Frost said
Home is the place where
When you go there
They have to take you in.
But what if there’s no place to go home to?
What if there’s nowhere that provokes
A sense of sight, or sound, or smell
Or taste or feeling
That evokes a memory?

You are cut adrift,
A piece of flotsam
Going where the current takes you.

The tide runs out,
The current ebbs and flows
Yet never ceases.
And you . . .
A piece of driftwood,
Lacking even the semblance of design
That might inspire a sculptural creation,
End in a vortex.

Parfois je me regarde dans le miroir
et c’est le visage de mon père
qui rend mon regard.

Et je sais que dans ce moment
il est toujours en vie
parce qu’il habite en moi.

C’est ainsi que nous atteignons l’immortalité.

Un jour peutêtre mon fils
va se regarder dans un miroir
et c’est moi qui rend son regard.


*Based on my poem written in English and published in Metaphors and Matzo *****, ASPEN 2015.

. . . in our search for immortality
we must not forget
that
all flesh is grass.
It’s better to die
having made the journey
than to stifle
one’s advancement
in the embrace
of adventure unfulfilled.

The sun has brightened up
the dull autumnal morn
and those remaining birds
who have not yet begun their exodus
have now commenced their song.
Let us then rejoice.

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.

If the dead can hear the living
albeit for a while
then this they know:
“You have not left us,
you have not gone away;
you rest as firm
as some long-planted tree."
Here.
Now.
Forever.

As I wander through my life,
the distortions of my existence
provide an illusion
to warp my perspective

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.

They tell me that
inserting a stent in an artery
these days is no different
than lancing a boil in my ***
when I was a kid.

It should reassure me,
but the use of a phrase
such as invasive surgery
fills me with such dread,
as does the hated “C” word
that rattles round involuntarily
in my head.

And even worse
is when they call it
Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
or PCI for short
but not for long
before the dreaded doubts
once more invade my mind
in sinuous counterpoint
to that more disquieting
portent of invasion.

I awoke this morning and thought that I was dead.
Not a sound could be heard; not a breath of air
Could be felt.  “So this is how it ends” I thought
“Not with a bang, not with a whimper,
But with a dreadful solemn silence;
With a ghastly breathless stillness”.

And then I replaced the devices in my ears,
And conducted my matutinal ablutions,
And was restored to life.  Prepared to face
Another dull, disturbing, Covid-driven day.

There are different levels of love
as there are different layers of onion,
and the trick is to peel the layers
whilst retaining the essence.

Be it of love
or onions.

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

I view the future with much equanimity
And try not to rely on consanguinity.
My loss of blood to NHS phlebotomists
Whose hides are thicker than hippopotomists
Or, if you prefer it, hippopotami
Exacerbates  a lot of my
Concerns with the diminution of supply,
Reminiscent of Hancock and his cry:
A pint of blood!  You must be mad!
That’s almost an armful.  It’s really bad
If I do not have enough
Left to fill the smallest coffee cup.

But do not grieve excessively,
I’ve left a glorious legacy.
A double pocketful of books
Into which no one ever looks;
As well as countless music scores
That it seems everyone abhors,
Regarded by equal abhorrence
As evidenced by non-performance.
But one we greet with jubilation
Refrigerated Transportation
Beloved by transport chiefs galore,
Who hide it in their frozen store.

Do not plant a rose bush
in the shadow of an oak
and expect to see a beauteous flower.

Instead exult in the beauty
that is the mighty tree.

Il n’y a pas un croix qui surmonte mon église
ni une etoile à six branches.

On n’y trouve pas un croissant
ni un ******* non plus.

Cette église n’existe que dans mon imagination
mais elle est plus puissante que la pierre.

I was astonished to receive over 60 messages yesterday about poems I had recently posted.

But I was appalled at the possibility that some of the correspondents had not appreciated that many of these poems were not written by me, but were favourite poems that I wanted to share with others.  Most of them by authors long dead, but all within the public domain, and all attributed.

Reassuringly, however, many of the tributes were for my own verse and I simply wish people to know that where no attribution is given, the work is my own.  Otherwise the author's name will always be revealed.

Sorry I have not written this in verse :)

(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?

The heat of my emotions
Cools the coarseness of my words.

Overwhelmed by your
enormous response,
with thudding heart
and sense that once
again I've been
awarded
a demonstration
that virtue brings
more than its own reward,
please take my hand
in gratitude
for so much passion stored
and shared.

That is not a poem, just a piece of prose that I've written in poetic form as an introduction to an announcement that the next issue of my quarterly online magazine New Nurturing Potential (publication date end of December) is being prepared.

The Autumn issue, published in September 2014, included a poem from Hello Poetry contributor Amy Bells, which she kindly allowed me to publish therein.  I intend to publish more Hello Poetry writers in the next issue and will in due course ask some of you for permission to include your work.  Maybe, just two or three.  

Meantime, if you wish to see the last issue (and archives!) you will find it at http://www.nurturingpotential.net/New-NP07.htm.  I'm happy to accept also any prose articles you would like to contribute.

Thank you again for your validation of my efforts.

Amidst the gloom and sadness
of so many hateful deaths,
I find I have again to ask myself:
is there a parallel universe
in which I continue
to exist
surrounded by
and pleasured by
the family and friends
I loved of yore?
It is a wonderfully
sustaining thought.
Giving up is not an option.
Humour lifts the climate of despair.

Formerly I ran like mad
to stay in the same place.
Now at last I’ve come to know
that this will merely
bring me face to face
with my own alter ego.

I used to have expectorations
But now I don't give a spit.

Thomas Carlyle said
the present is the living sum total
of the whole past.

Now, when I look back
over the history
that is the sum total
of my life,
there are aspects
that are hard to
fathom.

There are black holes
where one might expect
to encounter
a white hole’s event horizon,
while other events
have apparently failed
to intersect
my preferred boundaries.

Arithmetic’s never been my strength
and I suspect that
at one stage or another
I may have
put a decimal point in
the wrong place.

I thought she was my greatest love.

For more than half a century
I’ve nursed and cherished
a memory that haunted me.
My tinnitus and hearing loss
dating back to that bitter,
cruel and hateful
time,
has always been
attributed
to that recollected period
when I sat huddled and lonely
upon the vastness of
that couch in Antibes
and sobbed and sobbed,
and sobbed until I thought
I might expire.

And now . . .
having suffered a loss
that demonstrates how trivial
was that earlier experience . . .
and now . . .
having truly the need
to express my pain
in overtly demonstrable ways,
I find myself
unable to shed a single tear.
The pain is cutting me up
inside,
but no sign is visible
to others
and no physical relief
presents itself
to me.

Bite back pity.
Bite back pain.
Bite back remorse.
Disabuse myself
of trivia.
Embrace the exigent
and shed the
nugatory.
And then perhaps,
just perhaps,
I will learn the truth
about myself and others.
Perhaps I will learn
to accept my innocence
and place the guilt
where it truly belongs.
Perhaps after fifty years
I will finally see her
as the faithless creature
she truly was.

And then . . .
and then, perhaps,
I will be able to dispose
my grief where it truly
belongs.
And then, perhaps,
I will shed those tears.

He’s back.
Recovered from suspected heart attack.
Sense of humour undiminished.

To those who thought that he was finished,
unwilling to rest supine
and echoing Saint Augustine,
although aware the sun will set:

but not yet.

Is humanism Utopian?
You really have to think about it.
Or is it rather more dystopian?
No, then I think you’d never doubt it.
It seems that disbelief is best.

Humanism owes a debt
to thinkers of the Enlightenment,
although I haven’t paid it yet,
I think of it as my entitlement
to settle it at some behest.

I very early cleared my mind of Kant,
experiencing a vast relief,
approaching his chef d’oeuvres extant;
removing knowledge to allow belief;
the opposite of what he had expressed.

It occurred to me I ought to dig up
(or should I say instead ex-hume?)
what constitutes at least an egg-cup-
full of wisdom that I might consume
with non-platonic zest.

But wondering how on earth to do so
and thinking he might hold the key,
I fixed my sights on Jean Jacques Rousseau
and set sail for my destiny,
while trying not to feel depressed.

Voltaire’s voices loudly rang in deaf ears
as did the Persian Letters of Montesquieu
and failed to still my latent fears.
And thus I felt no need to rescue
Adam Smith (morality-obsessed).

To put Descartes before the Horse-
men of the Apocalypse
War, famine, pestilence and worse.
Who could guess it would eclipse
my thought, wherefore I was oppressed.

Or take the case of Denis Diderot
a friend of Hume and others seedier.
and one you might consider so
rash as to produce an encyclopedia
to get his knowledge off his chest.

That precious quality of truth
was Mary Ann’s# description of it.
It would not take a Sherlock sleuth
to simply thus produce a conviction of it:
an elementary request.

I cut my questing teeth on Russell.
His secular logic had a profound effect
and seemed to stir each red corpuscle
inhabiting this fervid non-sect-
arian but doubting breast.

I later turned my eye on Dawkins,
and his concern with my divine delusion.
A sceptic whose inspiring squawkings
validate my disillusion
and emphasise an ill-starred quest.

And so I felt the pointlessness of it.
Progress is the best end for a man to see
And belief simply produced less profit
for reality’s dispelling of my fantasy.
So, in the end, I acquiesced.

#Mary Ann Evans, aka George Eliot, in *Adam Bede

Kit Wright – From Humpty Dumpty, the Official Autobiography

9.  Ode to Autumn – Humpty looks back on his life.

Humpty Dumpty had a lean summer
Humpty Dumpty’s spring was a ******.
Humpty’s winter was no good at all
But Humpty Dumpty had a GREAT FALL.

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
How shall we live alone
that once depended on
a heavenly father who defended us
and now is made superfluous?

Oh, where has that god gone?
Oh, what has that god done?
What can replace
that heavenly grace?
Can ear or hand or eye
supplant its mirthless majesty?

Perhaps it’s not that god has gone
but rather god has been
replaced by many other gods.
Unholy gods, ungodly sods,
who offer no exemption
from time-past sin’s redemption,

but just provide a shining light
to illumine a fearful night,
colonized by miscreants
and similar recipients;
and what remains in that confusion
is nothing but a vast illusion.

There is no plan, there is no haven
to escape from images engraven.
The trumpet that was played by god
is merely a connecting rod
to nothing but a shooting star
a sound drowned by Satan’s guitar.

So often the god that we thought great
is ******* of no more than hate.
We see them in all walks of life
with gordian knots that lack a knife,
or weavers of a nautical shroud
more shocking than a mushroom cloud.

I would choose to have it gone
that secular phenomenon,
that we might build trust up again
far from the place where corpses reign,
to somewhere safe for everyone.
And now I vow my verse is done.

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.

I want to see her one more time;
One more time to say the things
I should have said before;
One more time to say I’m sorry
and how much I deplore
the ill-concealed behaviour
that she could not ignore.

I want to see her one more time;
One more time to gaze upon
that so beloved face;
One more time to visualise
that look of peace and grace
so unappreciated
while it was commonplace

If only I could see her one more time,
I’d be able to expiate my crime.

He may not have had all the answers
but he helped me address some good questions,
such as how you can locate a cat in the dark
when that feline itself is pitch black,
and has hidden itself in a cellar
otherwise termed a black hole.

But if I should chance to confront him,
I could ask for his personal view
of the answer to Hamlet’s sage
question of whether we are or we aren’t,
or which of the two we prefer.
And how can we learn to distinguish
a quasar from a hole in the head?

I might even ask what he thought of the cat
that Schrodinger placed in a casket
with poison and deadly material
that’s radioactively based.
Does he think it might leak radiation?
Does he think particles might escape?  
Or suspect it could simply explode?

And what might become of the cat?
Was it dead or alive, or just gone?
Let’s leave then with neither a whimper
nor even the biggest of bangs
It seems that it’s time to conclude this,
Now we’ve somehow returned to the cat.

In the blue distance, gleaming, painted with glorious patterns
reflected in the refulgent sunset,
come the surfboards amidst
the swell
the froth
the crashing waves
that rise and fall.
Crashing, rushing, babbling in tune that
echoes and re-echoes in the evening softness
to dance in joyful harmony.

And this, this crystal world that I have seen
in patchwork majesty spread wide upon the shore.

Blood tests are something I could do without
But they are alas a necessary evil
And though it’s really not a thing to shout about
They haven’t so far (in my case) proved lethal.

However it was with a deal of trepidation
That I presented myself at phlebotomy today.
The result did not match up to my anticipation;
The perfect vein was quickly pierced I’m glad to say.

It did, at least, give some sense of direction
To medical support for my ongoing treatment
Avoiding, to my great relief, any infection
Or disconcerting prospect of impeachment.

While the symptoms are improved by the procedure,
The condition, sad to say, is not remitted,
And the problem, even sadder, gets no easier,
While the health practitioners remain committed

To additional probing examination,
And are calling me for further tests next week,
Despite the blood flow’s vast immoderation
That required a lot of plugging of the leak.

When they put me into my final casket
And thus dispose my bones and body once for all
I can imagine someone there will ask it:
“We wonder why his body seems so awfully pale.”

It was a sudden impulse that
directed me to stir myself
and remove a well-thumbed dusty
volume from its shelf.

I opened it with fingers that
lacked the youthful dexterity
before osteo-arthritis had
curbed celerity.

I started to turn pages with
a reminiscence of delight
until becoming bothered by its,
failure to excite.

What is the cause of this despair
the loss of Nature’s circuit board,
a fevered stirring in the *****
fails to be restored.

Must I now accept as fact
that there are simply no springs left
in my body’s potency?
Is all now bereft?

Those springs may now be lacking in
my physical displays.
But please grant a mental Spring
in the
Autumn of my days.

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.

My brain too long has had the sound
and shape and nerve
of breathless requiems.

I want to feel my own rebirth
in time and space come throbbing through
the tips of each finger,
flooding my dry veins with rich green sap
and giving me new sight
to every sense;
making me whole again.

I want to feel my spirit as before
rippling with joy
and dancing through my skull,
so that, merged in adoration with my soul,
I may once more have that power
to fill my cup of life and love
and find this consummation
in her arms.

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.

I have spoken many cruel words
I have harboured many unkind thoughts
I have been guilty of many unconcerned feelings
And these are all shameful.

But, at the end of the day,
I am not defined by what I say;
I am not defined by what I think;
I am not defined by what I feel.

I am defined by what I do
And I have done nothing
for which I need to feel ashamed.
Thankfully my deeds define me.

You ask me if I still remember what you meant to me
in those brightly golden days
that filled tumultuous lives with wondrous hopes,
undaunted by the death and dark destruction
that existed far removed from
our immediate ken.

And now, and now in these benighted
topsy-turvy times when love lies bleeding
in the urban battlefields
that are our personal birthright,
and our inheritance of that early
insouciant disdain.

Will we still remember fantasies and dreams
transmogrified into harsh reality,
or hopes that never were fulfilled.
With nothing left but fading scraps
of paper or a tape or two
and no instrument to play them on.

I was a pimply-faced youngster,
fresh from the soot and grime
of London’s East End.
Removed unexpectedly
from the bomb and blast and buzz-bomb
of wartime London
and deposited precipitately
in the midst of South Wales
in the heart of rugby-playing country.
And I a soccer-playing kid from grubby back streets.
What could I know of scrums and back-passes and blindsides?

But I did my best, while ashamed to admit to my ignorance.
We put our heads together.
I thought it was a team consultation.
(They told me later it was a scrum.)
Someone shouted “heel”.
I thought he was being abusive
and the ball was so elusive,
and I turned too sharply,
and the upper part of my boot
detached itself from the lower.
(Our budget didn’t run to decent boots!)
And the team coach came over to me and said
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘heel’?”
And I, on the top of my form, replied:
“What shall it profit a man to win the whole game, but lose his sole?”

I strain my ear
to hear
a song that has never been written.
To hear it I need to explore
the innermost depths of my soul.
The song is me
and if I do not know it,
then how can I know myself?
And if I do not know myself,
how can I know another?

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 shot my brother in his rear.
He fell to earth
But I don’t care!

There is a tendency among
those poets who may be very young
frequently to put in verse
those foreign phrases, or much worse
the now dead words of oh so ****** Latin
to boast of classrooms that they’ve sat in.

And just in case you’ve never heard ‘em,
Let’s reduce a few to ad absurdum.
It was amore a prima vista
until he left her for her younger sister
for, after all, who could resist her,
so moving on to secunda vista
he took that step and boldly kissed her,
behaviour that is hardly utopista.

The trouble with modus vivendi
is that it sometime rhymes with eye
but there are those who don’t agree
and think that it must rhyme with tea.
Who cares? It’s all the same to I.
Or should that be the same to me?

You may say it is not de rigueur
that I defend with so much vigour
what surely is no more than hubris
that I attribute to Confucius
for he surely ha detto tutto
albeit un po convoluto.

And everyone’s heard of carpe diem.
If not, then I have yet to see ‘em.
But I prefer to seize a waist
which may be thought somewhat unchaste
though far more likely to have shocked ‘em
would be to carpe in the noctem.

Perhaps you think it’s ipso facto
that I’m intolerant of lacto
unless it comes directly from the breast.
I think it’s better that the rest
of this is left to your own opinatus
for which I offer no blank cartus.

Then there’s the modus of my own vivendi
that I indulge in cacoethes scribendi
the itch to write for which I daily
scratch myself or play my ukulele
which is my form of modus operandi
before I pour myself a king-size brandy.

And thus we leave this boring dull citare,
by this time you have certainly grown quite weary
of any further venture into tedium
Or as ***** Harry might say, fac ut gaudeam
For after all a day senza sunlight
Might altrettante facilmente be night

She played on the strings of my heart.
Was it a melody?
Did it harmonise?
Was it sensual or sensuous?
Who can say; but at the end of the day
It was naught but a vast discord.

Les mots que j’emploie
Ne sont pas meilleurs
Que ceux de n’importe autre poète.
Mais les espaces entre les mots
Les espaces alors!
C’est là où demeure ma vraie poésie.