We watched and we listened
as He prayed.
And we wondered
what might it be like ?

to speak with Jehovah
- as He did.
-
-
So one night we gathered up our courage
and we asked,
'can WE do that?'

And then,
smiling,
He taught us.
He gave us
OUR prayer.

And, as if
for the first time,
it felt real.
It felt like we had PERMISSION,

We had an INVITATION
to call Jehovah
'our Father'

just as He did.
-
-
I couldn't help but smile
when I thought what the priests would make of all this:

What would they say?

Praying child to Father.
Having direct access. Forgiveness
Without a priest.

And oh the simplicity
of asking,
of feasting
on the generous Spirit
of OUR God

just as He did.

He saw me grin and He laughed with us.
-
-
And later,
when the others were sleeping
I walked and practised this new boldness
and shouted through my smile:
-
"Our Father
in heaven,
most holy be your Name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
here on earth
just as in heaven.

Give us this day
our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins

just as we forgive those
who sin against us.

And lead us
not into temptation,
instead, deliver us from the evil one.

For Yours is the kingdom,
Yours is the power
and Yours is the glory
for-ever,
Amen."

I kept my childlike smile.
And when I slept
I slept as He did.

Closer to grace.

Know this - I am.
Know this - I can.
Know this - I will
and know this - I will, with you.
And yes, that's a promise,
Oh, I'm serious.
You can be sure of my presence,
confident of my grace.
Come and together
let's change this place
for the better.

Come
and take a double touch of His grace
on your tear stained face,
hinging on His mercy
coupled with His ability
to not assume, to not barrel past,
but to rather ask (and twice ask)
with a balm of a voice and intentional hearing
and His long compassionate waiting.

Come
and take a double touch of His grace,

Jesus wasn't one for placing His touch 'in passing',
but He placed His touch with presence -
His was an off-the-fence, no-pretence full in the face presence.

Come
and take a double touch of His grace.

He held back from the passing pack and exercised the knack of knowing to look back, going far enough to reach a truer understanding,
to reach out with both arms and so allowing
Him to encompass all previous experience of heavy handed mishandling.

Come
and take a double touch of His grace.

For He knows that truthfully the healing is secondary
to the placing of true medicinal touch,
to the reassuring brush
of acceptance,
to the knowing that you've received close hearing
and closer grasping -
a meeting of more than minds, a confidence of souls truely entwined,
standing embracing and only releasing once we have the assurance of knowing
that we've been double-touched with honesty and that we're twice as much connected fully
and gracefully with the One who truely never turned from anyone's face.

Come and take a double touch of His grace.

Not pen to paper nor digit to key,
but eye to eye and hand to hand,
with a firm grip on our reality.

With half-empty mouths and full-empty ears,
we understand that its has to be us
voicing our two converging histories.

Exploring what it is to be you,
what it is to be me
and what we two can be together
in the next chapter of our come-together
unfiltered, unashamed and unheard stories.

Compromised
between original and possible
losing the beat and a little of the rhythm
even the form
as the pulled words
fall afresh,
short of English,
far from the tree,
but cousin enough
to retain alikeness
and still echo a piece of me.

No.
Not ornamental,
more fundamental.
Not sentimental,
but rudimental.
And when I wear it
it's very much an intentional
statement of who I am,
how I live
and who I worship.
So, no,
not simply pretty,
but pretty much essential.

I drank in the portrait
of the lady on fire
wondering how
the master kept his eyes focused
and his heart unmoved
as he captured the moving anguish of her beauty.

My two ears are red
my ten toes are blue
at this time of year
warm days are few

Whoever you're with
this valentine's day
keep your heart warm
and keep flu at bay

Blinkered and blindfolded
and hooded for good measure
- I run.
And when I run out of road,
that's when I fly.
That's when I stop looking around blind and instead see that my loss of footholds, my lack of reference points and my failure to orientated myself to others frees me from restraint and I acquaint myself with possibilities that I had not allowed myself to paint even with numbers to guide me and instead I had paid too much attention to the mumbles that derided my attempts at something beyond my safe comfort, grounded in the fear of the ****** of others' distaste for what I deep down desired for myself. And so with this loss of the constraint of others' eyes, I fly, blinked and blindfolded and hooded for good measure I no longer bother to check my mirror and instead I revel in this fresh freedom by which I can navigate the skys.

Blinkered and blindfolded
and hooded for good measure
- I run.
And when I run out of road,
that's when I fly.

I'm now made up of what remains
now that you're gone.

And now I'm alone I see,
I know that it's enough.

You were not all that I am after all.

I write for the unreliable reader, the one who reads what they want, whether they want and how they want
- not reliably reading though my eyes and carefully abiding with my well placed breaks in line, my enjambments, separation of themes into stanzas or even a subtle semicolon.

I write for you and entrust to you
my heartache, my headaches
my angst, my joy
my mess ups, my bust ups
my skewed views, my hard pews
my shouts, my sullen frowns
my walks, my sleep
my songs, my guffaws
my control, my dance
my destruction, my elevation
my blame, my late claims
my relish, my shame
my togetherness, my brokenness
my sleep-kicks, my daybreak
my jealousy, my generosity
my rewinds, my reruns
my hospital runs, my mother's hands
my triggers, my pretence
my pride, my bullies
my children, my memories
my past, my now
my decisions, my abdications
my loss, my child
my teen, my adult
my space, my confinement
my health, my ailment
my green, my red
my therapy, my surgery
my war, my peace
my time, my eternity
my kindness, my hate
my tea, my cider
my queuing, my waiting
my coming, my leaving
my life, my death
my ever after
- these are yours.
Just turn the page

Infinity isn't a number
And nor am I.

Not reaching
Not arriving at

but going through,
continuing past
this end

on to the next

ready for any number of ends that I may meet and greet and then pass, thanking them, but not being held by them

saddened by them
but not brought down by them

rather, finding myself a lot stronger and a little wiser, I walk on to find my end that will always be ahead of me past these ends.

"Once you have found it
keep your Voice on you at all times,"
my Uncle told me,
"you never know when you might need it.
Do not entrust it to anyone else -
they won't value it the way that you do.

"And do not leave your Voice
where they can steal it,
but slip it in your inside breast pocket,
close to your quiet heart -
where you can reach for it
at a moment's notice,
and when the moment comes,
you take it out with a steady hand
and you let them see
that your Voice is not lost,
it is not tired,
that it lies ready
that it is willing
to speak truth to power,
to voice comfort to the powerless
and sing in chorus with quieter voices."
And he patted my hand,
"You'll know. You'll know."

Years later,
when I found my Voice
far from where my Uncle had sat,
I knew it was mine
from its familiar shape and weight in my throat,
from the way it resonated
with the call I had suppressed
and the way it chimed
with the voices of those
who chose to stand with me.

And now that I've found it,
I exercise my Voice in song,
I practice it in comfort
and I school it in truth
and I always keep it close
to our quiet hearts
where they cannot steal it from us.

And where do you keep the jazz?
Where do you store the melancholy,
the self-reflection
and the escape.
Direct me to the place you keep
for your inner, your deeper,
your best kept back
and let's sit and explore,
let's jazz and coalesce
into a more honest
and more innovative
improv.

These are the ingredients for a poem. But like all recipes, you don't need every ingredient every time:

MUSIC
- beat, rhythm & rhyme
IMAGERY
- pictures painted
IMAGINATION
- describing what's not there.

STORY
- the narrative, the journey within the poem
STRUCTURE
- size & shape (line breaks and stanzas)

Also, you may have a inclination to use a particular ingredient to the exclusion of others - so as you recognise this, experiment with those ingredients which you are less confident about using.

Note
- the first three are where poets typically find their freedom to explore ideas within the poem;
- the last two are where the reader typically finds handholds / the anchor to better engage with the poem.

Big Art: The art of collaboration.

Big bouncing, cushioning,
resonating, in-phasing.

Small piece-by-piece-making,

patch-working, ingredienting,
combining, conjoining,
absorbing,

- collaborating.

These days we
last long enough to grow old
live long enough to reflect
but don't grow up enough
to bother.
Lord, save us from ourselves.

While smoking my mother's ashes
in my father's stale pipe
I felt a curious high, which was strange
- the rest of the batch had been expectedly bland

and homely. I walked the aroma through her discarded bungalow,
into the kitchen, out into the bare garden following the line

of the absent washing over the sunken stepping stones,
ending in the cul-de-sac of her rock garden of heather and herbs.

I sat on the concrete steps of the dismantled green house
letting the hit of the ash fill my lungs, holding it there

until it filled my head, before very slowly
breathing out the deep memory
of mum and dad, shouting and laughing and l allowed myself

to float above the colour of the border plants, up out of reach
of the childhood sprawl until I was back in her smoke filled room,
full of her emptiness - chin raised in silent prayer for one last breath.

And still gripping the warm bowl of my high, I sang her songs,
knees-up with the best of them and with mum on both arms, chin raised high

with a chorus of belief in family and friends and neighbourhood
and how this was never going to end well,

but meanwhile we'll have a party
making sure the whole street knows they're welcome
- and all the more if they have grief to smoke and memories to sing
- surely this is a life worth living.

Put another record on,
there's tea on the ***, ashes in our pipes
and songs to sing.

She took the crisp offered
- not for the flavour, but for the high offer
of a connection across the tallest table,
balanced on tall stools, with tall tales
that fired unfettered, unfiltered
from her so much taller son,
each word spittled with snorted laughter
as they floated in their isolation,
cushioned by a child's unhesitate honesty,
silky and cloud-light and nothing like her fears
which had continued to hover and to threaten
to sink her float and fade her laughter
and to let the dank win.
Instead she stayed afloat,
tethered only to her son's fingers
as they drew her further into his world,
pushing away her lost years,
floating her free to explore this genesis
of something like a second chance.

Kindness is not nice.

Nice is soft and inoffensive.
Nice is easy and effects no change, it's cotton wool - not stuffed tight, but just resting on the surface ready to be blown away or trodden into a muddy disinterest. Nice is a damp whisper, a mouse cowering in the corner, taking up as little space as possible, lest it be noticed, lest it presume too much and cause a whisker of offence.

Kindness isn't like that -

Kindness pushes in, claws out, quick and heavy, uninvited, unexpected, taking pleasure in disturbance, in leaving nothing unsaid and little undone in its pursuit of creating a disruption of difference. Kindness counts everyone a target, anybody a likely candidate for a three act matinee and evening performance of loud Kindness. Surprise is its currency, smiles its language, common humankindness its passport to lands yet to be explored, to vast red territories with drumbeats of gratefulness for the opportunity to march in with regiments of compassion and to leave a signature devastation of brutal Kindness.

Kindness is not 'nice'.
Kindness is loving awe-ful.

I hold with care the value of the Wait
with a backdrop of the intrusion of the Immediate;
I relish the Not Yet,
not looking for an untimely rush into the unfinished;
I anticipate the delicious Hope,
ignoring the clamour of dissent;
and not taking anything for granted, I do all I can to clear space,
to listen with intent
and to then herald the Promise of the Soon,
the ready-coming-King,
and I embrace the God-With-Us
Now.

History snores at the back, too tired to notice the present company, and
Maths figgits nervously, his mind overwhelmed by possibilities and permutations, while
Geography let's her mind wander, dreaming of paths yet travelled and regarding this classroom as just another staging post, but
English mutters disapprovingly at the thought of so much hassle and any proposition that might disrupt his carefully balanced timetable.
French sighs and shrugs, unconcerned, but can't help but be curious about the
German sitting so self-composed and self-contained across the aisle, somehow managing to ignore
Science as he argues with himself and apparently agrees another working hypothesis. And at the door
Divinity wonders and ponders what brought us here today and says a brief prayer for forgiveness.

I make a mug of tea and butter a slice of toast and am not surprised by her smile, years before and right there, waiting for me with the sound of The Express being folded, crossword almost completed, as she rises for a kiss and a 'hello love', and the trusted 'I've got the kettle on'.
We hug and I sit as she stands and takes down two mugs, just as she recalls something or another that she meant to give me last visit and now wonders where she placed for safe keeping for this moment - and she's gone,
leaving me sitting in the kitchen resting in the familiarity of her calls from the other room telling me she'll find it in a sec and chiding herself, until her cry of finding and her return
with something of my dad's that she thought I'd like or perhaps a grey photo, with a young me, head sliced to fit a frame long discarded, but having left its trace with a stain of Sellotape
- and then we talk of nothing but people and happenings that left family stains we cherish for the pictures they conjure and for the bond left undiminished by time and if anything made stronger by any mug of tea and toast and the still-left-unlocked front door always ready to receive me with a 'hello love' from deep within the home that stayed open forever and now keeps a space open for memories and a silent undertaking that I'll somehow perpetuate this welcome.

Pub poetry is a form of performance poetry consisting of the shouted word which has developed in UK urban pubs, dating back to the 1940s and 50s. Words are typically yelled over ambient haphazard rhythms which are not especially chosen for the piece of poetry, rather the poetry is performed over the generic sound of empty bottles and part filled glasses and live samples of patron conversation that will be familiar to those frequenting hostelries around the UK.

Sometimes the audience will employ call and response devices to distract the poet, such as calls of "W##k-er!', with the traditional response of "F##k-You!" before the pub poet continues with his yelled out verse, often read from the beer stained back of an overdue envelope.

The pub poet usually appears on a chair or table, surrounded by immediate family or work mates cheering him on.

Invariably inebriated, the pub poet may not appear to make any sense to the uninitiated - but once you too have availed yourself of your 4th or 5th pint, the words become clearer and easier to appreciate.

No musicality is built into pub poems and pub poets generally perform without backing music, delivering chanted speech with pronounced modulation, broken-rhythmic accentuation and dramatic, though random, stylization of gestures, often resulting in the pub poet losing balance and sustaining a head injury thereby losing consciousness and bringing the evening's entertainment to a premature, but often welcome, end.

It is often noted that many pub poets are remarkably shy and retiring when sober.

I had grown out of time-outs - those imposed minutes of inward reflection, of self confrontation in wait and ponder. I had forgotten that slowing and pausing could be a productive use of time, and that eternity does indeed wait for all who have the stamina to stop the clocks and drape the mirrors.

I had instead lived for the future, passing abruptly / obliviously through the momentary present, robbing myself of the present time to consider, to discern, to consult, to learn from those like my father who had travelled further through time, having time to use the time-honoured travel method of patience.

And now, in my father's cooling presence, I stalled in an unfamiliar, unexpected hiatus between generations, and was forced to wait for what would come next.

And I paused.

I sit thinking a little faster than the speed of penning, thereby having to repeatedly press pause on my thoughts to let the ball of blue catch up with the image / the sound of the phrase in my mind / on my quiet tongue that flows fast down my right arm into my slow fingers and out into the ball point that hits the page with part-satisfied impatience

And in that pause, resisting the urge to edit / to revise / to reform the original thought that is crying out to become embedded in the page / begging to be seen / to be loved and so to sit and to stare back at its origin, safe in the curated space to stay / to settle and perhaps to become part of something bigger / longer / older, something of possibly permanent beauty.

And having gotten over that feint-ruled line, my first thoughts face the risk of being transposed / transformed by typing thumbs before becoming something that will last on a plain white screen and later be posted at the speed of competing broad bands into a world wide cloud of words.

Later, having hovered / waited, my wet words just might find a place to soak / to stain / to marinate and later be memorised perchance recitied at a more appropriate speed within a crowd of like-minded minds and perhaps for a phrase to lodge / to be recalled / to form part of something that fate redirects through a ball of blue, back out into the flow.

Sitting in the space made by her leaving, I'm far from comfy, but no-where-near lonely.

Cooking for one is far from easy and it's easier to succumb to the micro-wavable and the processed in a process that suggests sadness, but in essence is a life past survival and a start of a moving on.

Leaning on past memories for a more reliable sense of self, I walk back beyond the years of this boken partnership.

These years from the off were tainted with discomfort while threaded with laughter and it's the laughter I now follow to earlier layers that might form the start of a fresher, better fitting wardrobe and a comfort that is more than this - sitting in this space of her leaving.

More than this, I'm sure.

At your denial you were at your creative all-time-best as you added vivid detail that distracted and buried the facts beneath a story that captured our imagination rather than releasing the truth of the situation and risking the shame of a truer declaration lying a few lines beneath your masterly woven but ultimately deceptive late night conversation.
And you left us none the wiser.

What once felt an exciting,
adventurous experience
has become an annoyance
at the bruises and blood blisters
which come with each smack
of the lips.

Why must she kiss
as if it's her feast
and I'm the main course?
Especially as tomorrow
she'll be just as hungry

- something to which my lips
can give uneasy testimony.

When I think of my dad
I think of a smile
and full-body-laughter.

I think of piles of library books
and reliable pedal bikes,
cigars and pipe smoke,
holidays in tents
and long family treks.

I recall his choice of grey,
brown
and karki
and his superstition of green.

I think of stubble,
big crossed arms
and early morning mugs
of strong tea.

I think of an only son
not matching expectations.
Quick tempers.
Rationed phone calls.
Enforced lights out.

I think of that time
he forced the door -

and of mum's white
'best not tell your dad' lies,
and the lesson taken into my own marriage,
for better, for worse,
that the truth was worse.

When I think of my dad
I think of his smile
and his laughter.

When you give yourself permission
to be vicious
you can cause fear to rise
doubt to take hold.
No doubt, worse violence
is avoided
and disorder,
ordered,

but when you let your vicious out,
it's a ****** to put back -
and even when you do,
it'll know its way back out.

My three gold wedding rings sink deeper
into my 30-years-on skin.

I've seen the youtube tricks
for removing them with wrapped floss,

but I think I'd rather sever
each of them at the final decree,

otherwise I'll need to dispose
of three perfectly good gold rings.

And that seems a waste.

Time here is treacle -

it's thick and syrupy, a rich golden glow that envelopes the spoon while flowing over the edges inevitably leaving a trail / a thread if you will, that will never be chased down or scooped up without leaving a sticky sweet trace that will last days before it fully fades to a savoured memory.

Time here is golden treacle.

May your bells jingle all the way
May your snow be crisp and even
May you ding **** merrily on high
And may Saint Nick keep you believing

Rudolph The Red stayed in his shed
Unhappy with minimum wage
He refused to get started
Cos he wasn't rewarded
With the promised end of year raise

Rudolph The Red sang with his friends
And staged an all-advent sit-in
But Santa just smiled
Cos his jet had been fuelled
In advance for such an occasion

Rudolph The Red looked overhead
While Santa sped round the world
When Santa got back
With his large empty sack
His workshop was empty of Elves

Rudolph The Red was no longer led
By thoughts of personal gain
He'd formed his first union
With Elves and ten snowmen
And the workers were free once again

I believe in choice.
I believe in the power of choice.
I believe in the God-given right
to freely choose
what we choose to choose.

Freely choosing -
Freely making -
Freely selecting -
our choice.

Freely taking
one of the options
offered to us,
freely declining
to take the others.

Freely deciding what we want,
what we will,
what we'd like
to choose.

I believe in our free will.
I believe in just one-more-
before-I-go
slice of cake.

I sat in front of the mirror and reflected on age and plans and paths and happenstance. And as I reflected, my reflection faded and I looked inward and found a new road, a narrower path and an older way, leading me to my paths-maker rather than to my path-dictator and to my next choice on the adventure that my maker had made free and had made ordained, one and the same.
And as I looked, the dark fell and the light rose and reflected well on our choice. And so I too rose, and we walked on.

Take your own life
violently by the scruff,
and LIFT.
Once you have its undivided,
wholehearted attention,
stare it straight in the eyes,
and say 'Enough!'
'This is a self-interest intervention.
'Get over this,
shake yourself free
of this mid life need
for a preoccupation
by hostile thoughts
and self-absorbtion,
put to one side
self-indulgent fictions
and get real,
get serious
and get a life
that is true to the person
you now are.
And start by ending the comb-over.
It's a non-starter.'

The man stood in his thick red coat and sore shiny feet, square in the threshold, charged with a ready welcome and ruddy face.

He stood with no name but the one assumed for him and, unbeknown to him, inherited from his predecessor who too stood in a similar red coat and sore shiny feet and with his own style of smile.

He stood until he fell one March morning, in his thick red coat and his sore shiny feet and with a heart that failed to live up to the responsibility that came with the threshold and the coat and the shiny feet and instead chose to take its rest.

The man stood in his thick red coat and sore shiny feet square in the threshold, charged with a duty to smile with an open face, with no name but the one assumed for him and, unbeknown to him, inherited from his predecessor.

And he stood.
And he smiled.
As charged.

Never learnt anything
from a swing of a cane
but fear
and resentment
and that pain doesn't last
as long as the scars.

"A grain of madness is the best of art."
Second best is a handful of heartbreak on a base of isolation with a drizzle of self-reflection.

Reuben Col is a merry young soul,
a merry young soul is he.
He sings for his milk,
he sings for his lunch
and he sings for his afternoon tea.

Reuben Col is a merry young soul,
a merry young soul is he.
He gives lots of love,
he gives from the heart
and what he gives, he gives for free.

can we skip the bit
where I'm not sure
what it is you feel
and if it's the same
as the feeling
that I'm feeling is possibly real
and possibly how
someone as amazing
as you is feeling right here
right now?

- can we dispense with the fear
that what appears
to be actually here
is actually just a figment
a fiction based on
a misread permission
to stay this close, mistaken
like a ghost of a reflection
in a tarnished mirror
that hides the terror
of being seen this clearly
by another.

- can we move on
to the unguarded laughter
and the freedom to touch
the surface of your face
and the assurance
that we've reached across
a safe place,
a within-our-reach shared space.

- can we stay in this moment
for as long as this path lasts
and can this path
take us from our past on
into a future without-masks
where we nurture
each other to greater
and to deeper
laughter?

- can we do that?

I've been singing high up in my head
not aware I have a choice
not knowing in my heart of hearts
I've got a bigger voice -
that breath by breath, beat by beat
I'm able to release
in time with my heart's moving
the next movement of my suite

That as I breath in deeper still
using my whole body
my body becomes one instrument
growing in capacity
to compose something of my own
beyond my quiet moans
the music of my origin
and of scores I don't yet know

"All the stuff in our veins is the same." Guy Garvey.

Some stuff is the same.

First school,
Graduation

First pet,
Grief

First bicycle,
Grazes

First kiss,
Heartbreak

Some stuff is only yours and makes you.

"Listen!
I'm neither - not either!

"Not left, not right
Not black, not white

"Not red, not blue
Not the many, nor the few

"No, neither you
nor any other political tribe
will bribe my alliegence.
No one can expect
my adherence or compliant silence!

"I've no tribe but kin
and my kin can come in any skin
and will come and go again
this close to the rim.

"So, no -
I'll not promise to sing
from only one sheet of hymns.
I'll not sign up to this week's
with-the-tide swim.

"You can't assign me
based on a tick-box whim.
I'm no man's synonym.
I'm no easy pseudonym.

"My vote has never been
and never will be
ANYBODY'S easy win."

She stood at the door poised with her pen.
'Okaay... Is that an 'Undecided' then?'

on saturday morning we grace around recycled rustic tables, lowering our heads over gluten free brown toast topped with gently scrambled free range eggs, adding soya milk to decaffeinated, ethically sourced coffee, self contained in guilt free reusable cups -

and still we fret.

Reputation - what they think they see
Character - what you prove to be

Image - what is seen from afar
Substance - what you truely are

The difference is what makes a man
a sure and steadfast gentleman