Poetry

Tuesday 24 November 2015

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

Morning

Morning, morning, morning
The morning of our lives
Here the steep hill is swollen
Like a mother with child
The burning morning, the moaning borning
Of Anti-auntie archipelagos
Be of good wife, oh life, oh life
The coroner Coriolis effect 
Sunrise of the mind
The mellow, yellow morning mightiness
Of dirty kettle sunshine

Taken are the heliotropes
The switches are swished
Fall the nettle heads
Beside a barbed wire ditch

And the kitches of kitchener
March to the warehouse Drum
Beside ear phone shop
Who listen to the dark men come

Oh morning, morning
The steel brush of salty heaven due
In exhaustible fatwa of merciful Father Pew
Painstaking needles in a Pine forest hill
Who can hear a pin drop has no need of fire drill

All this absorption and none of it real
All I have to give is what I can feel

River Lundy

River Lundy

I miss the Lundy
The river of Lun
I miss the Summer
Funny Honey Bun

I miss the Blue Sky
The Lazy haze
And I miss Lundy and You

Mardi was a fine day
Mecredi too
Jeudi was okay
Vendredi was Blue
Still I miss the Lundy and You

All day I wonder
Oh what can I do?
I walk the dusty streets
Feed animals at the zoo
Each night I see shooting stars
Quite beautiful is true
Yet I may as well live on Mars
For still I miss the Lundy and You

The seals are singing alone in the bay
Sweet gulls are winging above a mermaid serenade
No more Ghosts are appearing
I’m not afraid of the shade
But I still miss one thing or maybe two
I miss the Lundy and You

Love is on the lips
Of lovers who kiss
Black bird is on the Rosehips
But there are still somethings I miss it is true
Yes I miss the Lundy and You

Sunday 15 November 2015

Aonach Mor

Aonach Mor

Northern lights that are amazing
Like a green fire that’s blazing
Above the Mountain hearth beneath the sky

Jagged skyline like rows of teeth
 Rising up from those soft gums beneath

Always pushing, stirring, nudging
The sky not budging
Pilgrim clouds are rushing turning
To be nearer their destination

In the cold of Mountain heights
The stars come out like diamond kites
Twinkling, shimmering in silver sprinkling
Like star dust glimmering
Shining down

And then the cold air
That’s blaring, sneering, snarling
Staring hard down
The wind which bustles, hustles, rustles
Rampaging tussles of heathery ground

In its stampede, walkers impede
Deer hunker into the hollow some more
When they arise the mornings bright
With frost that bites
Before it thaws

And the air it fills with steam
From the nostrils of the stag
As he stands beside the stream
Drinks its cool water from off a crag

And his harem of does that follow
Tread lightly, nimbly through the fallow grass
As winter grips into his hollow
His antlers stand hard, as a guard stands fast

Ever battling the coming storm
Built of granite, Mountain born
Open hands of thorns inviting
Call down rains from Heaven’s fountain
Implore the Gods of the grey peaks whitening
To keep his coat of fur from lightening
That keeps his strong heart warm


Clouds

Clouds

Clouds are pilgrims ever travelling
Round the winding world unravelling

Tying up and letting go
As the spool while the seamstresses sew

And their thread
Is the winding wind
Which blows this way
Then back again

And the clouds are like carrier freight
With their cargo of water
They cannot be late
‘Always hurrying to the next mountain

Like ghosts who cannot rest
Who must keep going as if un-blest

And yet some holy pilgrimage
Keeps them travelling on
As if they knew that somehow

Their time shall not be long