31 October 2024

Hope - still

Hope is bloody-knuckled and bruised
From punching the wall in an attempt
To break it down. 

Hope knows the only way through
Is through

And time heals
And connections feed
And nothing is ever truly lost

Hope is certain

Even when nothing else is... 

21 July 2017

Unison

In unison
As one
We breathe
We sleep
We rise
We breathe
We sleep
We rise
As one
In unison


We are one
But more
One plus some
Greater than one
More than.
Better.
As one,
But not one.

As old as time

Your throne
As you're thrown
Disintegrates
And your bitterly gained power
Obliterates
Any mercy
Or understanding
You once held.


You realise,
far
too
l
a
t
e,
far
too
l    o    n    g            f     r     o     m            n     o     w
how
little
you truly have.

17 May 2016

The Seeker

Substantially transparent, I fear,
no deeper meanings,
almost not here.

Can you discern
the difference between
a reacting rage
or your infinite stage?

Within / is distinct /
From / Without

False anger
You rail
You shout.

A Sorting

Four houses,
All alike in quality,
Explain so much of human quandary.

Earth, a badger, stable and true,
Air, a raven, whose mind through stars grew,
Water, a serpent, with ambition and grit,
And fire, a lion, can consume all of it.

Simple boxes - dangerous
Narrow minds do fall
With a whim, a breath, a sigh,
Nothing

is left

at all.

29 November 2015

Fall

lies lie like autumn leaves
strewn across pavements
damp with tears
things are not
always
all right
in the
end
in the
negative space
things are sometimes unfair
the basis for comparison
is not always clear
lies lie like autumn leaves

27 November 2015

Wonder

Eyes open, curtain rises,
Softly spoken, memorised lines,
Rivulets
of
sparkling
emotion
coast
unhindered
at
the
opus
Here, now,
Brand new creation

Unique but billions were before,
Palimpsest of page, stage, person, life.

25 May 2015

tin cans in the dark

I whisper,
string vibrates,
you falter,
but smile at the Fates -
who frown -
because modern heroes are here,
but they cower,
and buckle,
       (might break)
before fire
consumes with a kiss
and forges steel,
tempered with valour,
but imbued with
agape
  caritas
    mettā.

You dance.

16 November 2013

Return

A return to form
aspires to erase
all past pain,
a cruel phase.

Lysander spoke true;
this course never did run smooth.

16 February 2013

Surface

     Words weighted,
          looks layered;
 a world of meaning
 in a dip of the head
 or a slip of the eyes
away from the cause
 of feeling and being
           so
            incredibly...
     
                 
fine.

16 January 2013

A fleeting glance of esperance

A fleeting glance of esperance 
on a mother's face
until no, all hopes are dashed,
like Lady Macbeth's baby brains.

Stark contrast

Night and day.
Two unsustainable wastes.
One - hard-working, tireless,
exhaustion, no peace, low grades.
The other, apathy personified,
gifted perhaps, but none of the drive.
One - a high-flier, determination
goes far.
The other, aims lower
so lowest expectations
are never
unrealised.

11 December 2012

A world of forms*

The only truth in my eyes
is the truth within my mind:

A world of forms before me,
such as Plato could merely dream,
is then shown to be a pleasant kind
of childish make-believe.

The only truth in my mind,
is a truth beyond my eyes:

A sea of tendrils before me,
feelings from which I glean
an abstract set of show and tell,
love, hate, and all between.

*absolutely not a textpoem.

13 November 2012

A moment from the lips

A bad choice made, impulsively,
leads to humiliation, publically,
despite the knowledge that you are still
incomplete
yet to experience much.

Your behaviour, which belies your age, perhaps
is a true measure of maturity and sense,
so I make an n.b, p.s, or post-it note reminder to me:
'here are young dreams, tread softly'.

08 November 2012

After 'Tell all the Truth'

Hear all the Truth but hear it slant --
Belief in Honesty lies
Too opaque for your tripping tongue
The words you say surprise

As Rain to the Windows lashed
With cruel description flawed
The Words must crash Violently
And any false One be outlawed --

06 November 2012

Game

Too close to Nov 11th, this:
immersive surround sound,
hyper-real graphics of guns,
naturalistic narratives,
all devised, he tells me, to engage.
Better, he says, than real life.
In a real war, she says,
you would not last.

Some angels would do better
without even one halo.


danger

ideas fly around;
fireworks outside reflect
connections being made in mind.
One remains: critical.

19 October 2012

rain

Cocooned, wrapped up, ensconced.
Faces and surfaces become more pronounced;
all the leaves falling from
the wet, black, bough.


~nod to Mr Pound.

06 October 2012

Can You Not, Thanks.

Jeremy Hunt, some say you're a --
very nice man really,
(irony)
but
interference
in a realm
that is so far removed from yours
is, simply,
refused:

womb belongs to woman
and she will never allow legislation
to become part of her decision.
Your supposedly elevated status
should never allow you to
invade
this most private of spheres.
You will find your approach blocked
by any who feel
their body
=
their choice.

01 October 2012

Hope

There is time, in the day,
to create, produce, incredible change;
the smallest detail can give
shelter from the rain.

Inspired by Emily Dickinson's 'Hope is the thing with feathers'

28 September 2012

Epic growing

An epic story is waiting to emerge,
if given time, energy and a certain verve.

The days pass as one,
get up, get around, home again,
feelings insufferable,
words - empty - few -
gone. Spiral.

27 September 2012

Ass u me

One facet, professionally,
does not dictate or indicate
any further aspect of me.
The blood that boils because
of your words
is blood that feels
deeper than any facade you see.
Disappointed, I ask:
Do you even have a clue?
Or is yours a skein,
words arranged like a house of cards?
An image saved, portraying a mask.

24 September 2012

Fragmentation*

The curb grabs the dark
and you're right,
this city's alive
with hopes, dreams,
from the CEO up high
to the homeless in the park
and
every day, heroes walk among us.

There are many ways our souls decay;
you can theorise, hypothesise, or turn your life around,
and not just twist your face away,
but your soul is made heavy by the pressure of a goal
that is unrealistic or just plain stupid because of course,
what does it mean to be rich and why does it matter anyway?

Your greatness will be a sight for sore eyes to behold so
scale your mountain, leap far, and above all, be bold.


*inspired by the words of Kate Tempest's show, Brand New Ancients.

17 September 2012

acerbic aftertaste

You say you've changed,
I don't see how.
but
destiny has become,
at once, too loud.

Your clipping words
puncture thick skin
Seen it all -
no apology, again.

13 September 2012

Guest post

For the first time ever, here we have a guest post transcribed from a text by the esteemed @tomtomandgo:

Takes the time away from other thoughts
And intrudes on you from night-time.
Did you forget?
Subconscious is always awake.
Always thinking.
Always making connections to disassociate from the sane self.
It's silent.
But now it jabbers excitedly.
And you realise.
The thing that's been bothering you isn't cumbersome or negative.
It's not apathy to be in love with what you are not what you should be.

Empty vessel

Not In Service,
a terrible indictment of the human condition,
closed to passengers of any disposition,
a satirical statement of the greatest importance,
or - not.

Absence

The moment the bulb pops,
there a second, gone the next,
moment in time that's hard to define but finally you
truly understand; this,
an epic event,
irrespective of light.

29 April 2012

Frozen

An elastic band stretched
to
breaking
point makes me freeze - fear -
my back -
will snap -
and I will be -

- stuck.

Overlay

Perspex drawing,
laid over lines
from yesterday,
resembles not -
resembles still.

Age defies us
with every day.
Our time marks us,
as we become
grave.

Poet, madman,
Shakespeare knew and
summarised well:
"To die: to sleep"

18 February 2012

'Pretty Little Liars'

Drama, personified,
certified,
broken images and
unreal cities of
an ersatz world,
bildungsroman in a visual form,
a seed of truth in every lie?
Bizarre fiction, or the norm?

04 February 2012

blog wordle

Wordle: rt

03 February 2012

Concrete nouns

Ellipsis;
the mark of a superfluous word
to be understood by the context.

Invitation;
the mark of esteem and respect
to be understood by the context.

Hug;
the mark of feeling, compassion
to be understood by the context.

Context;
the parts of something that prec-
ede and follow a word or passage.

01 February 2012

The Waste Land*

1. The Burial of the Dead

piercing pain and numbness
crossroads
hope/despair
joy/grief
dichotomies between feelings and
extremes of being
and
the narrowing of possibilities to

one

'In the mountains, there you feel free,'
you would frighten others with your anguish and your heart howls

'What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter'

and we are all the same.

19 January 2012

Slam*

There's a certain slam of poetry
that echoes in my ears;
it's got metaphor and semaphore,
gestures which can shift gears.

The topics tackled vary
although the most common theme remains;
there's nothing words can't solve
(except those grand things that stay the same).

There's an idea here; Ophelia,
a troubling state of mind,
antonym to all interiors;
'dreamers often lie.'

*not a text poem.

26 November 2011

Flashback,

warm nights.
Cold morning, low mist, ice.
Sharp, clean smell and
people.
Some kind of appetite.

Atmospheric pressure means

that one day you will be old.
Time will steal itself from you,
or you from yourself.
Your luggage will be dense
with possibilities
and consequence.

12 October 2011

'broken images' T.S Eliot

home
leave(s) in darkness
arrive in darkness
cyclical structures
life imitates art
elegiac.

///////////////

juggling with fire,
spinning plates,
incredible feats of
heroics -
a walk in the park,
comparatively,
when dealing with certain
histrionics.

21 April 2011

Dinosaurs

There must be a better way than this,
a crowded bridge to a path by a relic
of our past
juxtaposed
with those alive.

03 April 2011

Broken images

How to explain, so you understand?
Broken images coalesce become sea sky island.

How to show you, sans telling?
Simple pleasures are ones most missed,
Heart-dwelling.

07 January 2011

Perspective

What is there but time
& the attempt to fill it well?
What is there but time
& our minds, ourselves?
What is there but time
& an endless sky
and an endless well;

a small boat under stars, endless;
time without,
without our selves.

03 January 2011

Comfort

In arms of angel comfort here I see
a breath on the air
& a frozen city.
In arms of angel comfort here I glide,
amidst the blanket faces & dreams
of deep night.

07 December 2010

Snow day

White seagulls and black crows
perched
on snowy gutters.

Two bus drivers plotting
an
early
journeys
home.

Nose frozen clean away.

28 October 2010

Wrong type.

There's nothing more annoying than a-
well, no, that's not, strictly speaking, true.
There aren't many things - or - people,
or maybe, types of people, more annoying than -
no - not types, that's not right -
The most annoying person I know is a -
not to say that - oh, never mind.
Pedants. I don't like them.

27 September 2010

Buoyancy

White&pink balloons(without),
sweet homilies, big blooms(within).
No doubt.

A child weaves
tween tall trousered trees&,
barely noticed neath the tea tray,
plays.

30 August 2010

> Simple instructions

Close your mouth,
open your mind,
Who knows what you'll find.
See, imagine,
out of time.

30 June 2010

Tempus fugit.

Tempus fugit!
Same, relatively, but older,
a collection of
fits starts tricks smarts.
Whole mind in body,
in
complete
alive
ruinous/cascade/falling through.

09 June 2010

Three words.

"You may begin."
No gun,
Just tick tock nerves.
Sea of bent heads.
Minds through ink onto lines.
Only you can help yourself,
last week,
open textbook with TV.
Clocks tick, pens flick, life, this.

05 June 2010

Pyre

So, have you seen her?
She has made many mad,
unable to describe her magnetism or milky skin.
Always just a little too far to touch,
even when resting in trees.

Follower

Foreign invading space, my space,
claimed, just - get out, stranger,
I'm busy, I'm going, I don't know you -
just leave me alone.

21 May 2010

Now

I blinked,
a year passed,
or a decade.
How do you measure time?
In minutes, hours, days?
Or faces, moments, followed trails?
A blink, sideways eight,
ouroboros, heartbeat.

Hot.

Hot head,
cold feet,
can't stay still,
fidget,
metaphor creeps.
Bottom drops as muscles relax,
falling,
suddenly galling,
Waiting for tomo morning.

10 February 2010

Life for love.

Can you stake your life on your love?
Suddenly, it all makes sense,
when I saw you crying and in distress I -

…thought nothing of it.

Un(expected/wanted) news,
a turn of the wheel,
a crash of the cymbals,
soft words strong hug brave face -
onwards, the show must go on.

Onwards.
You stake your life on your love,
cross fingers, faith holds, hope lingers.

You stake your life on your love every day.


*not a textpoem.

21 January 2010

Stop, look, listen.

Stop spending time,
start using it.

Stop fearing life,
start living it.

Don't look for shadows,
walk in light.

Listen to your heart,
release your sorrows.

Read

She was an avid reader;
of books,
of people,
of faces and tones.

She missed nothing, except -
It was lined on her face,
written on her heart, and

- her sadness enveloped her.

29 December 2009

A listener.

Have you been here long?
Did you always sing that song?
I saw you once,
as if in dream,
knocking on a door of make-believe,
moonlight caressing your trusty steed.

13 December 2009

Cope.

We have evolved
so that we can change,
adapt ourselves (though never our chains)
and move the Earth to suit our needs
and make the Earth adapt to our greed…

09 December 2009

Snow

Falling slopes,
loss of sanity
gain of hopes
against gravity.

The glassy kind of memory
- truths -
the cutting kind
when you mistake your head
for your heels.

02 December 2009

Sometimes.

Sometimes there are no words,
in times of great emotion,
surprise,
sadness,
or joy.
Sometimes, there are merely breaths
and moments,
distilled drops of memory.

14 August 2009

Riddle

Heads bowed, shying,
from shining yellow
to drying, brown,
shells that carry the sound
of no mortal sea,
a series of swords in the ground,
swaying slightly.

Moment

Natural treasure,
The sea gleams, crashes and roars.
Caressing giant.

23 July 2009

Tests

They take us by surprise, the bad days.
Before we know it, we've succumbed
to bad temper,
excuses,
escapist fantasies.
But there's hope,
don't forget,
&love,
&grace.

21 July 2009

Millions

Dark times of night/time.
Solid sky, inky eyes,
there's water flowing there.
Nothing wretched, nothing gained,
pirouette
again,
again,
again.

Interim

all i want; to write!
close the world out of my mind
final justified.

For a friend.

Shift your perceptions.
Open your mind.
Just being a (my) parent
does not make you right.
No, you listen for once,
see that you’re bored,
or stressed at work,
tired at home.

/

You "gave me your smarts"
but I didn’t think you meant this,
I thought you’d retain some
for the day-to-day bits.

Denouement.

A mortarboard flies
in company, memories,
middle, start, and end.

08 July 2009

solvitur ambulando.

Solve this now.

There's a breath
A movement
in my mind
and I find
a tranquil
shiver on
stormy sea.

I can walk.
Slow my heart.
Think, now, of
tomorrow.

Solvitur
by walking.

05 June 2009

Sword-edge

Suffocating, tease,
10 months I waited, can't breathe.
Midsummer-no-dream.

~*~

Sweetwrapper bookmarks
my place in this immense plot
lost upon your desk.

01 June 2009

404

File not found, I see
here is where my heart should be.
Instead – I find –– blank.

20 May 2009

Just right.

just pick up a pen and write.
pick up a subject, speak your mind.
just write. convince and cajole, tear apart and make whole, show me, write.
Otherwise? It'll be dead and stuck in your mind so pick up a pen
rhyme it again
speak from your heart
and use your mind
just write.

Blocked.

There's a haze over everything,
an impenetrable
indefinable
inability
to string.
Two.
Words.
Together.
This is a rundown show
of unknown force
FORCing me to.Stop.

03 May 2009

Twirl.

Falter,
slither softly,
in the light
of a silver slipper
of a moon.

Saunter,
smile tightly,
'neath the boughs,
watch her skin glow
as she moves.

18 April 2009

Almost falling.

Do you ever almost fall?
Find yourself on a bright, sunny day,
smelling damp earth like
after rain?
Instead of walking,
you are still
a little back garden
full of brambles and ivy,
not
even
aware
as you
fall into
memories
until it is far too late.

29 March 2009

Profile.

The smell of cut grass
follows you everywhere
old-fashioned lawn mower
ear protectors.
Career tools.

Tweentime

Tweentime.

Crisp air,
mighty stars,
and dreams.

Hope, breathe.

18 March 2009

time∞

Cusp, space, time,
all and nothing,
mine,
a sip, a dribble, one line
of infinity.
Brown paper,
unravelling twine.

28 February 2009

tired

asleep/ sleepy/ sleepiest/
realm of silence and 
reticence.
now i hibernate
now i am myself
now i oscillate
between awake
and dream-stealth.

20 February 2009

Stranger walk.

In a second I can tell something that could reveal

I know you well.

One intake of breath

can reveal if you shower daily,
smoke,

maybe

your last meal.

Poignant 
stranger.

18 February 2009

While being consoled.

You tell me to be still
and I yearn to destroy it all.
I want to hear breaking glass,
push you away,
and yet,
to break your fall.

12 February 2009

Curtains.

Red, white, black,
these are the colours of the stage.
There is nothing the actors lack
and once the curtain 
rises, falls, rises,
no way to go back,
except to be it again.

Jarring.

As strange as it sounds
I don't want excitement,
it's too loud.
Can you hear me?
I want to walk slowly
and enjoy the day.
I want to see clearly
though I may not know the way.

20 January 2009

Picture perfect

Twilight tremors onwards,
faster than I can run,
faces made immortal
with the cadence of the sun.
Caught in flashes,
forests frozen,
sky a steely grey.
This is a photo-finish,
& with it light of day.

01 January 2009

Riddle.

They say ask me no questions
and I will tell no lies.
What am I? 
A sphinx, a phoenix, a centaur
or one of a million myths,
and all of them,
but newer,
and none.

31 December 2008

Reflecting.

For 17minutes on
the 17:20
I studied your
reflection
as you studied your
free paper.
You made no move
to hide the illicit call
to your lover
overheard
/
surreptitiously by
the whole carriage.
When your gf called,
we heard the lies as
they tumbled, then stalled.
Your reflected
doppelganger
was fleshier 
/
than you.

06 December 2008

Winter blues.

I saw the blue lights.
Her room, last night
they flickered
and danced on your skin
I blink.
I'm here again,
surrounded by blue lights
and enveloped by sirens.

04 December 2008

How?

How do you live with the grey?
Shades of coping,
day by day?
How can you stand
the ambiguity?
Without closure,
Without of sanity.
How do you dream?
In b&w?
Or in between?

Post-dinner dialogue.

Chessboard tablecloth
does not good ground make
for your games and overtures;
arid, jejune, fake.
Tense - past, imperfect. 
Tantamount
to a punch,
I am winded,
and foresaw as much.

02 December 2008

Reduce

Squares of blue.
Deceptive. Fearing you,
I keep my head down
and, concentrate, frown.
I pretend. Forced to
look away, you
Flee the scene
leave blue sky serene
and forget I ever was.

14 November 2008

To assert.

I can't wait,
but still, I hesitate.

You arrive like a tornado,
a bomb
about to blow,
and assume all will
be as you desire,
your clothes drying in
my funeral's pyre.
But you meet resistance, mine,
unwilling to let this slide.

Shocked, you reel,
and realise you were wrong.
This is how I feel,
and this is my song.

13 November 2008

Rowdy neighbours...

Sleep easy,
I can hear you singing
soaked in alcohol,
not quiet but not clear.
I wish you'd turn it up,
blast it out, 
louder,
so I could hear
the cacophony
become fear
through sirens
and flashing lights.

~This was written a few nights ago at 3amish 'inspired' by loud, clearly inebriated, neighbours. 

03 November 2008

mix-tape paint.

These jarring lines
from my ears to my mind
from metallic to melted in 60 milli.
No troubles either but no fun really.
A vacuous enjoyment, ready made,
As empty as light when it is in shade,
a useless entity falling apart,
a black hole where there used to be a heart.

01 November 2008

train lit.

Rolling
hills,
people
far away,
long journey,
train sways.
In my mind
I'm there
already
a meaning
assigned
to my inner
journey
bends and
brakes.

15 October 2008

Running late.

Head against crying wall,
shower steam,
a waterfall,
a predicted spin
of awful and grim - 
lies upon lies upon lies.
Friends, enemies, spies.
Swords, spears, knives.

15 September 2008

Funeral (lies)

Life imitates art,
                        inaccurately. 
                 A
central single pallid
           figure,
                   cantilevered
          by the living,
but unequal.
Three oozing batteries
on the bedside table,
relics of a forgotten hobby,
          fans.
Fans of all sizes,
metal wings and buttons,
but no fans in this family.
Opportunistic
and unloving
and dry.
For a life mistakenly lived,
I cry,
and cry,
and cry.

31 August 2008

San Rocco.

An orange moon
highlights your figure
silhouetted by fireworks.
Visible in flashes,
colours of the rainbow,
condensed.
A cappuccino
at midnight; 
against the grain.
One day we may meet
through twists 
of a tempestuous fate.

~(17.08.08)~

'sic itur ad astra'

'thus you shall go to the stars' - Virgil.

Red light,
lacrimosa,
a death fit for
a thousand souls.
Leaking heart,
no words impart
how to make
this torn mind
whole.

23 July 2008

Tearing strips.

Orange tears in the light blue sky,
broken bubble
where dreams can fly,
summer storm,
summer torn
from your
yearning arms.

21 July 2008

Wanderings

Stranger sleeps
next to me
apologises
for disturbing
out of politeness
rather than earnestness.
"I have to go"
(I wish he would,
or shut up, if he could)
but stays some more,
finally ends up on hard stairs,
asleep, alone.

03 July 2008

Sibling.

You are my hazel eyes,
a terror,
rollerblade tremor,
a younger selfish me.
You have my last designs,
my sister, teenager,
kind sometimes, I see.
You'll have my way of life,
forecast the future,
and please,
take your time to me.

["Two wrongs don't make a right, but one wrong doesn't either..."]

Grassroots

Grassroots,
mud & boots,
gloves & green.
I've never been
a great escaper,
troubadour failure,
but never fail
to love the trail
beneath my shoes,
sliding home.

09 June 2008

Contrary.

A borrower,
the silent kind;
of optimism,
& strength of mind.
Not enough now,
ever enough?
You need to feel
a touch of love untainted, true.
I wish,
for you.