Bequeath to me sleep in your will
let me lay, all silent and unknowing
leave me this as your parting gift
for only the dead can ever know true peace
I may dream of you, and never want to wake
we can waltz together to music never-ending
a sweet sad tune we both know full and well
hold me tight, I will not fear the night
knowing you are waiting,
just as you promised, just like you said
in the candlelit ballroom
that lives in my head

There are times when life’s knitting unravels
a major diversion in the direction of travel,
not a dropped stitch, or some existential glitch,
but a ****** awful tangle
a wrestle, a fist fight,
a complicated wrangle
a long overdue appointment with fate,
when we can do nothing but sit back and wait
let it run, see it through
think about anything that we can do
to find the loose ends
pick up the pieces
and start to make amends

I never thought I was the only one

A single ripple among a thousand more

Breaking the surface of the ocean

Not the brightest star to grace the sky

Where millions try to shine

I never thought I was the only one

But I had no idea that there were quite so many fish

Swimming in a crowded pool of words!

Take the love that dare not speak its name
reduce your thoughts to memories,
lock them deep
hide them in the silent vault that is your heart
smother the singing bird you want to be
snap its feathered neck, quick smart
smother any signs of life
poor wounded thing,
better it was never born,
if it cannot fly, then it should never be
kinder dead than never, to fledge and leave the tree
smash your heel and end it now,
for it cannot be set free

The past is a smell of gently frying bacon
in a house with a green front door
you were too young to remember much
except a dog named Sandy or Rex
it licked up the ice cream you dropped
and someone kind
that you cannot bring to mind
wiped away the tears
from your sticky infant fingers
the memory is gone
but the perfume lingers

What am I ?
not wind nor rain
nor endless rolling sky,
I am not sea
or green and falling land
not trees nor beach
nor endless shifting sand,
not sun, not moon, not stars
so help me now,
to understand
if am fish or beast,
or calling bird which sings
which part am I
or maybe I am all these things,
as for why I came to be
or when or what or even how
I do not know
but call me nature
just for now

To change
to fundamentally rearrange
what you are,
or to alter the fit
just a tiny little bit

In the slammer

Doing stir

Eating porridge

Do your time

Does the punishment

Fit the crime

Is this the act of a civilised nation?

Revenge or rehabilitation

If we send someone away

On a governmental holiday

Slamming shut that big grey door

Should we question a little more

What the hell are we doing it for?

I blame the rain

It has a ceaseless patter

A rhythm on the window and in my head

It stalls my words

Drowning them with sound

Stones that sink that great grey whale of my thoughts

Stilling his song into empty silence

No poems today

I blame it on the rain

If your vocabulary is small
you can grow it like a plant in a ***
day by day water it with words
one at a time until it blooms
into dictionary flowers

Sunlight bathes the sleeping leaves
in shades of green and gold
this was always winter wood
without your hand to hold
now it fills with music
a bird in every tree
your dappled sunlit kisses
a breath of spring to me

A mashed banana car crash of a morning

Messy and awkward

Words won't heal

Actions are not enough

To **** the silence

Anger heats the room

To a cold simmer

Resentment boils away below the surface

Occasionally something will bubble to the top

The elephant in the room

Lurks, as you dance around him

The clock ticks

Showing it is way too soon

For the building blocks of memory

To start their slow repairs

For now it's just a band aid

On an open wound

So deep you could drive a bus through it

The smashed embers of words that hang unsaid

And the ones you should never have used

It will settle but never leave

Someone will bring it out

Like that ugly Christmas china you always hated

Sad

But you will all learn to live with it

Eventually!

Farewell Samhain
Celtic custom to honour the dead
****** for profit and greed instead
drowned in sugar
until all that remains
is a Jack-O-Lantern rotting in rain

A house upon my shoulders
with a garden for the mind,
an address the earthly body
could never hope to find

Fair or foul
we sail together
the breeze my captain
and I his willing servant
travelling where he wishes
escaped from the tree
but no free spirit
a happy captive
of the wind

There’s a long long trail a-winding
to the sound of marching feet
worn smooth by shadowed footsteps
their time on earth complete
although a poignant sad reminding
no one’s listening so it seems
there’s a long long trail a-winding
to the land of broken dreams
where that nightingale keeps singing
because that’s what she is for
to welcome home the fallen
from each successive war

Time is water

An endless flooding tide

Which regulates our lives

It has no form

No shape

Beyond the ones that we give it

All are streams in a river

Which flows to a sea

When oceans dry

And weeks and months are gone

Time will carry on

We knit idyllic hopeful schemes
and fashion them as garments made from dreams

We don't all have a choice

A selective voice

Some get what they get

No being upset

They are the losers

Others are choosers

They pay to play

And have it their way

They will always win

With another spin

We all have to learn

That an extra turn

Will put you on top

No matter how much

You want the ball to stop

Sing like a bird in a tree
Without the rage
Of a bird in a cage

Time to turn the pages

Leave the book open

Scribble what you want to say

Then draw a line

Put down the Pencil

Make space for a new beginning

A fresh hand can start their story

You wrote a chapter or two

When someone moved over for you

Now do the same

Let the music fade

The lights go down

Time to leave the stage with grace

It is done

Goodbye

There are tulips in the gutter
perfect blooms,
destined for dinner with a friend,
they were meant for the table
but alas she was unable to attend

The rain
when it came
was not unexpected
soft at first
then larger drops
falling music
dancing puddles
ignored in a rush of passers by
I stayed to the end
and heard it all
that orchestra of sky

Scented change perfumes the breeze
nesting birds fill the trees,
warming earth turns the plough
winter makes his final bow
the pulse of spring is quickening now

Lost lines
withered fruit upon the vine
which snuffs a lighted candle
in the writers mind
the skull, that egg
which once was full and round
now echoes, hollow with the sound
of missing words no longer found

We have this need to know
what makes a river run
or whips the wind to blow,
what lies beyond the stars
and makes the flowers grow,
we investigate our world
from the sky
to the seas below,
mankind in all its ferocity
has an insatiable curiosity,
we are bright and questioning creatures
one of few redeeming features

I am the wind
the rain which pelts and blows full in the face of adversity
and the silent sound of a million damp and aching feet
I am friendships that will never come again
and the voice of doomed youth
I am memories in old age
the scarlet smell of crushed poppies
and the iron tang of spilled blood  and rusty wire
I am hope and loss
dignity in duty
and outright defiance in the face of defeat
I am all these things
I am remembrance

Dylan boy,
lord of all the sleeping towns
the valleys and the mean little houses,
master of the flowering words,
like best bitter they flowed
dark and ripe and full to the top of the glass,
well worth the waiting for you were,
if the masses couldn’t see it
then they too were blind as moles,
you finished up your pint
and left us, empty

We flew for a while
and shared the same sky
with modest results
but we gave it a try

The thin bare bones of a silence that was

Shattered calm, a mirror cracked

Snapped underfoot like a plastic toy

Smashed, a fragile thing destroyed

Beauty broken by a careless word!

Not exactly floating
not completely sinking
I have reached a place
where there is no conscious thinking,
it’s a liberation
to be free on the blue and wide
just a piece of driftwood
taken by the tide

Listen to the silence

As the world holds its breath

And waits in hiding

Grass grows in the streets

Parking lots entwine with ivy

Around the rusty carts

And the spaces in-between

Yellow boxes faded by sun through empty windows

No breeze stirs the pavement cracks

Due for mending long ago

Thin cats lick their dusty paws

Stretching out on the hot trunks of cars

Sleeping peacefully

Until the bold rats come out to  play in the moonlight

Skipping down the hoardings

Unafraid

And what of the thousands

Their pale and haunted eyes

Looking from behind every curtain

Radios tuned

Listening

As the world holds its breath

And waits for life to begin again

Autumn leaves blow random wild
a Harlequin in scarlet cloak
spring and summer's fated child
he dances freely with the breeze
and does not seem to know or care
that harsher colder winter winds
will one day strip him bare

Falling light on springtime leaves
shadowed fingers stroke the breeze
sunlit table, awning up
proper tea in a china cup
supper cooking down the road
a neighbours grass efficiently mowed
cat on a cushion flicks an ear
rock doves calling somewhere near
new clad branches swing and sway
peace at the end of a busy day

The poet inside me sleeps,
curled up in the nut he rests,
perhaps he has died
and he lies, stiff and cold,
I do not think he is no more,
the occasional snore can be heard
a tumbling phrase or sybillant vowel
escape his lips,
errant ships that pass,
otherwise he lies
a dormant beast, waiting for spring
and the filtered sunshine that his words might bring

Skin needles, made from rain
threaded hope, that stitches pain
peel away the Monday morning
a coffee scented cloudy dawning,
the existential grey clad ******
of a quintessential English summer

Can you hear the stars,
sweet infinite music
the whistled song of the sky as it soars above us,
yes, you with your phone clamped to one ear
are you deaf to the whistled tune of the universe
then you have truly lost connection

Close the door
slip the latch and let it fall
I am sad to say farewell
but I must leave you all,
imagine me at peace
freed from earthly things,
I am the autumn breeze
a winter wind that sings,
I am rain, I am sky,
a part of everything,
we did not say goodbye,
I am summer, I am spring
blossom, light as air,
don't think of me as gone
look around and I’ll be there

Butterscotch sunset
Fades our walls to caramel
Sweet hummingbird light

Life is the threshold
existence is a windy doorway

Haunted
by the ghost
of a tune that you heard
or a book you once read
a fluttering bird
that flew from your head

The world and all its many fingered thumbs
has me by the throat
tugging hard at the wire
gripping tight it cuts, sharp at the prospect of another hour
until I do not know if flesh is bone,
bone is flesh,
or some thing in-between,
all is pain, and pain is all
lightning in a head that is filled to the lips with rags and straw
raw alight and burning bright, although I wish it were not so
I want it dim to let me sleep,
let me hide in dull-thought darkness
calm beneath the leafy shedding midnight trees
with their echoed mindless hum
and owls, there are always owls
screeching brutes of talon tinted wings
that eat the other flying things that haunt my night
and I can only lay
and wait for morning light