Poetry

Tuesday 24 October 2017

Book line and sinker

You caught me book line and sinker
With that sentence of yours
Turned my cheeks a bit pinker
With that fish verb doing its best
To escape the nets, and nest
Of the dark owl of Grammar

In your forest of words I was lost
For a moment that lasted an hour, or days
I cannot tell,
They were like little bells
Tinkling in the trees of a's and b's
Then like soot
These burnt words fell, their fire
Having died out
Like ash, they lay on the ground
White words pale with memory

I kick them and let the dust fly up in a cloud
Translation is soft, it makes little sound
Remembering understanding is quiet, not loud

Saturday 21 October 2017

White Trunks

Sitting upon a giant trunk
A white leviathan once sunk
Like Moby Dick, caught and weighed
Left its ballein skeleton - sunbleached for days
Trees are like dinosaurs of the hidden valley
Echo back the white chalk cliffs
Which straddle up above the canopy
The semisphere of blue to kiss

Wood peckers drill holes about
Bull ants fill them with their snouts
Searching out the sweetest honey
As pirates seeking out hidden money

All at once the leaves do drop
In an unknown breeze
Like a gentle woman walking by, inexplicable
Ease
The winter comes as Summer's release

Just passing through

Oh what a perfect morning
Just passing through
The valley in the early dawning
Reds and pale yellow leaf hues

Insects in the bright meadow
Appearing out of hill shadow
Buttercup and clover
And low thorn bush cover

The slope and the pines
Keeping ancient time
With the Sun's clock
That awakens them from a dream
So shallow

Its dial winds and the birds awake
A brand new morning to make

Thursday 19 October 2017

Orchestral movements

There they come with their flutes and violins
As they walk in
Like a hot knife through butter
They cut her
They fill the Cathedral atmosphere
With tones uplifting in the air

And smartly dressed in suit and tie
In black lapels, collars that would fly
If they were not buttoned down
In formal attire
The occasion calling for its desire

Calling for Hosanna to come down from above
Calling to praise the public square doves
Calling the broken, the lame and the sick
Calling them all within the walls thick

Unbroken symphonies of sound
The memories of lives once lost
Now found

In the ruins of the church
Long after the Turkish Wars
When Christianity knelt low
Yet stronger seeds would somehow sow

Then calling you back from imagined histories
To the present day mysteries
Of the hot knife cutting
The voice from a milk bottle chested singer
Singing in a cage - the church
Within a cage - her ribs
Within a cage - her heart
Like a bird on a perch

To what heights can the human heart soar?
On the days remembering the war?

Friday 13 October 2017

A Boring poem

Ruth was over the moon, she was an astronaut
Barry was down in the dumps, he was a recycling operative
Norman was under the weather, he was a meteorologist on holiday
Faith was keeping her money for a rainy day, she was married to Norman
Bill was taking the plunge, his toilet was blocked
Gertrude was footing the Bill, she was bill's chiropodist
Nancy was washing her hands of him, she was Tony's nurse
Tony had a bone to pick with her
But he chose the wishbone, and Jill told him to pull the other leg
But Francis broke a leg, he wasn't a chicken when he plucked up the courage
To walk the boards
However Sally got stage fright when she saw a deer with antlers
And the dog had a nervous tick, it wasn't prepared to suck his blood
Cathy was given the cold shoulder by the butcher
There were no flies on him, he used deoderant