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.

Returning

Starting again,
On a fresh morning,
Come back
Like a friend abused.
And it breaks me.
Apples rot adn on them
Bruises fester deeply;
Cuts leave scars
Tearing the grey flesh open:
Past rest presents
a suffering
And storms sag grey
In corners of dusty rooms.

Believe me, I'm Happy

Trees.
And lit up behind, they seem
A golden shelter of leaves.
The more wintered
Clutch the sky
Like withered hands
Of the old;
Holding on to a cause - lost,
Unknown.
Then the intolerable pile
Of human misery -
like old clothes
cut off the dead -
Sits undaunted
In clouds like
Smoke.

Wild Nights

While at life's tavern
I sullenly drank
A toast to dreams
That died.
The landlord pulled
More frothy ale
And spoke to make one cry.

Self Diagnosis

I draw boxes when I doodle;
I wonder why.

War Poem

With his last will and courage
He captured just enough ground
To be buried in.

Sucking the marrow out of life

Yes, I too drink in the wine of life:
But sometimes I must piss...

Old Photos

Folded around its fraying edges

Sun-stroke blurred and beaten

Forever captured; two faces gleam in

Looking back: one, a boyish me

And the other a youthful you.

There I sit – in hopeless forever

Hugged into the crook of your elbow

The bottoms of your trousers – too wide –

The space between us, lengthened

Like shadows in cool evenings.

I don’t recall the moment when

But it seems too sunny to see

Like driving at dawn

With the news always on

And I hear her “look at me!”

As I repeat now

With small bodies eager for moving

But then, as her finger pressed

I was already looking away

Even now I think I’d

Drop

From that bridge

And then, if not now, I knew

You’d save me.

Boy, Man

From mist, light:
hard shadows lengthen the day;
once, cow-parsley on road sidings
promised luxuries beyond what
you, young boy, could imagine.

The damp night opens around you now
like a closed fist
relaxing. 

Cooled ardour in  a summer breeze.

Leaves seem like surreal green spots
as grey becomes blue.
And birdsong - positive as music -
is only catcalls and threats.
Eggs are easily broken;
Small and blue like ice;
small heartbeats brought to life
and ugly skin to frail bone, stretches.

Teeth clench then backs press
now against each other.
Two Cs - one as in a mirror -
Reflecting back to back
a naked gun-slinger's dead sleep.
A baby unborn but grown.

All the little weeds and the hot smell of
growth.  All is vacant like lots,
puddles of digital seeing of the
unimaginable and the pale
obviousness of scripted passion.
Such went youth; so went man
and then goes time -

The Party's End

The glittering things were taken down
and packed into dusty boxes
with romantically curled edges.
The lights were switched off for
another year and new locations
thought of, new things to do.
The winter seemed milder
but for how long?
It always seemed, around here,
to come back and bite,
broken mirror sharp;
cutting the most washing-hard
skin.
There were times when the
heady stench of warm bodies
felt good.  Now it repulses like
cigarette butts in ashtrays
piled high in old pubs.
Urinals marinading chewed gum.
The party's end brought with it
a hope and a thought of
something lost
and something yet to come.

Remembrance

I'll live with poets not with God,
For they have lived and felt in
ways he never could.
All his creation and what of that?
All sides knew him and all
sides fed on beliefs of his salvation:
And what then?

The clamouring of haste at the bugle call?
Is this His stupid beckoning?
Or is it - as he says - with much
gesturing form the pulpit -
Our human failing to understand the
book, the word, the bits of insincerity?

I have stood by graves of children;
Noted the words of grief;
seen the white slabs on slabs,
Row on row.
Have knelt in wonder
at Poelkappelle
And seen those torn from life and being
Without even a name to take them.

How can I sit in cool chapels
lit through glass bearing sacrifice
and see it all as one?

I'll live with poets for they have lived and know.

Forever

I am yours alone forever:
My eyes and hands, heart and
other parts.
I am hunted by your smile,
I hide in deep woods and mists.
You pull your bow and I'm shot!
You see me now as I strain to
keep patience as they skitter
and fritter away at time.
You watch as I sometimes watch you
through the glass,
seeing what you do not know.
You all bodily innocence of my gaze
My wandering imagination.
Nothing is ever the same: new suns
New growth, new shoots.
Do you know me like I know me?
Is it for all time this lovers' bliss?
tell me how it will be;
For forever is all the past.

Grass and moss

While the summer tickles long grass
Its feathered heads shiver in the air.
Below, the grass wages war with moss:
The spongy soak and squelch which grows
Like violence in the trim rectangle
Of the lawn.

Beyond windows reflecting
Back pale skies, the moss seeks to sow its
Vile wetness, destroying the grass much
Undersold.

Somewhere, there is a good man, toiling
And doing his best.
Yet some other
Spreads lies and deceit. 

This latter Squeezes out the life and talks
Flame and death through a gritted-teeth
Smile. He shakes the former's hand And pats him on the back -
Knife concealed.

Here, the grass seems defeated but,
Look closely at the sun burned moss
Frail and dry, crisp and fragile,
The loose earth beneath showing
Willing to take grass' seeds and grow.

Exams

Arrivng late at the exam hall, As if getting to a battle spent - After medics had packaged the bodies Rags and tissues and broken bits Remain And time stands, pauses and air Takes stock - deciding what next. The silence almost whispered and echoed Throwing into relief the scratching and tumbling of chairs. Arriving at the exam hall late A window ajar, pivoted idly. Small scrapes of metal and the cooling waft into the empty space. A chair untucked by some Grateful youth into freedom. A picture askew - some uncaring Shoulder barge. Beyond blue walls sounds of play After day And me here, late, alone A fly trapped in amber.