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.

There are no stabs of conscience
as memory, understanding and will
all work together in constructive harmony;

yet the spirit's sad gaze
looks out from the window of it's heart
at the transience of passing flotillas
of sleep-invoking clouds.

With the mind
turning and twisting
in the agony of a heart
squeezed dry like a sponge with despair
I pace to and fro
in a bedroom's dimly lit silences
as a caged animal
hungering and thirsting
for the scent of a liberating oasis.

Distance stretched
the length of our nearness
that time in the park, the Phoenix Park,
when the deer fled from our coming
and you, silently with the sound of thunder,
walked over there knowing that I, being unsure
and trying to think the reasonable thing,
would follow when desire was to strike out
and savour the wounds of a false pride.

But then the November darkness came quickly
where you had come to stop
and swirling leave shoals
rose and fell like souls
praying for the next rush
to lift them higher
before a distant bell
rang out my destiny.

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

The world

does not care

if your days and nights

are torn asunder

by the crimes and tragic mistakes

of yesteryear.

Alleluia !
The visions and insights
increase with each passing minute -

whirlwinds of growing wisdom
together with the receiving
of perpetual graces
and eternal values.

All difficulties surrender
and disappear into oblivion
where the horrors
of non-being thrive.

Come into my heart forever,
horizontally and vertically
to the greatest distances and heights.

Come and be with me in every step
and breath I take.

Come and share all the toil and hardships
of this mundane existence.

Come and divide it all
in pain with the occasional
scent of heaven.

Come, my love, into the womb
of my future.

Come, my love, come.

Come and stay for infinity!

The owls line up
in the vicinity,
the street lamps
switch on;
traffic trundling by
with homeward bound
hungry crowds.

The kitchens hives
of domestic industry
as broadcasts
prepare to invade
the living rooms
of the temporary retired.

Night falls.

Purpose -
to bring something
into existence
baptize it with a name
and bless it's frail tangibility
with an aura of poignant grace.

The sun exits, ever so slowly,
down behind the heights of bursting-into-leaf beeches
as gym-shoe-running children
are called in to supper and to bed.

Voices sound from balconies and neighbours' gardens
while blackbirds bid, contentedly, the day farewell.
Lawnmowers cease their whirring sounds
and clippers, rakes and hoes clank in wooden or plastic sheds.

Fragrances roam the evening air,
invading every square metre with terrestial joy,
and cigarettes are passed around
as the face next door has ceased
being a removed nod and smile.

Eventually, the curtains are drawn on a happy ending
while tentative talk succeeds in silencing
any riotous upheavals that might occur
in the night's discourses and dreams.

Poets like blackbirds must sing
at the dawning and ending of each day;
tear the worm of nothingness
from the heart of existence
and embrace every miracle of chance
encountered or revealed
in every stream of light.

Not being capable
of imitating a song-thrush
(I know his speckled colours!)
and being in possession of a guitar
that won't or refuses to play itself
I will gladly admit to an arrest,
somewhere, in my developement.

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.

A cool breeze
shaves the contours
of my face
in a night lit
by a thousand warm
stars.

More than radiant
Your loving light
flooding from the infinite reservoirs
of a teeming heart
into the vast spaces
of an ever thirsting mind.

Land of pain

and complaints

teaching it's young

the miserable lessons of failure

and injustice that went cruelly mad.



An island

with rugged shores

that turn in

on it's own populace.



Rising.

genuflecting

and falling 'fatefully'

again

into the puddles

of it's own demise.



All that remains

is an emerald sadness

filled with living ghosts.

The pretence of too many new beginnings
lacking, eventually, any appearance of permanent lustre.
Each new day just another blob in a copybook
of fragmented scribblings.

Impervious to the time of day
and suffering the idleness
of sitting in a near lifeless limbo
I am at last compelled
to take up my pen
in the almost vain hope
of resuscitating an interest
in the rhythms of the joyful
side of life.

But being of a disposition
that too easily dons the coat of distraction
my attentions are soon reduced:
to impoverished thoughts
and reflections concerning small talk
about the weather
while standing still in lifts;
to thinking about the same old heads
nodding to each other
in rain-soaked streets;
to pondering greygreen corridors
that stretch the imagination
into cheerless silences
of absolute emptyness.

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.

At last!

Cheerful notes flood

the heart's empty chambers

and encourage impromptu steps

in a momentary jig of joy.

A walk -
cold to begin with
but the blood soon warms up
and everything becomes
invigorating.

Sun and frost -
the trees sentinel
bare silhouettes
in a winter landscape,
as train traffic
can, more than, clearly be heard
crossing the Rhine
near Oosterbeek.

On the way
crisp reflections
on general and particular
affairs;
a clear sober mind
plotting and planning
the immediate future.

Refreshed,
with all things translucent
and in their proper places
I head for home
and coffee and a cigar.

Sounding
deep and deeper
into a myriad of memories;
into the archives of the mind's tomes;
into the roots and foundations
of a flowing and alternatively stagnant consciousness;
into the labyrinths
of emotional conflicts and behaviour;
into why there is anger, bitterness and contempt
and in the next beat love, compassion and even laughter.

Sometimes with daunting deduction there is a revelation
springing forth from the secret realms
of the subliminal self.

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.

The impressions of the day
mould into memories
fleeting across the pages
of time and space
while reclining in a metaphysical armchair -

before entering night's
palace of dreams and countless desires.

Sooner or later everything gets played out
and the music stops -

childhood almost before it has begun
with youth rushing on to it's doom
and adulthood  showing some semplance of maturity
before middle-age despondency.

Wise old age reveals itself as a grinning caricature
reflecting comically the way things should have been.

I hear, now,

the traffic of time

speeding on into

the gaping black-hole

of the avaricious

and all devouring

night.

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.

Swirling
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 selected
from Your inexhaustable
chest of treasures.

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......

There is a woman,
so kind and great of heart,
who visits our church.

From Eastern Europe
she is tinier
than even the smallest Piaf.

When she sings
in praise and adoration of her Creator,
you can almost see
the pillars tremble
in harmony;

as her voice
totally and powerfully
pervades the innermost depths
of the entire congregation.

Storm at sea -
fishing boats
tossed about
in the spume
of giant waves.

Each pause
in the onslaught
like been offered
a last cigarette
before they blindfold
you.

Celestial long summer days
bring us back to the joys of hide-and-seek,
tickling long grasses and blue infinite skies -
the innocence of childhood ways
played close to the ground
while travelling incredible imaginary distances
to attend a momentary symphony
of pastoral vision and sound.

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.

Triumph,
triumph,
triumph!

A fanfare of triump,
a fanfare of life
marching on -

anew,
anew,
anew!

Life anew,
life anew
bursting the seams
of it's winter clothes

into the dazzling dance
of a newly arrived spring!

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.

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.

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.

Is there to be no reprieve
from the mental rack
of present hauntings
resurrecting a persistent
and pervading past ?

Into the more than endless night
they loom, dressed in cloaks
and armed with countless daggers,
rusted in their deep graves.

They plunge and contort
the heart into a shapeless mass
of free-floating anxieties
dominating and dissecting
every half-conscious syllable

destroying all feeble endeavours
at any semblance of normality.

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.

To be human
is almost everything
in itself -

and is the happy-go-lucky mess
that still turns this planet around.

Feelings -

tugging

at my heart strings;

pressing

all the buttons

at once!



Written in collaboration with Marie Shine.

Impoverishment ?

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

materialistic gods
in many lands.

I am not
in control anymore;
unidentifiable powers play
with the furniture
of my brains.

I must go on
I tell myself;
there are things
that need to be done
but to what end?

Elements
*****
the putridness of pain's
existence
down the bows
of my sinking ship

as a scream
turns into a gurgle
before
it has really got underway.

August sunlight
coupled with carefree breezes
flit through the well dressed oaks
outside of my rectangular window

and illuminate a stopgap
in the ongoing transience
of the seasons and time.

Life's sometimes hundrum haze
and maze of tangled thoughts
are now and then lit by illuminations
fleeting through the lens of revelation's eye;

like a full-moon in June fringed with
a late-night-hot-navy-blue satin sky
or an expanse of shimmering water
dotted here and there by an odd-dark-green island.

Waves and leaves rustling in the contented sphere,
radio-voices and soft music floating over
the air-waves travelling from a distant dwelling;

the identification of a wild plant or flower;
your only child putting his big toe in his mouth.

Miracles without grandeur,
miracles of simple import
with no screaming white gulls
spoiling the tranquil view of the sea's horizon.

The sea,
dark tonight -

lights twinkle on a hill
and there is the sinister sound
of shingle been dragged down
into reluctant depths.

Above,
a foreign-bound jet
flies into the distances
of refreshing differences
and welcome change.

Typically reflecting
the soul and taste of your race;
poignant in the moment
but eventually flowing
to the heavens,
the unattainable
and the ideal.

Your joy is in fighting for dignity;
the well-being of nobly conquering
all jokes made at your own
and others' expense.

Yet within you
there is the sublime humour
magically transcending pettiness
and hates of every gender.

You ascend
into celestial understanding
and sweet compassion.

However
in the end
you are a tired compromise
of love gone wrong
while bearing fruits
for insecure futures.

Nothing more can be said
to describe your beauty
in all it's temperamental
indulgences and lack of self-restraint.

When I am as

a rusty frame resting

in the dump

of it's own miserable present

I can but hope to become

dung

for a new spring.

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.