On a derelict island lived a solitary youth,
A desolate prisoner of his own- the unfathomable truth.
Enclosed by the fence which his own hands had built.
All day he lay, still as a rock, eyes fixed on the silt.

From his enclosure, the same sorry shells he would collect everyday.
And when he put them together, they never failed to look the same way.
The job he once loved was now monotonous and mundane,
No longer did people want to see his shells- so ordinary and plain.

One warm day, a shell so unlike the others his fence did hit,
Fascinated, he took down a piece of his fence with a new-found grit,
Joyously, he discovered a whole wide world of many a beauteous shell,
Vivacity enveloped him and godspeed, he took down the rest of his fence as well.

But the island, in reality, was his isolated mind,
The fence, the enclosure for his mind, around the ‘island’ was aligned.
The shells stood for thoughts, words and the inspiration he could attain.
As the writer opened up his mind, he fell in love with words again.

Was Annabelle just a woman in Poe’s dream?
Was there really an angel on Janet Frame’s wooden table?
Did Emily Dickinson really wear white for the rest of her life?
Was Dante just a bitter ***** to tell people about a red man with horn’s on his head
Didn’t think it was Halloween too soon on the corner of his calendar

I resembled all the traits these  writer’s made of their spoken lives just like Bukowski
If he did live in many rooms and lost his brain cells in bottles
Maybe in the afterlife Burroughs will give me pointers on drugs along with Thompson. Meeting Rimbaud ask him if he ever was in the closet. Took an eyeful of literature before high school,  made friends with boozers, losers and psychopaths. Don’t quote me because I cherish them so much I know I’ll try to make it like them soon, dead yet my heroes they remain alive
WRITE ME OFF WRITE ME OFFF Write me down there’s no pen and papers around scrawl on the wall have a purpose to write them all

Thursday morning and I board
the Preston train, a dumpy DMU,
but less of a cattle-truck today.

Over the bridge or beneath
lines to Platform 5 to wait:
Branson's Scarlet Pendolino
will glide in soon bound
for Birmingham - wonder
who I shall meet and share
travelling moments with ?

At the caverns of New Street
I must wend to Moor Street
and a Chilterns train trundling
me south for Warwick's 1,100th.
birthday weekend and 100 years
since trains of Lancashire PALS
cattle-trucked themselves to
Flanders fields never to return.

(c) C J Heyworth June 2014

Diniligan ng luha
Ang tuyo kong pagsuyo
Bitakan at tikag
Itong aking puso.

Sinilo mo ako’t
Ginawaran ng rehas
Ipinahalik sa araw
Binasa pa ng ulan
Ako’y kinidlatan
Kulog ay nakapapanting
Tainga’y duguan
Halimaw ang tingin.

Aking pag-ibig,
Pagsinta’t pag-irog
Pawang kuro
At puso’y nilatay
Inilibing
Inihatid sa hantungan
Hindi pa man nito oras
At ang binhing kinalinga
Siya ring inanod ng rimarim.

(12/2/13 @xirlleelang)

Minsan nang naging utal
Ang dilang
Pait lang ang nalalasap
At isang kalansay
Sa malamig na sansinukob.

Dumi ng iba’y
Singkong duling
Heto ako’t
Isang krikitiko
Sa mapanglait kong titig.

Minsan nang
Naging kasapi
Ng pagluray sa bayan
matatas ang pananalita
Tangan ko pala ang madla.

Saksi ako
Pati silang kapwang
Panay bulag
Lahat sila
Minsan ding nanibugho
Sa taglay kong kagalingan.

Ibinandera ang sarili
Sa mga lapastangang dayuhan
Ngayo’y sila na
Ang yumuyurak
Ang pumapalakpak
Sa pagsalipadpad
Ng mga letrang
Ibig isuka’t ilabas.

Mapusyaw ang kulay
Ng aking pagbubunyi
Pagkat bibig nila’y
Kandadong mga
Walang susi
Walang kusang palo
Talusira sa katotohanan.

(11/29/13 @xirlleelang)

She keeps dancing
over the dark water;
The flash of iridescent blue
Beneath her wings,
Quick as a breath.

How else could they see?
The dragonfly dart;
Then hesitate above
The mossy green bank –
As if it gave liberated pleasure.

How could they perceive?
The green dimness falling;
Between trees, that antique stillness,
Then the vermilion leaves –
Startling, unexpected,
Like an exclamation of delight.

How could they receive?
That moment when one, then two,
Then three dragonflies skimmed
All over the once pure river.

(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)

‘Felt the heart’s old persistent music,
Beyond logic, beyond hope,
And so I didn’t heave myself
Into the blanket of fear.

To this perilous land,
I lived with you all along.
Either latent and exposed,
Still I know there’s a vivid side.

Extrajudicial atrocities
And related political violence
All over the globe;
But what your status became,
Was second among all nations!

This politically motivated murders,
Has unfastened the eyes of many.
Everything comes to blows;
Transgression and lapse like these,
Surely we’ll meet in the future.

This is the world now;
When one opt to fight or not,
Darkness will still scrap the true light.

(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)

Lost to backdrops scrolling past,
She sits knitting
in the carriage of a train.
The vague needles
They scintillate and glimpse
With the cadence of the wheels –
Upbeating ceaselessly.

Strips of tiny loops
And eyelets like dewdrops
Of condensation
Grouped on the superior rim.

Once in a while,
She gives a heave
To loosen more yarn from the skein
Of Filipino-made wool,
brushed worsted weave.
Spun and carded
from the richest fleece,
Deeper in the wicker basket by her feet.

The needles flash,
With ancient rhythms and attack
Of duellists in their chainmail coats.
With little hesitation she can tack
From plain to purl to blackberry.
Count back by rote or slip a stitch
While the fish-eyed gimlets gleam.

All gather profusely in her lap,
As windfall trove, rich-patterned
And warm with peach-fuzz nap,
All crafted from a single line of yarn.
Marvels fall continuously from wise
Spell-binding hands and all is well for now.

(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)

His hand seizes no brush,
What he has is dish alone.
There came a deluge –
A surge of days
With lovely clatter of voices.

Eggs tousled,
There’s a perplexed question within.
Amused by her doll,
That little one.

His weeks-old pant
Now rowing incessant,
Famished for something.

A trance of canvasses stretching,
Where there’re outlines
On ocher-soaked linens,
Earth-dug umber, sienna, yolk yellows,
Wet, oily and waiting to bleed
Thick and gummy from the brush.

In his veins,
The scent in ether enthralls him –
He was lightheaded
leaves me lightheaded,
Daubed and anointed
By the deity he has filched from.

Now the baby cries,
Sodden, smells like a milky cotton
Sopping every minute up,
Those implicated hours.

He’ll spill years
As the earth alters his faces.
Greens of summer,
Tarnishing into autumn..
And in winter, the north light;
Grasping firestorm
In the braids of the medium’s hair.

(9/10/13 @xirlleelang)