News from the oak tree
she sent a brown envelope
to say it's Autumn

Autumn nights
smoky dusk possess us
brings on a certain melancholy feeling
there is a quality of ending
in this falling light unbending

My cathartic heart
threw away the finished leaves of bitter autumn's burning
I brewed myself a loving cup, made sweeter by my learning
tansy, bay with chamomile, bright meadow flowers to sip
tastes better far than poison found upon your lips

I don't want to follow your footsteps

with my two left feet in my two wrong shoes

If I take a path it's the one I will choose

my steps are my own

and I'll walk for a bit

maybe I'll find some shoes that will fit!

Tend to the soul of me
that means the whole of me
feed my mind my heart my head
nourish the part that doesn’t need bread
water me with love, watch me grow
a person will flower before you know

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

Everyone starts out naked,
without baggage, direction, or will,
carrying nothing but promise,
and a big empty suitcase to fill

Pile them up
stack stone on stone
hold each one
bone on bone
feel the rocks
between your fingers
rough and smooth
the feeling lingers
weigh each pebble
in your hand
lift it from the shifting sand
let it fall from where it came
to a rock it's all the same
one tiny part of an endless game!

Some people are bananas
They may look fine
But underneath they are bruised
You never know
Until you peel back the layers
And find the damage
Be careful with bananas
They are easily crushed

A thin and somewhat wavering cry
echoed in the banshee breeze
as she beat upon our door with frozen fingers
heralding your birth, you child of storms
a winter babe
the fallen leaf forever restless as he grew
a wailing wind inside to blow you onward
that much is true

lithe she floats
surface barely breaking
hard as wood, smooth as jade
yet light, a thing of burnished air
barely there
no thoughts to weigh her down
for she has ceased to care

Bay of Funday
shines in the fog
smoky landscape
wide grey ocean
flower *** rocks and rolling tides
I long to breathe your salty air
and throw my cares into your breeze
feeling the freeze around my toes
who knows, perhaps one day
Bay of Funday

A candle breaks our dark

a spark to chase the shadows to their several corners

who can say where it lies

somewhere inside

every life has a glow

of what, we don't quite know

but it shines all the same

a tiny flame

radiant as the moon

or the stars that hang forever floating in celestial night

that little flickering light

To love is to derail your path
put aside your own desires
throw yourself upon the pyre
to feed the fires that burn in someone else's heart
an act of madness from the very start
not a sacrifice, for that implies regret
yet we impale ourselves, to feel love's sting
on the reddest rose with the sharpest thorn
the sweetest pain which must be borne
a beautiful sabotage

We all need beauty in our lives
words or music or mountains and trees
not like a fish, they need the water to breathe
like a bird needs the air
they can live in a cage
the bars will not suffocate their lungs
only their tiny souls
they are miserable if they cannot fly
always longing for the sky they can see from a window

Where is the beauty
that tiny creeping flower
it blossoms in the cracks
between the slabbed ugliness of this world

What is beauty
If you see it with your eyes
and I do not share with mine
is it any the less beautiful
for being yours alone

That intimate space

Inner sanctum of the discarded sock

That empty coffee cup

You meant to take downstairs

Borderland between light and dark

A place of extremes

Joy and love and sometimes fear

Where we can truly be ourselves

At our most vulnerable

When we close the door

We switch off,

The clock hits pause

We sleep,

Defenceless

Against the monsters under our beds

And the ones inside our heads!

Sleepy blue ocean
Hiding in a cowrie shell
I heard her snoring

A pebble in a sea of glass

Shattered mind raindrops

Fragile as cobwebs

Sun strong and shadow deep

Infinite and fleeting

Planet sized in the palm of your hand

Belief is everything

And nothing at all

A pebble in a sea of glass

shattered mind raindrops

fragile as broken cobwebs

sun strong and shadow deep

infinite and fleeting

planet sized in the palm of your hand

belief is everything

and nothing at all

Yes I am greedy
for a single tomorrow
no wonderful shining moment
no rivers and rainbows
nor sunrise sunset skies of gold and cotton candy pink
just another day, like many others I have seen
a belly full of living, would be food enough I think

Be more gentle
the glue is not yet set
neither child nor man
but something in between
you are as yet unformed
a wondering restless thing
forever rearranging
the shifting sea
which constant breaks
and beats the rocks
with pounding fists
to make them change
they will not shift
be not angry at a world
which moves too slow
and way too fast for me
be more gentle, wait a while
find the shape you want to be

We are the fallen
bereft of life
but filled with music
we sing with a speeding bullet’s zing
our lyrics the crack of splintered bone
a symphony written for us alone
in the land where all are supposed to be free
so much then for liberty

You don’t need religion
Or any kind of God
You can still be thankful
Because life can be a sod!

If you are still alive and kicking
And feeling pretty good
Give thanks your ticker’s ticking
Just because you should!

You have come
good
I want to dance
whirl me around
free and young
bright as summer air
fly with me in your arms
take me somewhere new
we could be ravens
watching the sunset turn our feathers to flame
walk with me now, take my old hand
I don't think you ever did tell me your name

See your face in standing water
it reflects back the truth

No airbrushes in nature
no photoshop filters
you get what you get

Staring into the clear and glassy depths, right to the bottom
You think you can see through it, but really it sees through you!

Bottled words
Boiled down
Until all that's left
Is meaning

Expectation leads to realisation

You think you climbed the wall

To discover that your pond is very small

Not a big fish after all

Bird on a winter fence
all frozen feet and frosted wing
scans the sky and wonders why
crows don't fly south till spring

For those who rise to seek the morning

Joyous airy sprits sing without words

A lyric tune so old

It tells of trees and the endless shifting sky

Warm earth and the clean dry whisper of grasses in the wind

Long before the restless hum of man

Drowned out the forever-song

And the rushing world forgot to listen

Love

Where does it go when we die?

Does it still flow?

Spreading like a river

Watering new fields

The crops we sow in life

For someone to reap

In return

A fertile harvest

For the next generation

Does hate do the same?

Many acts have been done in its name

Will it outlast the hater?

Poison the ground

Spread seeds

Choking weeds

Wither fruit on the vine

Bitter wine to swallow

The love and hate we leave behind

Continues through tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow...

Yesterdays leaf
springs lithe and green,
of promise fine and fair,
todays is dry and parched and brown
its lifeblood fled elsewhere,
a cracked and fragile brittle thing
where hope no longer flowers,
how could this be,
how came you change,
full cursed by bitter hours

I have walked the bitter road

Where tangled briar romps

It is a place for dying

The twisted path for twisted thought

Minds bent out of shape beneath hanging branches

A narrow lonely place, built for one to travel

Uneven ground beneath unsteady feet

Landing is hard, rising harder still

Some fall, some follow the sign to lighter daysWhen you leave the bitter road

A little dry earth will cling to your feet

Because It never leaves you

I loved you most
in our bittersweet years
a taste of honey
wrapped in tears

Ploughed fields and tractor churning
yarrow, nettle, stubble burning
signs of a year at summers turning
blackberry, bracken, meadow sweet
showing the season is almost complete
chiff-chaff, pipit, pecking crows
bring high summer to an early close

I have laid down my life as I laid down my gun
the battle is over
I don't know who won
their side our side
does anyone care when it's all  said and done?
Long ago and far away
at very the end of the hardest day
when silence falls on the blood red, mud red, grass
will anyone remember what came to pass?
Young men die and old men weep
for comrades lost and the memories they keep
hugged to themselves till their time is done
a long life haunted by the shadow of the gun.
I have no name
war took it from me
a symbol, instead of the lad I used to be

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

Blend me a colour
In waterproof mascara
Shades of missing you

Paint me the cold of midnight
or dawn in the hills,
mix me the feel of fresh grass
under tired feet
and the smell of rain
on a long and dusty road,
boiling rage
or the sweet sweet joy of relief
blend me a colour
for the things my eyes cannot see

Do the stars look down and gently sigh
From their lofty home do they wonder why,
as we scurry around on our little blue ball
concerned about things that don't matter at all.
Do they weep when they see us again and again
smashing our world and the bits that remain.
The continuing heavens roll on and on
they were there before, and after we've gone
they will still exist to shed their light
with a fire that warms the eternal night.
Human kind is the blink of an eye
To those who look down and wonder why!

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