Never to dance
Is Never to cry
Yet Never to chance
Is Never to fly

Always to wait
To Always consider
Is Always in limbo
Always a dither

So Open your mind
More open that heart
For when life's fully lived
Regrets will be sparse.

So tell me what you want to be
And what you think you need of me
For what you do
You will become
As habit makes it part of one

For habits grind and clearly shape
Rough edges smoothed,
some dreams may break
Then, from time to time
There’s someone who
Will melt or break a part of you
So once again your shape does change
Though it may feel you’re just the same

It may take another, looking on
To see the shape that you’ve become
So maybe that should be my role?
Some sort of yardstick of your soul?
But then again, I will change too
So perhaps we’d better muddle through
And focus on the spark inside
The flame that undiminished shines

And if, as said, that change is certain
It will never be the final curtain
So embrace the change in me and you
And love the flame that shines on through

Trickling tingles bubble, goaded from the verdant body
As a butterfly’s flutterings coax the flow
Widening and filling
With a gentle lapping of inlets
Ripples tease the reeds into turgid tremors
Merging to waves
Wave upon wave
Curves slide over curves
And at the Delta’s swollen, gaping breadth
Crests slip over craving crevices
Slapping froth in desperate gasps
Milking cruel spasms from the urgent need to reach escape
Until with turmoil resolved
A gentle calm inundates the great ocean of sleep.

The station Tannoy’s so polite,
Train’s here but late; commuter’s plight,
Doors opening, pushed to platform’s edge,
As the herd of bodies forms a hedge,
Will she be there?
A gap, way in, a scramble of feet,
The desperate scans for a vacant seat,
With a jolt and a whine we move away,
Packed with the faces of one more day,
Did she mean what she said?
Past fields and cuttings the city nears,
People gaze blankly, no smiles, no tears,
Blurred names on platforms pass with a rush,
London workers in etiquette’s hush,
But where to meet?
Slowing through tunnels, lean and rock,
Roll under the canopy, groan to a stop,
We pour from the doors like arterial bleeding,
Swept in the flow, haemorrhaged carriage receding,
By the trolley, she’d said
Moving fast, with their own motivations,
The eddy of souls takes me out of the station,
Pull out of the crowd, out of the flow,
Onwards they march to the tube lines below
But we just hold tight under J.K.’s fake signs,
And expression finds space,
Between the lines.

RD@2009

Am I just absurd
Or is it inbetween the words
That those tiny spaces shout
What this relationship’s about

The pause before the sigh
Or the sparkle in your eye
Just before you crack that smile
And once more put on the style
Of a life that’s just a breeze
And your role – of course, to please.

For I think it may be true
That, inbetween, you feel it too.

Five years ago
Upon this day
For “Training” I did go away
To London’s noisy buzzing heart
Then after I took in some Art
An hour’s stroll around the Tate
Came three o’clock and I’d not ate
So rang a friend who worked in town
“Fancy food?”
“Yes! - come on round”
“Place nearby at half past four”
At quarter past I’m at her door
So pasta, chat and many smiles
Nice to do once in a while.

So Five years pass
What comes my way?
Refresher training; exact same day
My friend had since set up alone
Another city, laptop, phone
If lunch seemed off, don’t pity me,
For strangely synchronicity
Means the venue’s somewhere new
This course has moved to her town too.
So I make the call hoping to see
If this five year anniversary
Can be repeated as before
She agrees, we’ll meet at four.
When course is done, I make my way
Not noticing it’s damp that day
Slip on the path, my arm goes numb
And “****** it!”; a broken thumb
So instead of chats and smiles and tea
I spend the time in “A & E”
Rang my friend , “I slipped on grass”
With stifled laugh, “You silly ****”

And the course that damaged me so gravely?
A specialist branch of “Health & Safety” :)

RD©2014

Do you know the world unseen?
The one that every human being
Takes for granted every day
As they go about their work or play

For I speak of things like morning mist
The flower in the breeze that twists
The way some clouds evaporate
Or that flake of rust on the old front gate
The struggling mum who needs a rest
The logo on her child’s vest
The smile that means “I noticed you”
A kiss that’s meant for no one’s view

For all these things are here to see
Yet focussed minds just cannot be
Sensitive to all that’s there
For overload would bring to bear
Such cacophony of life’s rich vein
That most just choose to see the same.

The exceptions, friends, are me and you
Who take the time, like poets do.


RD©2014

A man-made cave of brutal grey
Damp and dark on sunlit day
Void of what it used to be
Yet a thousand souls I seem to see
Oppressed I felt I must escape
So through narrow door my way I make
A few steps more on grassy knoll
To sit, and breathe, and take control
I stare across the open fields
Wide and flat, and Poplar healed
I want to write
Yet words won’t come
For in this place all words are done
Upon this knoll, one long past day
Were penned the words of John McCrae
So instead I ponder field’s banks
Fresh turned earth in neat trim ranks
And watch the flowers bob their heads
With diaphanous petals
Of deep blood red.

RD © 2014

I once fell for a poetess
A lyricist of songs
She alliterated everywhere
With such cracking shaped diphthongs!

I thought of you the other day
Standing ten floors above wet grey streets scoured by gales
A drop of rain absurdly climbs the glass
Yet I focus someplace far off through the miles of murk.
And there, all rush and bluster, eyes flashing, you pull me close into the doorway
Your smile just a little crooked , like you weren’t sure you could
or should or would…..
And then what was is past
Now just for a moment I let myself feel
And it catches in my heart and makes it ache
With the indigestion of something lost
And I wonder if you are standing
Gazing through some storm soaked pane
A drop of rain absurdly climbing your glass

I thought of you the other day.

How can a hollow ache?
Or a poet write?
When the part that felt is cut away
Excised with a razor of reason
Bandaged with the dressings of the Sensible
To be healed, so it is said, with time
Yet like the morbid curiosity of the child who picks at the scab
Or perhaps more akin; the itch of an amputee's phantom limb
There is still an ache
How can that be so?
How can a hollow ache?
Or, come to that,
A poet write?

When she’s hot
She’s very, very hot
And when I’m hot,  She melts
So drown us both with gushing hose
And soothe our steaming pelts!

It’s unnerving how after all this time
Even with clarity of experience
Of the conflagration and how
that burning pain eased so slow, then subsided to a dull ache
and finally to acceptance
How after all that seeming resolution
You are still a pretty moth with slightly singed wings
who appears to see a light in me
And I am still fuel to your particular spark.

Metaphors like similes
Alluring alliteration
Onomatopoeic sounds
Swish swash through its creation
Full of figurative constructions
To skyscrapers of the soul
That rise to a crescendo
Then with bathos quickly fall
So what is it I have written?
Just a stream of consciousness?

For if I claim a classic poem
Then you’d be right to take the …. :)

Methinks, Thou canst a secret keep
Pray listen to these words I speak
For they must bind alone to thee
And not for other souls to see
If thou believe that I speak true,
Come stroll with me
Cross morning dew

Where I shall, ‘pon hallowed ground,
Twixt inn and spire, with ne’er a sound,
Make with thee a tryst of love,
Befitting as a hand in glove
And such power the world shall speak in awe,

‘Til this fair world doth turn no more


RD©2012

H alloween is come again
  O ctober’s date with fate, so
    B eware the dusky fields and of
      G oing home too late
        O n every dark damp driveway
          B ewitched with candlelight
            L anterns smile ghoulishly
              I nsanely through the night
               N o one saw just how she went
                 S he simply vanished in thin air
R emoved from all her earthly friends
  U nder cold demonic stare, so
     L eave the spelling to the wizards for
       E nchantments can be tragic
O r just pay heed to what I write and
   K eep away from Magic!


Nos  Dolbru

Sometimes she is a steam train,
All fire and noise, sizzling, powerful
Too hot to touch …
Almost.

And sometimes she is tree
Growing, blossoming, strengthening and seeding,
Increasing to a golden leafed complexity,
Before disrobing once more

And yet she is too a river, deep with secrets,
Wide with acceptances, bubbling and meandering and
flowing gentle round obstacles

Then is love the water that makes all her ways possible?
For then rain cannot disappoint
Tis drought I fear most.

Some stars shine their light above
Some stars we give for merit
And some we watch on stage and screen
Those names that top the credits

Shooting stars endow a wish
A few keep secrets true
(The Head of MI5 – you say)
(Yes she was Stella too!)

But celestially the stars up there
Made atoms for our blood and air
And the elements of heavy stuff
Required a few to die for us
Exploding brightly, Nova’s Glory
To allow us all to tell a story

So what’s this mean?
I always knew
The hearts of stars
Are me and you

Ideas and Feelings inevitably start
From deep inside a pregnant heart
Ideas ! But surely the brain is the thing?
Yet brains fall dumb when heart doth sing.

So many a notion is drowned at birth
As for emotion; they often fare worse
For dreams never fly until they’re set free
So “When ?”to release them , you ask of me

Well if  ever’s the time to make them true
Then do it today
Whilst that moon’s shining blue.


*Well not literally, but astronomically speaking, it is tonight !

Thirty years has somehow passed,
And most of that indecent fast,
With pain, with joy,
But from first to last,
Little change, My Boy.

Retracing the steps, from the first time around,
But by myself, with time to spare,
To think, to dare
The memories abound.

The flagstones are the same unique, crack patterned lane,
Of a life.

Enough remains to bolster my mind,
But the pain is warm, of the welcoming kind,
For every place had its time,
And every time its place,
Even if now it’s diluted by knowledge and grace.

For though tempered by time,
Some thoughts burn as bright,
Tennis court by day,
Kiss by those roses, that night,
For wherever, whenever, my travels might be,
Still a part of me’s here,
A part of here’s me.

Endless rain falling
Felines and Canines abound
Sod of a drought!

If it were just the thought of you
That was running through my head
Then with grim determination
I could put that thought to bed
But the thought begat a feeling
And that feeling grew and grew
It wrapped itself around my heart
And squeezed it black and blue
So in search of a solution
I turned feeling into rhyme
And wrote for you a thousand words
Because you can’t be mine
Even though the strength of feeling
Maybe for Angels to compare
It’s clear the inspiration comes
From one for whom I care
And though I thought that by this method
I might put you back in place
I find I’ve just intensified
The feeling for your face

So now I’m finally standing here
Unsure quite what to do
With nothing I can give, My Love
Except my love for you.

And sometimes it happens
That it wells up
A lump in the throat
Something deserving of more than tears
But so suppressed by well-meaning logic
Hidden by a dramatic mask, too well worn
of its true shape, sharp edges removed.

A vectorless emotion
Stuck in a maze made with walls of reason
The unreasonable contained
Rebellious without a cause

Yet so susceptible to a simple kindness
That puts all at risk of disastrous desire, calamitous confusion
Demanding release.
So, those poetic parents; Darkness and Light
In a tryst at their boundaries, defuse the danger
And make, in quiet conception,
Amongst the gentler shadows of the soul
What gestates and finally
In a spasm of wordy contractions
Spills live and ****** into the paper world.

It seems today is not quite here
Well it wasn’t when I looked last year!
And if it’s not here you cannot see
How outrageous I can sometimes be

I’ll run naked through the park and city
But to be ignored seems such a pity!
Or kiss that lady on the Tube
Invisibly? – far too subdued
Dance in the street with one I adore?
****! – I’ve done that one before

So perhaps I should refrain from play
And look before I leap today!

Cockerel sunshine slips between the curtains
Energising dust to dance in beams
Lifting lethargy as I do the duvet
A good day I think.

Silver field shimmer in the moonlight,
Silver field glow,
Silence, in the face of the lady,
As she bathes the world below.

Cool and Pale, her gift she gives,
Never forced but enraptured,
Serene Siren of all with a heart,
Grasped at, but never captured.

With outlandish bravado
His form of protection
Fifteen years old
Deeply scared of rejection
He’d tried to deny her
He’d tried to ignore
But she'd entangled his heart
Like no girl had before
So he bought her a red rose
And dark chocolates beside
You may know the ones
With “the secret” inside
He strode to her classroom
All gifts on display
Past open-mouthed mates
Who were speechless that day
Her girlfriends were wide eyed
As he walked to her desk
She looked up with those eyes
That put courage to test
“These are for you”
Quite certain he’d die
But her smile lit up
And she started to cry
A hubbub ensued
And he said they’d talk later
With every intention
Of asking to date her
And they did talk
Many more times
As to what happened next?

Well that’s not for this rhyme.

I sometimes have too much to think
Mind liquidised by the blades of conflicting aims
A maelstrom of ideas, words and feelings,
Whipping up a sea boiled by emotional gales.

The fine cutter of thought, though elegant
Is tossed like a cork, compass spinning
And can only weather such a storm
Sails in tatters, with I strapped to her main mast.
Only a vessel with the assured tonnage of true purpose can make headway here,
And that, a rare ship in my oceans,
So take me in tow,
To a safe berth,
Where this cutter might wait out the tumult
And, unfurling new sails, take once more to calmer seas.

What if the stars went round the earth
What if the day were night
And cows could fly and trees could cry
Would that resolve my plight?

And if the world were back to front
If the hands on clocks swept back
And the land would wash upon the sea
Our yellow sun turn black.

If all our children went to work
And the parents went to school
Then effect would have predestined cause
That would make fate a fool.

And if age reduced with passing years
And if dying started life
Then perhaps this nonsense that I feel
Would turn out to be right.

Tracheotomy!
Now there’s a good word
Though its medical meaning
May be far from absurd
What I like’s the phonics
Harsh and then round
And the fact that the spelling
Is not quite as it sounds
Then comes an image of trains speeding down rails
Puffing and blowing
In brimstone rich hail
Or adding the ending
Perhaps a train full of soldiers
From the Somme or from Ypres
All packed shoulder to shoulder
Passing the Woodbines
Some chatting, some leaning
Ironically smoking
Inside this words meaning
So all words have a life
Those wheels within wheels
And the poet just tries
To determine what’s real.

Little was said
Yet both of us knew
As the hands on my watch so treacherous flew
Leaping too gleeful between stolen glances
Obscene in their haste
Making light of our chances
Still the word would not come
How could that be so?
When it seems twixt our meetings
Whole worlds come and go.


Ten lifetimes could never do justice to you
Yet scant moments are all I can treasure as true
When my hand touched yours
Then all earth stood still
With a jolt of raw power
A tectonic thrill
As if Physics had said,
“This time is theirs”
“Forget for one moment responsible cares”
But too soon did the sun race low in the sky
Our own thief of time that demanded “Goodbye”
So with fortitudinous smiles we both did depart

And that word left unsaid
Still sits deep in my heart.

Avoiding words
Embracing feeling
One particular way
To precipitate healing

Life’s a *****, you must surely agree,
There are so many reasons that show this to me,
For instance, I just get the hang of the words to a song,
Then I find out the words I’ve been singing are wrong.

And why when out to dinner to impress a young lady,
Does my sleeve end up doing the “crawl” in the gravy?
Or sat at the bar; comes the moment to kiss,
Do I lean forward coolly and utterly miss?
Toppling face first from that three legged stool,
As I grin up inanely from a best bitter pool.

I remember my sports car, fast and blue,
With the wind in my hair, she really flew,
Strong and good looking, and to my touch, compliant,
(Though I did once get “burnt off” by a Robin Reliant.)
But “No” I digress, the story to tell,
Is the first time I took out a young girl called Michelle,
She had a nice smile; I thought she was great,
I walked her from her door, and held open the gate,
We got in the car, and made ready to go,
For a meal for two in a candlelit glow,
I turned the ignition and clickety click,
Nice time to choose for the starter to stick,
Under the car with a spanner and torch,
Whilst Michelle spent the evening sat on her porch.

And when I got married,
Thought thank God that’s all over,
Now for a life of roses and clover,
Ha, Ha - not on your life, not on your nelly,
Not like it is when they do it on telly,

I mean, when they’re in bed and they fancy a nibble,
You don’t see them smile and then start to dribble,
So your lover has hysterics, fit to bust,
Which doesn’t do much for the ***** of lust!
And in romantic movies - where are the tissues?
You see, for me, these just aren’t small issues.

So one thing I’ve learned and drawn a conclusion,
Is that life being perfect is just an illusion,
And it’s best not to worry about small imperfection,
For deep down philosophy’s just pure conjection,
So a far better line to put an end to this fable,
Is “Just laugh and just love as much as you’re able”.

She took away the bottle,
And replaced it with her hand,
She moved herself so close to me,
Graceful, deft and planned,
Before I even knew the rhythm,
She’d entwined my fragile heart,
And gently moved me round and round,
Accomplished in her part,
Her body warm and yielding,
Touched me through her dress,
The brush of thighs, her sparkling eyes,
And if she'd asked, It's "Yes”,
A natural fit too comfortable
For mere coincidence,
Focus now, and listen,
For what she says is making sense,
Easy chat, with feeling,
Acknowledged with gentle sway,
Reflected in our mirrored moves,
So please don't move away,
Now the music's fading,
With a little bit of me,

A simple smile, a break of hands,
But she'd left a symphony.

Darkness and Light
The twin engines of Art
Polar extremes
That compete for my Heart

Shall I compare myself to a blob of glue,
For then my destiny’s to stick to you,
And our bond would harden with constancy,
So you’d have to love me,
Just you see.
:)

She was not grand
As is the Green’s great oak,
Nor rare,
Her kin dot the land in modest abundance,
In her position lay her magic
Dozing quiet on the edge of hallowed ground
Canopy politely shading the walled path,
How many feet passed under her boughs?
And how many small hands, under autumn’s dappled sunshine
Did joyfully plunder her mahogany treasures?
A rite of passage for several generations,
Making the journey to and from learning just a little sweeter
And now she is gone
The hole she leaves greater than the space she took
So perhaps, grand she was, after all.

She was made of glass, I’m sure
Her beauty was her perfection; flawless,
Optically correct, one might say,
But she was hard with a sharp tongue,
And after a while the brittleness grew,
Her motives were transparent,
I should have been more careful, when I put her back,
But feeling dropped, she shattered
Razor shards and splinters flew, some cutting me
Oh, the pain of glass.

With no warning
Love’s tornado twists through lives
Blasting us high on dizzy eddies of precarious passion
Whole worlds spin with abandon
Beliefs bent and some snapped at the roots
then
With no warning
the storm moves on
So standing, bruised, in the breeze of imperfect memory
Amid the wreckage
We wonder what it was that was loved
And how to chase the wind again.

I give you a tune to mask the symphony
A word to veil the story
I give you a smile to confound the pain
A touch to hide the feeling

I give you humour to placate desire
Bravado to unseat honesty
A hug to shadow love

I give

What I can

Biro poetry doesn’t work
It does not flow or fill the page with easy thoughts
The pen is a bulky lover, rather than the finer bodied pencil
It gives no quarter in correction, and scribbling out is just a messy affair
So it is unsatisfactory, clumsy and clogging
Oh for my pencil, where have you gone, my love?
Your fine point skating the velum,
An extension of my mind
Allowing expression beyond such coarse biro
******!

So is Physics now in trouble
Because neutrinos too fast fly
As clever troglodytes with white coats
Measure once again the psi
Could it explain the dopamine injection?
The amphetamine of just one kiss
Underpinning organic chemistry
That can make me feel like this
But No -  it goes much deeper
It might give credence to the thought
That sometimes things just happen
With a cause that sums to nought
So Einstein wasn’t wrong
He just did not say it all
He knew that physics has its part to play
In explaining why we fall.

Gerald sat by the window,
He didn’t know why,
Perhaps it was because he liked,
To watch the passers by.

Gerald wasn’t very mobile,
In fact he was grossly fat,
And when he did get to up to shuffle,
His buttocks they did flap,

From under his greasy nightshirt,
The nightmarish apparitions appeared,
And Gerald, being Gerald,
Did what the passers by all feared.

He’d stand upon the chair,
And lift the nightshirt high,
And press upon the window pane,
His voluminous backside,

And a smile would play,
On his sugar donought crusted lips,
As the people who had seen this,
Would gasp and run in fits,

And Gerald laughed and giggled,
Because Gerald didn’t care,
It seemed to him he’d just prefer,
If none of them were there.

But he hadn’t always been lonely,
And when younger far from fat,
Handsome had he been once,
And considered quite a catch,

And caught he was by a pretty young girl,
Who soon became his wife,
And they loved and fought,
And loved and thought, that this would last for life.

And so it did,
But for her and not for him.
So Gerald sat by the window,
Which is where I did begin.

If by chance you should walk the field’s edge
Beyond the thorns and the balding privet hedge,
Walk for five minutes until you see,
A lonely birch copse and a sycamore tree,
And as the breeze inspires the clouds above,
To fluff and feather in the sky they love,
Then look to the copse and think of me,
Those clustered trunks in adversity,
For together they can break the howling winds
From plundering what lies within,
And then, my friend, you’ll understand,
The strength that comes from holding hands.

The feelings that I have
And the feelings that are me
Do wax and wane from time to time
With the rising falling sea
Often swamped within its swell
At the mercy of tidal clocks
One day to dance across a beach
Another dashed on rocks.

Rarely going straight to the point
But approached best from the side
Testing gently, tacitly
Before the pincers are applied
And they can be formidable
With a tenacious grip
So be careful what you wish for
If into the rock pool you do slip.

Evolved with solid outer shell
An armoured place to hide
Because beauty may be skin deep
But emotions lie inside
And the softness of the centre
Can be a dangerous place to go
For it can upset the natural balance
Of what we think we know.

And though we truly feel the pain
Our hearts fight to be true
So we cling on through the stormy days
Just because that’s what ***** do.

Lifetimes ago
Behind a sofa, on hard floor, we slept entwined,
Warmed by lust – and those eyes.

Waking early
Another appetite took her
She wanted bananas
Not coffee, nor toast, or foie gras
But with whispered twinkle –
Bananas.

So I braved the detritus of folly
The beer can minefield, the tangled bodies of fallen angels
And stepped silent, into Finchley Sunday morning.
Welcoming the early sunshine of Maggie’s suburb
With the smugness of a man fresh loved.

The corner shop, door wedged in anticipation of heat to come, was dark
Looking up the old man fixed me with dark, dark eyes

Raising one eyebrow said he, “Bananas?”
“Yes”, smiled I

And I knew there was so much to know

Lifetimes ago.

Learning still.

Into his plastic lunchbox
He did, an Orange and biscuit, shove
And said the biscuit to the orange
“Come sit by me, my love”

And the orange, taken by surprise
Gave him a sheepish grin
And flashed her pips and dimples
So he knew they might begin

She was smooth and round and juicy
He was crunchy, brown and fat
She introduced herself as Lucy,
And he said his name was Zak

And throughout the sunny morning
They did laugh and love and tease
When suddenly with no warning
Their lives were torn apart with ease

The sky ripped from their little world
Their peccadilloes for all to view
First Zak, then Lucy disappeared
With a bite, a crunch, a chew.

So dear reader, please take heed
Don’t shy away from love
For we never really know quite when
It’s lunchtime up above.

She was my fresh air,
Out of a stifled room,
She was my refuge beyond compare,
When all seemed gloom.

And now, her vision still stabs, quite sharp,
But not with violins, or roses, or harp,
No, just a little sigh, when I recollect her swoon,
Under the roses, Back Hessle Terrace, One June.

So what of love,
Hearts burning fire,
Impaled on the horns of pain and desire,
A villain made true; honest man to a liar
In wretched quest for an abstract that’s higher

And if, perchance, they should vanquish their need,
Will he or she to true love concede
Or never quite sure of heart’s fine intention
Smother such dreams with stifling convention
Then, dastardly torn, twixt right and true
Sully their soul with transitory muse

In fear of the power that thunders within
And a promise once made, to never give in
For the Poet’s dilemma in this miraculous life
Is that when blessed with love, ‘tis oft coupled with strife.

When you dance for me,
And I for you,
We pirouette around the facts,
Pas de deux with a dream,
Rhythm held as if ‘twere always so,
And sometimes – a beat, a pause….
A fragile moment of possibilities,
The glancing blow of two hearts rebounding,
Shocked, yet excited by the power.
Then once more we rotate,
Reigned in,
And stop.
Surprised by the time.