Don't walk,
protected
by shadows
wearing masks,  
                         when streaming light,
                         gleaming sword drawn,
                         comes to annihilate,
                                                     ­     evil shadows
                                                         ­ with vengeance;
                                                      ­                               *where would you hide?

I was ill,
convalescing in fact
when I read this book
On Poetry.
 
I was a captive audience,
couldn’t move much.
I sat by a window
and enjoyed the light
playing shadows.
 
Twice in two days
I read this book.
It convinced me I was already
a judge of poets and like its author
only needed seconds to know
whether a poet was present in a poem.
 
The book encouraged me to
‘Read all the way back.
Read what made it.
Read what’s still here
And work out why . . .
Read up on the old stories
Know a little of what past poets knew
And what their poems still know.’
 
I thought that was quite enough.
But no, a little later
there was more I had to learn.
 
I was given as a gift
a collection of poems.
Its prizewinning author
had published respectably.
Imagination would take flight
into airspace off the radar screen.
Childhood scenes were to chill and disturb,
erotica left a bad taste in the mouth,
narrative poems told with a twist, and
common-place objects freshly observed.
Dear Reader, this I can truly say
is a confident, page-turning volume,
full of proper poems,
full of a poet’s presence.
 
But, for me
there was a significant absence of wonder,
a sad deficiency of joy.
 
When I brought the book to bed
to read out loud to the one I love,
not one of the poems seemed
right to read to end our day.
These poems called for hard chairs
and the bright lights of a seminar room.
 
Later, awake in the night,
I thought,
I’m not hard-edged enough to be a real poet.
My poet’s view is too parochial and kind.
I write about penguins, the moon,
even Christmas cake . . . and prose poems
on subjects filched from postcards
picked up in museums and galleries.
 
And there is, inevitably and always,
this ever-present thing called love,
creeping about when you least expect it.
Know I’m at one with Dr Givens
in Guteson’s East of the Mountains
who laments that with death
the tender memories of life
will be gone –
forever.
 
So with my poems I try to record
the daily wonder of life and love:
for those I care for
and those who care for me.
 
Life is so inexpressively full
of images and moments
waiting for words to bring them home.
 
Oh I know there’s pain,
and fear and distress,
hate and abuse and terror . . .
This is not for me what poetry
is there to express.
I’ve read enough to know it can,
and does. That’s enough.
*Poetry forms in the face of time.
You master form you master time.

so in ancient Rome
Caelius bumps into
his friend in the streets
and he says:
“Hey, Domitius
I thought you were dead”

Domitius laughs and he says:
“Well, you can see I’m alive”

“Yes,” says Caelius, *“but you must be dead
for I had the information
from someone more reliable than you”

I feel for the children
indoctrinated into religion.
I feel for the kids that can't,
won't question faith.

I feel fortunate I wasn't brainwashed
like that.
I feel my thoughts are my own,
I feel the theists have had that
stolen from them.
but I am intact.

only
when I realise I can't love
a catholic girl with
my everything
and my chest seizes up
when I hear them say grace,
I see I'm not better off
than they are.

in the same way that they have
been tricked to believe in a
celestial monarchy,
and see satan in me
so have I been tricked to see
satan in them.

I hate the church.
I thought I could still love the people.
but you can't hate anything
and still love the people.

I
and we all
have been rendered incapable
of fully accepting the implicit, fundamental unity
that does not name.

our parents didn't do it,
their grandparents didn't do it.
it started forever ago and it's
never going away.
we could of all loved each other
but we ****** up the axiom.
it's the greatest sin of all,
and it's nobody's fault.

The night sky of sleep
was ebulliently psychedelic,
specs of colors, yellow, brown, red,
created an ancient language
that spoke, secrets of a forbidden past,

The helicopter crept through,
the sky, tearing the canopy
of lights momentarily,
landed on a high rise apartment of dreams.

                                Now, after all these years,
difficult to remember,
who lives where;
aren't we somnambulists,
without navigational aids?

I would suddenly wake up
from one dream
                             within another -

soft touches of tender fingers,
sweet whispers in my ears,
soft light spreading its palm on an exposed shapely breast,
                                                         ­         I'll sense a disquiet,
a sigh, the pangs of a weeping heart, incidental results of
a life of passion, strife and agitation,
getting ****** by currents,
diving deep in to swirling waters
                                                          ­    

                                                           ­     In a dream, a young woman,
                                                          ­      standing on a podium, in a class room,
                                                           ­     teachers in a trembling voice
                                                           ­     how to appreciate poems:
                                                          ­      "From beyond light years,
                                                          ­       comes our grief..."
                                                       ­         the scene dissolves in to mist.
                                      
                    ­                        silence!


I am an yellow moon,
she is the pale mist circling,
we are in an embrace, momentarily,
                                         in a dream
in the jeweled bed of the night sky.

Saudade)
This is a division;
a dissection of blood cells;
a severance of the colors on a canvas.
Separating waters - Moses' staff in the air.
We are singing parting songs into each other's eyes
because we are slurring our words across the pavement.
One final moment slips through the palms of our hands,
flows through the back of our minds,
and calls our hearts to break.
This is goodbye.

Retrouvailles)
And, after all of this,
I will see you again in
the brightness of dawn,
the twilight of dusk.

I will see you again in
the blossoms of Spring,
in the fervor of Summer,
in the colors of Autumn,
in the snowflakes of Winter.

I will see you again.
This is hello.

you just don't get real paid.
you do it for free.
you're part of the problem.
if you don't do it for free
someone else will do it
for free.
you ask why that is.

well:
that's not a real job, you do it
because you love it.

"then a real job must be
something you do
that you hate doing."

we don't want you making a living
doing what you love doing.
the rest of us endure misery for money
every ******* day of our lives
and you want to spend your life playing
and you expect us to support you?
you've got a lot of nerve.
who do you think you are?

"i'm not a *******."

you're a drain.
grab a shovel and
dig.
find a computer
and type out something
worthwhile.

give us another rat.
we're running out of rats,
they keep dying...
we haven't worked out why
yet.

Plans have gone and changed, I'm
off and away regardless, couldn't
care more about this vagabond desire, I'll
burn the laughter down and run right out
of town, not stopping ahead for a yellow like
an eight-sided rule anymore, you've lifted
the unknowing latch and I'm out, I'm
out out
out.

I was ,
sitting on the bank
                      watching,
                            ­         the river,
                                              its flow,  
                                                       the current,
                                                        ­              inner spirit,
                                                         ­                               and
                                                                ­                                 something beyond
                                                          ­                                                               eternal;
                                                        ­                                                                 ­       I felt
                                                            ­                                                                 ­        the river
                                                                ­                                                                 ­             watching me
                                                              ­                                                                 ­                          from within