On the breakwater in the summer dark, a man and a
     girl are sitting,
She across his knee and they are looking face into face
Talking to each other without words, singing rythms in
     silence to each other.

A funnel of white ranges the blue dusk from an out-
     going boat,
Playing its searchlight, puzzled, abrupt, over a streak of
     green,
And two on the breakwater keep their silence, she on his
     knee.

Steven my boy,

We coasted into a medieval pub in the middle of nowhere in wildest Devon to encounter the place in uproarious bedlam. A dozen country madams had been imbibing in the pre wedding wine and were in great form roaring with laughter and bursting out of their lacy cotton frocks. Bunting adorned the pub, Union Jack was aflutter everywhere and a full size cut out of HM the Queen welcomed visitors into the front door. Cucumber sandwiches and a heady fruit punch were available to all and sundry and the din was absolutely riotous……THE ROYAL WEDDING WAS UNDERWAY ON THE GIANT TV ON THE BAR WALL….and we were joining in the mood of things by sinking a bevy of Bushmills Irish whiskies neat!

Now…. this is a major event in the UK.

Everybody loves Prince Harry, he is the terrible tearaway of the Royal family, he has been caught ******* sheila’s in all sorts of weird circumstance. Now the dear boy is to be married to a beauty from the USA….besotted he is with her, fair dripping with love and adoration…..and the whole country loves little Megan Markle for making him so.

The British are famous for their pageantry and pomp….everything is timed to the second and must be absolutely….just so. Well….Nobody told the most Reverend Michael Curry this…. and he launched into the most wonderful full spirited Halleluiah sermon about the joyous “Wonder of Love”. He went on and on for a full 14 minutes, and as he proceeded on, the British stiff upper lips became more and more rigidly uncomfortable with this radical departure from protocol. Her Majesty the Queen stood aghast and locked her beady blue eyes in a riveting, steely glare, directed furiously at the good Reverend….to no avail, on he went with his magic sermon to a beautiful rousing ******….and an absolute stony silence in the cavernous interior of that vaulting, magnificent cathedral. Prince Harry and his lovely bride, (whose wedding the day was all about), were delighted with Curry’s performance….as was Prince William, heir to the Throne, who wore a fascinating **** eating grin all over his face for the entire performance.

Says a lot, my friend, about the refreshing values of tomorrows Royalty.

We rolled out of that country pub three parts cut to the wind, dunno how we made it to our next destination, but we had one hellava good time at that Royal Wedding!

The weft and the weave of our appreciation fluctuated wildly with each day of travel through this magnificent and ancient land, Great Britain.

There was soft brilliant summer air which hovered over the undulating green patchwork of the Cotswolds whilst we dined on delicious roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, from an elevated position in a medieval country inn..... So magnificent as to make you want to weep with the beauty of it all….and the quaint thatched farmhouse with the second story multi paned windows, which I understood, had been there, in that spot, since the twelfth century. Our accommodation, sleeping beneath oaken beams within thick stone walls, once a pen for swine, now a domiciled overnight bed and pillow of luxury with white cotton sheets for weary Kiwi travellers.

The sadness of the Cornish west coast, which bore testimony to tragedy for the hard working tin miners of the 1800s. A sharp decrease in the international tin price in 1911 destituted whole populations who walked away from their life’s work and fled to the New World in search of the promise of a future. Forlorn brick ruins adorned stark rocky outcrops right along the coastline and inland for miles. Lonely brick chimneys silhouetted against sharp vertical cliffs and the ever crashing crescendo of the pounding waves of the cold Atlantic ocean.

No parking in Padstow….absolutely NIL! You parked your car miles away in the designated carpark at an overnight cost….and with your bags in tow, you walked to your digs. Now known as Padstein, this beautiful place is now populated with eight Rick Stein restaurants and shops dotted here and there.

We had a huge feed of piping hot fish and chips together with handles of cold ale down at his harbour side fish and chip restaurant near the wharfs…place was packed with people, you had to queue at the door for a table, no reservations accepted….Just great!

Clovelly was different, almost precipitous. This ancient fishing village plummeted down impossibly steep cliffs….a very rough, winding cobbled stone walkway, which must have taken years to build by hand, the only way down to the huge rock breakwater which harboured the fishing boats Against the Atlantic storms. And in a quaint little cottagey place, perched on the edge of a cliff, we had yet another beautiful Devonshire tea in delicate, white China cups...with tasty hot scones, piles of strawberry jam and a huge *** of thick clotted cream…Yum! Too ****** steep to struggle back up the hill so we spent ten quid and rode all the way up the switch back beneath the olive canvass canopy of an old Land Rover…..money well spent!

Creaking floorboards and near vertical, winding staircases and massive rock walls seemed to be common characteristics of all the lovely old lodging houses we were accommodated in. Sarah, our lovely daughter in law, arranged an excellent itinerary for us to travel around the SW coast staying in the most picturesque of places which seeped with antiquity and character. We zooped around the narrow lanes, between the hedgerows in our sharp little VW golf hire car And, with Sarah at the helm, we never got lost or missed a beat…..Fantastic effort, thank you so much Sarah and Solomon on behalf of your grateful In laws, Janet and Marshal, who loved every single moment of it all!

Memories of a lifetime.

Wanted to tell the world about your excitement, Janet, on visiting Stoke on Trent.

This town is famous the world over for it’s pottery. The pottery industry has flourished here since the middle ages and this is evidenced by the antiquity of the kilns and huge brick chimneys littered around the ancient factories. Stoke on Trent is an industrial town and it’s narrow, winding streets and congested run down buildings bear testimony to past good times and bad.

We visited “Burleigh”.

Darling Janet has collected Burleigh pottery for as long as I have known her, that is almost 40 years. She loves Burleigh and uses it as a showcase for the décor of our home.

When Janet first walked into the ancient wooden portals of the Burleigh show room she floated around on a cloud of wonder, she made darting little runs to each new discovery, making ooh’s and aah’s, eyes shining brightly….. I trailed quietly some distance behind, being very aware that I must not in any way imperil this particular precious bubble.

We amassed a beautiful collection of plates, dishes, bowls and jugs for purchase and retired to the pottery’s canal side bistro,( to come back to earth), and enjoy a ploughman’s lunch and a *** of hot English breakfast tea.

We returned to Stoke on Trent later in the trip for another bash at Burleigh and some other beautiful pottery makers wares…..Our suit cases were well filled with fragile treasures for the trip home to NZ…..and darling Janet had realised one of her dearest life’s ambitions fulfilled.

One of the great things about Britain was the British people, we found them willing to go out of their way to be helpful to a fault…… and, with the exception of BMW people, we found them all to be great drivers. The little hedgerow, single lane, winding roads that connect all rural areas, would be a perpetual source of carnage were it not for the fact that British drivers are largely courteous and reserved in their driving.

We hired a spacious ,powerful Nissan in Dover and acquired a friend, an invaluable friend actually, her name was “Tripsy” at least that’s what we called her. Tripsy guided us around all the byways and highways of Britain, we couldn’t have done without her. I had a few heated discussions with her, I admit….much to Janet’s great hilarity…but Tripsy won out every time and I quickly learned to keep my big mouth shut.

By pure accident we ended up in Cumbria, up north of the Roman city of York….at a little place in the dales called “Middleton on Teesdale”….an absolutely beautiful place snuggled deep in the valleys beneath the huge, heather clad uplands. Here we scored the last available bed in town at a gem of a hotel called the “Brunswick”. Being a Bank Holiday weekend everything, everywhere was booked out. The Brunswick surpassed ordinary comfort…it was superlative, so much so that, in an itinerary pushed for time….we stayed TWO nights and took the opportunity to scout around the surrounding, beautiful countryside. In fact we skirted right out to the western coastline and as far north as the Scottish border. Middleton on Teesdale provided us with that late holiday siesta break that we so desperately needed at that time…an exhausting business on a couple of old Kiwis, this holiday stuff!

One of the great priorities on getting back to London was to shop at “Liberty”. Great joy was had selecting some ornate upholstering material from the huge range of superb cloth available in Liberty’s speciality range.

The whole organisation of Liberty’s huge store and the magnificent quality of goods offered was quite daunting. Janet & I spent quite some time in that magnificent place…..and Janet has a plan to select a stylish period chair when we get back to NZ and create a masterpiece by covering it with the ***** bought from Liberty.

In York, beautiful ancient, York. A garrison town for the Romans, walled and once defended against the marauding Picts and Scots…is now preserved as a delightful and functional, modern city whilst retaining the grandeur, majesty and presence of its magnificent past.

Whilst exploring in York, Janet and I found ourselves mixing with the multitude in the narrow medieval streets paved with ancient rock cobbles and lined with beautifully preserved Tudor structures resplendent in whitewash panel and weathered, black timber brace. With dusk falling, we were drawn to wild violins and the sound of stamping feet….an emanation from within the doors of an old, burgundy coloured pub…. “The Three Legged Mare”.

Fortified, with a glass of Bushmills in hand, we joined the multitude of stomping, singing people. Rousing to the percussion of the Irish drum, the wild violin and the deep resonance of the cello, guitars and accordion…..The beautiful sound of tenor voices harmonising to the magic of a lilting Irish lament.

We stayed there for an hour or two, enchanted by the spontaneity of it all, the sheer native talent of the expatriates celebrating their heritage and their culture in what was really, a beautiful evening of colour, music and Ireland.

Onward, across the moors, we revelled in the great outcrops of metamorphic rock, the expanses of flat heather covering the tops which would, in the chill of Autumn, become a spectacular swath of vivid mauve floral carpet. On these lonely tracts of narrow road, winding through the washes and the escarpments, the motorbike boys wheeled by us in screaming pursuit of each other, beautiful machines heeling over at impossible angles on the corners, seemingly suicidal yet careening on at breakneck pace, laughing the danger off with the utter abandon of the creed of the road warrior. Descending in to the rolling hills of the cultivated land, the latticework of, old as Methuselah, massive dry built stone fences patterning the contours in a checker board of ancient pastoral order. The glorious soft greens of early summer deciduous forest, the yellow fields of mustard flower moving in the breeze and above, the bluest of skies with contrails of ever present high flung jets winging to distant places.

Britain has a flavour. Antiquity is evidenced everywhere, there is a sense of old, restrained pride. A richness of spirit and a depth of character right throughout the populace. Britain has confidence in itself, its future, its continuity. The people are pleasant, resilient and thoroughly likeable. They laugh a lot and are very easy to admire.

With its culture, its wonderful history, its great Monarchy and its haunting, ever present beauty, everywhere you care to look….The Britain of today is, indeed, a class act.

We both loved it here Steven…and we will return.

M.

Hamilton, New Zealand

21 June 2018

"You speak to me of narcissism but I reply that it is
a matter of my life" - Artaud

"At this time let me somehow bequeath all the leftovers
to my daughters and their daughters" - Anonymous

Better,
despite the worms talking to
the mare's hoof in the field;
better,
despite the season of young girls
dropping their blood;
better somehow
to drop myself quickly
into an old room.
Better (someone said)
not to be born
and far better
not to be born twice
at thirteen
where the boardinghouse,
each year a bedroom,
caught fire.

Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
Life is half enlarged.
The fish and owls are fierce today.
Life tilts backward and forward.
Even the wasps cannot find my eyes.

Yes,
eyes that were immediate once.
Eyes that have been truly awake,
eyes that told the whole story-
poor dumb animals.
Eyes that were pierced,
little nail heads,
light blue gunshots.

And once with
a mouth like a cup,
clay colored or blood colored,
open like the breakwater
for the lost ocean
and open like the noose
for the first head.

Once upon a time
my hunger was for Jesus.
O my hunger! My hunger!
Before he grew old
he rode calmly into Jerusalem
in search of death.

This time
I certainly
do not ask for understanding
and yet I hope everyone else
will turn their heads when an unrehearsed fish jumps
on the surface of Echo Lake;
when moonlight,
its bass note turned up loud,
hurts some building in Boston,
when the truly beautiful lie together.
I think of this, surely,
and would think of it far longer
if I were not... if I were not
at that old fire.

I could admit
that I am only a coward
crying me me me
and not mention the little gnats, the moths,
forced by circumstance
to **** on the electric bulb.
But surely you know that everyone has a death,
his own death,
waiting for him.
So I will go now
without old age or disease,
wildly but accurately,
knowing my best route,
carried by that toy donkey I rode all these years,
never asking, "Where are we going?"
We were riding (if I'd only known)
to this.

Dear friend,
please do not think
that I visualize guitars playing
or my father arching his bone.
I do not even expect my mother's mouth.
I know that I have died before-
once in November, once in June.
How strange to choose June again,
so concrete with its green ******* and bellies.
Of course guitars will not play!
The snakes will certainly not notice.
New York City will not mind.
At night the bats will beat on the trees,
knowing it all,
seeing what they sensed all day.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce:
the courtroom a cement box,
a gas chamber for the infectious Jew in me
and a perhaps land, a possibly promised land
for the Jew in me,
but still a betrayal room for the till-death-do-us-
and yet a death, as in the unlocking of scissors
that makes the now separate parts useless,
even to cut each other up as we did yearly
under the crayoned-in sun.
The courtroom keeps squashing our lives as they break
into two cans ready for recycling,
flattened tin humans
and a tin law,
even for my twenty-five years of hanging on
by my teeth as I once saw at Ringling Brothers.
The gray room:
Judge, lawyer, witness
and me and invisible Skeezix,
and all the other torn
enduring the bewilderments
of their division.

Your daisies have come
on the day of my divorce.
They arrive like round yellow fish,
******* with love at the coral of our love.
Yet they wait,
in their short time,
like little utero half-borns,
half killed, thin and bone soft.
They breathe the air that stands
for twenty-five illicit days,
the sun crawling inside the sheets,
the moon spinning like a tornado
in the washbowl,
and we orchestrated them both,
calling ourselves TWO CAMP DIRECTORS.
There was a song, our song on your cassette,
that played over and over
and baptised the prodigals.
It spoke the unspeakable,
as the rain will on an attic roof,
letting the animal join its soul
as we kneeled before a miracle--
forgetting its knife.

The daisies confer
in the old-married kitchen
papered with blue and green chefs
who call out pies, cookies, yummy,
at the charcoal and cigarette smoke
they wear like a yellowy salve.
The daisies absorb it all--
the twenty-five-year-old sanctioned love
(If one could call such handfuls of fists
and immobile arms that!)
and on this day my world rips itself up
while the country unfastens along
with its perjuring king and his court.
It unfastens into an abortion of belief,
as in me--
the legal rift--
as on might do with the daisies
but does not
for they stand for a love
undergoihng open heart surgery
that might take
if one prayed tough enough.
And yet I demand,
even in prayer,
that I am not a thief,
a mugger of need,
and that your heart survive
on its own,
belonging only to itself,
whole, entirely whole,
and workable
in its dark cavern under your ribs.

I pray it will know truth,
if truth catches in its cup
and yet I pray, as a child would,
that the surgery take.

I dream it is taking.
Next I dream the love is swallowing itself.
Next I dream the love is made of glass,
glass coming through the telephone
that is breaking slowly,
day by day, into my ear.
Next I dream that I put on the love
like a lifejacket and we float,
jacket and I,
we bounce on that priest-blue.
We are as light as a cat's ear
and it is safe,
safe far too long!
And I awaken quickly and go to the opposite window
and peer down at the moon in the pond
and know that beauty has walked over my head,
into this bedroom and out,
flowing out through the window screen,
dropping deep into the water
to hide.

I will observe the daisies
fade and dry up
wuntil they become flour,
snowing themselves onto the table
beside the drone of the refrigerator,
beside the radio playing Frankie
(as often as FM will allow)
snowing lightly, a tremor sinking from the ceiling--
as twenty-five years split from my side
like a growth that I sliced off like a melanoma.

It is six P.M. as I water these tiny weeds
and their little half-life,
their numbered days
that raged like a secret radio,
recalling love that I picked up innocently,
yet guiltily,
as my five-year-old daughter
picked gum off the sidewalk
and it became suddenly an elastic miracle.

For me it was love found
like a diamond
where carrots grow--
the glint of diamond on a plane wing,
meaning:  DANGER!  THICK ICE!
but the good crunch of that orange,
the diamond, the carrot,
both with four million years of resurrecting dirt,
and the love,
although Adam did not know the word,
the love of Adam
obeying his sudden gift.

You, who sought me for nine years,
in stories made up in front of your naked mirror
or walking through rooms of fog women,
you trying to forget the mother
who built guilt with the lumber of a locked door
as she sobbed her soured mild and fed you loss
through the keyhole,
you who wrote out your own birth
and built it with your own poems,
your own lumber, your own keyhole,
into the trunk and leaves of your manhood,
you, who fell into my words, years
before you fell into me (the other,
both the Camp Director and the camper),
you who baited your hook with wide-awake dreams,
and calls and letters and once a luncheon,
and twice a reading by me for you.
But I wouldn't!

Yet this year,
yanking off all past years,
I took the bait
and was pulled upward, upward,
into the sky and was held by the sun--
the quick wonder of its yellow lap--
and became a woman who learned her own shin
and dug into her soul and found it full,
and you became a man who learned his won skin
and dug into his manhood, his humanhood
and found you were as real as a baker
or a seer
and we became a home,
up into the elbows of each other's soul,
without knowing--
an invisible purchase--
that inhabits our house forever.

We were
blessed by the House-Die
by the altar of the color T.V.
and somehow managed to make a tiny marriage,
a tiny marriage
called belief,
as in the child's belief in the tooth fairy,
so close to absolute,
so daft within a year or two.
The daisies have come
for the last time.
And I who have,
each year of my life,
spoken to the tooth fairy,
believing in her,
even when I was her,
am helpless to stop your daisies from dying,
although your voice cries into the telephone:
Marry me!  Marry me!
and my voice speaks onto these keys tonight:
The love is in dark trouble!
The love is starting to die,
right now--
we are in the process of it.
The empty process of it.

I see two deaths,
and the two men plod toward the mortuary of my heart,
and though I willed one away in court today
and I whisper dreams and birthdays into the other,
they both die like waves breaking over me
and I am drowning a little,
but always swimming
among the pillows and stones of the breakwater.
And though your daisies are an unwanted death,
I wade through the smell of their cancer
and recognize the prognosis,
its cartful of loss--

I say now,
you gave what you could.
It was quite a ferris wheel to spin on!
and the dead city of my marriage
seems less important
than the fact that the daisies came weekly,
over and over,
likes kisses that can't stop themselves.

There sit two deaths on November 5th, 1973.
Let one be forgotten--
Bury it!  Wall it up!
But let me not forget the man
of my child-like flowers
though he sinks into the fog of Lake Superior,
he remains, his fingers the marvel
of fourth of July sparklers,
his furious ice cream cones of licking,
remains to cool my forehead with a washcloth
when I sweat into the bathtub of his being.

For the rest that is left:
name it gentle,
as gentle as radishes inhabiting
their short life in the earth,
name it gentle,
gentle as old friends waving so long at the window,
or in the drive,
name it gentle as maple wings singing
themselves upon the pond outside,
as sensuous as the mother-yellow in the pond,
that night that it was ours,
when our bodies floated and bumped
in moon water and the cicadas
called out like tongues.

Let such as this
be resurrected in all men
whenever they mold their days and nights
as when for twenty-five days and nights you molded mine
and planted the seed that dives into my God
and will do so forever
no matter how often I sweep the floor.

The sound reaching out to me from the sea
Is not what I desire
Or even want to hear
But still it reaches out to me
Through the open window
Of the high rise building, where I am enclosed in
And trying to live and close
But still the Window remains
A window out to the sea
That I can not close.

Even if I try hard or desire harder
As
The window glass that I broke
The other night
In frenzy of what remains of my desires
Unbroken, unfulfilled.
In the stupor of alcohol induced passion
And the call of the stormy night

The window remains just a window
Nothing more and a lot less
Glassless, desire less and view less
To the open world.

Still I didn't hear the cry
Or the sound of waves
Pounding on the beach, few hundred yards away
Still I let my heart break into pieces
On the breakwater
That walks out
Few hundred yards deeper into the deep sea
And I see
The waves breaking against it
A break out from the prisons of earth
Out to the sea
Try as hard as waves might
Could not stop breakwater from moving in depth
And deeper still

Then Why still
All the time the Sea calls me?

Is it free from stopping, bonding and holding

The Breakwater free from breaking me?
Does it want me to come
Merge in her depths
Just like the path that sinks in her
After few meters of walking along, with me.

Or is it just a sign - an omen
Of my solitude
All alone
Like the sea
Even though Rivers, clouds and the horizon
Sink into her depths and be within.


Why? Why?
She is not with me, now
When she was with me
Long lives ago
("Long time" if you will!)
And she is not coming back to sink
Into my depths of desires, needs
Or in my intense pleasure
Or, my darling,
My watery grave with me.
_____

Here I bestow my breakwater to guard my shores with still water and fresh air.

Here I stand on the edge of it, my curiosity aroused by the pretty lights of the billboards, grey stuff masked with the colours of the red yellow sky at dusk.

But I came for something else, for dreams I reflect on the stars upon me and the love I bear them.

Be my breakwater, my brothers and sisters, drown me with laughter not salt

Be my breakwater, my love, see that this life is not spent, but earned like the warmth of early May

and then, I'm all yours

From the calm to the rough, the going was tough
you wondered if you were made of the right stuff
there was a foot on the porthole so it stayed
the sea pulsed by, the colour of frothy jade

'Don't you drop ash on the sail,' the captain said
it will shred in the wind and we'll all be dead'
no sooner that we were out, we had returned
extinguished the *** before the sail burned

My world had been fourteen feet, I'm now discrete:
about how bad things can be to everyone I meet
about the images that came before me
my lone battle with the tempestuos sea

It was nothing but to me everything
amazing the peace calm water could bring

(1)

This is the sea, then, this great abeyance.
How the sun's poultice draws on my inflammation.

Electrifyingly-colored sherbets, scooped from the freeze
By pale girls, travel the air in scorched hands.

Why is it so quiet, what are they hiding?
I have two legs, and I move smilingly..

A sandy damper kills the vibrations;
It stretches for miles, the shrunk voices

Waving and crutchless, half their old size.
The lines of the eye, scalded by these bald surfaces,

Boomerang like anchored elastics, hurting the owner.
Is it any wonder he puts on dark glasses?

Is it any wonder he affects a black cassock?
Here he comes now, among the mackerel gatherers

Who wall up their backs against him.
They are handling the black and green lozenges like the parts of a body.

The sea, that crystallized these,
Creeps away, many-snaked, with a long hiss of distress.

                (2)

This black boot has no mercy for anybody.
Why should it, it is the hearse of a dad foot,

The high, dead, toeless foot of this priest
Who plumbs the well of his book,

The bent print bulging before him like scenery.
Obscene bikinis hid in the dunes,

******* and hips a confectioner's sugar
Of little crystals, titillating the light,

While a green pool opens its eye,
Sick with what it has swallowed----

Limbs, images, shrieks.  Behind the concrete bunkers
Two lovers unstick themselves.

O white sea-crockery,
What cupped sighs, what salt in the throat....

And the onlooker, trembling,
Drawn like a long material

Through a still virulence,
And a ****, hairy as privates.

                (3)

On the balconies of the hotel, things are glittering.
Things, things----

Tubular steel wheelchairs, aluminum crutches.
Such salt-sweetness.  Why should I walk

Beyond the breakwater, spotty with barnacles?
I am not a nurse, white and attendant,

I am not a smile.
These children are after something, with hooks and cries,

And my heart too small to bandage their terrible faults.
This is the side of a man:  his red ribs,

The nerves bursting like trees, and this is the surgeon:
One mirrory eye----

A facet of knowledge.
On a striped mattress in one room

An old man is vanishing.
There is no help in his weeping wife.

Where are the eye-stones, yellow and valuable,
And the tongue, sapphire of ash.

                (4)

A wedding-cake face in a paper frill.
How superior he is now.

It is like possessing a saint.
The nurses in their wing-caps are no longer so beautiful;

They are browning, like touched gardenias.
The bed is rolled from the wall.

This is what it is to be complete.  It is horrible.
Is he wearing pajamas or an evening suit

Under the glued sheet from which his powdery beak
Rises so whitely unbuffeted?

They propped his jaw with a book until it stiffened
And folded his hands, that were shaking:  goodbye, goodbye.

Now the washed sheets fly in the sun,
The pillow cases are sweetening.

It is a blessing, it is a blessing:
The long coffin of soap-colored oak,

The curious bearers and the raw date
Engraving itself in silver with marvelous calm.

                (5)

The gray sky lowers, the hills like a green sea
Run fold upon fold far off, concealing their hollows,

The hollows in which rock the thoughts of the wife----
Blunt, practical boats

Full of dresses and hats and china and married daughters.
In the parlor of the stone house

One curtain is flickering from the open window,
Flickering and pouring, a pitiful candle.

This is the tongue of the dead man:  remember, remember.
How far he is now, his actions

Around him like living room furniture, like a décor.
As the pallors gather----

The pallors of hands and neighborly faces,
The elate pallors of flying iris.

They are flying off into nothing:  remember us.
The empty benches of memory look over stones,

Marble facades with blue veins, and jelly-glassfuls of daffodils.
It is so beautiful up here:  it is a stopping place.

                (6)

The natural fatness of these lime leaves!----
Pollarded green *****, the trees march to church.

The voice of the priest, in thin air,
Meets the corpse at the gate,

Addressing it, while the hills roll the notes of the dead bell;
A glittler of wheat and crude earth.

What is the name of that color?----
Old blood of caked walls the sun heals,

Old blood of limb stumps, burnt hearts.
The widow with her black pocketbook and three daughters,

Necessary among the flowers,
Enfolds her lace like fine linen,

Not to be spread again.
While a sky, wormy with put-by smiles,

Passes cloud after cloud.
And the bride flowers expend a freshness,

And the soul is a bride
In a still place, and the groom is red and forgetful, he is featureless.

                (7)

Behind the glass of this car
The world purrs, shut-off and gentle.

And I am dark-suited and still, a member of the party,
Gliding up in low gear behind the cart.

And the priest is a vessel,
A tarred fabric, sorry and dull,

Following the coffin on its flowery cart like a beautiful woman,
A crest of *******, eyelids and lips

Storming the hilltop.
Then, from the barred yard, the children

Smell the melt of shoe-blacking,
Their faces turning, wordless and slow,

Their eyes opening
On a wonderful thing----

Six round black hats in the grass and a lozenge of wood,
And a naked mouth, red and awkward.

For a minute the sky pours into the hole like plasma.
There is no hope, it is given up.

We walk along the beach at night,
Arms entwined and hearts entwined,
Waves lapping 'gainst our feet,
Pebbles scurrying like sand ***** 'twixt our toes.
  
Talking about *****, we are both
A little tickly in the naughty bits department,
As the gentle summer breeze
Wafts through our matted ***** hairs.
  
Just a brief hour or two ago,
We were strangers at the Pier disco,
And now our histories are to be
Inextricably linked by fate.
  
I do not know that, in a month or so,
I shall need to send you
A little yellow contact slip
From the Margate Hospital special clinic
  
Informing that you have been exposed to
A most unpleasant social disease
Which, with a bit of rotten luck,
Could easily rot your insides.
  
But, for now, our thoughts are far away
As we laugh and joke together
In our new found post-******,
Youthful lovers' camaraderie,
  
Not wanting to speak too loudly or disturb
The copulating pair by the nearby breakwater
(Not that they'd be put off by a thunderclap
Seeing as how he's on the short strokes by now).

The giants know it is not the journey they make but
the first step on the long road
that they take to immortality which puts them
on the pages of history under the microscopic lens
of humanity.

The giants may slip and trip over giants who have fallen before but
some rise with their eyes set on the keys of infinity,unlocking the lighthouse to light up the pathways for us all to be
giants.

We break the mould and shoulder responsibility,it's not easy to be
a giant,simpler to be a small man,tall men are targets for the ****** scope,the aim of dreams which lead the refugees that hope for new technologies to ease their burdens.
The giants are among us,the humble ones,ones that tumble,crumble,crumple and yet unravel mystery,unlock misery
to free the sad and the sick,pick a person any person and that person could be the giant,
see
it's not really how tall you stand but how you understand and where the first step is and who gives you the helping hand,
we all have within us the grasp of the genius
we are all
potential
giants.

Down by the rough granite quay
where the ships and the sailors
stroll in from the sea
She'll be waiting for me.

I know it is time to go
to meet her
and greet her like an old friend.
I suppose at the end we all become
the knot that is untied.
Success is knowing we tried
we gave it our best
and the rest becomes the history
of you and me.

She waits by the quay so silently
where time does not exist for her
she shares tea with eternity.
She sees
me
and the wave she gives washes over me.
By the sea is where we all will be
one day.
Eventually we'll return on another tide
to take another side
and live another day.
Today she will have her way
and I will leave with her
leave all my cares behind
I bind myself
to
this.

i went to the sea shore.on this cold winter eve

i stand with feet in cold cold
water
trouser legs rolled up to my knees
body wrapped in a chunky
hoodie
curly hair, streaming in the bitter wind.
in my hand, a pebble
in my mind, your name
i stand thinking, crying
as the wave pound in and
the wind takes my breath
i sigh and throw the pebble
as far into the breakwater
as i can..
in letting you go... i can leave

the radio static of a blank station
the moment raindrops hit surfaces
the gliding of wooden sliding doors
the tick-tock of the clock on the wall
the sounds of leaves flying in the wind
the period of time a guitar is being tuned
the mellow piano scale of moonlight sonata
the echoes of footsteps in an empty hallway
the breathing of a newborn and a dying man
the far-off engine roars of a car on a highway
the supersonics of an airplane flying overhead
the crashing of tidal waves upon the breakwater
the ****** of chimes or frozen icicles on a cold day
the scrape of my pencil on paper as i draw and write
the scratchy noise after a vinyl record finishes to play
the ruffle of bedsheets when someone is restless in bed
the bristle of hair when mothers tousle their children's hair
*his voice

She draws up the tide
within me
Laden with debris and stone
Barreling green and white,
It heaves against
the inside of my chest.
In time the breakwater weakens
And the storm flows outward from me.

Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with
     lawyers
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been
     getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the
     restless surge
Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever
     fresh monotone,
Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I
     know?
How much do the wisest of the world's men know about
     where the massed human procession is going?

You have heard the mob laughed at?
I ask you: Is not the mob rough as the mountains are
     rough?
And all things human rise from the mob and relapse and
     rise again as rain to the sea.

my feelings overflow
with nowhere to go
waves smashing against the breakwater
spraying sea foam
a cacophony no one can hear but me
because it's roaring
inside my head

(Inspired by 'Indigo Night' by Thomas W Case)

A thousand thousand stars pierce the indigo night,
but no moon mars the canvas, or lightens velvet strokes.

Half-hearted waves slap at shoreline rocks, like tepid applause.
If the sky is darkest blue, the ocean is a still-darker green.

The harbor suggests a freedom, outside the breakwater
as if the choppy ocean were a highway to the sky.

Tomorrow's deadlines fade, in the face of infinities.
The harbor is quiet, like a restless animal that's sleeping.

No skiffs tack for the harbor's mouth, no fishermen juggle lines.
The sea is a jagged, broken and twinkling mirror for the stars.

A thousand thousand dreams will be launched, this deep indigo tonight,
some will store, in memory's hold, others will be lost, like shipwrecks.

No line divides where sky and water fold, where endless deeps meet.
Time's arrow seems stilled by the cold and the gentle darkness.

But dawn will come, soon enough, and with that blush, cares ignite,
duties' call, and the stars will hide their light in greater glares.

For now, we'll walk the shore-line, our small voices like seagull calls,
enjoying celestial light, and the indigo night, out beyond all earthly cares.

I am not meant to be, where I yam, what I yam
Unless life like spinach, is meant to be canned,
A failure by all reports, I have no retort,

Not one, n o response, my previous successes
lead me to believe, that "what have you done
lately" does not deceive, fills the beast, technology,

That leads me to my breaking point,
Rogue wave, out of the deep blue see,
If I were a martyr, that might be true,

But I am nothing more, than a man
with a love for words and I play with
sounds, really adore what they do;

with my mind,
with my heart,
preventing stagnation,
of my imagination.

Ah, the breaking point
not the tip of a coast,
where land ends,
              and bends open water
to new possibilities.

We all have at least one
In our life, in our career, in our day
Weakness, faint of heart,... No Way,

Even the oceans, and their waves,
As those waves come to shore,
On breakwater's and beaches

Break! but do not dull the ocean's roar.

This is the light of the mind
Mystery Behind a ****** veil
The beauty of the moon
Where her face walks in its own right
Breathe in the enormity of the clouds
Gliding like pure cotton,
The gray sky becomes one with the soul
The bride is waiting for words to come calling
The stillness of thin air
Unlocked images beyond the breakwater
Remembering the unsolved labyrinth
As the cliff whistle to the stool pigeons
Bringing good news to the earthen womb,
Fighting the courage of shutting up
Forcing myself to unload my senses
Unselfish thoughts of a blue grievance
Between the sun and the clouds,
The outrage of the pierce Violet,
A cold glass of water glances at a beautiful pearl
Stashing the glamour of an oceanic mirage
A love affair chasing you through twilight
An enormous trill for the unknown
Driving you closer to a hole beneath
A disturbance of mirrors
Finally straight from the heart
I felt a silent outcry
Waiting for a shatterproof soul
Against the natural odor of true love




Rony Joseph all rights reserved 2010

We bring around little worlds
searching
colliding
hoping that someone
will share the same skies
in our little worlds
It doesn't hurt that much.

We carry our little worlds
against the great big one outside
and when we find
that
this big world is both more and less beautiful
than ours
reality hits us
You'll see it if you know where to look.

We cover our little worlds
our faces smiling
a facade
a breakwater
against the waves
of which
some call fate
some call living
It's okay. Even when it's not.

We hide within our little worlds
a part of us
to others unknown
our little paradise
of sands from eternal shores
in it we find peace in chaos
without we find chaos, even in peace
What we don't know can't hurt us.

We live in our little worlds
against the cruelties
of reality
of responsibility
of expectations
and of disappointments
we closed it too slowly
it has seeped in somehow
Sshhh.

And then I find

we are our little worlds
whether darkness
or in light.

air pours alive in stringencies,
fall of tor and expanse.

mazy-eyed,
casts a syncopated hook
amongst tulips beheaded

by the toppling of a leaf
bracing for departures,
something else holds back,

furrow—
the thatched morning's serious mien,
the arrow, whirling in trajectories

one with the dive into red cauldron
of infinite scar of water,
Śiva, sighted footfall of the condor's

verdigris, this simple rustle
of your scourge-gowns
insists cadence of flutings;

i am one with beginnings.
swarming poultice of the inflamed grass,
obscene lines of shore in twilight

unfazed virulence spreads
like an epidemic of kisses against the
pulsing loam, cries like breakwater

lorn the fault of men, death at one's
trembling hand — sound the tribulation
of slender bells to a gather of pallors.

it is a stopping in-placeness
like crests of *******, a beautiful woman,
shiftless weight of light on glazed    collarbone, Śiva, the enigmatical paradox

beleaguers a concatenation of
unloose chandeliers of appurtenances,
the unblinking aperture, widening in sky.

an ant fell in between the page
   of the book,

even its own silence it does not understand.
from where to climb it does not know,
all steps carve discourse;

staggering in its littleness, its fragile
  mind takes on the mystery of star
and its delicate body swells in the sheen
   of words.

as in the night, it trails the moon's slender stem that transfixes
   a constellation's ephemerality:
a soldier tumbled over, undulant,
  amazed in betweenness of light
and dark when god himself dies
   before his fall was born,

o trencherman, deep in the peril
  of a word's closing, fusion of
knowledge's breakwater and permutations of bluntness,

the unwelcoming abyss is your kingdom,
  unwillingly enduring the taut blow
    without purpose — when the book is shut, to what dark do you imagine your
  eyes? to what enigma does your senses
wake up to? and to what erudition does
   your silence keep flowering?

an ant fell into the book, and in its turning page, it rides each changing wave like
  the white in its pale, blue horse,

arriving at different shores, yet all the same, a notable fate: stilled and dizzy
washed and unmoving in the abject night.

I take this mangled body of iron,
  its acoustic of all malleability.

the flattened world outside
sings something so slender, a structure
    of a rose.

as long as there is the fierceness of these words,
   they will leap forth, a defenseless vault,
and cry a breakwater of rivers.

these words like caged birds peering out
   into the ferruginous world consummated
by the oldest of thrills crumpled anew – fledgling beats
  of dance, this hysterical morning that slinks to a clasp
    of slipshod music.

when it is time for all of Earth to slumber,
   I am the drapery and all unknowing eyes,
         my children.

In the dream (or perhaps it is forseeing) it is cold,
The air carries whispers of ice
That cut through the warmth of my skin
Like knives,
The quay is deserted,
Quiet aside from the occasional
Breeze induced moan from
A beer bottle tossed casually away
To lie discarded and thereby
A bit like me,

As I single up the mooring lines
Of the boat below me its movement
Becomes greater,
As if shunning the cold stillness
Of the land,
And seeing this I feel kinship
With the waking hull,
And a sense of shared impending journey
To the grey seas
Beyond the harbour wall,

As I work the halyards and
Aged sails creak up the mast
The breeze becomes more evident
In the brisk flapping of canvas,
Rime frost on the gunwhales gives way
To dark hand prints as I steady myself
Moving forward and aft,
Steadily prepping for departure
In a routine well known
Across decades,

Finally all is ready,
The wind picks up,
Sundering the clouds to reveal
A clear black sky studded in diamonds,
The navigation lights
From far galaxies come to light my way
As the backed foresail
Pushes the bows away,
Then with a creak the boom quells
The flapping main,

Approaching the harbour mouth
The wind rises further and a few
Long lazy yet driven rollers
Make their presence felt,
The heel increases as the bow tastes freedom,
Nav lights on the breakwater are
Unnaturally bright but no one sees
Nor waves goodbye,
Nor ever will again for tonight
I that was James just crossed the bar

carnivorous portraiture
symbol of power
like waves crashing over the breakwater
or the moment in which dinner-table and silverware are upended
a very nice rug to cover a very deep hole

inside that hole;
look inside the darkest recesses
inside the vault of stolid self-irreverence
underground railroad adorned with tableaus for selves no longer embodied
hang yourself
be your own ideal hang man
be your own ideal hang man's own ideal hang man
be your own ideal hang man's own ideal hang man's own ideal hang man

parasuicidal ego-death impotentiate
look into that hole
do not step on the rug

Bashing
Crashing
Smashing
Clotted-cream tongues
Lashing
Cathedral hulls
October’s chop
Out to get
Lifejacketless him
Cityboy him
Neither’d gone beyond
His breezy smiled
Awrigh’ my lover
Up to their eyeballs they’d got now
No chance now to break
The awkward ice
Outside the breakwater
Never ought’er  
Hunker down
Turkeyland yelled
Ride the swell
Cradle orphaned beef
And if you don’t  
Incubate the rough
Earthed nests of wine-drowned potato
And proper job swede
And if you don’t
You won’t make it


*


Oggies  
Never take’em to sea
St Anthony’d decreed


But Master Herd, he hadn’t heard
And he’s too emmet to question.

a breakwater must be in everyone's life
while fleeing from the raging waves
a port in a storm

relaxes you

if I was a breakwater
cuts off the waves of your sadness
I will be very happy whilst

you are in a bay
you didn't need me