Poetry

Friday, 8 April 2016

Budapest times

In the Out, and any way between
From the Castle set in the Clouds I dream
Dreaming of the spires through
Salt encrusted streets
Someone has sprinkled the Danube
Now its grown extra feet
Far beyond the telegraph
Far over the clouded plain
We journeyed on for hours
Until we rested again
About the busy city
Where the rounds and squares
Fitted into pegged holes
Banners on castles walls where statues stare
Trailing in the sunny azure
An actor from the ramparts calls
Down to invaders at the doors
Stifling in the thronging crowd
We held hands in palms
In clovers, in the marble whiteness
Of the stone that shone like daisy petals
In a field of fire
Under the Trinity Statue and the dome
Whose symbols drove away the plague
Whose gold was yellow chrome fatigue
Whose cherubim twinkled as a fat ballerina around
The legs of Mother Mary, Father, Son and Spirit’s Surround
Trumpeters and fanfares of Ideas
So high and Mighty Up high within the battlements
Embattled soldiers, embodied all the queer and flighty
Tendencies of Post holders to abandon their guard
But their Military training kept them standing hard
(It was a military thing not an object d’art)
Standing to protect this fortress of the mind
Where such ideas integral to statehood we can find
The common man must be able to see but not quite
Touch the divine
For If he does what else is left but to topple regime
Castle post
Aristocracy must keep its distance from peasant orders

Of that kind

In the pleated Hungarian Night

In the pleated Hungarian Night
Where the clouds are rippling high
And the moon is burning bright
Rolling silver pale as a coin in the sky

Hear the houses
See the stain of the blouses
Washed in the rain
In the pleated Hungarian night

As Trans-danubian pillars write
Their own blood histories
On the wall
Of them that rise
And them that fall
In the pleated Hungarian night

While the tyres turning tight
See the racing cars, squeal wheels
As they chase stars on their heels
In the pleated Hungarian night

Because the big sky is there by right
 And the plains are without their borders
So men’s brains are free from chains or orders
They can dream big, in the tree twigs
Seen through the sight

Of the pleated Hungarian night

Long time No Sea


The burnished coast
Green as a pea
Hungary boasts
An inland sea
Where the Holy Ghost
Is in no poverty

The manicured devils finger nails
Ripened claws
As the moonlight pales
Walking east from Minehead’s Pier
The glassy sand, the grassy dune
The monthly moon in Luna phase
As a night sky on Holidays
Easter Fete of spraying water
Over the daughter the Mother, the bride
Or father’s pride
By the boy, the man
The man over board
The Buoy out at Sea
Lost asking in return for saving a wilting flower
Can you with a Piros Tojak (red Egg) save me?

Long time no Sea
In Hungary
Landlocked but knows the Loch, the lake
The lace of Gossamer
Webs like a misty white sea
Over fields or meadows
Where the swallows and swifts
Are the fish
The insects the creel
The whales the loafing cows
Treading through the long grass swells
Like monks saying vows
And little gofers like dolphins
Popping up their heads
Sharks like foxes
Sniffing out ways to be fed

The Sea is the land, the land is the sea
Because what we’ve planned
Is what we can be
And what is possible
There’s no impossibility in endless ocean
In rolls of Mountains
In the fractal geometry
The Partial differential equations
Of change time geology
In topography of sky, sea and land
Interchangeable as three dimensions
Of Space or time
Stretched intermingling

Through the human mind

Dead Sharks


The frantic Atlantic
The Pancreatic Adriatic
The Brownian motion of the Indian Ocean
The rather wet flannel of the English Channel
The rusted Iron Quay of the Trusted Red Sea

Cajoling Memory
Of Sea shanty carols
The whiff of cliffs
The dead fish scrolls
That turn up and roll
Over and over in a white wash
Of crustacean suicide
Calcium lime tide
Abide with me
Its baptism goes
Submerge let go
Of your worldly throes
Let wild horses stampede you to sleep
In the dark inviting night
A swimming adventure
The temptation of death
Easy as slipping into sleep
Less Temporary
Though is drowning
Cousin to snoring, yawning and frowning
Conscious only of its state in itself
Narcoleptic Narcissus
Of the Narwhale tribe
The seeing of unicorns
Of stars in the reflection
Of waves and tide
The thrashing of sharks
The gnashing of teeth
The permanency of death
And its impossibility in the mind of someone living
Except in the Sea
Where we’re all out of reach
But we have to keep moving or like a shark we shall die

A shark has no choice but to kill to survive
And then what you're left with is a dead shark 

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