City Zens

CitiZen

The Zen of the City

Through the City Bazaar

So calm and so pretty

Like the King’s own Hussars

So markedly poised

In the river, the joys

Of the arcade or bar

Dogs stop their howling

Gulls stop their screech

Car’s horns are silenced

To the avenues of beech

The pavement cracks heal over

Plastic bags find their home

The wind blown detritus

Bins itself with Kentucky fried chicken bones

The Zen of the city

Is so Martian like and strange

The guards all look at themselves

And mark how they’ve changed

Anger and road rage

Malice and strife

Are not more than foot notes

In the book of city life

Loch's Constancy

Loch’s Constancy

What is this Princess of water?

Sparkling in her bejewelled gown

Just a Loch of Mother Nature’s daughter

Flowing from the father down

Rippled black shades and wraths

That touch like a feather stroke

Bristle the lake

Under a swallows fledge

Yet undisturbed the currents stoke

Stirring up the cauldron valley

In between mountain sides

That once cut by ice rivers rally

Now they rest to the sea’s abide

See the Princess in her parade

Pass along the mountain streets

Now the Glen is green with envy

An audience of trees

Stand to applaud the bride

There she goes to the sea to Marry

Rivers must meet, the union be tied

All water wives will obey

Neptune’s rule

He sends them forth then draws them back

With the tide

Avalon Marshes Sculpture trail Poems

Wells Cathedral Blues

To the Apostles and Saints on the Cathedral Walls

All you Bishops and crowned kings

Come down from off the palisade where you watch

Come walk with me on the green today

Come open the twenty second catch

All day long, you keep the walls

Like shadows ever shifting

The sun comes up then fades away

Like our hearts we are ever lifting

Come down you rooks from your castle

Come step off your Cathedral Carousel

(We all may find so many things to keep busy

But take time out by the spring and the well)

Come down and bring your gift-parcel

Of Christian scroll to tell

I wish your watch were not so long

I wish it were safe for you to descend

I fear the world has moved along

Beyond where your merry-go-round ends

Come step off your stone plinths

Stand your weary feet down

Lay on the grass your batholiths

Lay down your heavy crown

The people on the green are not made of stone

Our hearts beat and break in time

There’s no sense spending eternity alone

To remain up there is a crime

The Saints and Apostles go stepping in time

The Cathedral Walls are weeping

Shine on their light in a shade of lime

While below on the green, their disciples are sleeping

Does this sound familiar

Poet’s Corner

We wait we wonder

We wonder and we wait

He is sat in the corner

Staring up at Heaven’s Gate

Saint Peter was a Poet

The Poet’s shuffle, reassemble

Like Penguins until a new one of their number

Is in the corner

The warmest part for to create

We shall speak in tongues

With the Ouija-board the muse we shall summon

Come speak to us from the other side

Oh Muse of the other world

Spirit from the dark side of the moon

Is it Monday? A bold but confused Poet name Henry Hymn

Prophesized

The day of the mons, the Monads

The Moaners and the Mona Lisas

Who leased her? Who Owns her?

This spirit of the wind of breath?

Her Mongrel Gods barked the Major Dog

The King of Canis over the Caspian Sea

Who hung his jowls on the table top

His Moustache bristling with the Confidence

Of the Landed and free

What phantoms have called you here?

Do these walls have ears?

Only in the corners spoke the old guy from behind his beer

Only in the corners do the Poets hear

The muse

She whispers through mouse holes

As soft as mice squeak

As clean as a ski slope under drifted snow

As dry as a desert island

Said Saint Thomas the retired Priest

 Haling back his Hale to heaven

Each present gift of manna

A hail stone in the eye of the muse

Like David and Goliath

He draws his sling while enemies

Surround him

The promised land is within him

And She walks in his pastures green

Where he lays down with her

And Jesus looks on saying this

Is not what He had in mind

Beyond this at the end of the evening Adam turns up with

His Apple half chewed

And Eve is already there

Saying I’ve been waiting for you with my muse

Is Poetry what you intended by your fall

Temptation was just over the garden Wall

No said Adam I admit I walked out

Of Eden’s gates

Poetry is not the lost key, its just another way back

But it for now will have to do 

The Painter

The Painter

He was a crazy painter

Making crazy paving of the pavements

He painted crazy brushstokes

Of the crazy government

Who left him empty pockets

In his crazy pants

He filled his hands with bristling brushes

Like the mazy rushes of his random rants

The Lazy Lazarus street which lays half dead

At his feet,

He brings back to life with his dancing soles

His shoeless taps that run through his pictures

And drain his paints are the street’s life blood

He wandered the zodiac circles around the platz

Meeting bears abating, Dogs who were a mating

And bulls dancing on their heels

Archers hunting ghosts

He drew looks from city goers

Painted their eyes like diamond stars

Stuffy old ladies in thatched hats

Whose opinions he dissolved into

Linseed oil and turpentine jars

Their prejudice like jaundice

Yellows their features

Whose roots were in the bitterness

Over beauty they had lost

He gave them it back in his pictures

And all was beautiful again

On Lazarus street

As he walked there

leaving his frames in the square

Resting on the shoe trodden floor

Under foot his masterpieces

Are obscured

Wires

Wires

Blackbirds sit on a wire

Gulls on a rooftop do too

Scan the horizon until of it they tire

Return to the Sea Lochside view

Men in chain gangs walk the high street

They are prisoners of the pub-crawl

But are left in the rain to hang on a fence wire

With sad dog tired faces all in a drawl

The buses hug hills like the beetles

Buzz like bees to their stops

With feet stuck full of pollen people

They search another flower head where their pollen they drop

Nature tends towards patterns

People by nature are dots

Someone draws lines between us

Joins us together whether we like it or not

All I see around me are wires

Electrical fences what not

Sometimes the lines are cold frozen

Sometimes they buzz like their hot

We, like the birds, sit on fences that are broken

Watching skylight horizons

It may be but a cheap token

But I like it all the same as if it is not