Poetry

Monday 27 June 2022

Statistics

 Statistics :

It's just sex, death and money

Wednesday 15 June 2022

Seaside serenade

 Because she is a sea wolf 

She will defend her litter

Because the dragon rises above

The winter sky so bitter


Because she has an assassin's eye

She can kill me dead

Just with that one killer look

I'm a fish landed, 

Caught upon her hook


It's just the sea

Is full of sharks

And a harpoonist must cry

Out to new moon evangelists

Who in the sunlight die

But my soul is a balloonist

Readying to fly

Come join me in my basket

Blast it we can only try

Tuesday 14 June 2022

Orwell news

 Pennies in the hands of miners

Stocks and shares go underground

Anywhere you find shoe shiners

Liberty is lost and found


And the rainbows and the diamonds

Shining out in summer times

Can you see the Maypole flying

Colours of the flag in primes


Count me in or count me outwards

I am like the acrobat

Flying from all the high wires

 Swinging high or falling flat


Don't make roller-skates for spiders

Don't make gates for garden climes

There the blue bird waits his fate

But love and hate the church bell chimes


Singing homage to Catalonia

Keep the Aspidistra flying

I am nearly home to ya

Even though my eyes are crying


In the house of the new spring

All the white things lie

Like worms on strings

And carpet baggers

Liars will their tongues soon tie

Set them free

 Baby you'll never know

What you meant to me

When you love somebody

You've got to set them free


And baby When all is said

and done then finally you'll see

When you love somebody

You've got to set them free


There are murderers in chains

And they sway in the arms of the sea

Well all that I know is

When you love somebody

You've got to set them free


To kill a love is kindness 

But so close to this is cruelty

When you love somebody

You've got to set them free


And when the wheel turns

Then maybe you'll return to me

When you love somebody

You've got to set them free


The world now

 If in truth my death is dying

Then like a bird out the window flying

Goes the spirit of the word

Hangs the Damoclesian sword

And if in hearts 

The songs are sung

Of choosing right or wrong

That's hung

In the scales of a breathless lung

Love breathes, love is silence long


I should know their ways

Are shining

To the ever receding horizon

In the burning of a child's eye

In the breath of a mother's sigh

This world is not long for keeping

But who owns her or him in sleeping

When we sleep perchance of dreaming

That this world is soft and gleaming

Not dull and hard like knives cutting

But through stars our dreams are jutting

Pushing over far frontiers

Of clouds that drench like children's tears

Of all lost meaning in innocence drowning

Until tears turn to laughter, smiles from frowning

And in wastelands spring love's eternal waters

That soothe like a balm God's sons and daughters

Who play their parts in peace and slaughters

Oh what a world it is now

Saturday 11 June 2022

In crowds

 In crowds, you never feel lonely

In crowds

you're never far out

In crowds

Anyone can be phoney

In crowds your anonymity isn't in doubt


Don't you float like a cloud

Above it all

Like a cloud in the crowd

In the dance hall

Don't you know you stand out

In crowds


In crowds, you can never feel lonely

In crowds they all sing and they shout

And this is life and life only

Now this must be what life's all about

Monday 6 June 2022

beautiful hard

 Beautiful hard

Like a diamond, a gem

Sparkling in my palm

Oh who ever needed a friend

But diamonds, diamonds, rubies and pearl

All these are an infinity in the world of my girl


She is lost in the emerald sea

I search the doom bar

And the mermaid banks

I roll my R's and I give thanks

For small mercies of the gem stone planks

I'll walk for you across the sea

My hard hearted love

My dragons scree

My belief is love

Is hammer and tongs

Oh what does it matter

If I'm right or wrong?

I've been broken in the field of love

The warrior queen has

slashed my shield

She has broken free

She's sailing down the Amazon

At a million miles an hour

And I am like a falcon trailing in her power

Road crew

 Oh they're cleaning the drains down the street

Singing like canaries so sweet

Their hard iron bells

Clang like workers in hell

Dropping pipes with a wing and wang,

a crash and a bang

And a "oh honey can't you tell!?"

Their pneumatic drills

Pirouetting with skill

As the turn of the screw

This and every road crew

Who I ever knew


As they shave off a lump

Or grind down a bump

To make it fit

They might jump

And flatten a hump

Oh all hail to the road crew


They sing as they sting

With hammer and tong

Their black tar rhyme

But who's done them wrong?

No no one in time

Just the prime paint of this song

The white lines they write on our roads


These Shakespeares of tarmac

So white they are black

So dark and yet light of spirit and flight

Or fight on the pavement oh curb on your Kerb

They'll put a curse on both your houses if you try to disturb

Their road work

Their road work

What's it like on the other side of the road?

They won't ever know for their is an endless ode


Thursday 2 June 2022

Measuring time

 One foot in Hungary, one foot in the dark

One foot on a higher plain

One foot in the grave

Six feet of the millipede

The ant on a trampoline

One foot, Rabbit thumper

Hologram I've seen


One foot, two foot, three foot, four

Push me backwards through the open door

Too afraid to step through

Too afraid to fly

Too afraid to live,

You may be too afraid to die

Fear yes in feet, measured in inches or miles

Fear like a far away train

Rumbling for a while

Something on in the background

Through the static noise

I can hear a pin prick

Feel a pea through a mattress

Feel a foot or two

The distance of my heart

 We got the news

On our island

From the rivers

Down to the sea


I am alone 

On my island of the self

I miss someone so much

She is like a ship

Come sailing passed my island

in the sea


So alone in the distance

Of my heart

So alone in the distance of my heart

You say potato I say photo

 I took a photography and cookery night class at the local college. I hadn't done too well in school and had a habit of getting my words mixed up so I was a little worried about the essay writing, but I felt pretty confident on the practical side. So when I read the instruction to now cook the photo in the oven for 50 mins I thought perhaps it could have been a strange request for my end of year roll. On the other hand I was more than willing to dip my baking potato in sodium iodine and to hang it up in a dark room in order to develop it. the results were remarkable, I won the end of year photography prize, apparently my post modern take on potatography went down a storm. Moreover I did exceedingly well in the cookery competition in which I gained third prize for most developed photogenic food category, only pipped to the post by a half baked apple iPhone and a Samsung soufflé. 

Dance hall

 The sound of the feet in the hall

The tap tapping has stopped

On the old wooden boards

Quiet it creaks

And scores in shores,

Like the waves on the sandy beach


The leaping, the sweating, the 

laughing too

The going wrong, the who's who

The meeting of feet,

The look and the move

Swinging of hips

Beating of boots


Pirouetting

Waltzing

Gingerly stepping

Taking flight

Like a swan

And the house is so empty quiet now

Now that the dancers have gone

These bones

 I am a skeleton poet

I have to have lived and died

To write again

Get hold of my bones

Lay them in a line

Try to figure out the sense

Where did I come from

How was this thing arranged?


Everything was blown up you see

When he died


He had to write himself back into life


They rearranged his pieces like a puzzle

A shoulder blade from India

A collar bone from Bangkok

From England his muzzle


A thigh bone from the Russian step

And a rib cage from Mexico

It all came together

An Everyman

So they say

This skeleton poet

Who came to read on that summer's day


He is gone now

Into the grasses

Under the earth for to recline

Forever and a day

Maybe in rebirth you will find

Him writing poems

Again

About this or that or other

About how they sold the Times

About how he loved his mother

And what would a woman

Skeleton say back?

Shake her bones

Rattle the bone sack

Tell us poems are things of clay

The flesh has wrought desire

But words are the bones that hold fast

After the music has been burnt by fire