Penguinness Part 1

In Search of Penguinness Part 1

Look for the black and whiteness

You know this greyness doesn’t pay

I want life to be so righteous

There must be a wrong and right way

You know we need to find Penguin-ness

The white head upon black hills

There is a place they must drink Guinness

Whoever said that blackness kills?

All in all, in all this whiteness

There is not a hint of beige

If only my rugs could know this rightness

Like the black ink dries on the page

We are Penguins, yes, you’ve guessed it

There is no fish we haven’t found

On the summit of the iceberg

Little mountains are our ground

But like us there beneath the surface

That’s where mass of thought is sound

Yet what recurs to us is whiteness

In the vastness of the white surround

So, we search for black and whiteness

Even if they’re poles apart

It is best to reach for the brightness

Than to sink with a black heart

If you see us treat us kindly

For to see us is a sight

Then you’ll know the snow less blindly

For our image is there by right

In our search, we dig a tunnel

Through ice-shards that glimmer bright

Because in the darkness of the big funnel

Flows the Guinness of Penguin delight

I make no joke to follow screens of smoke

There are no cloak and dagger plans

It is a clear quest of all Penguin folk

To find meaning and truth in their own lands

We go crawling on, stumbling our old shuffle

The Fleet gulls slip through the sky

On the ground our feathers are all a ruffle

The music of the wind blows chill

As the arctic choirs shrill

Their moaning hues, and closed cup whistle

Blowing relentless as a tumbling thistle

Across the plain comes again, and again

Like a black cat in an all white world

Turning loose the barrels

Like cannons of assault

This way, that way the ice-rivers dance like a colt

The moon spins its silver threads of light

Across the sculpted ice flow,

And turns the blandishments of might

Into figurines of Michelangelo

Like a spider she spins her moon lit web

To capture unsuspecting travellers in their ebb

At lowest point they’ll sink beneath the milky mist of frost

This is why as Penguins we stand and remain together at any cost

This is how we outlast the land

And take the whip from out its hand

And if you’re different and don’t fit in

There is no place for you to go

It is stand still and shiver, or follow the ice floe

And that is where I must go now

To find and follow the black and white cow

Of sacred Penguinness

To find the route and heart of true Guinness

I set off, my feet a waddle

Away from the manger and my mother’s swaddle

Away from whiteness and the Penguin din

Into the quietness of the never ending

Away to where the fresh gull flew

And the bonds of heaven know no curfew

Where days turn markedly into night

Bees are swarming and the river’s bright

Trees grow green an seaweed rustles

Hawks now seen above grass’s tussle

I’ve reached the great Reindeer plains

Of Northern Canada, full of aches and pains

See the constellation of Andromeda

She chases the bull with bow and arrow

And I think when my belly was full

But my world was so narrow

And on I walk turning to skin and bone

I must find fish soon or die alone

I must meet a fellow traveller

To aid me in my quest

And that is the flame that keeps me burning

To find the sacred Penguinness

I walk to where the Salmon sing

And the Grizzly bear’s roar in the mountains ring

To where the Eagles fly to their nest

And on I push on what is my quest

The road is hard, the shore like rubble

Cuts my feet and spells out trouble

I stagger down into a cave

And place my life in God’s hands to save

Soon after one or two days

A wandering Caribou comes to its mouth and neighs

Licks my face, nudges my side

And with God’s grace I with him abide

As he carries me across wide plain

I stare up to the stars again

And feel sure I see there a glass like shape

Pouring a starry substance into Orion’s nape

The Caribou drops me after he has drunk

Of the fresh waters of Lake Michigan where his hooves had sunk

Exhausted he lies down to take his rest

I thank him climb off and continue my quest

Now I near the Autumnal East coast

It seems to me a marvel of colours its beauty to boast

I find I must board upon a transatlantic boat

The island of Nantucket, with the tough whalers seen

Was where I first journeyed beyond Virginia’s green

There I found an Irish whale ship

Ready to return from a worldwide skip

Back to the emerald shores of Ireland

Back to the Penguin’s heart land

Art Book Launch in Arnolfini April 2015

http://flatholmsociety.org.uk/event/flat-holm-artists-book-launch-and-reading/

Above is a link to the Flat Holm page that refences our book launch. Please follow the link to find out where and when in April 2015 Flat Holm Book will be launched. Thanks

The Egg that Rolled

The Egg that rolled

Just an ordinary egg

Came out of a chicken

On an adventure away from the kitchen

Down cobbled road

And Shaftsbury’s Hovis hill

It bowled its ovaloid body

Driven by an inner will

Narrowly avoiding disaster

As it crossed the road

This egg was its own master

And had destiny under its thumb

Like a Prince who came out of a toad

It missed each pram wheel by inches

Then evading the horses hoof

This was a living reminder

That life lives on a knife edge

If ever we needed proof

And trundling like a lost general

In search of his egg army

He seemed self important to the untrained eye

When what guided his blindness

Was courage and faith in his Life

So there is the irony

It was just that this was a fortunate egg

In that every move he would try

Came out a sparkling success

This was no shell-shocked guy

His formaldehyde soul

Grew very cold

Like Jekyll and Hyde

He was an egg of two minds

Brought together in the oxygen of his shell

Albumin and yolk

Played some practical joke

To make him indestructible

Meant he could not die

And so on he rolled

Down the tragic road

That was his life

Being an egg that could not crack

Meant likewise that he could not hatch

So to be spared the ritual

Humiliation of the chicken

On the pecking order

His will told him to leave the kitchen

And find another abode to board on

The ocean was his calling

From when he was a foetus

And soon he came to the ocean's cusp

In a land named Lyme Regis

He pervade the sea for all it was worth

From a top a cliff top and there he did perch

But as soon as he had settled down

He found himself in an albatross' town

Where busy gulls, guillemots’ and puffins

Were roosting and laying eggs ten to the dozen

And by chance a bird named Harold arrived

And plucked this egg so that he may survive

So, on they fled across ocean swell

Well into the evening and things were going well

Then down he landed on the coast of France

And said to the egg, you are free now take your chance

So the egg trundled on down roads that were familiar

He heard the faint call of accordions, smelt onions and the sky that was vermillion

Past hawthorn nests of owls

And smiling white cows

He alighted himself upon a hay cart

Pulled by an ox

Then travelled on there

With less a wing more a prayer

Until his wanderings brought him to the Alps

Now by this time he had made many friends

There was Alphonse the fox

And Bernadette the owl

Stephanie the squirrel

And Miriam the mouse

They all were dressed in berets and striped jumpers

And the egg dressed like them too

And they all said "it suits you"

So not out of place did the egg seem now

When he journeyed up the foot hills

Of the Alps with a cow

More the traveller with means,

For many things had he seen

And made a small fortune

Displaying in a circus

Where a strong man named Roger de la Forte

Tried to crack him with his muscles

But all that cracked were the piggy banks

Of the circus goers he would hustle

So saying “fair well” to the Ferris wheel

And “so- long” to the Ring Master Monsieur Devil

He journeyed on into Switzerland's fair Climbs

And soon found the time

To visit the sights and squares of Geneva

One day he stopped by the lake's great fountain

And watched a long time thinking it as tall as a mountain

And what sprang to his egg's mind was a plan

He began to hatch

A dream that one day he might fly

So at the dead of night

He took on a gondola to alight

Amid the luscious lake of the fair town

And boldly going where no egg had gone before

He nestled himself into the sleeping fountains core

And there he waited until the next morn

When the fountain man turned the water pipes on

: Then to everyone's delight

In the crisp morning light

The egg was shot clean into the stratosphere

Now feeling less earth encumbered

This egg went through the ozone

And around the earth

He orbited like an orb

Some clever folk from NASA said

There goes a UFO, proof that life

From another planet has arrived

And much was made by Europe

Of the flying eggs orbit

And it put to bed many wars

For the people of earth saw that they were not alone in the universe

So they no longer felt lonely or frightened anymore

Then the egg left the Earth's gravity

And was pulled by positivity

Out to the furthest region's of the solar field

Where he settled on Pluto

Feeling all was going well

A miracle then occurred

This Egg who could not hatch

Finally did just that

And the first extraterrestrial chicken was born

He went by the name Prince Pluto

And spent many a year going to and fro

Discovering what else could be explored

Until finally alighting

In a cave away from lightening

He found another chicken who was earth-bored

Together they made a family

And are living still quite happily

Raising many Plutonians abroad

Last Year's Poems

A City Walk Down Under

Fitzroy to Brunswick St

Smith’s to Johnson’s Rd

The lanes I walk are many, with

Many a heavy load

Shop windows are light as a fairy’s

Though without the rains are cold

The people are blown verily

Up and down the streets of gold

Bronze statues offer avenues for the brave and bold

Snatches of photographs of bookshops

Signing autographs

A St Kilda Builder of autobahns

To a coffee house strode

Jazz in a bar off Blessington St

Rose in the arm’s of chessington meets

The mauve army of the black and white sheep

Who sail their newspaper ships to work

The metro creeps like a worm underneath

Trams as blood clots are forced up the veins of the street

Corpuscular people disembark and greet

Then form fresh tissues in cells of cafes

The city’s cognitive organs are its university and schools

Its stomach is its shopping centres and mauls

Its liver or lungs are its business districts

Skyscrapers, factories that hum

Shipping yards of cargo make for a mouth and anus

Where it imports cars, exports grains, oil miscellaneous

If it had legs it would get up and run

But this city is Melbourne

It is an octopus which spreads itself in a rock pool

Under the sun

Frost

The icicles tortuous hang

Below the bridge as if a fang

And the cold, cold air

What made man in this frozen spirit land?

What sacrosanct communion can him to Nature conjoin?

Is this Lent enough

To be reminded of his Love?

The Hawk soars above

But a shadow is what we see

What is this absence of essence

This non-being

Less than the sun, less than the big sky

It is unbeing – the ice of the land

Unbeginning Eden’s Rivers

Unbeginning time and man

In the chill depths of understanding

In the frozen waters of despair

I feel your love still surrounding

Through the ice layers I see you there

When the cold clasp of evening has gripped

The saffron sun in its palm

Then the ice winds moaning

Comes as an arctic fox

Prowling about the farm

Beneath the arch of the bridges fangs

Where the icicles of a jagged tooth hangs

Gawping at the abandoned fields

Where the moon white river runs

Solicitous in its death dance

The earth puts on its frost mask

To entrance

Life out to its last waltz

Its last moon light tango

And Jack is tripping,

Is slipping on the ring of the horizon

In its embers of hedges

And brittles sedges

It is the eye-line of a fox – sharp and cold

And I know I am too late

I wish to give up my soul

To that harsh relief

Of the fox, whose slinking loner figure

Is wily to this life’s lease

And beneath a wooded dry hedge

His eye is bright

And his heart still beats

Ode to a Toad

The toad is more akin to muddy holes,

Lies in wait beneath a mossy stone

He is Charles Atlas

Always wishing to be lifting weights

Carrying the world on his shoulders

The unfortunate thing

Like a Shakespeare’s King

Ugly as a broken plate

All warty, ill-seeming to company

Apart from one or two nights a year

When he must mate

Then out on a midnight stroll

Solipsist, the harbinger of droll

Should have been born to the Mafia

And just sat there

Stayed there with his Fairy Queen

But when she kissed him

On that midnight road

He arched his crooked, boiled, rumpled back

And remained a toad

Sidcot Swallet – Burrington Coombe Nov 9^th 2013

Down, down into the deep

Into the depths of the hills which sleep

Earthly death the temporal bowl

The bowels of the earth

The hell hole

Dark and black

Damp not cold

Warm as bark

From the fires below

Down we go, down, down, down

Down to the depths of the pits dark pole

Rock that’s round, slime and mould

Warm and black don’t lose your soul

Farther back, farther still

Reaches the slack of the Mendip sill

Subterranean rivers run

Inside the place hid from the sun

Farther back and farther still

Runs coal black the rocky gill

Breathes the stone lung

Its wet warmth not chill

Yet eerie stack upon stack the boulders fill

When so far down

Beneath the crown of the hill

When above you lay the weight of a hundred ton sill

What drives you down is an impossible will

It draws you down

To the world beneath

To cavernous clowns

Who hurl your belief

Into echoes around the hideous relief

Where a voice may drown without knowing a grief

Where the fantasy stalactites like acrobats stow

And chastened as sleeping bats roost under bows

Of roofs a thousand feet below

Below, below, to and fro the arches bend and breech the throw

They lend a spectacular frieze

As in a cysteine chapel we fall to our knees

And reach such wonder lust as only heaven must know

A man must be humble, crawl and lower like a snake

Slither on belly, on back on sides between cracks

Around bends without using his eyes

Just feel with his feet

Trust to the unknown

For it is in refusing to accept defeat

That for our greater sins we atone

Next generation of poets

http://nextgenerationpoets.com/
An interesting website relating to recently published poets and newly appreciated.

Flat Holm

https://www.pinterest.com/o7To/flat-holm-ottographic-artists-book/
The link above concerns the book on Flat Holm
www.ottographic.co.uk
This link is to Otto's website his Art books including how to order a copy of the Flat Holm Book.
After spending afive months on Flat Holm island I collaborated with the graphic screen print artist Otto to make a book about the place. It contains my word and his pictures if you are interested and they really are very nice pictures and not bad words then go to the link above and order yourself a copy or at least take a look at the samples thanks.

https://flatholmisland.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/a-poem-by-philip-gross/

Above is a link to the Flat Holm word press blog, follow it to find out more interesting news about the island

Selections

ermine

The fox

The fox stalked across the field in the late afternoon light

A ragged and thread bare specimen, ravaged from the cruel cold winter

That lengthened into February

He stops looks round searchingly

Yet distracted, somehow fidgeting with his own dire experience

His own state of affairs

My mother points out the starlings swooping above him as they ready to roost

Among the levels further down along the reeds

The fox moves sleekly, slinking like a chain of bones concertinaing

And then squats to lay his scent or shit

I have almost lost interest as he becomes the grey of sky, the brown and pale yellows of winter hedgerows

May be he was the fox that ate our chickens I say to my mother

All those years ago

He is an intruder, yet somehow respected for his cleverness despite this. And I feel somehow very safe and sanitized in this my mother’s house but seeing him also vulnerable. Like seeing a thief from behind the confines of a ‘CCTV’ camera – catching him in the act. It is the interest in his survival, his spirit and hut spa. Confidence in wildness, somehow he will always be there, in the back of your mind.

Otter

Otter sleek, Minky whale black

Bitter as beer, the coal black water

Mirrors as obsidian

This corpuscular form

Meiosis divided itself

From the jelly mass of the lake

Yet never breaking the meniscus

- it bobs it's whiskers appear damp

And shining

Back rises and slinks back into the black

Great Breech Wood

I went to walk in Great Breech wood

And found myself where trees abound

The North wind blew between dead twigs

And curled the leaves that lay on the ground

My nose it twitched, my ears they itched

I felt the presence of deer and hounds

I saw a squirrel run to a trees furthest reach

And heard the forest birds song of sound

The nettles stung, the beeches browned

The Oaks were strengthened by the ground

The leaves curled in the winter furls

That twirled the wind and around me wound

And my love did call from beneath an ash’s eves

Like a satellite I was drawn to its planetary crown

Then Great breach wood was torn asunder

It gave forth lumber of Larch and pine

All of it under a winter storms thunder

Which rattled the bones of all those near

Their toppling heights and treacherous climbs

My dear lady was struck by a bolt of lightening

A love dart from the Gods struck her in her prime

And the planetary dark that ensued was a wonder

To walk in this park I felt was a crime

My romantic soul wished to lurch in search of a number

By which I could dial then bring back the time

But the forest which was wiser than mountains

Held my soul fast so alone I did climb

To birth the last hope I had of my loved one

And set her soul free her one God to find

Now alone I walked through the forest alive

Badgers scurried like bank clerks collecting

Their wad of twigs and worms like knives

The wood pecker sung the pigeon cooed

A single black bird alone mewed

And rats slumbered beneath

Rotting tree limbs

As foxes cavorted singing howling hymns

Then the forest was then quiet as a graveyard hushed

As greenery flourished

And foliage lushed

The sandal wearing saint was knighted

The night began its game

Half housed between this world and the next

Advantaged

As in the eves called the owls

And many Stations of the Cross were planted

As herbs and forest plants were avowed

Into sacred celebration

Of the moon lit majestic cows (boughs)

Who’s alien forms besmirched the landscape

And past the night with heavy sounds

Until in the dawn rose the single starlings

In the flock of chorus loud

And beneath the canopy of heaven

Wrote the names of those in shroud

To be remembered by the martyrs

Who had seen and died,

And lived then bowed

And this I saw while I was walking

All this was mine of to be most proud

Inside the Breech of the Great Wood Vaunting

And opened its vaults to the sun and the cloud

The Garden Stroll

In the early light

When witches candles turn low to smite

The earthly walkers on a stroll

Beside an ancient garden wall

Then one says to the other

“How strange!?

The brick work of Eden has been rearranged.”

As they ponder mortar and stone

They feel the feeling they aren’t alone

Then an archway becomes clear

Designated this way; ”Do not Enter Here!”

They hold hands then cross the threshold

Into a garden bright and so bold

The green’s of willow

The lush of Ash

Oaken avenues stand in stash

All look starkly like someone’s preserve

They feel darkly like they do not deserve

And then a hare and next a rabbit

Come by close as if by habit

Disarmed the intruders are quite standoffish

Then they realise they appear quite selfish

And pet and talk kind words to the mammals

Feeling next they may meet some camels

As they stand and pervade the view

The garden’s paradise changes hue

And far over a foreign hill

They see Cain fight Able, until one is killed

And open under heaven’s skies

They see rains fall and flooded lies

Noah’s Ark is there by chance

But many a bad creature takes death’s dance

And suddenly they too are running from the flood

By this they find the ties of water

Much stronger than those of blood

All washed up now on heaven’s shore

They think of their stroll to the garden’s core

And they think to themselves, but neither comment

They should not walk in wherever they wanted

Sing oh Lord

Sing oh Lord to the moon and the sky

To the land of the Blind

Where the pity birds fly

And bees buzz merry like the fruits and the flies

In the land where the pity birds fly

Sing oh Lord to the ones who have many

And the ones who are lost

But have not crossed on the ferry

Sing oh Lord to the Queen of the sky

To the Land where the pity birds fly

Hear their song, like a balm on the cherry

Like a sweet salve to the unchained mind

Hear oh lord how they sing you a tune

In the land where the pity birds festoon

Hear oh lord how their hearts are not heavy

With the price of their lives or the hanging moon

Hear oh Lord just what they may stir

In the land where the pity birds flew

Duck Pond

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

And the straw is yellow

Next to the track,

Where the ivy creeps beneath the Alder and Willow

Which brush their stems and stem their flow back

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

Ducks fight and splash about

It could be a war or a turn about

Or a pair of lovers in a spate

One who loves, the other who hates

But deep in the duck pond

They see to their deed

Where the willow weeps in the green duck weed

Down in the duck pond,

Where fellows blow their horn

And the little spirited sprout

Sings for the sweet summer corn

While the West wind blows

Then across it the Easterly is torn

All along the deep duck pond

Where all the birds were born

Severed heads on severed spikes

All seem dead but go ask the tyke

Shadows shake in the shallows like

The deep duck pond

Of the bad old Pike

He swims about, he asks not twice

He sees a snout, then snaps his vice

And there he has you, pulls you down

Into the depths of the duck pond to drown

Where hell is a spirit on the water

And the wind chills the slender necks of swans

And the rails with the moor hens daughter

Falls to the pails and the sweet shorn sun

Where the kale sways in the shallows

And the bulrushes blow their seed

Deep as heartache over the water

Of the deep duck pond with the green duck weed