BECOMING LADY MACBETH.
( "Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" - Act 5, scene 1 MACBETH )


dawn chorus
switch on kettle
for first cup of coffee

but what's this
white kettle
streaked with blood

I have stepped into
a gory horror
real life movie

an hallucination
but how can
a kettle bleed

and now I see
my hands
bathed in blood

glistening...shining
more readily red
than can be imagined

I have become
Lady Macbeth
the play come alive

I can still smell
my own blood
"Oh, oh, oh!"

****** my ****** hands
under the running tap
discover the deep cut

my right hand thumb
it would appear
the culprit

"All the perfumes
of Arabia will not
sweeten this little..."

how come
I cannot yet tell
and yell

now that
the pain
decides to turn up

I act the part
to the hilt
discover that

pushing plastic
into an overflowing bin
cuts to the bone

who would have thought
indeed that this old poet
had so much blood in him


*
A plastic container that once contained olives and feta until devoured  squashed down into the bin not realising that its rim was super sharp and I didn't even feel the cut. Then turning back to the coffee making and lo and behold the horror unrolled the 'how can this be so' moments. And *******...so much...so much blood. As if the whole 12 pints in the human body had chosen to take up residence( squatters rights)in the thumb and to to a runner when the fisrst cut was the deepest.

You are the train
Going past
At three o'clock in the morning
Making the window panes
Shiver

You are the rain
On my roof
Falling
Softly
Loudly
Recklessly
Echoing
The tracks of my heart

You are the wind in the leaves
Running their fingers
Over me
Green
Stained gold
By the paling
Descending sunlight

You are the waves of the ocean
Falling and falling
Grabbing onto
An idea
Onto a shore
Only to be sent away

You are the shots
Of a live
Imagination
Crashing
Beside me
Running

You are the whistle
From the steam
Filling the kettle on the stove
I still
Make sure there's enough water

You are the footsteps
Known by someone
So well
Coming up the stairs
Sure and safe

You are the sound of a whispered word
Into a lover's ear
Hypnotizing
It doesn't matter
What was just said

You are the pluckings
Of a guitar
On a cloudy morning
Soft
Swaying
Moving
Making me dance
In sadness

You are the sound of your voice
Wanting

Nov 25 1991*


I just like to hear
the willow branches singing in the wind

I just like to watch
as the morning settles down and life begins

I just like to watch
As the Great Lake breezes blow across the shore

I just like to think
that you are somewhere standing just outside a door
with your bags packed and headed home to me

I just like to hear the kettle whistle
as I place two teabags in the ***
and forget there's only me

Tonight the wind
the pouring rain through trees
hiss and whistle of kettle
water poured for tea
the lashing winter willows
this coal, dark storm that blinds
and hides away your face
and any trace of moon.

hauled away by
the chugging of
engines and a
rhythmic ****. I
am still within
three hundred miles
of your arms
not too far
at all but
far enough away
so that you
keep bubbling forward
in the tea
kettle that is
my mind. I
heat my thoughts
to a steady
boil and then
try to take
you off my
mind but alas!
you are stubborn
and I am
stuck as all
the increasing miles
stack upon themselves
I try to
distract myself with
story and song
but you don't
go away and
all I can
feel is the
rhythmic jerking of
three hundred miles

Out of all the things in this world to fear,
Most of us are afraid to love.
We feel like we've been set ablaze,
Never to raise from ash,
But we've only felt the burn.
It was your turn.
You were meant to be broken,
Only to prove how durable you are.
A smooth sea does not make the sailor.
So take every last one of those toxic thoughts
Put them all in a box and light a match
Because that is not what you are.
You are the culmination of everything before you,
And everything you endure,
Thus making you the vessel of love.
If the people who created you
No longer reside side by side,
Just remember that the entire universe
Went out of its way to send two souls
Through eventual agony
Just for the opportunity to bring you upon this Earth.
You never asked to be born,
You didn't request to live,
So why would you spend your entire being
Questioning why you're here.
Give yourself a purpose to this world.
They can only guide you, but you,
You are the only person you truly have to listen to.
There is everyone else in this world, and there is you.
You can take everything that you've heard,
The compliments, the ridicule,
The encouragement, the hindrance,
And then how it all effects how you live your life
Is how you choose to react to it.
Prove them all, right and wrong.

This is hardly poetry at all, I know
But I don't care if anyone feels this,
This is how I feel.
When this began, there was no premeditation
As to how the structure of this would go.
I merely pour myself out like a kettle
Onto this digital loose leaf for me.
As time goes on, I'll grow morose
For no apparent reason.
The subconscious haunts us.
The weight of the world,
The burden of childhood,
And the load of adulthood
Will wear your head down
Until your teeth become the remnants of sidewalk chalk,
And when that happens, play hopscotch.
There isn't much in this world to look to,
So you make **** sure that it is you.
You, you bodacious, beautiful being that you are.

Tell me all those things
You've told me before
I'll listen attentively
And raise eyebrows in anticipation
As you get to the crux of each tale.

Tell me again the stories
Of people met and re-met
Of chance surprises and things said
Of sights seen and paths discovered
Of how good home felt at the end of the trail.

Just to sit across from you
At a chrome-plated and Formica-surfaced table
With a kettle going
And no breaks for me to squeeze in a word.
But oh, to see you again.

There's so much light
pouring through
a window pane
when the rain
fell down
like it did
today

and like how I
climbed
the butte with
you
and how you made
the tea

settle in
with me
when we go
home
after our legs
have been worked
in

and you'll stir the
soup
and yell at the
whistling kettle
for singing its song
too loudly

it's when the sun
is filling the room
and my legs are
dangling on you
that the light
wins,
and wins again.

Walking is wisdom
People go out
Abandoning their
Comfort unstitched
Each step is
pulling the yoke
It is sunrise
What drives them out
And keep them running
Pushing each rock
That hinders their way
I am sure it is an invisible
Spirit that breathes inside
A special gift
Of God to them
Not for women
A message for those
Shouting for equality
Yesterday the rain
Hit hard like strip on the fur
And the man,
with his umbrella
Like a broken sieve,
Staggering fast
Due to his twisted leg
Crossed the road
Where ditches were the rungs
I made a good comeback
Though in the morning
My mind had been
The kettle on the fire
And like him crossed
The subway to reach my point
Coming back is the best harvest
After sowing seeds of going out
And Walking is their water to grow

The wind is whistling,
out of tune I might add,
mistaking it for the kettle
I got out of
bad
or should that be bed?
shaking my head to dislodge the sleep
my eyes start revolving
the sugar turns blue and
it's me in the cup
wondering why I'm
dissolving.


Ridiculous is four steps to the right
I've been there
was there
sharing a night with the lamp
tightening up with the cramp
and have you noticed
anything odd?

if the door when ajar is not a door
where did it go?
how will you know where to exit or
enter?

When the day breaks
who covers up the cracks?

He
who cements commandments
to medicaments
and buries parliaments
in liniments
knows about the life in tenements
how to
fight from the battlements
He who
gives the final sacraments
on Sunday in the first aid tents

who is He anyway that separates the night
and makes the day pay ransom?

A handsome man I'll wager.

Folder: OBSERVATIONS...
its the morning wake up ritual at is mediocrity

you want to sleep in

I want to run along side the birds

I boil the kettle it hums as you snore

I wish I had your company

you wish you had more time

we dont fit together well

but we're okay today because at least we both woke up in the same place

although we dont ever understand why.

All things weird and wonderful.
The poet writes them down.
The words from nutty nightmares.
Well, most are preconceived.
When the words flow greatly
Emotions flow so free.
Go and put the kettle on.
I need a cup of tea!

Feeds my writes with darkness.
And with sweet flowers too.
Fill my head with poetry.
To stop me feeling blue.
(C) Livvi x

Put the kettle on
The Dodger's here
Him and me sat chatting in the sun
As happy as gypsies leaving town
We have a lifetime between us
Over forty years of friendship
And a thousand events and people
Indelible memories
Me teaching him his first chords
Fingers stumbling on the frets
Now he plays like a dream
And he's taking the band
Into the studio next month

All down the years
It's been music and laughter
And a few daft adventures
A few rows but then
We're both fiery characters
And they were soon forgotten
In favour of a laugh or a song

And now we sit in the sun
Remembering old friends
And "Do you remember when"s
The summer of '76 was rich
Guitars in the hills
Writing songs and poetry
Happy days, old friend
Happy days indeed

                                 By Phil Roberts

pigeon coo’s echo outside the window
relentless repetition please stop,
grey skies, lacklustre rain
drip drop drips from the sky
like a tap not turned tight
enough

the kettle is screaming at me
fogs up the window
desperate, don’t look out there,
the forbidden fruit, sacred outdoors
sterilised sanitised inside, free me,
I long to ***** my feet

how can the world keep on turning
when we are all so still
does the passing of time matter
during this vast nothingness?

a cup of tea to calm my nerves
hot liquid chases down the fear
bubbling up in my throat but
it just crawls back, and settles
so quiet becomes the house
eternally occupied, no respite

heavier now, thankful for the sound
drowning out the silence, rain
like the white noise, grateful
the sound of breath has become
too much, all of us in mute,
in sound, in colour, in all

Here for us pretend pretenders
Here is this a simple ender

We who lose it never seek it
There is hidden here in secret

Wading, fading making sicker
There is time or something thicker

Utter thinly veiled from under
There is more to write I wonder

Only clutched with hands ungrasping
There is now most everlasting

Piercing hunger never settles
There is broth to stove and kettle

Winter washed and nestle warming
There is still a calm a'storming

Not as brittle, cleaner, crisper
There is heretofore a whisper

Error spent for our repentance
There is void dark intermittent

If so then what say all we after
There is all that words can gather

For us the inner interventions
There is only aforementioned

Four people dead
Dreaming feverish
Faces flush red

Dry, The river's fish are dead
Stinking in sweat
Bloated sidewalk bread

Eggs fried on blacktop special
The heat restless
City boiling in a kettle

Heated up red
Four people dead
More to come
The summer heat has settled in

I'm sitting alone nostalgic
Kettle's been boiling for a while
Water nearly gone
What was it to be made
Coffee, tea or brew of quince
With a touch of tarragon
In your antique pocelain mug
A windfall from college days
You called it a talisman
Cast out of immemorial lands
A sign you must take to heart
And chase your feelings
With reckless mind
Without help from anyone...
Feelings that show you the way
Toward Elysian fields.
The water is all but gone
A drop or two for fond memories
We might have beaten the odds
Planting love in ******* mold
But enchanted by dreams
You chose to contain your love
And follow the singings of your heart
Though you have long been gone
Your illusion still lingers on
Tempting me to feed your love.

The kettle is a plugin,
glass carafe,
stainless steal base,
with lights and buttons,
the whole deal.

A hush of cold tap water into the carafe,
the weight pulls at my wrist as it fills,
a satisfying click onto its base,
the beep, beep, button click and we
begin to boil, LED lights from white to red.

I think of beginnings & electricity,
how easy I have it,
yawn, scratch my testicles, and
my perpetually itchy *******,
wash my hands.

wait.
stare.
listen.

At the start, all is quiet,
a swirl of heat can be seen
as the water begins its
transformation.

I think of my wife,
at twenty-two, standing outside my window
early morning,
smiling at me.

As the water heats, bottom up,
bubbles form, water to vapor,
right before my eyes.

I think of my daughters,
the smell of their heads,
their warm tiny hands,
grabbing my face.

At about 160 degrees Fahrenheit
the water beings to roar,
the rapid creation and collapse
of tiny steam bubbles has arrived.

I think of the bickering,
with my wife, with my daughters,
with myself, I'm dark,
but just for a moment.

At about 205 degrees,
the gaseous forming bubbles of water
transition from a roar to a babble.

I think of spooning my wife,
my sleeping daughters,
sunlight on my face when its cold outside.

The kettle beeps at me,
I hold it high and pour into the press,
a bathtub filling sound.

I think of splashing,
the giggles of my daughters in the tub.

The grinds float to the top,
a tan froth has formed.

It is 7:23 AM.
I have 4 minutes until my day begins.

We wish for words to work with us
to enter and leave as we believe all religioins are
And touch and taste are never disappointed
and the weather is always October

I Love for love to liven the colors of conversations to
bright red and crinkling silver
and tomes of poetry are hand delivered to the bored.  
Toys are no longer just for children
and everyone prefers candlelight to cinema
and Time finally admits its accompliceship to God.  

I weather words well for a kettle *** rung with flavored tongue.

Rhododáktylos Ēṓs*

Good mornings,
rosy fingered promise;
front row ticket
to creation.

Bad mornings,
gray diluting black;
thundering kettle drum
of Armegeddon.

Both mornings,
exactly the same
morning.

Only one life
in which to awaken.

if we all joined in left right
to write a poem a novel
you can sing I know you can
we all are free
make any old words up
if you want to
sing along
the beat is here
the words are up to you
just give a hoo a haw and stomp your feet
twirl round
like I do
stand upside down and
hymn
bring an instrument
join in
a harmonica a trumpet harp
kettle
just beat the hell out it
and sing for god's sake
at the top
of your lungs.

one hundred and ninety two hours
one hundred and ninety two hours where all i wanted to do was sleep
because in those moments,
you never existed in my dreams
you were not there to make my knees knock into each other
or my anxiety to pulse higher and higher
or worry of you becoming a screeching tea kettle over the phone
but also to make me feel like the butterfly that just opened her cocoon
and the little girl hugging her prized stuffed animal
or the core of your world

one hundred and ninety two hours
every single hour thinking about when is the next time
i can see emptiness
you're all around
and you still remain in my skin.

without disrupting the poem, after all, the original tenant left and someone new has moved in... adding a pr.s. (pre-scriptum / prologue, but not quite, since the praxis of this sort of phrasing is attache in nature), the revised size of a cup that became a mug invokes the following revision: it's still 50ml of milk, but the amount of brew is - 200ml - i lied though, i added an acute iota... and the: must we? surely there are some aesthetic observations worthwhile to be made, like the doubling of letters, the english answer to missing diacritical applicability, ever present, as if god... spleen morbidity, you can obviously replace the ee bit with an iota acute, but would it look ugly? most certainly... but not asking for etymological uprooting of a rooting of a foreign word, akin to shísha... otherwise you'd include the near-proximity of a Y with that automated diacritical mention on the iota... dot what? dr. dotwhat? quack?! then you get cackling of a magpie, what next? a crying hyena?! if no letter follows the last, you can actually pin-point an i with an iota grave... and all i have is a stick and a stone to work my entry into applying diacritical marks in particular instances available, which, as a language, is a inferno in paradiso for a pedant... a dot on the iota and a dot on the be-jesus that's a massive tarantula! that's i have: entry point via i... exit point via j-j-jaded! ah man, that aerosmith gig in hyde park, two girls by my side, joint in hand... the fun of the fun times when some things were still funny; and i lied because i also added the grave iota... which resembles a quick-snap merging of mono-syllable words, otherwise represented akin to this (with iota having its "head" ******* on): cha'i.

the notion that mixing milk with *chaì
is an english invention is simply wrong,
there is another nation of people
who are adamant tea drinkers,
namely the russians...
                     frequently mention
in dostoevsky's novels: the samovar -
which is equivalent to a shísha pipe
of the middle east
(can't we just have the acute i?
it's pretty much the same as p p ee)...
  what do the english have? a kettle.
ah ****, i forgot about the green tea
drinkers, the chinese and the japanese...
never mind,
  but i forgot because... the english are
not the only ones who add milk to their
black tea...
               in siberia they do likewise...
it was never just an english "thing" -
in poland they call adding milk to tea
a vabarka - intended to intimidate
like ordering cranberry juice in an irish
pub...
      i.e. the question: you lactating
or something?
             - and yes (and doubly yes,
you can begin a sentence with a conjunction
if it's predicated with a hyphen) -
    the best tea in england comes
from yorkshire...
       yorkshire tea is the only tea to drink...
and i found out the secret
for the best tea...
    like a bartender in a bar,
i took out the measuring tool,
   50ml on top, 25ml below...
                 the ideal amount of
milk...
             50ml of milk to 186ml of brew...
put a 9 in between the 1 and the 8
and you'd get the year of my birth...
and hey presto! toasted wheat colour,
just the sort of thing worth drinking...
maybe i was misinformed,
but i heard that americans only drink
ice tea, and are more into their coffee,
am i right?
               nothing beats the oozing
warmth from yorkshire tea
with milk...
             almost like ******* on
werther's original candy...
                   liquidated, ready to be slurped
up by pensioners...
                 with subtle hints of
'erbs...
                       so no, the english are
not the only people to drink black tea
with milk... the siberians also take to drinking
it that way...
    and given that the english are popular
for doing so, i suspect the siberians were
the first to adapt the practice...
the loudest gobs are always the ones
to nullify the pioneers...
   like christopher columbus comapred
with leif eriksson.

His thoughts were scattered
His walks were like thunder
Blood boiling like a tea kettle
Eyes pierced like fire
Like the Sea before lava
The one he Loves has transpired
Heart dropped in his musles
He's tired of people looking over
Ashes of rain as he thinks about his friendships
He's broken and he just now noticed..

The sky is long
And the wind blows hard
Been living twenty six years
But still feel
Like I ain't even here

Blood in the trees
Buzzing of the bees
Whispering windows
Just birds take flight
Child holds a red balloon
Wishing it was a kite

Oh' lonesome love
Infinite sky above
Restless meaning
Ants around me teeming
She lay next to me
Purring and dreaming

Turn the record over
Listen to another side
Car is busted
People can't be trusted
Bike is lost
This heart of mine is rusted

I wake in the morning
And I sleep at night
This wedding ring of mine
Is starting to feel a little tight
Ice cream smile with a
Blueberry triumphant smile
I can't help it
If this is the way it is

Give me a dollar
And I'll double
Your take
No one seems to understand
There's nothing
At stake
Let me alone
Read my mind
Count the clock
Tell the time

Through the drapes
Pass the trees
And the sky
I caught her eyes
In a lie
When you know
You know
So I turned myself around

And I ride
For a mountain side
Desolate and awash in solitude
A caught cradle
Babies breath and sand
She always told me
I had the hardest hands

Rejection
Is motivations best and
Worst
Friend
A stinging nettle collides with a
Hissing kettle
And I'm stripped and searched
In the local airport
Cursing my desire to move
To prove
Is was never meant to love,
But to run

No fault of mine.
Genetics of germination
Permeate all around me
I've lost my way
My footing
My grip
Another misstep
And I'll be to weak
To catch myself

Broken mirrors
Show a thousand faces
Miles of caves
A million voices
Sky of diamonds
Bird made of leather
I'm too proud
To live forever

Why can't it just be true?
That thing you wanna' do.
Tell yourself you can
And you will, one day.
But don't be surprised
If what you get is not what
You expected
We all have to pay a price
For a slice of this fleeting life

I feel myself changing
Yes, everything's rearranging
I'm lost on an ocean front
My hearts on another stunt
And since we've been apart
I'm finding it hard
To come up
With a better start

When you got no road to drive on
And the snow gets too high to go through
When you've run outta' fuel
And the world's only been cruel
Make your way down to where I live
Near the apple trees and the forest groves
We can talk about your worries
We can speak about your woes
Make your way down to where I live
And we'll give it another try
We'll give it another give

Breakfast is the hardest meal,

silver spoons scraping China bowls

coffee, black, sugared
swirling down into my ragged stomach

I want to burn down this kitchen
with it's stove and kettle that
unsettle me

floorboards scorched with my hot feet, a thin grey dressing gown that hangs

limply around my limbs

I want to sit at the breakfast table and scornfully scratch hearts into the wood

there is no love here

only bowls and spoons
kettles and stoves