Poetry

Friday, 8 April 2016

Travelling Home


There’s a sky that is a foreign sky
A cloud that rolls too high

There’s a mountain gives an eerie feel
As an Eagle’s cry

There’s a land that lies like a kaleidoscope
Of all the other lands
And brings back to memory
Fragments like cracks in your hands

There’s a time and a freshness of air
That you search for but just cannot find
And then there’s the touch of a tree
Like its bark is a layer of mind

And as you recall these things suddenly
Where you are seems quite bare
And you look about you for signs or a landmark
To keep you from this despair

There’s a thing that the wilderness does
-it calls you from the depths of your brain

It calls you to prove yourself brave
Be courageous and prepared to suffer great pain

There’s even a thing Society does –
It calls you to seek out fortune or fame

It says where you’ve come from means nothing
Go forth and make a great name

And even your own mother and father
Insist on you going somewhere else
This place where you’re born was your playground
Go forth and discover yourself

All these voices are calling you
And so you go forth in good faith
To board on a ship or a train or a plane
And you travel out at a pace

And you arrive in a great excitement
Full of yourself and own ideas
And it doesn’t seem to you like an arrogance
To have turned up in a foreign land
To face your fears

It seems you do what is expected of you
It seems living must mean to go to extremes
And so you throw your money at the carnival caravan
And you follow it like you follow your dreams

Except one day something is stolen
Some possession worth to you more than Gold

And it lies on you to be beholden
That a thing can be worth more than for what it is sold

And a series of catastrophes strikes you
And you start to see in shades of black

And it seems that the paradise where you’ve chosen to stay
Is beginning to want you to go back

And you start fights with the local lawmen
For not helping you when you were down

And they beat you until you’re battered and broken
Then they leave on the outskirts of town

And it seems too your dreams are broken
As they lie like shattered glass on the ground
And when you look into their mirror you are frozen
Into a thousand selves spread all around

Now you’re lost and you wish you had a home where
They all knew you, and what you are about

And so you figure you may start to travel homeward there
You’re sure they’ll welcome you back with a shout
And the road it is long, it is arduous
It is filled with peril and pain
And on the way many towns offer comfort and rest
The kind to which the Devil would not complain

But there is a voice that doesn’t shout loudest
There’s a voice like a humble refrain
And it calls to the boastful and proudest
It tells them to let go of being vain

And it cuts through the crowds like a fire hose
And it quenches the burning house of its flame
And it tells the Emperor to try on New clothes
And it tells you to remember your true name

And for the first time in your life you are listening
You listen and it starts to speak again
And the more time you give it the more its glistening
The more it shines like a jewel in the rain

It tells you to go back to your father
It tells you he’s grieved for your loss
It tells you not to travel any farther
No more the gamblers dice you must toss

And you wander over the mountains
And you travel out beyond streams
Until you come to the land of fresh fountains
To the home where you first had your dreams

And you call, call up to your father’s Homestead
You say forgive me for I was so lost
Your father embraces his Son who was a Ghost

By returning you are brought back from the dead

Missing Words



Do you remember Weöres Sándor
The exhibit of moving words
Like our own story
We were filling in the gaps
With our hands
Trying different combinations
Approaching a whole
You carried the words so gently
In your cupped hand
As on your lips
So like your kisses
But sometimes they missed
An unrhymed vowel
Improperly pronounced consonant
The dissonance made the little birds shake
On their brittle little legs
But they kept singing
After all
We were not so lost for words
Ours had wings and flew
And the gaps were no more empty
Because we didn’t fill them

But fuller for all we knew

Thursday, 17 March 2016

This too will pass

This too will pass
The rose that climbs upon the wall
The primrose blossom all
The Snowdrops and the Hawthorn’s flower
As in the wee small hour
This too will pass

The road that’s cracked and torn asunder
The memories of regret or blunder
And time as light that trips in power
Flickers brief as candlesticks in the midnight hour
This too will pass

The Spring whose surprises do unfold
The stranger waits on a platform cold
The meeting of two friends by chance
Or the sharing of a final dance
This too will pass

All the songs of love and man
All the law broken, held or still in plan
Every thought, or deed or act
Each right or wrong, promise or contract
This too will pass

And so you say you love the season
Spring’s festoon April’s foolish reason
You say the day you prefer to night
What’s bright and gay over what’s out of sight
This too will pass

Be not surprised that all is folly
That the wheel turn’s rain requires your brolly
Nor that woman and man curse and hurt
In Tavern’s the same doomed play rehearsed
This too will pass

I see the writing on the wall
The blood that’s in the mouth of a fool
An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth
What lies are told through Vanity
Or in Humility what Truth
 This too will pass

The Starlings murmur in the sky
The Cloth is starched, cast is the dye
The Spindle turns driven by the wheel
Desire burns but its just the way we feel
This too will pass

I have no possessions, though once I had Gold
Like a King, I would buy a thing; even a soul could be sold
Wisdom is worth more than any belonging
Sadness makes the heart larger, than for any true or false longing

This too will pass

Saturday, 20 February 2016

Alder Tree

Alder Tree

Alder snakebite bark
Almost adder in colour
Almost has a bark worse than its bite
As a Dog, loyal to the damp wet lands
As a watch dog waiting in water for his master’s return

Almost ‘Alter’ another a changed tree
Made different by a root’s width geometry
Haltered stopped in its snake tracks
Through the river in the swamp
Just like a traveller chosen to stand and stare up

More upward and proper than the wayward willow
More symmetrical like a spiral
Or a cart wheel a Mandala blowing free
Generous with its fruit, and looking brown

And warm with its little lanterns of nut-cones hanging down

Pruner -Somerset Skyline

Somerset Skyline
The look of Apple trees in Winter
Their Spiny fingers
Bud knuckles
Ladders of nearly buds grapple
The cold sky like hooks
Whose black blue bruise
Of storm clouds roll in on the horizon
And they claw at it
Apple trees are thought of so innocently, happily
But Apples were in the Garden of Eden
The knowledge of Good and Evil
The Fruit that gives this knowledge
As alive and promiscuous as anything
World changers
And when I prune them
Am I cutting back the tree of knowledge
Hurting the chances of this bursting secret?
Its branches never fall freely they grapple
Unlike the apple
The limbs of thought like ideas in a brain
Interweave, hook and thread on new neurons
The old memories are cut away
To make room for new
The buds are nodes the chance of new connections
In an infinity of chemical reactions of the air and the tissue
Material of earth is sculpted by the brain tree into its new thought
Its atmosphere of the moment

The pattern of their branch shadows
And the crinkle of their oval leaves underfoot
The pages their ideas are written on
Lying open to the sky
And the precious fruit

Inviting you to try

The Battle of Ham Wall, or alternative places

Ham wall was an ancient pig battlefield. For years wild hogs had crossed tusks on this flat leafless plain. They fought over the one enormous oak that provided acorns for the winning tribe of pigs.
            However, after the great battle of Catcott moor one side, the Curly Whirlies, lost and retreated down onto this more easterly plot. Upon doing this they discovered the Oak tree and so in order to defend this they built an enormously long security wall of peat. Because the wild hogs guarded it through little windows at certain points it then became known as Ham wall.

            The Victorious tribe of Halalumi then made their offensive, because scratching around for bare bones had gone on long enough, they needed and wanted acorns. King Hal ordered the Ham wall that had now dried out over some years, to be torched. The dry summer of the arson and the surprise nature of the attack left the Curly Whirlies frying like bacon and unfortunately crackling too. All that remained was a scar of ashen ground, tusks and pork chops lying hither and tither. The odour of cooked pork and burnt offerings was not to leave the marsh for fifty years. 

Earthworms and DVDs

Earth Worms and DVDs
Two things I do not seem to see
These days
Though like the night you know they’re
Out there somewhere moving
Playing
Re-running the same old pattern
This mineral in that garden
In one end and out the other
You wouldn’t think it had a mother
Earth worms and the film trade
So much garbage regurgitated
Swallowed up remade
Repackaged the resold for re-use
They are the ultimate composters
Recycling what others abuse
Pre-womble dawn, before Nature
Grew a big ‘N’ in the national conscience
Earthworms were living it large
Nobody bothered them down on the farm

Nobody said oh look how good
I want a new one I’ll write a new book
In two years it will be turned into a film
And somebody will be unwrapping the cling film
Then loading it back into the Dvd player
Like their sandwiches they consume
While they act out the worm slayer
And dig in the garden of forgotten stories
And dredge up some rot
From the compost tub of past glories
Left over food beginning to mould
Pass it over here its one that hasn’t been told
Give it to the worms I know they’ll eat it
Any old crap used tins of sardines
A packet of biscuits
Just leave it out and the birds will have it
Well no actually! We’re not all worms
We have feelings when we’re trodden on
We squirm
Don’t throw us your never ending supply of sap
Else you might find these Earthworms
Decide to fight back
You might find your beds infested with snails
Which we have corralled
With our elegant telescopic tails
You may find your bath tubs filled up with pond weed
Your Pumpkin seed bread already gone to seed
But worst of all when you’re relaxing at night
You’ll find yourself strapped to your armchair unable to fight
And the one diet you’ll know
Yet you’ll know it ain’t right
Will be to watch your own DVDs
On a loop repeat like in flight

This is what you’ve given us
This diet of earth worms
Learn to read a new book why don’t you
So that your script words
Are not food for worms
The spit of birds

Who desert you