Sixty years of
Blood
Sweat
Ink

Perhaps today
Something good

Where pencil Pier
Rolls over the Moon

And slides beneath the
Sun.

Timbers shiver and
Return to salt-

Give succour to
Barnacle and ****,

Green as a greeting
To the lovely Dawn

Perhaps a damp sponge
Will wipe night terrors-

Expunge trace of Moon
To slip beneath Sun

Erasing memory, making
Flat a sorry curvature

Of this rough-edged,
Rotating ball.

Trading a violence of
Sapiens

For the calm of
Shimmering Dawn

How little we look.

And yet
No sculpure in stone
Nor canvas daub,

No photographic pixel mash

Can catch the
Soaring beauty,
Vouchsafed to me,

Of You

A scatter of ash

Itch
Scratch

A rash calf-

It took years for
The bark to spread-
Leg-trunk-head

Til roots sank from
Foot soles to
Molten core of iron-

For limbs to sprout from
Eyes-ears-mouth to
Foliate-

For boy to man
To grow-

Begin rustling

To speak or
Scream into the
Howling wind

Underbelly of seabirds
As
White blue grey sky
Scrolls above.

Feathers frolic on
Thermal waves
Unknown to eyes
On Southend pier.

Rusting legs step out to
Sea
Swell and cresting small
Over silted bed

Hull hand-
Rubbed
Hand polished

Too slick still
For slow barnacle.

Bright brass-
Her bell already
Salvaged (stolen)

Before she clapped
A sound

Sinking into
The aesthetic

Blow bubbles
Of Honey

Almost too sweet
For a bumbling
Bee

Where he walks
Flowers bloom-

Beyond the Ox,
Trod in splat

Each seed and tree
Throws colour on

Universal Blank.


O blanket of Stars
Eternity beckons,

Your sparking Eyes
Shine

This body is the
Flower of the Soul,
Critical Mass desirous
Of Being.

No shame in the Flower,
Full blooming or
Fading,
Petals droop, running to
Seed.

The End comes swiftly,
Nitrogen gravitates to
Tuber.

O Flowering Soul,
Dead and Alive-
Your Beauty fumes as
Spirit to Sky

Woken by orchids
Kissing my ear-

Found the moon had fallen
Into a puddle.

Unexpected overnight rain-
And with moon departed
And orchids ******* puddle

Within my pain
I wonder

Will we ever witness
Such a night again?

Tipped a bucket of words
Down the Well,

Echo calls:

"Soon to be forgotten"

How strong is the rope?

Kundalini ran off with
Satori and bred
Enlightenment on
Some far-off
Mountain peak,
Which left me,
Empty as a shell,
Devoid of both
Oyster meat and
Pearl

A dis-ease of classification

Category of categories,

And each morning tiny flowers
Open their heads
To sample the breeze

Imagine

Origami Swan.


Unfold and
Press-


Hey Presto,
A Blank page or

A poem from
Your man

Besotted
By the graceful
Curve of
Your eyelash-

You can see no further

You dreamt
You Awoke
But your slumber
Tumbled into the Deep
Ocean where your
Delusion soaked
In Brine.

The Molten Core of your
Ambition
Melts and steams in a
Brevity of Being.

Goodnight sweet Fantastic

Allow the gentle Waves to
Waft you ashore

You wake,
Startled by the sky,
Wonder if-as senses
Implode-

A flash of Awareness
Can carry Infinity
And be gone.

We crumble ash,
Still warm,
Between our fingers-
Bonfire of some
Extinct Star.

We sleep-
Holding hands,
Cool ash trickling
Between our fingers-

Nothingness pie
Held together
Sheer with inertia-

Unstuck by
Suffering entropy
Anyway.

We wake,
Startled by earth,
Supporting
Overwhelming weight

Of dreams

Today
Older than puny
Time

I laugh in the
Face of the gods

Who made you ashamed
Of your nakedness?

And why?

Toe-nail clippings fossilize
As they fall

Stone-set by rise and
Evaporation of a
Million Seas

Water becomes you.

Cold lake fed by small insistent falls
High in Cretan mountains.

No Goddess, you,
Young Woman
Vibrant
Fleshy and real

As scale and gill
Animate your kick,
Your stroke, water
Laughing in your movement.

I stare
Narcissus fractured in
Your ripples,

Ek-stasis
Solitary bubble burst.

No fear of Minotaur-
Our innocent frolic
Protects

Stiffened by wind the
Canvas White
Glows on glittering
Scales of
Shallow Sea,
Salted against ice,
Resisting decay
Through sheer, restless
Movement.

All else is Blue-
Homeric
Wine-dark banished,
A brilliance of
Sun-Flowered-Yellow
Lights the view.

I sent this postcard with
Puppy love and
Grandchild
From Palmy beach,
Mother.

You demand a
Spreadsheet

You sit-unmoved-
In your Mountain fastness.

The tree Spirits frolic,
Hiding, slipping trunk
To trunk until, uncertain-

Your Belief transcends.

A single tear ploughs
One runnel down a silted
Cheek
And the Flood some day

Shall unleash a grim
Vengeance on those who
Forgot-

Our place in Nature
Ruptured,

We hasten toward
The failing Cliff

Your wart,
When it went-

How I missed
Kissing

Your little
Blemish

A grotesquerie of time
Sculpted faces
Litter the landscape.

Classical columns stand
Jagged and broken or lie
Forlorn.

A soft oriental anxiety
Hangs in clouds over yhe scene,

And all the waves of
History fall.

The shift proceeds-
A drunken monk
Misdeliberates his
Kung Fu.

All is change
All balance is wobble-
The sun sets-uncaring

I always choose the losing side

They wear the prettiest silk
Woven clothes
And die

In droves

Mighty Oak
Grows tiny acorn

Talk of Tomorrow
As if it were a
Thing

A clay malleable,
Made to some Will o'
The Wish

No tomorrow is
Nor can be,

Tomorrow, Yesterday
Cannot exist.

Just This
Now
Synapse
Arm
Pen

Winter return-
Briefly-

Thorn
Blood drip
Drips onto snow-

One harsh word
From you and
I
Is undone
To
0

Please-
Gentle-
Return the Spring

How slowly the barges moved

Until they stopped

The view from Olympus
Is partially obscured

By cloud, wispy
And sad against
The elongated Drought-

But I see Them-
Kicking up dust-

Thrusting their tiny
Toothpicks
Pointed and tipped

With rust
Or blood.

The horses blink
Through Armour

Longing for the Plain...

Aegean glinting-
Shrunken by
Lack
Of Rain

Deep dive into
Molten core

Ask Vulcan
How to pour

Old iron into
Novel moulds

Make grief
An object

A wonder

Wander Earth

Seek a good place to
Die

Return body to soil

And spirit to
Sky

From

Nowhere

To

Nowhere

Grew too big for home

Out you go

Fly or die

Hototogisu

Who stole my life

Which starched white
Matronly apron
Dropped a basket into
***** Thames-sordid Times

Who rode my Charger
Bedded my Princess

Who drank dry the
Dank cellar of my
Being?

And why

I painted your Myth onto
A cave wall

Until she atrophied

I scribbled our story
With a stick in White sand

And then the Tide.

So long gone,
I see in Dream
Your Face in
Moon Cold night

Your heat on soles

The Harvest of your Hips
With another.

I blame the moon.

Her sinuous rhythm
In tune-
You move to her
*****-
Her Face your Mirror.

My Gravity slips and
We tumble Cold
Into Space

Slept on Thousand
Year deep moss-

Woke with Spring
In the Steppe

Last leaves swept
Pile

Years heaped

Wan smile

Listen to the Pre-verb
Listen to the Dis-chord
Listen to the Dancers out
Of Africa with drum and trumpet

Even a little is too much
One word
One note
One flex of foot

Listen to the Before

When scalpel sliced through heart

Your butterfly emerged flapping
Blue red blood against
Sterile white


Good to see you free from
All those years locked
Within pulsating muscle

Perhaps the painting
Will survive the blast

Or paint peel as skin
Revealing space

Intoxication of the bee

Dancing lavender
In the hive

Sqirrel dug
1958
Buried a nut

Forgot

Today sit
Tree canopy
Shelter

Forgive

That lazy foraging

Tussock
Small
Grass,
Within
Mammalian tremor-

Mouse alive
Without

Vastness of Space

Light and wet
Meet broad leaved canopy

Dark and moist beneath tendrils
Coil softly
******* soft decay from sodden undergrowth
Lush and dry

Howls of monkey, flashing bird
And life oozing through every porous
Ant hole
Leaf loop
Trunk of wood hard grown, soft in death

This is the Jungle

Corner of the room
Crevice of mind the
Womb forest of warmth
Of home

Soft succulent home
Tender as bruised fruit
Fallen from high
Nourishing the nut
Seed of new delight

Fallen space makes crazy yearning for the light
Wet width of green green
Soft soft soft growth

Rivers spring up unannounced from the
Jungle
The Jungle is home
Home is soft green filtered light and wet wet
Water

Soft coils hammock me gently in the
Jungle
Home
Jungle

I saw your children
Playing
In the Fiery Pit

Unscorched


How the honest
Innocent

Survive

1
Tidal grief
Wore granite
To grain

Vapour plume
Sprays as Spirit
Does

Soaring-

Ether and never
So close together

2
Angels may climb
A ladder to
Greatness-

For others

Self soaks wings
With oil
And sinks
Back
Through soil-

Heaven/Hell
All spoil