If I may be allowed to be rhetorical
In matters spiritual or metaphorical,
I have a little parable to tell.

And if permitted to wax somewhat lyrical
I’d count it no less than a flaming miracle
If my words chanced to cast a magic spell.

You make the sunshine
When clouds fill the sky;
You make the flowers bloom
Where deserts are dry;
You expand my mind
With thoughts dear and clear;
And fill up my heart
Whenever you’re near.

And now if I may choose to be empirical
And build a dream that’s simply atmospherical,
To emphasise the points you’ve overheard.

They’re really not the least bit evangelical
Or even meant to drive someone hysterical,
As long as you’re both shaken up and stirred.

You light up my face
Whenever you smile;
To see it I’d walk
Full many a mile.
I’d go anywhere
For beauty so fair;
Honesty so true,
Fidelity rare.

So, summing up a treatise categorical,
And drawing to a close this tale historical
I’ll add one chorus to this final word.

In case for you it has been too intense, I call
Attention to much other verse nonsensical
And lyrics that are equally absurd.

My verses avoid
June rhyming with moon;
Search much as you will
You’ll not find a “spoon”.
And hard as you try
You simply won’t swoon
Over a songster
Whose style is to croon.

My task completed has not been incandescent
But is rather now revealed as evanescent.
And certainly it was not made of chrome.

So set aside these verses allegorical;
I hope you didn’t seek the Delphic oracle;
It’s time to pack up and to just go home.

Prosaic’ly he plods the path of peace,
Avoiding pitfalls when the dusk is nigh
By treading warily.  Does not release
In gay abandonment a heartfelt sigh
Such as the vagabond of Nature’s road
Permits himself when shades of darkness fall;
For he has not to carry such a load,
And is but one of many that make all.

These hips are made for bearing,
And that’s just what they’ll do.
One of these days these hips
Are gonna bear a child or two.

I cannot believe
in my own mortality.
Am I a vampire?


Being close to you,
no matter how far away,
I’m closer to me.


Once I’d learned to crawl
I yearned to reach to the sky
and prove I could fly

Epicurus put it well.

We need not concern ourselves with death, for
so long as we consider it,
it does not exist.
And when we cease to exist
and can no longer consider it,
it is of no concern.

So . . . what the hell?

Epicurus put it very well.

The scriptures tell us that
to everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die.

Forgive me then if I suggest
that this was not the time
for Emily.
It bears no sense or reason.
It was a fearful crime.

She was one of the blessèd ones
who offer so much sustenance to others
that they have little left over
for themselves.

It is not always a blessing
to survive.
Sometimes it is anguish
to be alive.

Now she has gone and we remain
to face a lifetime of pain.
But we should also strive
to keep alive the joyous memories
of all that she has brought into our lives.

Hers was a bright
unquenchable spirit.
The heartbreak of her vanished hair
produced a request for hats
that would enhance
and not detract.
Thus did she turn negatives
into positives.

The intensity of her smile
was such as to dispel
that monstrous regiment
of doubts and fears
that assailed us.
Thus did she bring us comfort.
Thus did she turn winter
into summer.

She always bore her sufferings
with fortitude beyond credence
and always thought of others
before herself.

Music was such a large part of her life,
for her the bells were always ringing.
She would be saddened beyond measure
if she believed our grief
prevented us from singing.

For life goes on
and we move on
and she would be the first to say
"It is right to grieve
it is right to display sadness,
it is right to shed tears
so long as you continue to believe
that I will sing with you through the years."

Her song may now be heard
in the notes of every twittering bird.
Her smile will be seen
in every flaming sunset,
in every shimmering rainbow;
in the beauty of nature
as profound
as once she loved.

Her joy will continue to be felt
in the waves that crash
upon the shore,
the wind upon our skin,
the blades of grass
beneath our feet,
where once she walked.

In the fleeting clouds
of blissful skies,
the woods and trees
that mark the hallowed ground
that once she trod.

But most of all
in the sound of every twittering bird,
her song will continue to be heard.

I have lived many lives;
I have worn many hats;
I have sown many oats,
and touched many hearts.
I have enjoyed adventure
and reaped a rich harvest.

And now there are

no new lives to be lived,
no new hats to be worn,
no new oats to be sown,
no new hearts to be touched,
I look forward to the next,
perhaps the last, adventure.

We believe that by identifying symptoms
we will succeed in curing cause.
But the name is as little the origin
as the menu is the meal.
We need to seek the source,
the mainspring of our malady.

A cure may be
as elusive as the alchemist’s gold,
or the scientist’s discovery
of a perpetual motion machine.

But
to **** the ****
we must locate the root.

Sow the seeds of kindness
in the meadows of your life;
and reap the harvest of love
in the orchards of your heart.

They **** us up, the kids we bear,
A Gordian knot cut through and through
But it’s a blame we have to share
A penalty that’s overdue.

And they’ll be ****** up in their turn
By kids who simply do not care;
Who half the time show no concern
And half are scrabbling in your hair.

The child is father of the man
So how on earth can we complain
When they indulge cruel Nature's plan
And put us through it all again?

I have these thousands of words
jostling each other at the back of my head,
trying to force their way out
in a certain order, a particular pattern;
trying to express something.
What?
And every so often a combination of them
will be expelled  in an unexpected way,
after we roll them around our head
as though they were candy
rolling around our palate,
being tested for flavour,
for consistency,
for shape.
Toying with them,
teasing them, denying them their natural
conclusion.
Sometimes we feel frightened,
we feel threatened,
we are fearful
that we may reach the end
of an exhilarating experience.
And then the candy dissolves,
the words force themselves into consciousness,
and are revealed in a form that
in fact
enhances our experience,
provides  a new sight to every sound,
a new flavour to every consistency,
a new pattern to every thought.
And we call it poetry.

The poet and the platonist
Were seated side by side
A carriage on the Circle Line
Was what they occupied,
While gazing at a map aloft.
It was the station guide

The train was running on its tracks
Running with all its speed
The carriage held but these two men
Great intellects indeed,
Deliberating mysteries
On which they disagreed.

Alongside Mr Gregory
Was seated Mr Syme
The former quite anarchic;
The latter, quite sublime,
For whom the whole discussion
Seemed but a waste of time.

The time has come the poet said
To speak of many things
Of God and Truth and Transcendence
And Saratoga Springs
And whether miracles exist
And archangelic wings

“O poet” said the Platonist
“Please look at what you’ve done!
You’ve ridiculed my arguments,
Where have my dogmas gone?”
“No need for such concern,” he said
“I’ve swallowed every one!”

I bought myself a pencil.
I had a lot to write.
I bought myself a notepad too
it was a gleaming white.

I started to write upon it
but the words were very faint.
I went back to the paper shop
to tell them my complaint.

With the pencil in his hand
the shopkeeper scratched his head
and said “you need to change this
for a darker form of lead.”

I asked him most politely
with no hint of aggression
“2B or not 2B, " I said
"that has to be the question"

                                               Bill Shakespeare

She came back.
Briefly.
Back from mind and heart.
Back into my
actuality.

The initial shock
of external appearance
immediately
transposed itself
into the feeling of
habitual love.

There was no alteration
beyond the
superficiality
of her changed deportment.
The strength of character,
the courage to face
unflinchingly
the extremities of
physical discomfort
and pain . . .
none of this in any way
differed
from the recalled
determination
that inspires
the admiration
and the adoration
in which she is held.

She is not a survivor.
She is a victor.

There is a taste to violence,
a tang, a smell,
a strange delight
that thrills and yet disgusts
the fickle sense of worth,
the sweet austere caress
that fills and then combusts
to leave the hated spirit
stained in hell.

She came and it was light:
The light of countless twinkles in a champagne glass.
She spoke and all was bright:
The brightness of the sunset in a narrow pass.

What matters how she came or what she said?
Of small importance, now, the cause of strife.
But when she went I wished that I were dead,
For all the light departed from my life.

Longmoor 1948
Subsequently published in Uncultured Pearls, ASPEN-London, 2014.

He was being interviewed on the box,
having famously engaged
in a different type of box
many decades earlier.

They, rather unkindly I thought,
produced a recent picture of him
stripped to the waist and in his boxing shorts.
neck larger than his head,
spindly legs at odds with thickened torso.
His hearing clearly impaired
by the damage sustained to one ear.
His balance slightly unsteady,
but a reminder of what used to be.
I felt really sorry for him.

And then I thought
who am I to judge?
Perhaps his life would have been pitiable
had he followed any other course.
Perhaps he might regard
the loss of certain faculties
a small price to pay
for the pleasure and fulfilment obtained
from the pursuit of a career
that was more satisfying
than any other that was available to him.

The thought sustained and cheered me.

There were so many superstars
Conducting somber seminars
And I’ve attended many in my time.

And they seemed to take for granted
We could only be enchanted;
That their facilitation is sublime

And since those presentations are
Now displaced by the webinar
Their pedagogic hubris is enlarged.

And they can add computer skill
To their old-fashioned power drill
Engagement thus is positively charged.

And we still can choose to slumber
Through a course no longer somber
The internet will simply intercede

So gird your ***** and drop your guard
Send reverence to the graveyard;
The superstar is an endangered breed

Where does my shadow end
and I begin?
Or, contrariwise,
where is my ending
and my shade’s beginning?

Captive
in my body’s helpless
state,
I am aware
of the detestable
but inexorable
consuming of my body
by its shadow.

Following a visit to the phlebotomist this morning, I penned the following:

She stuck a needle in my thumb
I gave a mighty yelp.
She said that she was satisfied.
I asked: “Do you need help
To take my blood that ancient way?”
To answer which she said
“It’s simply that you look so pale
I thought you might be dead.”

There was a time
when words appeared
mysteriously, magically
magnificently
upon the previously blank page.

And then came
a period of total
dissatisfaction.

I would read them once . . .
and then again.
And suddenly
involuntarily
they would cease
to make sense.

I would say to myself
“I can do better”.
And then –
“Better than what?”

Clear your mind of CAN'T
Do away with OUGHTism,
Quit MUSTerbating.

In one of her last few semi-lucid moments
my mother quizzed me.
She gazed at me myopically
and seemed to be asking
herself as much as me.
“Did I really love you?”

It was the first firm indication
of a previously suspected
demonstration of approaching
senile dementia.
There were others,
more mundane,
less cerebral,
mainly related
to her toilet habits.
Clues that were easier to ignore
than to acknowledge.

What did she mean by it?
“Of course you did”
was an instinctive but meaningless response.
She peered at me uncomprehendingly,
as though my reply
bore no relevance to her question.
A question that has haunted me
for over forty years.

But how could I doubt her love?
Had it not been for her concern,
I would have perished ‘neath the surgeon’s knife
on my return from evacuation
in Fakenham.
She never would have dared challenge
a doctor’s diagnosis
on her own behalf.
She was of the generation
and the class
that treated medical practitioners
as gods.
But for an offspring she was quite prepared
to fight both tooth and nail
in some basic, ritualistic simulation
of a jungle tiger’s protective shield
at a perceived  threat to its young.

And later,
when she rushed my sister and myself
into totally unorganised evacuation
to Llanelli in order to escape
the sudden perils of flying bombs and rockets.
How could I ever doubt the love
that she exhibited in my presence
in her debate with the headmaster
of the local Grammar School?
Her insistence that he accept me
despite my lack of Welsh
that would ordinarily be a
basic entry requirement.
Her refusal to accept
the rules and regulations
was a mother I had never seen
nor could I have imagined her
to be capable of
such persistent challenging.

Thus, my mother, tottering on the brink
of what was to be a life-annihilating
dementia, asking me, in a rare, lucid
moment, if she had ever loved me
would seem to be a non-sequitur.
Was it a sudden recognition of
a coldness that she might exhibit
to the world, but which did not reflect
the love that she really felt but
failed to exhibit?
For that matter
was the “me” really me or was it
some other family member with whom
in her later stages of dementia
she confused me.

But it has induced a question
that now I have to pose myself.
The recollection of those many
wonderful experiences
that demonstrate
the lengths to which she was
prepared to go
to defend those values
which she honoured
though rarely overtly.
render the question
meaningless.

Unless, unless it be reframed
into an accusation of my own
failure to recognise
to appreciate
to reveal
the extent of my own feelings.

Perhaps it was I
who should have posed the question:
“Did I really love you?”

Along the Isis; down the Cam,
the brightest minds have not displayed
solutions that are worth a tinker’s ****
deserving of an accolade.  

How like the fates to cruelly take
the nectar of the sweetest flower;
to steal its fragrance and thereby to make
a nonsense of her latest hour.

The footpaths that she bravely trod
reflect the beauty of her life.
The countryside alas now sadly flawed,
by memories now sadly rife.

Late misted fields now sunset flushed
beneath the spread of every tree;
the golden corn now waiting to be crushed
from Shillingford to Maddingley.

(1)

The tremulous reaction
to her guileless approach;
the terrible attraction,
the terror of her touch

the unaccustomed measure
of closed lips taking aim;
the merest feather pressure
and I fled home in shame.


(2)

Her lips touched mine
as soft and gentle
as the feathered brush
of a butterfly’s wings,
and then they parted
oh, so slightly,
and I froze
and turned
and ran away.

And through the decades
that have since elapsed,
one thought is ever present
with me.
What if I had
simply responded
at that time?
How might my life
have changed?

I saw a thrush upon a bush,
a graceful bird was she,
and next to her I saw a rook
as black as black could be.

And as I looked, into my head
these words occurred to me:
Oh rook, oh rook, please tell me please,
why do we disagree?

For, after all, we both have beaks
and wings that we might fly,
and yet you know these things we share
just seem to pass us by.

Our main concern it seems to me
is how we might apply
abilities that each may have
that take us to the sky.

Beyond the rainbow we both soar
but what do we bring back?
For some of us it’s peace and joy,
for others its attack.


You may be black without concern
for my own speckled brown
but why should colour matter so
when, wings spread, we have flown

up to the heights and back again
albeit on our own
and you just treated with disdain
the friendship I have shown.

Although this thrush upon its bush
invited you to play,
you  gave a quite incurious glance
then turned your head away.

I do not want to seem to push
or tell you what to do,
but if you want a friend, this thrush
will still be here for you.

Now that I live in a flat
and there’s a lift to use
I rarely have to scale the stairs
up to the second floor.

However sometimes I feel that
I need to take a little exercise
and then I use the stairs,
and engage on a strategic pause
at the half-way stage.

But soon I fear this practice
may have to have its ending.
Yesterday I took a pause
upon the first floor landing
and when I started off again
my face produced a frown.
I simply couldn’t recall if
I was going up or down.

Tears come from the heart
and my heart is as cold as ice.
So don’t ask me to cry,
for if I cry
it will not be for you as you are
but for you as you were;
when life was serene
and joy was unsullied,
and hearts were undemanding . . .
and tears will never bring that back.

.
Dreams follow strange patterns:
They appear and disappear
both sleeping and awake,
And while we are in their thrall
they place gossamer
fingers on our
imagination.
And when they go
they do not go quickly;
they die
little
by
little.

I’ve become an old man now
It’s something I can’t hide
For age is a condition
That cannot be denied.
.
But energy will linger,
So long as I survive
To pen these simple verses
That keep my mind alive.

The pressures mount incessantly
But I will overcome,
And  will continue marching to
The beat of my own drum.

Denial rose
unbidden to my tongue
but
I could not disclose
the words that lay
unuttered
in my heart

He has gone.
A mere shadow of his former self.
But I still see him in the passing faces,
or queuing for the bus,
or shopping In the supermarket.

I see him
not as I saw him last
in his bed:
his penultimate resting place,
but as he was throughout those
years.

A child,
a playmate,
an adolescent evacuee,
a youthful, excited participant
in all those artistic delights.
The nudes, the landscapes,
the biblical, familial and  historical
inspirations.

And during those
Italian years.
Honing his artistic style.
Enjoying, and being enjoyed by,
that colourful scene
as eccentric as he himself
was destined to become.

And now he is no more.

And I am suddenly
and painfully
struck by this terrible thought:
he was the oldest surviving relative
of that generation,
the offspring of
a mother who was
the sister of my father.

It is a mantle I have had ****** on me.
I am the patriarch.

I remember saying:
“If you notice
Any change in me,
Any loss of faculties,
Any lapse of memory
Any sign of frailty,
Any sudden disability,
Promise, promise, promise
You will bring it to
My attention.”

But he never did.

Now he suffers from
The onset
Of his own dementia
And I have made
No comment on it.

Forgive me
the rage of youth,
the senseless
towering frenzy
of childish
interception.
the malignity
of immaturity
Now that I am
old enough.
Old enough to be dying
with dignity.

Clarence Darrow said
I don’t believe in god because
I don’t believe in Mother Goose.
Personally
I do believe in Mother Goose because
I’ve seen her on my dinner plate.
But I don’t believe in god.
So . . .
Go figure.

The transience
of everyday events.

The fear
that much experience
will pass me by.

These fleeting concerns
disturb my waking hours
and interrupt my sleep.

I lack a strength
of purpose.
I deplore
the weakness of my mind;
the doubts
that happiness will yet return;
that new growth of spirit
will spring from old;
that I will retain the faith
to go on building
from every death
that decimates my world.

And
I owe a debt.
I have a commitment.
I must maintain the will
to go on fighting.
I must retain the hope
that life and love
may yet be won.

And I must accept the fact
that dogmas may vanish,
that temples may fall,
that ikons may crumble,
and credence
may moulder.

But
Earth Abides

It comes, it comes,
the air sweetly thrums
to herald the presence
of chrysanthemums

Vicious tongues may not be stilled
Prophecies may be unfulfilled
Knowledge gained may not prevail
But love will never fail.

There is an invisible tie
that links my daughter and me.
Though not visible
It is as strong and as sharp
as tempered steel.

Though we have spent
so much time far apart,
the bond has never weakened,
and nothing can diminish
the way we feel.

Ice cap vanishes
Imperceptibly from view.
The rest is silence.

I love thee well;
I do not know
how else to tell
I love thee well.

Then fairer belle
he met, and so
I love thee?  Well,
I do not know.

Before I lay myself to rest
there are mountains I must climb.
Before I go, I must construct
the perfect paradigm.
There are bridges that I have to cross
and rivers I must ford;
and metaphorically at last
cut the umbilical cord.

Those things that I have left undone
from my long bucket list
must rapidly be tackled before
they can be dismissed.
And superficially at least
are tasks that need to be addressed,
and any sins remaining
that need to be confessed.

I will not go gentle.
I will shout and scream
and beat my breast,
withstand all mental
pressures that would seem
to put me to the test.
It will suffice just to resist
the forces that will persecute,
and, knowing I have done my best,
shall raise my fist
into a victory salute
and stay defiant to the last.