Urban spaces –
they do their best to define us
as we do our best to push through the visual noise,
through the cultural pollution of busy streets,
through life thrust at us easily and cheaply –
consumed, discarded, unlived…
Category: Poetry
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Further Reductions
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Without a shadow of doubt
As you walk without a shadow of doubt, you enter the valley of the shadow of death. You will fear no evil, for you will be that evil, never seeing itself or the world, but seeing your reflection upon the face of the world.
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Danger Of Death
I think it is vitally important to learn from history.
George Santayana once said that those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.
I can add that one of the first things we learn from the past is that those who repeat it are doomed. -
Bare interface
As the tide goes out
and the interface between the land and the sea is laid bare,
the soggy mud reflects the majestic sky
so clearly,
so deeply,
so poignantly…
Tears well up in my eyes.
I feel at one with the mud,
but not with the sky. -
Abandoned
Forgotten rooms, abandoned spaces, full of rubbish. Rubbish that drives you mad. Leave it there in the dark. Leave it there to rot – ugly feelings, broken relationships, things you had to forget in order to forgive… Lock the door and throw away the key. Phew… Isnt’t it better? You can start with a clean slate, clear conscience, honest gaze. Aren’t you nice? You can be happy now. You can be whole and pure. You can flower, a beautiful snow-drop, untouched by the rotting rubbish. Oh, but it gets in through the roots, it fills your fruit with poison of all that festered there, in the dark, in the abandoned spaces. You try desperately: keeping your thoughts pure and your living clean… but the poison coursing through your veins makes you into a deadly nightshade. All that you touch withers and dies, it turns into rubbish. Rubbish that drives you mad. You build them up, layer upon layer, abandoned spaces, forgotten rooms. How many layers now? How many more can you build, before you realise that you can never start over, never be clean, never become a snow-drop… before you scream, shrill and ugly, through tears and despair, bending over the withered remains of another broken relationship. And there is no way back, no way to clean out the spaces that feed your roots, for they are the forgotten rooms, the rooms that you locked and threw away the key.
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Ode to Spring
Forming a watercolour from a sketch –
new blooms and leaves are springing up on trees.
At five o’clock the pigeons squall and kvetch –
one wants to grab them by the neck and squeeze.
Deciduous adults drop woolly socks,
teenagers sprout knees and belly-buttons,
their clothes bloom into heterodox;
the streets are full of lambs that dress as muttons.
The warming sun incites the happy shirkers
as winds are loosing their winter punch.
The lawns fill with blooming office workers
and rubbish left from their picnic lunch.
The fuel-poor stop heating and start eating,
with fuller stomachs hearts begin to sing.
As life begins anew, the sheep are bleating.
The spring has come. Hooray for blooming spring. -
Spring Nonsense
The life on Mars
is rather sparse.
It’s very hot
and dry on Mars.
They grow mushrooms
in the dark
and walk their ogies
in the park.
They walk, so couth,
with gravitas,
for gravity
is big on Mars.
There is a festival
of spring
to bounce wildly,
scream and sing.
They light the lanterns
by the stream
and eat their mushroom-root
ice cream.
The ogies frolic
off the lead,
they quack and squeak
and pay no heed.
The spring is full
of mirth and girth,
it’s worth on Mars
its worth on Earth. -
Tartan fish swimming through the bones of time
Time is full of voids,
empty spaces devoid of substance or meaning.
You think,
– Where has the time gone?
and there is no answer.
There is evidence:
worn out shoes, wrinkles, bigger digits on the calendar and your pay slips…
But the time collapsed, like an empty balloon, and there is nothing there but a thin film of facts.
Time is supported by a skeleton.
Big, public ribs – wars and discoveries:
a burning child running down a dusty street,
tears in the eyes of a woman who can see again,
a man stepping in front of a tank,
another – stepping out of a shuttle into the void,
facing overpowering odds with the same grim determination.
Small, private bones:
sitting on a curb, waiting to be picked up when everyone else is gone,
feeling your hand on my back while making love – so big and warm,
holding my child, crying in pain and joy,
screaming in fear and frustration at the sight of love slipping away,
laughing helplessly at a silly joke repeated again and again.
Moments of loss and gain,
kindness and thoughtlessness,
Moments that stretch time and give it shape.
Time has bones,
bones that keep you up,
bones that stick in your throat
and make you choke.
