A tragedy miles of time away,
The anguish almost forgotten:
But pain is a stubborn stain;
Counselling never washes it away,
New love never smothers it.

Like a stubborn ****
It is always there,
Rooted in composted memories,
Finding nourishment in the briefest recollections.
The slightest trigger allowing it to briefly blossom.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

I take a crash course in their existence,
Personal history, wishes and outcomes
Scribbled for a rudimentary assessment.

They are but scrappy souvenirs,
Notes that barely scratch the surface
Of lives that cannot be summarised.

Passing, always passing:
People I wish I'd met,
Met long before their passing.

Reality rushes to a single point
A concentrated truth ovewhelms

Am I free or imprisoned in the now?
Options become the stars and clouds

But vanish in a flash of lucid thought

Standing straight in the swirling straits,
A bridge - now outdated - whose chains bear great weight and history,
Bejewelled with diamond raindrops that glisten in the winter sun,
Lending the old bridge the look of a semi-submerged crown.

This bridge is a source of pride to the islanders,
Many stories are told of it,
Some are true and some are legend,
But one tale lies inbetween:
That of a giant King chased from the island.
Forced to leap across the boiling straits,
Barely making landfall,
Falling backwards as he did so,
Watching in horror as his crown tumbled to the ground,
Falling into the grey waters.

Many years went by,
And modern ways demanded a bridge.
As foundations were laid a discovery made!
Upon the shore, deep in ancient mud,
Poked out a colossal rusting iron crown,
News broke!
Everyone spoke!
The story was true!
A giant King had once ruled!
So, in honour of this ancient King,
The design was amended to honour this crown,
And that is why this bridge, in profile,
Resembles the ancient coronet,
Found on the shore of the waters that the Romans failed to cross.
Of course, naysayers claim there was no crown,
Merely publicity seekers who found an old iron fence,
And who contrived a tale with willing locals.
Whichever is true,
The bridge is part of a glorious view,
And stories abound of its construction,
Like the man who walked the length of the chain,
Stopping halfway to take in the view whilst making a shoe!
Or of the maiden who swore that all who crossed would suffer a loss,
As great as they could ever imagine.

This bridge, whose beauty is unsurpassed,
Is now part of a glorious past of truths, lies and legends.
But forever it will stand,
And many more stories it shall inspire,
For it no longer simply links lands,
But now links truth and myth...
Am byth.

Such happy childhood memories,
Of the sweats you made and sold,
All those wholesome confectionaries,
Reminding us of times of old.

Your staff members, young and old,
So happy to work overtime,
Never revolted or ever became bold;
To do so would have been a crime.

But, like my wasteline, you have expanded,
You have factories in many nations.
My childhood you may have branded,
But I love you without hesitation.

I do so miss the sweat smell,
That poured from the old factory,
That dominated the town in which I dwell.
When will you come back to me?

Those lucky people on shores afar,
Who work all day and night,
Making those millions of sweat chocolate bars;
Their grateful sweat and tears ALL go into your delights.

Now I hear that you are diversifying;
The clothing industry in those developing nations,
Will add to your sweat bottom line,
Perpetuating your sweat *******.

Crap! Have I been spelling 'sweet' as 'sweat' throughout this **** poem?

Time's tight leash restrains ever more:
Youth runs without looking,
Adulthood takes in the views but not the meanings,
Parenthood siezes your social life and shakes it like a rattle;
A head-spinning temporal trauma
Leaving a void filled by nostalgia
- the middle aged man's worst enemy -
Sunny dazed days of drinking
In heavenly beer gardens,
Laughing without thinking.
But time yanks the leash,
Drags you back into today,
This hour, this minute,
To the ***** diaper
And your soiled hand.

There is art
That touches on our brief existence.
Art so refined,
So naturally attuned to
Life, Existence, Experience and Death
That Explanation is a waste of  words.
To me, it is song:
Beethoven's 9th
Songs For Drella
O Superman
God Only Knows
Underneath The Weeping Willow.
All hyper human,
Super surreal masterpieces
Beyond my evaluation.
So, thank you composers.

Your shrill sound echoes down the sickly fluorescent corridor.
I try to ignore you.
Its jauntiness jars.

I feel I shouldn't like your racket.
It bounces off the pain-bearing walls.
It exacerbates my claustrophobia.

But perhaps your music is soothing to some;
High happy notes inspiring hope of recovery
Or of a deserved restful sleep enveloping dear ones.

But I hear only the low notes.
Out of time with my quickened pulse;
A foreboding soundtrack to my deliberately slow steps.

But, I know you play for no pay.
Busking in this hospital for practice and charity.
And I know too, you do good both night and day.

For your primary instrument is a sharp sleek scalpel,
Wielded by your steady, practiced hand,
Rehearsed and well-versed in surgical concertos.

But, out of hours, your instrument of choice lends you a voice,
Allows flourishes and improvisations,
Best avoided during operations.

But, were you aware that for visitors like me
That the clarinet would take on a life-long significance,
Taking me back to bittersweet memories of visiting my Taidi.

Now, though, I am older and a little wiser,
My memories of him are more than just of hospital visits,
And I wonder, could I ask one thing of you?

Why no Rhapsody in Blue?

A ****** of Orange and Yellows
Pushed you through the Blue
Into the star spangled Black backdrop
For the White-Yellow companion
Of your Green and Blue Mother Earth.

Still the dunce turns up!
Lesson after lesson
Week after week
Term after term.
What has he learnt?
How to hold a book?!
He cannot be taught
So I only chastise.
But still the dunce turns up.
Will mockery **** him off?
No, the resilient peasant still turns up!
No great expectations have I of him
He only seems to leer at me
Yet plays the fool with others.
His grades a stubborn average.
To teach would be to encourage
But still the dunce still turns up!

Acknowledge the knowledge:
Accept it is there.
Dissonance is ignorance:
Neither here nor there.
There it is, as plain as day:
It is not going away.
Demon drink
Taken you to the brink
But still you fail to grasp
That others aren't always to blame,
That circumstances don't conspire,
That fate doesn't deem it too late,
For if you can move to contemplation,
Then you could still resist temptation,
So, before your will is trampled,
Let's discuss the undiscussable:
The Elephant in your head.

"You look well!" are words I dread to hear;
It means I have put on weight;
Probably a result of all the beer,
Of which I drink many a crate!

I know it's affectionate,
Just a compliment and an observation,
And I know I've been a bit decadent:
Stuffed my face like a bear before hibernation!

So at the moment I'm full of self-pity,
No gym for me for the next twenty years,
I have two young kiddies,
Healthy living for me is now in arrears!

So what to do? What's the fix?
Go for a run when they've gone to bed?
Simply too tired and then there's Netflix,
See, I now have the motivation of the walking dead!

But seriously, I need to get fit,
Make the kids a part of a health regime,
Get me off my comfy seat,
And get me back some self-esteem!

The Goldfish and his friend shared the one bed flat for what seemed to them a lifetime,
But was, in actual fact, just three months in human terms.
They knew each other well, like the back of their fins,
Having circled each other a million times.
Sure, they argued sometimes,
Always about the same thing
But neither could ever remember what that was.
Forgive and forget and forget ad infinitum,
That was the basis of their friendship.

So after his lifelong friend swam his last lap of their squat apartment,
The Goldfish mourned and tried to remember the good times they shared.
As he did, he forgot his bereavement and swam his next lap.
That was when he discovered the body of his lifelong friend,
Limp and halfway between sinking and floating.

So the Goldfish mourned and tried to remember the good times they shared.
As he did, he forgot his bereavement and swam his next lap.
That was when he discovered the body of his lifelong friend,
His former golden hue now gone.

So, the Goldfish mourned and tried to remember the good times they shared.
As he tried, he forgot his bereavement and swam his next lap.

That was when he discovered the body of his lifelong friend...

"Jesus Makes You Smug"
Is was it said on his coffee mug.
"****** atheist is lucky I'm a pacifist"
Thought the very angry Jesuit.

I've got the key, I've got the secret
I've got the key to the corned beef tin.

Ar ben y bryn
Sits a paint-brush-thin monument,
A crooked rocky record built by unwilling hands.
This cockeyed testimony announces a difficult man,
A man befriended by nature
Whose oakish form turned in opposition to his kin
To take root on stony ground,
To prosper on infertile soil
And shelter under nature's canopy.

Y bryn oedd ei gartref
And there he thrived
To the annoyance of the conformists,
The chapel-goers, the gossipers, the rate-payers,
Those who could not abide his ragged clothing,
Sweat-stewed, blood-patched remnants of cloth
Hanging rags of garments and barely-there shoes.
Loneliness was his hope and so peace was his.

Ar y bryn fu farw.
A few feigned to mourn to satisfy their curiousity
Hoping to spy the corpse of the man on the hill,
A man who was and who wasn't one of them.
And so a dissonance rang through the town:
He was them but not them,
Miserably poor but enviably free,
And so, his half-hearted monument was raised
On a foundation of contempt and begrudging admiration.

Memories aren't what they used to be.
A sunny spin on what happened to me
Hid the truth of pain
From which there was no gain
Other than the mastery of denial
That kept me going for a while
Until delayed maturity helped me realise
That we all work so hard to idealise
Those excitingly messy parts of life
That cut a thousand painless cuts.

Your shrill, yet oddly pleasant sound, echoes loudly down the long corridor.
I try to ignore you as the jaunty sound clashes with my melancholy mood,
Yet I find the notes and melodies cling to my mind like tissue stuck to a shoe,
Hanging on for it's own amusement,
Ignorant of my desire not to be teased nor humoured at this anxious time.

I feel I shouldn't like your racket,
My naïve ears and young years sense, not only an inappropriate comedy in your sound,
But also a daunting undertone,
Adding to my sense of having been plunged into deep icy waters.

Perhaps your music soothes those who are leaving,
Your high happy notes providing optimism and assurance of recovery,
Or of a restful sleep enveloping dear ones.
For me, however, at the point of no-return in my pilgrimage,
I hear only the low notes,
Out of time with my quickened pulse,
And lending a foreboding soundtrack to my slow deliberate steps.

But you play for no pay,
Busking in this hospital,
Doing good both night and day.
Yes, you are well known in this place,
Admired for the hours you commit to this space where lives can hang in the balance,
And where your instrument by day is a sharp sleek scalpel,
Invasive in its desire to alleviate suffering,
Your steady, practiced hand rehearsed and well versed in the methodically planned procedure of a surgical concerto.

But out of hours your instrument of choice lends you a voice,
Allowing flourishes and improvisations.
But were you aware that for visitors like me who visited repeatedly,
The clarinet would take on a significance beyond other instruments,
Taking me instantly back to bittersweet memories of visiting my family,
As, in turn, they aged and became unwell and recovered and became unwell again.

Now I am older and a little wiser,
I reflect and ruminate on this period;
My memories of family are more than just hospital visits,
And I wonder if I could ask one thing of you?
Why no Rhapsody in Blue?!

For a ****** Healer,
He sure had a dour demeanour:
More of an android
Than Sigmund Freud.

A truly lousy Physician;
Missionary is his favoured position!
I fired him after one consultation,
He knew nothing of fornication!

He said he was overly-qualified,
In *** he was apparently certified.
But he must have faked an ******,
During his oral examination.

A luckless boy
With a disc camera
Chases a picture of beauty.
A picture of his favourite bird:
The Song Thrush.

This boy feels as free
As the bird he seeks.
This boy sings his own song
Unaware of a bigger chorus
That will, one day soon,
Drown out his naïve tune.

Still, with tail up,
He chases that elusive bird
With a camera he does not understand
On a film he will never develop.

But he is lost in the moment,
Skulking and flitting
From one place to the next
Trying quietly (but loudly)
Not to startle the Song Thrush
As it whistles its timeless song.

Silken shroud of flowing water
Softens rock to rounded pebbles
Much as time sooths the memory

You weren't quite with it this morning
You bled Red-shifted light,
Soaked the clouds and stained the hills,
Startled a three year old
Not yet wise to your nature
"The birds haven't painted him yet,
He'll be Yellow again after Breakfast":
The reassurance of a father
Who does know your nature.
Of course, you got your act together
And, by eight o'clock,
You were basking in your own Yellow brilliance,
Like the celestial Emperor you are.

A family outing in ice cream weather.
My sisters and I in the backseat.
The brown fabric interior of our Cortina chafing our legs
and dad's cigarette chafing our lungs.

At the beach, the lazy ol' Sun kept watch,
slyly burning us as we pretended we could swim:
A childish farce that was nearly our downfall
when my searching feet were grabbed by Gravity.

Panic rose from toes to head as the Sea birthed me back to air.
Just long enough to note that nature's forces were in cahoots:
A kidnapping Current, a magnetic Gravity
and a Sea hooding me with saltwater cloth:
All combined to set a course South of maternal reach.

Of course, a mother's instinct kicked in.
A non-swimmer herself, she nonetheless set off in pursuit,
aiming to liberate her son from Mother Nature's conspiring forces.

And what was my younger sister to do but follow?

Now greedy Nature had three in its grasp.
Three fifths of a family doomed to drown.

As fatigue struck me dumb
I made a naïf's deal with Death
(a simple choice, no game of Chess)

And so, enter, the young heroes,
(partying only moments before)
who dived in to wrestle our would-be Killers:
Saving three fifths of a family
and the grief of two more.

It goes
You know
I’ve told you loads
I’m talking time
It goes so fast
Nothing lasts
But here’s a toast
“To Mister Time
Stop a while
Chill yer boots
You go too fast
Let things last
You breezy sod”
I’ve told you loads
That I’m getting old
But time gets bold
Quickens it pace
Without a care
Leaving me to stare
At children growing
At Christmases going
And coming
And going
And coming and...
Well, you get the point
So what’s the point
Of telling you more
About my woes
About time
And how it goes?

A hundred ***** dusty bleary-eyed windows open
As a deadly-dull town awakens
Unready and unwilling to take on another new day.
Each indolent inhabitant wishing away each minute, hour and day
Banishing any boy or girl who talks of "getting away".
Yes, a sad sullen town of little ambition,
Happy in its unhappiness,
Disembarks on another week
Allowing the woeful wintry weather to dictate its motivation
Glory be then, the rain that seems to fall perpetually
On the unglistening slate-grey slated roofs
That keep out the rain
But not the season's strong sickly grip.
To end at the ending?
Yes, let's,
This town is life's last stop
The end of a long long line
A lovely place to relax and whine.

Cartwheeling at the order of the winds,
Power to the people with the tumbling of your limbs.
A last throw of the dice by your makers,
A Quixotic endeavour to undo the damage;
Damage wreaked by the furies of their forebearers.

Words floating in the ether
Tied to a copper wire tether:
An outlet for an outlet.

These online wordshapes composed offline,
Composed in haste and left unedited,
Are but a proxy for real-world emotions.

Shall I 'Tweet' and forget in shame?
Or 'Delete' to burst these floating words?

A cloud formation
Never to be repeated
Farewell T Rex cloud.

The unimaginable that must be imagined
The flame in memory of the flames

Let the living live for the dead
So the truth of the dead can live on.

Let the unimaginable be imagined
Let the flame burn in memory of the flames
Let the living live for the dead
So the truth of the dead can live on.