes
a fiery consummation,
conception and fermentation
of breaking new ground -

frontiers once again opened
and filled with cadences
and rhythms of liberation.

A blessed release
from interminable durations
of the void's hammering on
and in the brain.

In time's ebb and flood
we are like puppets
falling down
and being pulled back up again
by the powerful strings
of our own primeval stubborness;

Yo-yoing back and forth
while the shooting gallery
shots of fate and fortune
hit or miss.

Tragicomedy in the full!

Paradox -
to name the indescribable;
give it flesh and bones,
water to drink,
food for it's soul
and a heart to digest
both life's pains and joys.