Intricately laid by a master mason centuries ago,
the cobbles have become shiny and worn through use.
If we listen closely at the  echoes contained within,
what would we hear? The din of old, the clatter of hooves,
the patois of tradesmen, the fisher wives bellows?
Or, just life as it was, moving along at a pace we today find slow?
The sun beats down on the Spanish stone, firing them hot and
languid, pace has slowed, need has slowed, greed has slowed.

Dusty cobbles leading to cool houses, siesta has called and all obey.
The midday sun beats down, only tourists looking for quaint shops
remain, decrying the heat, ready to swoon.
Sweat drips onto the dusty cobbles, and is soon boiled away.
Blood has dripped on these cobbles, human and beasts.
Only to be scrubbed by the crow black crones that sit and watch the day.
Afternoon lull, boats bobbing slowly up and down,
babies rocked by a quiet lullaby.

The sun lowers bathing the cobbles in a pink, orange glow,
quiet now, Spain is sleeping, forgetting her past, the Moors are long gone,
the Armada been and gone, bullfights are frowned upon,
their Kings and Dictator laid to rest, only foolish tourists throng the
dusty cobbles, oblivious to their history, looking for that awful gift.
Spain's pain is echoed in her cobbles, few hear it, but know this,
if you listen you'll hear the heat, the pain, civil war,
pride and flamenco feet*.

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

Cobbles

I had forgotten
How the Artic wind could
Sear its path up the Dublin Quays and flood
Into the streets
Tearing the very surface off
Everything it touches

The cobbles seem to shiver and ask to be brought
Inside
The paving slabs have already resigned
To their destiny

Feet shuffle past
Ignoring the multitude of stoney beggars

It's October
Dublin has turned off
The welcome sign.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
And the highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding,
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

He'd a French cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark innyard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by the moonlight,
Watch for me by the moonlight,
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way.

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the west.

He did not come at the dawning; he did not come at noon,
And out of the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching,
Marching, marching
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at the casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through the casement,
The road that he would ride.

They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"now keep good watch!" And they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say
"Look for me by the moonlight
Watch for me by the moonlight
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way!"

She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness and the hours crawled by like years!
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it!
The trigger at least was hers!

Tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs were ringing clear
Tlot-tlot, in the distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming!
She stood up straight and still!

Tlot in the frosty silence! Tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment! She drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him with her death.

He turned; he spurred to the west; he did not know she stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it; his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were the spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

Still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon the cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding,
Riding, riding,
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

I lay spread out on 
My local shingle beach
Letting the pebbles 
Sift through my fingers
I consider the myriad
Shapes and forms they take.
The varying rust
Charcoal grey and mustard shades

I set myself a mission
In the multitudes
That the sea brings to my feet
I will find amongst the 
Copious cobbles
The ultimate pebble
Perfect and pleasingly
Quirky or smooth.

I become so absorbed by 
This sifting sorting 
Comforting process 
A simple quest
I forget myself
And my proximity to the waves 
Until i am splashed 
And soaked and 
Have to vow to take up
This valiant quest 
Another day.

Until then I have taken 
Home a few shortlisted
Candidates
And made a promise to stand up when
The winner is found
And make a little trumpet
Fanfare sound
And hold the stone aloft!

Remember that afternoon on the ferry
Ride to Nantucket
The labrador who fell asleep on my foot
And the kid who vomited
As we stood at the rail,
Mist in our faces
Foam that curled
From the keel in swirls
A whole world in that turbulence
That no one would ever know of -
Focused on the Grey Lady's
Promise that a warm comforter
Would melt us together again.
And it did, amid the strangers
We brushed past
On the cobbles at the wharf.
Back at the dock,
You greeted old demons
And so did I
But kept them secrets
From each other
On the long ride
Through pine forests
As you slept, I drove
Back home.

And he saw it now and then
the lamp lit row of houses that
stretched beyond the eye
houses where men who dug black
slept and drank when they could

ageless cobbles pried on
men who fought in the street
over want, women and work
while little men sons played
foolish games of childhood

daughter women with prams
mothered their plastic dolls
and the wives gossiped about
young Sally who had a belly
by John Stout the butcher boy

the reverend Ellis knew
all the stories and chapters
of life in this coal dust street
he birthed them baptised them
married and buried them

and the street was quiet
no vehement voices tonight
as the deed of death
slipped over the cobbles
and gripped a sleeping soul.

The road was a ghostly ribbon:

a strange violet hue.

The sycamore trees ******* thrashing

as a frenzied wind blew.

A dark cloaked horseman

appeared on the horizon’s edge.

He whipped his horse forward;

this horse almost flew.

The pounding hooves echoed

down the cobbled road.

The  madman charged forward

with his deadly load.

They never caught the horseman

who murdered her father that night.

He shot his pistol once then the old man died.

No're was he ever seen again

after the red cobbles dried.

They never found his stallion

with nostrils flaming fire'

who flew like a dragon

until the prey expired.

The girl wept and moaned

at her window. Always watching for him.

Watching the winding road ;she could redeem his sin.

A kiss my darling sweetheart, kiss and let me fly.

His shadow was imprinted on  clean cobbles.

His scarf around her neck but nothing made things right.

The devil surely wanted him

and death breathed down his trek.

They searched  swearing they'd catch the wretch yet found

no trace of him. The girl she smiled sadly.

For now he rode the wind.

From the valley that feeds the great river
Beyond the hundred-league Forest of Darkness
He came in the first year of his Roaming,
Seeing then, for the first time, the sprawling city on the coast.

In the shanty-town wedged between spoil-heap and highway
Among streets one could span with outstretched arms
She often did whilst walking alone
And singing quietly in the earliest light.

That they would meet was fore-told
Not in lore or in the words of the old ones,
But in their hearts from their first days
Which each remembered without a specific age.

They both felt the world was surely a place
Bigger than the corner that held each trapped
Collecting only whispers of somewhere, something more
Hoarding words that meant 'bright,' and 'plentiful' and 'freedom.'

His clan's traditions are stronger than the bindings
That held him in his familial servitude.
The mandatory age of Roaming was upon him
And cast out, he at once felt a call across the continent.

But a release for her, from the poverty and isolation,
From the shacks, and filth and futility
Seemed yet as impossible and cruel and forbidden
As it ever had, over all her years before.

Something happened then, on that last day of the rainy season.
With the city still yet across the expanse of a black river
He saw the sun break through a dark-veined sky
As the ferryman took his father's amulet as payment.

The guards of the gate pushed back the planked doors
And he entered through the wet, rough stone walls
Among a dripping hoard of plains-peasants, and traders,
As a distant siren call caught her beneath that broken afternoon sky.

To the central market they both found their way.
She on hard, bare soles slipping on the long soaked cobbles
He on worn and wet elk-hide moccasins
The throngs of the city descending to find daily fare.

Aimless wandering guided them each across the Great Square,
She, tired, finding a mostly-good apple fallen aside the stands
He, exhausted, buying bread with one of his few remaining coins.
Each sat close, yet still unaware, unseen to the other.

Unknown in the city, it was a meadowlark that brought them together.
Alighting upon a thorny shrub near them both
They turned when they, at the same time, threw a crumb.
Eyes like wells, in they both fell, cobbles steaming under a new sun.

A meadowlark brings to each now a gasp of surprise
Alighting upon the window sill.
Five decades gone in a moment,
The memory fresh again as a just-fallen rain.

Here, there are slices of deep-red apples
And rolls of sweet golden bread, and cheese, and wine
That sit on the table between them,
And a fire slowly ebbs in their hearth.

They're digging up the cobbles in our street,
moving them to a classier area.
We'll be given tarmac, black and soft in the sun.

Yes, even here it shines - on men's vests.
They're red faced, drinking from lager cans,
while their women finger scarved curlers.
At least, that's what others think they see.

But neighbours do talk with us.
There's a code of decency,
though Mum says, 'some have hearts
as black as the tarmac'.

There's a hierarchy,
in minds and heads,
if not in pockets.

Some day the toffs will turf us out,
gentrify our street. We'll be moved,
filed vertically, pigeon lofts in the sky.
Then they'll bring our cobbles back.

I walked along a cobbled street
That echoed, clattered, at my feet
And thought of many feet before
Who’d walked this way, but nevermore.

Those cobbles always seemed like home
Had been there since the days of Rome,
My father led me first that way
And his as well, before my day.

Then back, as far as we can see
Those cobbles lay through history,
Though worn and scuffed to mark their age
As walkers shuffled off each page.

Each came, eyes bright, a will to win
A glow without, a fire within,
Determined each to make their mark,
Their headstones now loom in some park.

Their needs and deeds, it must be said
Are soon forgotten, now they’re dead,
Though once it seemed their world was won
It shone and shimmered, then was gone.

And love loomed large in every tale
That walked those cobbles, made men pale
And listless, for the love they lost,
While candles lit each Pentecost.

And I think of those years gone by
That wrought from me a whispered sigh
Of love, I thought, that was well spent,
Was there at Christmas, gone at Lent.

And so I walk these cobblestones
That trip my years, and make old bones,
I turned, and lost that dream somehow,
For that was then, and this is now…

David Lewis Paget

My "place of clear water,"
the first hill in the world
where springs washed into
the shiny grass

and darkened cobbles
in the bed of the lane.
Anahorish, soft gradient
of consonant, vowel-meadow,

after-image of lamps
swung through the yards
on winter evenings.
With pails and barrows

those mound-dwellers
go waist-deep in mist
to break the light ice
at wells and dunghills.

The bows glided down, and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.

Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea,
High and dry by the top of the mast,

Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
For my sake sail, and never look back,
Said the looking land.

Sails drank the wind, and white as milk
He sped into the drinking dark;
The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
And the moon swam out of its hulk.

Funnels and masts went by in a whirl.
Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck
To the gold gut that sings on his reel
To the bait that stalked out of the sack,

For we saw him throw to the swift flood
A girl alive with his hooks through her lips;
All the fishes were rayed in blood,
Said the dwindling ships.

Good-bye to chimneys and funnels,
Old wives that spin in the smoke,
He was blind to the eyes of candles
In the praying windows of waves

But heard his bait buck in the wake
And tussle in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod, for the whole
Of the sea is hilly with whales,

She longs among horses and angels,
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys,
Floated the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys.

Where the anchor rode like a gull
Miles over the moonstruck boat
A squall of birds bellowed and fell,
A cloud blew the rain from its throat;

He saw the storm smoke out to ****
With fuming bows and ram of ice,
Fire on starlight, rake Jesu's stream;
And nothing shone on the water's face

But the oil and bubble of the moon,
Plunging and piercing in his course
The lured fish under the foam
Witnessed with a kiss.

Whales in the wake like capes and Alps
Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep,
Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips
Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons

And fled their love in a weaving dip.
Oh, Jericho was falling in their lungs!
She nipped and dived in the nick of love,
Spun on a spout like a long-legged ball

Till every beast blared down in a swerve
Till every turtle crushed from his shell
Till every bone in the rushing grave
Rose and crowed and fell!

Good luck to the hand on the rod,
There is thunder under its thumbs;
Gold gut is a lightning thread,
His fiery reel sings off its flames,

The whirled boat in the burn of his blood
Is crying from nets to knives,
Oh the shearwater birds and their boatsized brood
Oh the bulls of Biscay and their calves

Are making under the green, laid veil
The long-legged beautiful bait their wives.
Break the black news and paint on a sail
Huge weddings in the waves,

Over the wakeward-flashing spray
Over the gardens of the floor
Clash out the mounting dolphin's day,
My mast is a bell-spire,

Strike and smoothe, for my decks are drums,
Sing through the water-spoken prow
The octopus walking into her limbs
The polar eagle with his tread of snow.

From salt-lipped beak to the kick of the stern
Sing how the seal has kissed her dead!
The long, laid minute's bride drifts on
Old in her cruel bed.

Over the graveyard in the water
Mountains and galleries beneath
Nightingale and hyena
Rejoicing for that drifting death

Sing and howl through sand and anemone
Valley and sahara in a shell,
Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy
Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl

Is old as water and plain as an eel;
Always good-bye to the long-legged bread
Scattered in the paths of his heels
For the salty birds fluttered and fed

And the tall grains foamed in their bills;
Always good-bye to the fires of the face,
For the crab-backed dead on the sea-bed rose
And scuttled over her eyes,

The blind, clawed stare is cold as sleet.
The tempter under the eyelid
Who shows to the selves asleep
Mast-high moon-white women naked

Walking in wishes and lovely for shame
Is dumb and gone with his flame of brides.
Susannah's drowned in the bearded stream
And no-one stirs at Sheba's side

But the hungry kings of the tides;
Sin who had a woman's shape
Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud
And all the lifted waters walk and leap.

Lucifer that bird's dropping
Out of the sides of the north
Has melted away and is lost
Is always lost in her vaulted breath,

Venus lies star-struck in her wound
And the sensual ruins make
Seasons over the liquid world,
White springs in the dark.

Always good-bye, cried the voices through the shell,
Good-bye always, for the flesh is cast
And the fisherman winds his reel
With no more desire than a ghost.

Always good luck, praised the finned in the feather
Bird after dark and the laughing fish
As the sails drank up the hail of thunder
And the long-tailed lightning lit his catch.

The boat swims into the six-year weather,
A wind throws a shadow and it freezes fast.
See what the gold gut drags from under
Mountains and galleries to the crest!

See what clings to hair and skull
As the boat skims on with drinking wings!
The statues of great rain stand still,
And the flakes fall like hills.

Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light!
His decks are drenched with miracles.
Oh miracle of fishes! The long dead bite!

Out of the urn a size of a man
Out of the room the weight of his trouble
Out of the house that holds a town
In the continent of a fossil

One by one in dust and shawl,
Dry as echoes and insect-faced,
His fathers cling to the hand of the girl
And the dead hand leads the past,

Leads them as children and as air
On to the blindly tossing tops;
The centuries throw back their hair
And the old men sing from newborn lips:

Time is bearing another son.
**** Time! She turns in her pain!
The oak is felled in the acorn
And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.

He who blew the great fire in
And died on a hiss of flames
Or walked the earth in the evening
Counting the denials of the grains

Clings to her drifting hair, and climbs;
And he who taught their lips to sing
Weeps like the risen sun among
The liquid choirs of his tribes.

The rod bends low, divining land,
And through the sundered water crawls
A garden holding to her hand
With birds and animals

With men and women and waterfalls
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships
And stunned and still on the green, laid veil
Sand with legends in its ****** laps

And prophets loud on the burned dunes;
Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard,
Times and places grip her breast bone,
She is breaking with seasons and clouds;

Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves,
with moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the greater waves
A separate river breathes and runs;

Strike and sing his catch of fields
For the surge is sown with barley,
The cattle graze on the covered foam,
The hills have footed the waves away,

With wild sea fillies and soaking bridles
With salty colts and gales in their limbs
All the horses of his haul of miracles
Gallop through the arched, green farms,

Trot and gallop with gulls upon them
And thunderbolts in their manes.
O Rome and ***** To-morrow and London
The country tide is cobbled with towns

And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman combed
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his **** was a hunting flame

Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair
And terribly lead him home alive
Lead her prodigal home to his terror,
The furious ox-killing house of love.

Down, down, down, under the ground,
Under the floating villages,
Turns the moon-chained and water-wound
Metropolis of fishes,

There is nothing left of the sea but its sound,
Under the earth the loud sea walks,
In deathbeds of orchards the boat dies down
And the bait is drowned among hayricks,

Land, land, land, nothing remains
Of the pacing, famous sea but its speech,
And into its talkative seven tombs
The anchor dives through the floors of a church.

Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon,
To the fisherman lost on the land.
He stands alone in the door of his home,
With his long-legged heart in his hand.

I became Holmes, past knowing true:
In every sense, I'd seek for you.

Now, taking the cobbles consciously,
Sick, mad, of the essence of this construct,
Dismantling the ancien régime to see
That I am all your stains in concert -

I am made up of every last touch -
Originality's a lie, save in
The combination that you see - as such
It is unique, but I still cave in

At the dawn that nothing is my own,
And much like as if you were a coffee
I'd downed: I could not, for my life, disown
The five million senses cutting me

For the time, for every conscious cup
I'd take and take again: Why should I dull
And cut myself this way, a life made-up
Of such a tannin-full ideal?

My way as a writer is to fall
In love, in my eyes, in yours, in raptures,
In despair, in tough crowds, on God, to call
On my muse and survive the ruptures

Of worlds and heavens, both real and made,
And feel the rain upon my face, but Lord,
How often do I feel, and feel the raid,
Engaged by scent, blush, needle, salt, word?

All too much makes nothing, and I can't flee
To seek another cup: I must seek me.

nothing flights these skies tonite
nothing burns above our heads
or crackles in the air
or glows in the houses about us
as we pace the cool and empty
the alleys and the meatless streets
and the clean scaleless cobbles
carry our patternless birch-bare feet
a sail less nite
but a kite to the imagination
a bringer of new
lighter beings
osmosis
through our faultless immigration




Previously published [Show Thieves 2010 : An Anthology Of Contemporary Montreal Poetry - 8TH HOUSE PUBLISHING]

In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.

On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.

I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.

At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.

Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.

But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.

Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.

Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dci Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.

This isn't really a poem at all this is what i go through every night.

im standing on a long narrow path, i can feel the cobbles underneath my feet, they are uneven and cold to the touch. I know thats its night time but there is no moon and no stars, just black, dark and cold. I start to move forward on the cobbled street but as i move forward i hear a scarping sound behind me i turn round slowly my whole body shaking cold sweat running down my skin, what i see frightens me, all i see is a face and a dark shadow covered body, the face is moving darkness tendrils of shadows moving across his face, he has eyes like burning embers i can almost see the smoke escaping his eyes, he has horns dark black like a rams horns poking through his darkness, he starts to laugh and when i see his mouth its full of the faces of people i know but they are on fire screaming the skin melting off there bones the arms and hands outstretched reaching for help but there is none there, i'm stuck just standing there i can move i cant run away as he turns his eyes on me boring into my soul seeing me for who i am and ripping my memories apart bring up the ones i buried he laugh he's enjoying it,  he moves forward grasping me with his hands the tendrils of shadows holding me still i cant breath i cant move, he moves closer to me his hands grow claws sharp as razors he digs them into me i feel be flesh tear i scream but he dosn't stop he just laughs at me saying to me that i'm pathetic, worthless, he digs further with his claws i now feel my blood pumping down my arms down my legs i cant stop it i can't move, he just laughs at me goading me i scream more and more till my throat cracks and nothing comes out, he looks at me and just drops me, i get up he looks at me and smiles i run as fast as i can running for my life, i turn back to and see hundred of eyes like his each one holding a painful memory of mine reminding me of it pulling at me, i run but they are always behind me they all laugh and again i see the people i know in pain and i cant do anything, i keep running my lungs burn my legs feel like dead wights but i don't stop i keep going one foot in front of the other, the the cobbles fall away and fall through the air and hit hard flat ground i look up but its just darkness i know i'm in a tunnel i can feel it sense it i stop running i take a deep breath but then i feel my skin tear all along my back and he's there smiling again i run the blood running freely down my back now, as i'm running i hear a sound one that made me stop from fear a scream that chilled my soul and rattle my bones so high pitched it hurt me to listen, but it didn't stop i carried on i felt my ear drums burst and blood dribble down my neck from it, i fall too my knees clutching my head to stop the sound stop the pain, as soon as my knees hit the floor theres a thunderclap and the walls and celling crack, the walls fall on me cracking my bones the tear through my skin my muscles rip and my vain's burst i can only feel pain the celling collapses trapping me my intestines rupture my lungs pop, i can feel it all happening, i scream for help but no ones there, i scream till my throat bleeds but no one hears me, i can see them  the demons laughing, i can see the people who i thought would helping standing on top of where i'm buried they do not notice they just walk away. i start to grow cold and weak my eyes are shutting the last of my strength escapes me and then as i'm about to die.

i wake up.


This happens every night.

A dream took shape, defined by the contours of the hole
you cut into the fog when you left that night.
You were walking on a dark cobbled street,
the drizzle coming down like sheets of silk,
the pale streetlight reflecting in the sheen
of the cobbles your gentle footfalls fell upon.
A man in a flatcap holding a skull-handled cane
smoking a cigarette with strong, yellow-tipped fingers,
watched as you ambled past his eyeline and down the hill.
He looked up to me, threw me a wink across the distance
and turned to follow you, his slippers sliding on the cobbles.

He disappeared from view and soon I heard the shrill
call for help come from your hastily muffled mouth,
but I just stood there and waited for the cries to die,
becoming drowned out by the drizzle pitter-pattering
upon the old cobbles and the stone wall lining the street.
The man came back up the hill, breathing heavily,
a line of blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth,
and he stood back under his solitary streetlight,
lit another cigarette and threw me another wink,
licking his lips and giving me a secret freemasonlike nod.
I picked up the shovel resting against my thigh…

When I woke, I thought of vampyres from the near east,
Transylvanian midnight hunters longing for the blood of virgins
to soothe the burning pain flowing in their centuries-old veins.
Still wearing my overcoat, I stood up and looked out the window,
overlooking the gaslighted cobble street enshrouded in fog,
the cemetery across the street, the stone wall doused in drizzle,
and I swear I could see the hole you left behind your body
as it vacated by world to find a new life to forage from.
I tapped out the dottle in my pipe, stuffed in fresh tobacco,
and lit the pipe, creating a large plume of smoke that quickly filled the room,
indistinguishable from the world-weary fog crawling beyond my window.

And then I saw the man in the flatcap, the cigarette hanging from his lips,
bent down from the rain, surely much too hard to gain anything from it,
but the smoke did indeed snake its way up into the air from the end,
like snakes of blue that decided gravity was far too cumbersome to believe in,
ready to escape the atmosphere and find a better way of living.
I began to feel empathetic for the smoke when I noticed the focus of the man’s gaze;
the window I was now standing at, where I too was smoking and gazing,
and he threw me a wink across the distance followed by an almost imperceptible nod.
I dropped my pipe, the wood splitting upwards along the shank,
almost shearing the tenon, but none of this I noticed as I stepped away from the window
that allowed the figment of a dream to gaze upon me and for I to gaze upon him.

I sat on my bed for an indescribable length of time, planning to stand up,
find the courage to step towards the window again to lay me hallucination to rest,
but the smoke must have still been stirring in my eyes because tears flowed,
and all I could think of was that figure of you disappearing into the fog
and how I let you disappear without saying but a word, without so much as a fight,
to try to convince you that I could change and that I was ready to change for you.
I may as well have picked up a shovel and started digging your grave,
or would that hole in the ground have my name upon the headstone?
Whatever recourse led me to this situation, I was surely now stuck
with no mode of transport available to allow me to venture to other pastures,
to view upon other cobbles, ones not lined by a cemetery,
ones not housing an hallucination that smokes snakes and winks and nods.
But here I am, wearing an overcoat in my bedchambers, dreaming of you,
because that is all you are now, walking away into the fog of a memory.

To you i would give the passion of the sun
and the shine provoked from simmered grass
and if the moonlight was not safe from your eye,
it's buttermilk glow i would surely pluck down.
To you i would give the midnight chimney smoke
that sillouette on the sky putting cobbles underfoot.
Take my taste of salt as sea white mer-men come
a breeze in the laughter of workmen's homecoming.
I give the feeling when swallowed by field flax
pinpricks of cotton, i'd lay you down bare-skinned.
You empty the film on my flesh camera,
I keep the removal cuts.

it,s loose cotton electric ***
copper children
          husky sighing t
                                      he
trickle of daughters into the little wet cracks
on Railroad ave. a beggars hand gesticulating empty spans
a river of grins course toward amber
oblivion and jarring rhythms. she's a white idea. a lemon dress *****.

          her hips are a delicious war of curving apparitions
a dearth of pleasure loaded folds. or else a caustic laceration;

     some hernia of capillaries blotting ivory thighs
            a
           n
                d all the children giggle, teeth cleaning pearly cheeks
splay the efforts of their throats all over the cobbles. it,s a night

   FRIDAY









          yes

In a land beyond the rainbow
Stands a dark decrepit wood
Where monkeys glide between the branches
And witches live, both bad and good

There within its tangled branches
Lies a path bedecked with gold
Leading brave souls who do not blanch
On to wonders yet untold

Near this path of yellow mortar
Stands an ancient half hewn tree
Missing wood, about a quarter
Standing **** for all to see

In this wood there stands a hatchet
Once beloved, now fraught with rage
Just another rusted gadget
Cast by in the wake of age

On a gnarled and twisted root
Centered in a mushroom ring
Stands ***** a metal figure
Frozen ever in mid-swing

There he stands through frozen winters
There he stands through summer's heat
There he stands through April showers
Standing ever on his feet

Once he glowed a gentle pewter
Once he moved with solemn grace
Lines of rust bedeck his figure
Streaking slowly down his face

Once he stood a man of flesh
A simple hewer of the wood
Who held a cabin near the creek
And loved a maiden fair and good

In the village near the forest
There he sought to win her hand
A debt of love he'd pay with interest
If beside his side she'd stand

In the woods he sought the bride price
Needed to start their new life
In the trees he found the journey
Soon to be defined by strife

By an elm his axehead sundered
Cleaving cruelly through his arm
Through the boughs his loud cry thundered
To the heavens in alarm

To the ground his lost arm plopped
Landing softly with a thump
To the town the woodsmen hopped
Grasping at the ****** stump

There he found the village tinker
And roused him roughly from his bed
Dragging him out to the workshop
Leaking out a wake of red

There he begged the wizened workman
'Make a new arm from your cans
For i marry in a fortnight
Let my bride take a whole man'

So the old man plied his trade
To make a limb of springs and gears
Twisting tendons in a braid
To move his fingers through the years

Now renewed to former vigor
The Woodsman went back to his trade
Returning to the morning's rigor
Back into the ancient glade

Little did the doughty hewer
Know his axe contained a curse
Stricken on unknowing users
Causing their limbs to disperse

By an oak he lost his left ear
By a beech he lost the right
Hazel took him down a peg
And by a yew he lost his sight

Through the week the tinker labored
On in a rush to replace
Just enough of the woodcutter
To accept his bride's embrace

On the day his nuptials dawned
The woodsman clanged into the square
Passing through the crowd with awe
On to meet his maiden fair

There she stood beneath a trellis
Sky blue ribbons through her braids
Oh, she was a sight to rellish
Worth the trial of the glades

There he stood forever altered
A shadow of the former man
In this form forever haltered
To this shell of springs and cans

The cutter broke into a dash
To wrap his woman in his arms
On the cobbles his feet clashed
Causing her no small alarm

From the altar his bride fled
With screams of terror in her wake
On the day  he should have wed
Became the day his heart did break

Suddenly devoid of purpose
To the copse the woodsman flees
Never ere' again to surface
From the shelter of the trees

Months went by the woodsman toiled
Day and night, no pause to sleep
Day and night his kettle boiled
Over with the urge to weep

Till the sound of April thunder
Rumbled in the cutters ears
Bringing rain that tore assunder
Dams he'd built around his tears

So between his swings he wept
Of loss and of abandoned trust
Trails of tears in his joints crept
And hardened slowly into rust

Now he stands in frozen duty
Saplings rising all around
Dreaming of an ancient beauty
Long surrendered to the ground

Till the day another maid
Returns to bathe his limbs in oil
On that day he'll leave the glade
Moving on to other toils

Then the rust begins to part
Then the magic starts to slake
Then the woodsman finds his heart
Then the Tin Man starts to wake

Speculation proved
contagious,
misinterpretation
crept silently on patchwork soles
(odds n' sods messily stitched,
tittle tattle did no favours)
like a flu it spread,
hushed curiosities rested
outside ol' Hutch baker's door,
where even a freshly oven'd
batch might strain an ear
or five to net nearby tongue trading,
seeds straining on their brows.

Even those Mother hens
had a cluck or two left in them,
rumours about the
'Dust mite Martyr'
as she was dubbed,
“Does she have no shame,
sitting pretty in Matrimony's dress?”
one heaving checkered breast commented
titling her beak
to gain a better look -

At that shriveller slumped,
an examiner of the cobbles
with such a religious stare
her lids traced stones
within the darkness,
a traveller -
wanderer not to be trusted,
especially not
with bloodied lilies tangled
within her gleaming mop.

The sun has long disappeared behind the stage
I'm inspired and sweaty and feeling my age

The amplifiers still ringing in my ears

The smell of the Tagus draws in and I take my tired frame up winding streets
The cafés are open. Piano music. Shoes on cobbles providing the beat

Sat silently listening to the late urban shuffle, people appear from narrow openings between tired, tiled buildings
Are the up late, are they up early?

It's been a long day. A day of fleeting smiles.
I think of you, and there's one more.

This one lasts.

It began, as these things often do
With darkened skies and all around
The night had paused to draw a breath
And through the streets rebounded sound
A slow and steady fall of foot
I stepped the cobbles free of care
My eyes were drinking vivid light
A fragrance tangled on the air

My purpose set
My heart a grim quartet

The door was mere scenery
A sight to see but not recall
The passing gaze is pushed away
And sees there, just another wall
No movement could I hear within
My knuckles whitened on the knock
Relief recoiled hastily
A scratching from the rusted lock

My fingers clenched
Anxiety deeply entrenched

The woodwork inched a little back
A brow bedecked in withered hair
A pupil sharp as autumn frost
Surveyed me with a butchers glare
Her voice, a blade across my mind
Invited me to step inside
A shiver shook my frozen bones
My feet took up a timid stride

Her tone shallow
Her skin like warm tallow

Within was soaked in tepid gloom
In candle light the shadows danced
The flames grew quick and paranoid
And leaned away as I advanced
Behind me scurried shut the door
And down my spine, an angel tear
A leather chair of ages past
Held consort with my falling rear

She sat near
And whispered in my ear

With lizards hiss and jagged tone
In fragrances of smoke and gin
She sprinkled such a parable
That tingles bounced across my skin
My mission lay ahead of me
But caution of a reckless choice
A curse that fed on failure
And menace edged her ebon voice

Salvation awaited
But hope swiftly abated

Away into the night I strode
My razor wits with terror blunt
I packed a satchel prudently
For sustenance about the hunt
A dagger dangled on my hip
A bow and quiver on my back
Its bowstring plaited spider web
Was ever strong and never slack

Horizon bound
I broke the ****** ground

My quarry was a worthy foe
And many days I tracked until
By moonlight on a starless night
I caught a glimpse and stopping still
A sight I've struggled to forget
My bounty and my nemesis
Was bounding past me heedlessly
As fear wrought paralysis

Eyes like death
****** hung on its breath

It stood a daunting seven foot
With talons jutting from its hands
A mass of quills and tentacles
With extra spleens and mucus glands
A mouth with room for seven men
And teeth the size of ironing boards
A single but enormous eye
With lashes like a row of swords

My face paled
My bladder faultered and soon failed

I faced my prey and crossed my legs
My stricken blood had turned froth
I ****** myself in abject fear
But stopped just short of touching cloth
I turned about and ran away
While screaming out profanity
And crying like a baby
And adopting Christianity

Pleading with fate
My pride a sorry state

I fled the county swiftly
Finding shelter inside a cave
My punishment for failure
Would see me to my grave
And so I existed in exile
Eating only what I caught
In time the wind grew colder
And the days were ever short

Winter grips
The solar zenith slips

I huddle to this very day
Amid the gloom with frozen breath
And keeping warm is paramount
For stretching life, postponing death
Though purely for survival
While I weather every storm
I've taken to bumming weasels
As a means of keeping warm

Blunt trauma
Weasel skin *****-warmer

[Disclaimer : Collection edited from previous works for the purpose of competition.]

Notes during Jane’s night out
and its afterbathe.


Observe :

when your heart's beating overtime
you drool poison in your sleep
and you're looking down
on this wound of slaughter
simply turn your head
and repress the urge
for mischief
mirth
and laughter

Jane’s prayer of control


Observe :

Deathlessness 
becomes my Oedipus
Restlessness, my Vein
I spy from the Windows
upon the Exterior ;
It's Humid, Night and Rain
I pave my Thoughts ; 
all bark and froth
I Pound Drinks
It Powers tight my Bellows
I Hound the Clock
My energy thrives out a fan of nerves
I create an idea of what's soon to be
A plan of posable culture
forms flossy in my Tide
and
(as the Night Out steps up)
It Bites firm in my mind

I stride across the threshold
Betraying nothing
Of the Savage I've put together
Slough Suited in neat Disguise.


Observe :

Raw Meat and Red Teeth
I'm a Bow to the Moon
I Click over Cobbles
A Mad Energy
Bailed in my Stomach
I Task Myself
Open
And Daring Prey to Cross the Tension
Strung on my Senses
All Hot Gut and Wire
I'm Playing at Being
A Wild and Mean Thing
And I am Dedicated to this Wound.


Observe Others :

The exclusive clubbers present their cards of invite
And go swiftly about the social wetwork 
Their practices and manners 
Interact and ply
Pulling teeth of the guises
Harvesting an inflammation of words
A baffle of tongue chorings 
There is an hour
There follow more
Whittling time
Taming code
Resorting to a little physical...
Then they take their leave ;
Prizes into the nights snare.


Observe My Racing Brain :

Let’s put Sleep to Death
And purify madness
We shall practice giddy boils of imagination
Bright
And quick lives could flare
Brief celebrities
Hastily added
To this new chattering evolution
There'd be little lung for morals
And sorrows would be swift experiments
Let's make all lives what they really are
Put Sleep to Death
And be recognized
As blurs
As shots 
As stars and spittings
Firing in this universe
This playground
This raw wash of activity


Observe my Near Miss :

gunbeat
memory fleeing ;
murrums over soils
stresses and seas
desaturation
my colourless meat
mind down
hasty retreat
coma tones
my last retreat
failing the game
and foul on my feet

but then spoiled warmth floods back
my sponge reforms
damaged
but re-soaked
current again


Observe Hospital Stay :

Talisman
Brighter than a new spawned sage
Appears to me.
Abyss-less
It lisps of rest
And passes me its clay.
Obedient
I foster a dent
And begin to draw my feed.


Observe my learning :

take a breath
expel a myth
pattern a thought
create an action
reset and repetitude


Observe a Single Step :

This is a Me
(hands indicate body that they are a part of)
A responsive sock of meats
flush with The Other
and stringy with Thinker

From The Other 
operations may be performed
Within this mix
a View dwells
this could be said
to be a Me

The Being makes
a physical step forward
A Me indicated that it ought to
and it did


Observing Spark Plug :

...and 'oh my God' did I cry
I sparked like I was made of knives
and it carried me
I was adopted
I was addressing reasoning
burying it fiercely and fare
pounding clay over it
and enhancing my surroundings
content
yet
without trust
re-start
welled and sad
sick excited
a primal plug 
connected
and this world had once seemed so borrowed, adolescent and unpracticed.

Pulling off my scarf
letting it drape like a resignation
across the back of a chair
The sun is setting
the room is dim
and almost orange –  and is
sometimes lonely
in its loss of day

I think of you now –  

and then

We were walking with our arms around each other

Always...

through the Boston Common
The air drizzled
with late-winter
melts
the cobbles
wet
The sounds of our steps
go on –  

Forever....

I turn to hang my coat

Night replaces you again
__


1-29-18

Heathens -
in heaven's lobby
flock
to barter
for Magic 'Shrooms
with pop rocks... and pancakes
and leaf-green brownies.
new to the scene;
the Son of Man
holds a motley court,
then wanders off
to fetch Picasso - Lassoed
from his cups, his Love that must Love
his genius... doubtless,
cloud-scrawling
huge pendulous *******
in Elysium; for no one at all.
better Pablo
should tend bars      that set mobs free
than one god's toddler, with long odds
against Bacchus - should ever
small-talk-speak
to the godless
or worse...
preach.

" Better Sins to love.. " The Spaniard once taught...
A Lover's Urge is born in forms of weakness.... adorned in all Might -
bathed in blessed contradiction,
a Lingam for a Yoni's dream of stiff drinks
and pliable men, with strong arms.
a blue fiction  on Calvary -
nailed to the softest
cross.

Between thieves,
an honor, double
parked

with bucket seats brimming with moonlight,
and her knickers
tossed.

Picasso asks for absinthe
to be sent
post haste
and polished off -
by all
his better angels he had guillotined
with dull snails,
and fallen  
harps

ones -  he stole,  to de-tune
a flat fifth of Cuttysark
for a deaf
****,  [but no mute ]
a portrait, ****
and is soon
bought...

lust
sleeps then -
with both Eyes;  
Locked on
One of
God's.

like a deer
in a Head-light's
Gospel...
now, a Minotaur on the
Autobahn -
stalking
it.


II

Heathens
in heaven's lobby
recite ' Howl '
as Ginsberg, walks over hot coals
and spicy psalms; glowing wanton
in white grass; with a very
cherry ****.
And a wise throng, cobbles...
****** -
they rob
Peter of his  toga,
leaving nothing wrong.
but no less ' On '
they laugh hard;  and wake the dead
asking  them for new songs
to set    their false alarms
in lofty Tic' Tocks  
of Eternity's
clock.
Bible on a snooze bar
for at least that long
or  someone
knocks.

As if  "Hello."  
Spoke the Whole World into Being -
And " Goodbye."
misspoke, and
trailed
off...

Not every man is gentle in his life
but you remained a gentleman
Through all your pain and strife
My childhood years
when you stood strong and tall
Sparkling eyes with love
entwined the ivy on the wall
within your garden, hedged around
a paradise of fruitful ground
and I in childhood flushed
transfixed I stand
awed at the gardeners magic hand

Here for you
there was no wretched bottled smell
An alcohol free paradise
An alcohol free hell
How you loved to hear the wild birds
sweetly sing
And see your world re-live again
in Spring
"How calm" you said to hear the rippling stream
A beauty unaware to me
You thought me how to dream
In all your yarns
attention held me mute
but if my heart allowed
I wouldn't dare dispute
With flitting years
your speech you tried to goad
But you my aged friend
could still my thoughts behold
Your every limb that moved
so gracefully before
by life's uneven cobbles
were battered , warped and sore
You fought a loosing battle
with your bottle eager hand
and I watched your spirit slip away
like a fist of dried out sand
The tears rolled down my face
as I kissed my cherished friend
I thanked your god for your friendship
and your dignity to the end.

This wild night, gathering the washing as if it were flowers
          animal vines twisting over the line and
          slapping my face lightly, soundless merriment
          in the gesticulations of shirtsleeves,
I recall out of my joy a night of misery

walking in the dark and the wind over broken earth,
          halfmade foundations and unfinished
          drainage trenches and the spaced-out
                    circles of glaring light
          marking streets that were to be
walking with you but so far from you,

and now alone in October's
first decision towards winter, so close to you--
          my arms full of playful rebellious linen, a freighter
          going down-river two blocks away, outward bound,
          the green wolf-eyes of the Harborside Terminal
                    glittering on the Jersey shore,
and a train somewhere under ground bringing you towards me
to our new living-place from which we can see

a river and its traffic (the Hudson and the
hidden river, who can say which it is we see, we see
something of both. Or who can say
the crippled broom-vendor yesterday, who passed
just as we needed a new broom, was not
one of the Hidden Ones?)
          Crates of fruit are unloading
          across the street on the cobbles,
          and a brazier flaring
          to warm the men and burn trash. He wished us
luck when we bought the broom. But not luck
brought us here. By design

clean air and cold wind polish
the river lights, by design
we are to live now in a new place.

Stone fingers clasp the clay
The mind is weak,
The heart is cold.
Ice to the unknown neighbour
Broken and reborn
As a phoenix
With cute desire
As stone fingers clasp the clay
That creates new worlds
New identities
New beings
New desires
New babes.

Clasping their Jocasta heartbeats
Holding it tight
As another pale dawn covers
The empty cobbles
Of this home
And you face the new day.

Will we meet in shady groves;
Upon a hill? Perhaps in morning.
In hidden vines of deepest green… Does day break?
We spool in canopies as the world beyond awakes;
Cocoons of fragrant freshness. So here I sit and of you I wish.

Will we meet in times of woe;
Under streets beveiled? Perhaps in mourning.
The well-worn cobbles ache terribly, my dear, let us go inside
A yellow cigarette crushed against the glass; I burn for tenderness and see
It in your eye. So there you sway and beneath you I lay.

Will your face be one I know;
Past veils of spidersilk? Perhaps, my darling.
This well-worn world aches terribly, let us make our own
From shady grove to comforts home; an empire on the hill.
Lifetime passes in an eyeblink. So with you I hide
Til our tender world’s first sunrise.

The great gaudy flage is screamin' blood in the streets
                                          loose yawn of a gob on him
                                              all bombast n' swagger
he makes a barrage of nuisance
     channels through the public
         and scatters a juggler's performance spot
                  lobs away his change hat
then, roughly over the cobbles  
                                        he hoicks a resuscitation doll
         and stamps down a posing boot
                                                 on the 'defeated form'

an unprepared scoop of tourists
a pause for silence and begins a rant
a great performance
of well harassed combustion :

"i smear to god all the phalluses
      [he roars, all saliva]
i smug to god
             a full jug of uglies
tug on       [makes the hand gesture for male *******]
i **** off the forger
would slug it in the mug
                          if it ever did form a tissue oath
took a plug at some drunk straggler
called the baffled *** 'god-father'
            and spate spume on his fallen anatomy
[with one hand he indicates the mannequin at his heel]
       amen ******* !"

he bows
a long quiet
some people clap awkwardly
two police officers appear and hook him by the elbows
(it has been this show before)

This poem comes from a dream.*

Sun—as February ordains it
roseate—early
twisted inordinate—in gray blanket
Snow has sifted to the pockets, wrinkles
the cuff of his woolen cap

An old hand rubs stubbled cheek
Snow flickers and falls again
in a dazzle

As he groans and stirs—
sparrows sing
As he struggles to sit—
sparrows sing
As he exhales into the chill
he considers the lilies of the field
Their luminous curling petals rise
steam or hope?
or just white smoke
wandering from the tiny fire
He sits a while to listen
to sparrows bickering in the bushes
then bursting into song

They have their audience

Across in a court of broken glass
and toppled stones
a room— still partially intact
Kindling gathered
Marta melts snow for tea
peeling potatoes in her lap
Stops to blow on hands
Marta’s heart—decent, visceral
like her hair—bun, kerchief
like her words—few in the failing
like the wounds of her smile

And Mikhail—harnessed
to the sounds of service
Orderly rhythm in ruin
hush    hush     hush
of a broom stroking cobbles
Mikhail—his hands wrapped in rags
old warrior  
now, restorer of places to live
Stops, removes his cap
squinting sunlight into the channels of his face
Then turns toward unsteady shuffling behind him

“You shouldn’t.”
Tears interrupt
reaching for the broom
“You shouldn’t do this for me.”

“No, no, Holy Father. It is little thing—
a little thing I do.”

Decorations are up
hung from fishing wire,
fishing for good luck.

There’s Christmas on her neck
and as she stretches out in front of me
a wake of cinnamon decks the halls.

It remains and lingers,
falls away past nostrils and
turns to festive well-wishes.

The market is in full swing
wrapped up tight in large scarves,
like a low cut sling cradling the cold.

Winter has the streets in its hold,
the wind is sour, bitter to taste,
and punters, commuters, Asian lost-tourists walk in haste.

Shop floors are warmed by radiators
hung above their wide open doors:
let the heat out, let the customers in.

And when the mid-November light dims
and the council gets past the
everlasting electrical admin,

streetlamp sticks will light and spark,
sending effulgent embers down onto
the Cambridge cobbles.

Children will peer wide eyed into windows
remembering names for their lists,
hoping to unwrap them as gifts later on down the line.

Adults, some probable parents and others newly-wed together,
enjoy the festivities, the weather, the bespoke crafts
bought from Argos sold as Handmade Swedish Chairs

And do they care? No.
It’s Christmas in Cambridge and
winter is settling in.