English Oak

Old tree stump

What do you know?

The corn has been cut

Now only corn storks grow

Where are the dancers

Who with their right hand

Lead you in the dance

Across an ancient land?

Plush are the hay bales

Rolled up to sleep

Lying in their yellow beds

Yellow blankets at their feet

Somewhere salty death

Is wrapping her fingers

Around the candle stick oak trunks

And waxing its leaves

It’s bleeding in the heart wood

It’s rotten to the core

But it stands upright in the night

And shines on all the more

It shines on in its dying

And in its finest hour

It shines until the sunlight

Has burnt out all its power

And in the death of the English oak

Grows something more

Not as strong as once was known

Its mantlepiece not made of stone

But a force to hold a door

Less in its redistribution

among the rising ranks

But in its ten thousand multitude

For its own strength we still give thanks

Cloud Watching

Once I did see jellyfish

Swimming above in the sky

And then a tiger’s stripes became

The image in my eye

Sudden flames of grey hue

Change to lakes of sacred dark blue

As the fires which rise in heavens

Part from their earthly curfew

And the firmament of stars

Turn in pin prick turns

The saddle of the space cowboy

Cradles the knowledge he learns

And from the tentacles of grey grew

The leaf veins of life

The lung like bronchiole tendrils

Breathing in space dust

I stayed out upon the hill

Feeling that familiar chill

When the sun has lost its grip

And the moon’s power is yet to slip

Its hand to take the reins of control

That twilight- dusk

Where do cross the souls

From one side to another

To my left the sad dark forest

Green in all its envy

Yet to the right, chasing the light

The creatures like me

Flee to keep up with the sun

A cheesy line

A pleasant scene

So nice and green - a riparian garden

Through the hills

The winding rills

Twist gentle then they harden

The Summer spring in elysian fountain

Coy carp rest easily in reflected black

The lilies float

In moon mountain craters

Elephant footprints smack

A trinket for a cat

A piece of reed

She swallows flat

The tiger and the mouse

Both escape near Martin’s House

For the followed, swallowed fog

Has escaped the abandoned dog

And the buzzing dragon fly

Beneath the cat’s claw does lie

Out upon the frosted moor

Where grass snakes knock on the door

To the anima enlightened

Just the wolf don’t be frightened

Firing Squad

She said that time
went upwards
And I said I thought that was spiders
No memories, she claimed
Were washed down the drain
When the single sun shines in the sky

I got the feeling of abbreviation
In the annulment clause
That somebody was not
Connecting what I was feeling
Like a draft coming in from outdoors

The house was sacred yet shattered
It had been, but would be for no more
The type on the computer mattered
But it was tattered prit-prattled
and poor
By the evening of the atomic bomb
A large shark was thrown through the roof
And the oceans boiled
As with turtles and whales
Who suddenly knew their own truth

You she said in closing
Have been acquitted of the true crime
There was dust on the shelves
Of your library of selves
The further back you looked in time

A candle was burning the evening
A thought conspired to form
But extinguished it was
By the hot winds flush
From the salty fleshed
Women of the storm

I slugged my way to the carpet
And left with a terrible head
The dawn came up on the parapet
And in the morning we counted the dead

Hegylab

What do you know of mountains?
I only know of the coast, the cliffs
The taste of the rain
The smell of toast
Or the streets

I could follow the cats
And tap them on the shoulder
I could caterwaul the taps
And turn over a new rocky boulder

But what use is all that?
What is the revenue?
Where are the black shadows
that pass under the rainbows
Along the avenues?

Mobile phones kill quality time

I lost my mobile phone the beginning of this course
And I have never been happier
No body phoned me up in my sleep
No one invited me to things I did not care for
Or if they did I felt ok not to go there

I was not pestered by whats app
Or meeting reminders
Or mobile phone updates for whatever crap

The organizers did not have the ability to contact me
I was free
In a word
If somebody died I would have heard
Somehow
But it did not trouble me
Nor did any desire to phone or speak to someone
Unnecessarily
I did not waste money on texts, endlessly
Inquiring of another's business
Or even organizing skype

However what I had was more cash
To spend on useful pursuits like swimming
That in fact chilled me out

When in the waiting lounge of certain arrivals
I looked up from my lap top
Which replaced my attention's focus
When the world got wired
And I saw a room full of young people bored staring down
Someone commented look at us now
And I thought of what could have happened
In a situation like this twenty years in the past
From now
Some bright spark would have started a game
Some camaraderie would have brought us together

It was there in virtue in vitro
In idea the embryo
Perhaps instead we would have read
A book or done a crossword
It is just that life not is too often wired
To the these black boxes of electricity
That are an anathema to the Human soul
Perhaps it is not all lost
Just the Ghost in the machine
Is beginning to take control

Old Rocks in the Sun

Today when the rains came
They came with a flourish
Like a goose shaking its ruffled feathers
A bristling kind of cold
And the dirty sky above the stones was enough
The photographer said it was good
To shoot a group in
To capture the moments of youth
Against such timeless monuments
The light was proof
Somehow in his lens
Of our existence and theirs
The Young ones
And the Old Stones

And who amongst them
Would be interested in old rocks?
Some relics of a bygone age
Some irrelevant artefacts
Who are not on Snapchat
Or facebook
Maybe StoneWall if such a social Media site existed

And yet of its day these Stones
Where the network hub
The consciousness centre of the people who lived then
The young and the old - probably not much older
Than many who were there today yawning
Complaining of how boring it all was
Of how long everything was taking
And how nothing was happening!
And there was nothing to see!

Only History!I thought to myself in disgrace
Only the geological and spiritual face
Of Time
The encapsulation of an epoch
Captured in unmovable objects
As permanent as their faith was to them
As certain as the seasons and the Sun
And the moon -were these monoliths to them
And their lives are all extinguished now
Yet these stones have stood the test of time
And will be standing even until the end of the world

Perhaps when the sea levels rise
And then the ice age comes
Perhaps someday a glacier
Will slide over them
And obliterate all trace
That Britons and Druids ever existed
But I hope not
And yet that would also be a fitting end somehow
To these doorways that have guarded
Gods from the early dawn
To the final sunset