I've things about me I think I know

1 - I know what love is and it isn't what I thought.
2 - Life isn't hard, but it's not simple either.
3 - I'm not as more or less amazing than anyone else really
4 - Happiness is not reality.
5 - I'm not sure I really know anything; especially those things above.

Man Song

What is that thing that makes us man
or not or something else?
The fall of mankind in too many drinks;
A lost word, like a missing child, calling for home,
Makes waves of hate and sneers and threats.
The frost of strong hands and good friends
I lost through time and distance: the measure tape of
Time reeling out over the years, over the miles
between us.

When we were young, our faces smiled in black and white,
Bent up sepia and frayed edges of youths untold,
Unheard and unmentioned.

You, where are you now?  The glimmers of
Pictures on laptop screens tell tall tales of a
Happiness unfelt and unknown.
We all spin the lies to send home.

The poker-party madness of whiskey in the night,
The flare and fight of shouts and vile threatenings.
We all go into the cold and where is there love?

Emerging

Dim shafts poke through.
A noise like hammering.
Three blasts of a horn.
A laugh and a cough.
Like a ride on a horse,
Slow motion trottings
Out on a field as before;
Before this concrete town
Rose from its swamp
And told of its future.
There's a certain type of
Steam.
Lean pickings in the air.
The vast nothing of blue,
The skyline closer than a
Hand reaching out.
To stand and see the harvest
Of home for a moment,
To see clearly as the
Dawn emerges and I roll
Into the warmth of a city's
Red eye of morning.

A Scotland

When it rains and the water
Splashes back up at you, and it's
Warm like a shower and it doesn't
Stop,
I think of the cold, and country homes
Where the smoke rises into the chilly air.
Here, where the babble of voices
Shrieks at your soul and the bubbles
Of cool form glistening havens in the heat.
The field outside is turfed and its posts
Seem like reminders of usual school Septembers
With their rigid posts and tight white lines.
But the ayi on the bike shouts louder
And school's term buses smoke through the gates.
Where once halls listened as they had
For a hundred years, sounds like chronicles,
Here the walls are plastered and straight.
The paint perfect white and the floors a glossy
Mirror.  Perfect imperfection.
I killed a cockroach, watched a gecko drown
And spray at the ants in the morning.
The smiling lady breezes in and can't understand me.
But I could never stay where the land will
Turn white and cold and where the bustle of time
Seems still and the tide turns slower than
Empires into the future.
I can still feel the clean air and know
What will come but change my view to
The East and all its mad chances.

I Saw Them Coming

The new spring;
Rain fresh like spray on the ground,
I heard the oyster catcher call all night
Their hooting and their wailing.
The swallows left splashes
Like dropped paint in the cloister;
Hung their houses from roof tops
- globe-like miracles -
The night would not come,
And the distant whirr of cutting grass,
Weeding out the beds,
The dog smelling through
The garden gate.

Write a poem

for me
about me
or even a song

it doesn't have to rhyme

like this one
doesn't

Stepping Stones

You use me;
walking from dry to dry
to safety and recluse
amongst the
cash and flow of life.
But

When you see me,
Standing upon firm
Rock and dry places
You notice
- as if suddenly -
hard edges and places that
might cut -
pale skin
and soft innocence -
and you doubt.

Only later will you know,
When you look back at
my
rocky
instability
and your
will
to             balance -
that this doubt
got you safely home
after all.