I won’t let you

He said,I could go to the City

It’s just you won’t let me

I said,that’s true,I won’t let you.

Sweetheart.

He said,I could get dressed and meet my friends

But you won’t let me.

I said

No,I won’t let you.

I won’t

let you.

He said,I’ll be alright tomorrow,won’t I?Will you let me?

I said,Yes,I’ll let you.

Then he smiled at me and closed his eyes

And I let him

Go

And he went.

 

 

 

Starting the next line

and I am starting the next line

even though my mind is blank

walking into a bog or a meadow

trusting myself to find

the rest of the sentence

and the next one

and so I am never blocked

or always blocked,if you like

it seems odd but it works

like solving a problem unprepared

in a lecture room in front of

100 students, my reason being

it’s boring to reproduce

and to do it right the first time

what do you think?

 


 

We learned definition and precision.

What was so wrong with me asking
About your absence from this world
And trying to grab you back
holding onto your coat tail
Eternity’s long enough already
We don’t need your vapour trails.
Was it a wicked thing to do
As you floated  far away
To reach out to touch once more?
I admit I never knew you kept a score
Were you already packing bags
to throw out the door?
I knew it was the real thing
But some folk never do.
You have your expectations
And your tests and rules
But we never learned those
In our lessons  at  high school.
We learned rigour and icy vision
We learned definition and precision.
But what use are they in loving?
What use are  they in life?
I didn’t know how to travel with no maps
And you were off anyhow.
The orchestra stopped playing
When they saw the gap.
You can’t fly forever
But I  am leaving you.
In these  circumstances
What  does a woman like me do.
You can smile and squeeze your eyes tight
Suck in those cheeks and hide your love.
What’s coming after you ’s an eagle or a crow
Not a dove…it’s black I know
When you toss it all away then
Seems like it’s long past time
and emotion to call it a day.
Come again…..you must be crazy.
Love is clear to me  now like the face of a new born daisy

Then he wasn’t

He was the most Klimt  witted man I ever saw

His portraits were pointillistic

His fingers were long and pliant

His face a wire drawing of picasso in old age

His ears like two old beer mugs hung with multiple invisible rings

His shoulders  narrow,

his coat hung  off wrong;

dead cabbage leaves  in moonlight,  the effect

His body   shapeless,hidden

An old wooden peg, blunt.

Legs hidden like Victorian tables

Feet bare but well shaped.

Too many dots and no eyes.

He was all there

Then he wasn’t.

 

 

I don’t feel Saturday

 

Read the review section tonight;

books I’ll never read  fully

probably;

contradictions like Denmark –

Denmark has the happiest population,

and they’re all on prozac, too.Don’t you see?

There was a  new poem by Fiona Sampson;

Mein Kampf is being republished.

Then the complete works of a poet  I’ve never heard of,

a school teacher

The TV shows a silenced film of murder in a castle.

I look at email

delete most

And eat my supper  from the laptop.

protected by a perfumed spicy mat

my nephew sent from the USA;

it’s patchwork.

My mind is on Furtwangler and the Pastoral

Should we judge artists for their political sympathies?

I ask my distant brother in my head

I won’t mention it when I phone him.

He looked like my twin but I don’t know him

He was always running away so fast, I lost him;

now he’s run down, his clockwork broke.

We mention Krystalle Nacht 1938

He seems surprised I know the date.

He doesn’t know I can’t spell it when I say it

[It was my mother in law’s birthday too]

Now I have lived precisely half my life motherless;

I can’t imagine how being mothered might have been.

I’m lonely.

My libido is dead too.

Maybe I should become another gender,

Or species.

I don’t….

What?

I miss  it all.

Conkers and warm cobbles

Playing rounders in the road

Uncle Vince’s car

Cousin Frank could have been a butcher

Threw it up for acting

Played Hitler and a Jewish man in Warsaw

And an incestuous father,barbed wire.

Now he’s dead

He still had thick hair;

But it didn’t matter.

 

 

When my voice trembles  

When words no longer work

wonder

wish

want

When words won’t come

compensate

contrive

When my voice breaks

snaps

sunders

strains

When I want to talk

touch

tenderly

towards

But you are not able

about

abandoned

absent

You are no longer

listening

live

longing

When I need to find a meaning

In the shape

form

structure

But I ‘m stranded

Stuck

Sucked under

Swallowed

Then I reach out to you

I want your touch

tenderness

tranquillity

temerity

Sometimes words don’t seem enough

endless

empty

emotive

ejaculatory

Yet words can console

conjure

quilt

charm

captivate

cover.

Stretch out your hand

across the emptiness

and touch me with your fingers

friendship

faithfulness

forgiveness

frailty

fever

touch my heart with words

and I will hope

expect

await

be grateful

grave

garbed in joy

When words don’t feel enough

When all we want is touch

Or to see

sigh

sob

sing

Words can be shaped

changed

contorted

controlled

challenged

Words are all we have

To make us love

To make us live

To make us alive

To make us sing

To make us stand up

To console,words may be

Enough

Where does one go after such fire?

The priest turns,hands raised,

holding the burning God

above our heads;

such a golden,golden casket.

This time, He is the sacrifice.

A reversal not totally unexpected

In this temple

of the once named lost.

Where does one go after such fire,

after such loss,

after such redemption?

Flying grass

  • 5933175_e3b13db92e_a  2

    He’s the type who hits himself on the head with a large wine bottle and then complains abour flying glass.

    He’s the sort who swears at women when he’s happy and swears at them when he’s angry.And when he’s depressed he curses at himself which is much worse.

    So I said to him,you need a change and he hit ME on the head with an empty bottle and complained t about the splinters getting in his heart.

    So I said,you don’t need to break the bottle,just take the cork out.Then he said I was too bold and bright for a woman.

    So I put him on the bed and took out his splinters with my tweezers.
    I stitched him up completely…he’ll be fine in a few weeks time when the cuts are all healed.
    Meanwhile he’s resting in the cat’s basket.And the cat is in bed with me.Well,I thought he was a cat at first…turns out to be my ex… he still had a door key.
    He said,what’s going on?There’s a man in a casket.
    I said,No, he’s in a basket…
    So he said,how big is your cat.
    I showed him a photo.
    That’s no cat it’s a cheetah,he informed me.
    Just like you,I said naughtily
    So he took the fence and ran away too sea…I hope it floats.
    He ought to join the navy but he wore bottle green.
    Why are bottles green,I wonder
    And I like blue glass though not in shards.
    So now the cat sleeps in a cot with its kittens… and feeds them all on demand and me as well.
    That’s a saving grace

    photo1438 2

  • Howl with discretion

    She gave him a bowl of discretion and some milk of inhuman kindness
    I have the art and he has the craft but do we have the rhyme?
    Shalll we abandon our lips? Kissing is not to be scorned/
    So it’s all about my face then?
    I sleep above the board and my head is underneath the bed.
    Absence makes the heart stray yonder.
    Advent makes my whole heart ponder
    Resolution falters after the facts.
    His face was in the hole and his ball was up a tree
    His body is still missing apart from his complexion
    He keeps his face up his sleeve since he saw a naked woman
    Why did Achilles not heal?
    The unborn don’t fall down on me!
    Factions speak louder than wholes
    Fictions speak sounder than truths.
    After viewing my own art I need a shrink
    After viewing my own heart I need a drink.
    If you show me your part I can think.
    After suing my own heart I wink
    To be rung by the ghoulish is the privilege of the dead honest

    Two religions are better than one

    Pray Father,give me your guessing.
    My guessing!Don’t you mean my blessing.
    Oh,probably.Possibly..who knows.
    So have you any sins to tell me?
    Yes,I broke a glass jug.
    Whose was it?
    It was mine,Father.
    Surely it’s not a sin to break your own jug?
    It is if you hit yourself on the head with it!
    What made you do that?
    I was angry with myself…I had been committing effrontery.
    Do you mean adultery?Your main problem seems to be bad language.
    No,Father I never say” Fuck”
    You just did.
    Well I had to do.I had no choice!
    That’s what they all say…if only I heard some original sin I’d find life more interesting.
    Well,it’s hard to think of anything original to do especially if it has to be a sin too.
    You are just not using your creativity.
    All right Father,Put your hands up.i’ve got a gun.
    Where did you find that?
    In my wife’s handbag.
    Now we are getting somewhere.. that’s threatening a priest,interfering in your wife’s privacy and stealing a gun.Any other sins?
    I could shoot you,I suppose.
    No.no!That is going too far.
    Shall I slap you?
    No… just say something rude to me.
    Your sermons are the most boring I have ever heard.
    Well,that’s enough…I’ve never been so insulted in my life.
    You have been very lucky then… you should hear what people say to me!
    Well,you are both ugly and unintelligent.I don’t know how you had the nerve to marry.
    I had no choice.She forced me.But I gave in quickly in case she changed her mind.
    And you have seven children.
    No, they are not all mine,And they are Jewish.
    How can they be Jewish.
    My wife is Jewish!
    I thought she was just a lapsed Catholic.
    No,she’s Jewish but not even an arranged marriage could be arranged for her so she used her imagination and decided an overweight ugly Catholic would be grateful for her love,
    And are you grateful?
    Yes, and so are all her lovers!
    Who are they?
    The curate is one of them and has two children .. they look just like him too.
    And does she want them raised as Jews?
    She just let’s them rise naturally and go with the flow.

    Do they have to wear hats?
    Only in the Synagogue!
    Are you Jewish too.
    Yes,it’s quite handy as we have Sabbath on Saturday and then we have Sunday on Sunday if you see what I mean.
    I never met anyone who practised two religions before.;
    Well,I figured it would double my chance of salvation!
    Well. I must speak to the Rabbi.For your penance you must give £50 to Homeless at Xmas.
    Am I absolved.
    If you stay any longer you’ll be dissolved!
    Thank you,Father.
    And take that gun away.I don’t want it.
    I can get you a good price for your cassock.
    Why,thank you,my child
  • dandelion

  • Love or unlove
    Till the end of rhymes,I’ll be loving or unloving you
     Until the very end of time I’ll be loving you.

    Until the end of all my rhymes,I’ll be writing you.
    Until the day I die,I’ll be unintentionally annoying you.
    Older and older,I’ll never leave you,but I will,no doubt, grieve you and
    deceive you,misperceive you and misconstrue my meter when I am writing for you and I can’t stop to get the right rhythm
    Otherwise I’ll think of you,wink at you and make a hypnotic link to you
    For now,my fingers will be all over you..looking for fleas in your clothes, and for for mice in your shoes.
    I’ll be looking for tears in your eyes
    and making you feel surprised.
    Do you speak Estuary English?
    Or Frenglish?
    You spun me a tale…..
    Love your particular detail,like you are male.
    You have small hands and feet.
    And you can smile.
    Love may fail
    Though it has no examinations.
    Or recriminations
    So I’ll stop loving you
    And find something more wise to do without you

    Computer of love

    Your skin glows like red apples in the fall
    You are as ripe as the strawberry left from last week’s crop
    in the loving hope of being eaten or eating
    My yearning heart rises to your yodeling voice and leaps like a cat at the whisper of your name.Shush,… don’t tell!
    The evening descends on a great brown eagle’s wings.
    What’s a lady?
    What a night!
    I am becalmed by your woolly hat
    that I carry into the twilight
    and hold next to my face
    to remind me what a swelled head you have..
    Even bigger than mine.
    It will make a lovely tea cosy..
    the hat,not your head.. baby
    I am filled with hope that I may be privileged
    to dry your tears on my tea towel or on my woow;;.
    I have plenty of them peach,blue or cream
    As the buttons fall from my winter coat,
    it reminds me of your messy yet delightful house..
    so I feel happy like a bird in a tree top.
    In the hush, I listen for the last purr of the springing cat
    that follows me about in my rich and wild fantasy life.
    Perchance we dream
    My heated heart leaps under my new blue silk bustiere with unmatching slip
    and my denim jeans and wool blazer
    Gosh, no blouse but I’ll buy one soon if you buy my poetry.
    I wait in the crystal moonlight for the route to your secret bed
    to be shown on the TV so that we may run as one, hands full of feelings
    in search of the glorious pink madness of love
    right into your bedroom… don’t fall over the rubbish..
    the books and the coathangers, he said
    Darling I can’t wait.
    I beg you for a kiss..
    that’s enough for any woman.. .
    Even one glance from your eyes would satisfy me
    as much as solving Fermat’s cat’s theorem or caressing your eyelids.
    You are my man….I love you like I love wild apricots and anemones.
    And moreover you are taller than me…
    Congratulations.You are divine to me,
    you smell so fresh always.
    I always wanted a clean man!Is it too late?
    I always tried to be punctual..but punctuality is not lovable,
    just an indication of an obsessive link with time
    not conducive to relaxing in the arms of Rudolf Valentino
    or even Dr Zhivago.
    I hope you will take me back where we came from into the Garden of Eden..
    I want to give you a big Apple baked in pastry.
    Well,how do we end.. writing has no end so I’ll just stop in the midd
    or start to begin again
    and again
    and

In winter snow

photo0904

No summer blossom,but decorated with   this snow

It fell  to earth one week

Changing the townscape into a white and black image

The tree flaunts her elegant shape,

so decorated.

And how daintily the black and white cat

with the long soft fur

stepped  out like a lady in high heels

going to a party

with jewels in her hair.

Punctuated, unconditional space of privation

“I’m not  surfing

on the tide of  realistic. frustration

exactly,so much as idealising

what one has.

To be able to bear satisfaction,

in order for grieving  to help ,  is unmistakable,

how the culture we can’t  see,

consumer capitalism ,depends

on the idea that toleration

every time we feel a bit hesitant

or scoured or inimitable, is  an omen

we beat, say, or we bop.

It’s only in  the punctuated

unconditional space of privation

that we can begin to  follow thoughts

.to really imagine or conjure with these.

It’s very difficult to allow

what we’re frustrated by  to remain alive

In making the case for  preventative thinking

I want to make it fascinating

so that people converse

or think  in different places

and extend their boundaries

so our thoughts can flock and even migrate.

 

The guardian translated into free verse

The shadowy [grey like John Major]

and foreign [see how they overrun us]

secretary,[his he male or female]

Hilary Benn,

has said

he will not resign [or even sign]

over[ a barrel]

his backing of air [was it wind?}

strikes on Isis in Syria [ package holidays free for gun holders]

despite his party [birthday,perhaps]

leader ,[Ledenhosen]

Jeremy Cor, blimey,yn,

writing to all [ and sundry?}

Labour MPs

setting out his oppo [slang again]

sition to military

action. [equal and opposite reaction to follow?]

Benn’s insistence that

he would disagree [ and be so disagreeable as to spoil his birthday party?}

with  his leader  { Heil Mary!}

came [ as fast as a  slug,giggle]

David Cameron called [but I was on the toilet]

[on Labour MPs to back military [ in fashion again]

intervention in Syria and

“vote on the basis [ or is it basics?}

of the arguments”. [What is their basis?]

The prime minister said there [ or elsewhere]

was a compelling [entrancing and inviting]

case for Britain [ to pay back all it stole from the Empire]

’s involvement and insisted [like a tantrum of toddlers]

MPs would allow the country  [to endure]

to do “the right  [ethical?}

thing” [ that cat’s mother]

if they sup [with the devil]

and exported the government. [ to Samoa]

Benn’s stance effectively [in effect or strongly?]

challenges Corbyn [ to a duel or dual fuel?]

to allow members of the shadow [ night demons]

cabinet to vote  [and  also my sideboard will vote too]

Iwith their conscience or sack [ Send my sack  now,thanks]

him and other rebels. [Albert Camus?]

At a difficult meeting [ of the waters]

on Thursday,

around half the shadow

cabinet, [milk jug and tea pot]

including Benn,[ Nevis and Snowdon and more]

the deputy leader, Tom Watson, [Whats app son?]

the shadow education [well it is a mere shadow of what we learned]

secretary,

Lucy Powell, [sexism again]

the shadow lord [Don’t say it]

chancellor, Lord Falconer,

and

others

made it

clear

they were minded [by the army night and day]

to back the govern [ or even  commit effrontery]

ment’s case for extending[ drinking hours]

airstrikes when  [can air strike?}

put to a vote in

the Commons next week.[ the future was once fiction]

Now there is no vertical

When you struck me,I vibrated like a kettle drum,
then as smaller percussions and repercussions
echoing from all the glassy surfaces
creating a balletic geometry of sound tracks
in space and time.

When you knocked me down,
I fell against her and her and her;
we were like a row of skittles
and we all went down with the lifeboat;
The infinite chain of being is.

When you hit me,the Fall spread across the world
Now there is no Vertical
All is undivine and graceless.
By the Rod it’s ruled

When you left me,I left myself,the world,the rocks,dry land
I weighed down sank to the ocean bed
with coral eyes
gazing.

When you struck my mind
I became an instrument of a foreign power
Singing a song I didn’t know.

When the glass was smashed
the splinters flew into all our hearts.
You didn’t know what we couldn’t see.

I lay on barren ground and gave birth
To my own Creator in the desert.