Every poem begins with a first line
After that we choose the space and time
The words float in my head till they combine
Must a poem begin with its first line?
Some are bold and some are more refined
Some are free and some have lissom rhymes
A poem begins by finding a first line
After that we search the Deep Words Mine
The end of values, kindness, earned respect
The loss of wisdom,history and truth
The pillars of democracy are cracked.
The centre of the heart,who can protect?
Conspiracy and madness unseat proof
An end of values, kindness, earned respect
Violence is admired though lives are wrecked
The lasting triumph of the folk uncouth
The pillars of the Western Mind have cracked
Their minds unfurnished seem bereft of tact
They tread on others words like horses’ hooves
The end of values, kindness, earned respect
How can such opponents make a pact?
The calculating crucify our youth
The pillars of the Western Mind have cracked
Yet Western Empire builders had no ruth
They tortured those they conquered group by group
On such ground just madmen earn respect
The altars of the Western Mind have cracked
My husband has a rubber face,
He’s from a subset of the human race.
Some men have faces fixed and set;
My husband’s face is not like that.
He imitates our politicians,
Just like Rory Bremner can.
Though he has no wig or hair piece,
He can look like anyone.
Some nights I waken for I am laughing
While I am quite sound asleep.
I am dreaming of his mobile features,
Contorted to a different shape.
He is skilled at telling jokes.
And he loves a good cartoon.
If I am feeling flu style blueness
I he can get me up again.
He has a rather noble visage.
He gets attention he abbhors.
In the bar on King’s Cross Station—
I was asked was he a Lord!
He’s a Lord of Fun and Humour.
He’s a Lord at Listening Well.
He’s unique, but so are you,
And all creatures that on earth do dwell
With the Mass in Latin,I believed.
The words evoked what no-one could conceive
The women in their hats looked like proud queens
What was, what is, and what once might have been
The men came late,hung over, full of dreams
They took no Wafer, drunk from living streams
I did not mind confessing made up sins.
Nor did I mind beans found in small tins.
Religion gives fresh themes to those obsessed
Guilt and sin,but scruples are the best
I went to church and told God I was through
He said, hang on,I’ll send my Light to you.
Thus it was that I was saved from death
I had worshipped Satan in duress.
After that I took a job for health
I am rich in love, though not in wealth
To me there is a White House of the Soul
We shall meet again there when we’re whole
A place of beauty, space and coloured light
God won’t boast, and neither will the mice
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
Its liquid centre thrown up wild and bright
Enigmatic like a midday dream
The pinky edges shift in sun’s bent beams
Do they convey the aura of the light?
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
I wonder where my haunted eyes have been
In the forests deeper than the night
Enigmatic like a midday dream
Schizoid, lacking affect, a slit scream
Destroying what is left of love and sight
The fallen sun makes black the trees that lean
Here we saw wild primrose by the stream
The castle of the Tudors soft in blight
Enigmatic like a midday dream
Bewildered people kill their own insight
Toss their fears , into the weak to bite
The failing sun as pure as boiling screams
Enigmatic are our midnight dreams
Trees lean over, watchful as we meet
The tall ones do not shiver in the breeze
Trees can hear the torment in our speech
We have flowering cherry in our street
But mine died like my lover with great ease
Trees lean over listening as we meet
The tree won’t bend too close, it will not reach
As panic,worry, horror,nightmares squeeze
Trees discern the music in our squeaks
Alas, no tree has mastered human speech
But when they can, they coax the honey bees
Trees lean over sweetly as we meet
The leaves will rustle,wrestle and may tease
Smile for selfies,what’s the word, it’s cheese
Trees lean over, wonder, and conceive
Yet trees hate noone, nor do they believe
I remember you so well for those eight years
The nights you sang love’s lullabies to me
I was fearful of the footstep on the stairs
You held me as we paddled in the sea
Maybe Blackpool,maybe Morecambe too
You told me stories as I sat upon your knee
I have some good memories, too few
Where are all those days we played outdoors?
Who knows if these memories are true?
In East Lancs and in West Lancs rain will pour
Once you wrapped me in your coat, but then
Mam was angry when we reached the door
She told you, you were foolish for a man
Why should men be wise, should anyone?
That was when your illnesses began
You let me lie beside you in your bed
I’d had my tonsils out and felt unwell
I talked but don’t remember what you said
I didn’t know the meaning of pure hell
I guess I learned that when death you befell
Come back,Daddy,missing you too well
I’m still your little girl, your smiling belle
Now I’m feeling kind of numb on this January day
The darkness came down sudden and I feel it’s here to stay
Shall I make some tea and pretend that you are here
I’m naked like the wood underneath that swish veneer.
I’m feeling kinda nothin’ now the melancholy’s gone
Should I be doing something that will give me, like, some fun?
The silence is not threatening, but neither is it good
Did you ever wish that you weren’t made of flesh and blood?
I’m feeling so damned stupid for falling on my back
My shoulder was in agony and there’s whiplash in my neck
The doctor, he injected me, but he said it’s down to luck
He may have missed the mark, he says,I wish I’d said,oh feck
Apparently the elderly are not in much demand
I heard a sorta whisper as my head went in the sand
We must keep the silence or we’ll frighten off the young
They don’t seem to notice but the cat will lick my hand
I didn’t know how old I was till the clock flew off the wall
Isn’t it uncanny what you see before the Fall?
Yout letter seems to overflow with rage
The reservoir of hatred has emerged
The loving kindness vanished without trace
I cannot see the mirror of your face
You used me to contain your anger’s surge
Yout letter, wanton, overflows with rage
Why did you enact your Play in haste?
Why treat me so coldly , why me hurt?
Your act of love has vanished without trace
Do not tell me I was not your taste
You fantasised an image I dispute
Yout letter ,sadly, overflows with rage
I hate to see my love was to you waste
Free speech applies to both, you can’t refute
How could good, true love leave not a trace?
After this, I in my world was mute
I could not speak,my heart and soul pursued
Yout letter uses words to channel rage
You wished to see me naked,this the stage
The ice in the eye
Invisible glass
Splinters the vision
Light can harass.
Panic makes feints
Like dancing with skates
She passed out in angst
Traumatic the date
The clutch at the heart
Oxygen, gas
Loosen your grip
The glory, the waste
Ariel,Israel,
Where is the horse?
Where are the olives?
Where is her voice?
Your breath became my spirit,made me live
You touch me as I breathe air in and out
I feel your presence in my heart’s inside
You have made our bodies, there’s no doubt
Growing from two cells, the urge is strong
The body’s wishes are not sinful now
In the schizoid era, flesh seems wrong
The intellectuals are the most admired
Yet we need our bodies and their songs
Ideas, more than loving, are desired
Sex and our poor bodies make us sin
Yet th damned chaste sing in Hell’s own choirs
Breath of God, the clay made into flesh
We continue in the holy work
No creation can be kept suppressed
May our lively bodies be well blessed
Loving into being all the world
Breathing in and breathing out God’s dust
midsummer days evoke the trancelike past
where children played in joyous, daisied fields
with buttercups so bright the memory lasts
a freedom that our conscious growth will steal.
those stones and leaves and many coloured flowers
were gathered into images that glow
yet later we forget those treasured hours
when for a while we lived in life’s deep flow
we did not look and see,but felt at one
we lived as did the birds high in the trees
now we write , experiencing has gone
we cannot live like flowers filled with bright bees
to lose ourselves in nature is a joy
which to our adult selves we must restore
Cold dull winters bring us close to death
The blood grows thick and scarcely does it move
The worms may shudder deep down in the earth
This damp coldness presses out our breath
The frost and ice, the memory delude
Cold dull winters bring us close to death
Do we need the sun to give us worth?
Low in oxygen, the mind’s confused
The worms have nightmares deep down in the earth
Should we pause, these issues to address?
In this Lockdown, where should we confess?
Cold dull winters bring us close to death
Wonder now what makes our voices terse
With no priests, who shall this poor world bless?
The worms may sleep deep down inside the earth
On each other,let us not intrude
Let all loving kindness be our food
Cold dull winters bring us close to death
Like worms that slumber deep down in the earth
To get you fit for death they took you in
The Rehabilitation of the dead ?
They got you up and sent you to a gym
You had a bed, the light was very dim
So those new books I brought were never read
To get you fit for death they forced you in
You fell onto my lap, it was no sin
Your face as black as Satan’s in his bed
They pulled you up for torture in a gym
They taunted you like Nazi’s, what’s to win?
Tell me what the liars wrote down or said
To get you fit for death they forced you in
When Christ was killed, they hung him on a hill
If God is tortured, where should man be led?
Who imagined dead men in a gym?
When the trouble came the nurses fled
You died in A and E , there was no bed
To prepare you for you death they asked me in
You cried,I want to die, but they just grinned
They say we ought to exercise
Walk up and down the stairs
Never use a Lift instead
Despite the tear and wear
I think I’ve found the answer
It’s as simple as can be
Just shake your limbs and head about
While you watch TV
But if you’re very nervous
That will do you good
Trembling with anxiety
Will circulate your blood
Or if you see men following you
Then run until they stop
They might be a fantasy
So do not call a cop
Agitation’s terrible
But even that’s ok
You won’t be able to sit down
Ot even kneel to pray
So have a nervous breakdown
You will live to ninety nine
You may not enjoy it much
But it fits my little rhyme
I suppose the answer is now plain
We have to choose our way
Loose and happy on the sands
Or shivering & trembling all day
When you die the Coffin men
Will thank you if you’r slim
It might be a real nervous breakdown
Is better than many a gym
The cat would listen as I sang a tune
Maybe Leonard Cohen, maybe Bach
I washed the pots and dried the silver spoons
He lay down on the carpet as I crooned
Now I have a doormat and no heart
The cat would listen as I sang a tune
In early married life. I saw no doom
Oh,mother, don’t you know we have to part?
I washed the pots. gave back the silver spoon
Instead I saw the silver of the moon
Where do we draw diagrams or charts?
The cat would wriggle gently, dance my tunes
He said the cat was ill,oh, can’t be cured
The cat had tumours ,soon we had to part
I threw the pots outside and bent the spoons
Our hearts are full of holes, pierced by such darts
My lover left me and my friends were sharks
The cat should listen as I sing a tune
I am mad, I fried the honey moon
I’ve got liquid Quink on all my clothes
I thought that everyone would like to know
I’ve got moth holes in my sweaters like small eyes
But my winter coat is still almost alright
I’ve had this coat for fifteen years,it’s brown
It drapes quite well, the maker is renowned
I must put it on to take a walk outside
To see which plants have died and which survived
My husband would be very shocked indeed
My tights have gaping holes upon my knees
The ink has penetrated to my vest
God knows where that Quink will wander next
If your clothes are damaged, do not cry
At least 5,000 moths have learned to fly
Bring your own God with you, you can’t help it anyway
I have heard you singing, don’t tell me you can’t pray
We’re strung like beads along a chain, we’re linked with none left out
Every time that someone dies, there opens a new mouth
Mouth brings voice, the people’s choice, there is no faking Truth
Eat and live, speak and grieve, give and so receive
Eyes to see and ears to hear,grace may be about
Still the Sirens wail and moan, leave them, they can’t count
I am this, the cobble stones
Hot tar between the wails and groans
Some stones are flat,our stones were round
Snap entry to the Underground
I am the pools in pavement holes
In winter frost you crack my bones
On my surface, children prance
I am the stage,I am the dance
I see you and you see me
As your peek with bended knee
I am the bricks that built your house
I am the mousehole and the mouse
Here comes Ginger, the big cat
He caught a chicken and a rat
Here the coal shed, here the lav
That is what our houses had
Cold it is if menstrual pain
Comes on in the night again
Colder still to lose your child
To the sewers wizened smile
I am the earth on which we grew
I am the mystery,I the clue
Stand on me,I am your strength
I the bowler,I the length
Golden children came to dust
I the promise,I the cost
Don’t send me an apron for Xmas
When all that I want is a glove
A glove for the oven
Its hands must be frozen
Let’s drown the old oven in love.
Don’t send me a card on my birthday
I cannot remember your name
Just bake me a cake
I prefer it to steak
Don’t limp unless you are lame
Don’t change the sheets every week,dear
For washing them makes them wear thin
Just give me a brush
I’ll beat off the fluff
Then we can both have some fun
Don’t give me bacon for breakfast
God won’t let Jews eat it yet
His aversion to swine
Is what makes him divine
The fig tree is dead I regret
The music is the waves as they run high
Across the pebbly sands onto the road
Then groaning of the shingle as waves die
The fish that dwell deep in the dark, dark brine
The flow within as outer waters flow
The music of the waves as they run high
The moon reflects sun’s light to other eyes
Above the seas which rise up to its goad.
Then groans the shingle as the steep waves die
The sea holds hidden goods where we can’t pry
In the deep the heavy water moulds
The music of the waves as they run high
All the day and all of the black night
The seas and oceans change from high to low
Ah, groans the earth as each wave has to die
Re-hear these sounds, are they a sacred code?
As angels wrestled, Jacob feared the Lord
His music is the waves as they run high
His groaning is the shingle as waves die
I was walking in a desert grey and bleak
All alone, with none to speak or eat
I shuddered when I realised the truth
I was unmarried, pregnant, mere refuse.
Cast out for other failings all unknown
My baby came too soon and I alone
A doctor with no face appeared and said
Your baby died ,I see he’s never fed
He flung my baby on his heap of dead
I lay there in the dirt, red with my blood
I had to leave or I would die of grief
The will to live just stronger than a leaf
I went to see my baby, and he smiled
He was still alive, my love,my child
I took him in my arms, where should we go?
I walked into that darkness full and slow
When strangers ask for photos of you nude
Or wearing clothes so scanty they’ll go blind
Let them see your feet without their shoes
Let them see your twisted toes turn blue
Let them see the bunions God designed
When strangers ask for photos rather rude
Can one solve a crossword with no clues?
Can one have no bosom and look fine?
Can they love your feet without cute shoes?
When you’re feeling sad and life is blue
When you long for love but not divine
When gentlemen want photos somewhat crude
Try to sell them on the Evening News
Take the veil or drink the Altar Wine
Let them kiss your feet without their shoes
When you’re looking for the hidden signs
Don’t read numbers settlers left behind
When strangers ask for photos, give them clues
Let them wash your feet but make them queue
Look without and see the claret sky
The sun is falling like Greek wine tonight
As sparrows hide in holly,safe from eyes
We need protection till our minds sublime
Into dusty corners shine their lights
Look without and see the curious sky
Tell your heart, your truth, though others lie
Seem rewarded with both cash and spite
Oh, sparrows hide in holly, leaves awry
A man is called an emperor , yet he dies
Look without and see the fatal signs
The sky is turning panic to delight
At last, philosopher, the silence sighs
Throw away the your thoughts, cold or benign
As sparrow safe in holly, shut their eyes
The hawk may soar across the sacred lines
Where patterns of complexity arise
Look without and see the open sky
When sparrows rest in holly, owls surprise
This poem is written in the sonnet form,
And yet I have my doubts about its shape
Though nearly to that structure it conforms
There may be holes where nightmare faces gape.
It looks and speaks just as a sonnet would
And talks of metaphysical concerns.
Do we conclude, as poets and readers should,
That in our schizoid age we cannot learn?
For humans may be decked in clothes of wolves;
And lambs be dressed in lion’s fearsome furs.
Thus, sense is tricked and problems are unsolved.
Landscapes etched, yet details seem quite blurred.
It looks like one,it feels like one,it speaks;
Yet from these words, does human feeling leak?
Put your painful feelings into form
The sonnet,villanelle, the triolet
The shape controls the anguish of the storm
Our wounds can shape our vision and our thoughts
Remember school, where bullies made you pay?
Put your painful feelings into form
Words like daggers pierce the loving heart
Oh, memory must not cut us off from play
The play controls the violence of the storm
Let all thought of vengeance now depart
Or our spirit blackens, then decays
Put those painful feelings into form
In its time the sun will bring new dawns
Tears will wash our souls from black to grey
The words compress,contain the bloody storm
Do not give the monsters time of day
Conversation does not always pay
Put your painful feelings into form
The shape will heal the anguish like a balm
The butterfly is like a flower
which moves its station every hour.
Oh,happy is he on the wing.
The vision makes me quick to sing.
The flower is open in the sun,
And to its heart, true love shall come.
The bees shall feast and fly replete
With nectar they are now full sweet.
I sing of colour and of love;
Blessings that rain down from above.
I wish to be a flower too.
Ah,that the bee could but be you.
We feel the bitter winter of the heart
The icy hand ,the cruel teeth’s sharp bite
When close friends die, when lovers break apart
Terse,cruel words can make our deep self smart
The weak have little power to make things right
So feel the bitterest winter of their hearts
Humans may like fruit be much too tart
Thus fantasied revenge can blind with light
As close friends die or false lovers depart
While we suffer, we seek maps and charts
Which path to follow,which leads us aright
From the bitter winter of the heart?
The muscles clench, the ligaments are taut
Faces frown, in mirrors demons shriek
If close friends die or lovers haste to part
The pain of loss, the tears that agitate
The mental functions,all have gone on strike
Stricken in the winter of the heart
Retaliation , bitter, wants to fight.
Yet we have little time to see the Light
We curse the bitter winter of the heart
Instinct, humbler. finds for us new charts
Do not cultivate a bitter heart
Nor spread the seeds of malice where you go
Accept the worst, be willing, though it smarts
Do not plot your hatred on a chart
Stand and feel , accept what we can’t know
Do not cultivate a bitter heart
When we suffer deeply, when death parts
The agony is torment passing slow
Accept the worst, be willing, wounds do smart
Though we have no dagger,words are sharp
The little snails have nothing but teach slow
Do not cultivate a bitter heart
Do not be the tiger as it snarls
Fate and death and anguish hurt us most
Accept, be first, be willing, though it smarts
As we sink down further into low
We see the glow worms, wondrous like lit snow
Open arms and time relieve our hearts
Accept, be patient, willing, that is smart
Can your dentist play the flute
The violin or the French Horn?
Do you know that teeth have roots?
Are your shrewd, are you astute
Did you smile when you were born?
Can your dentist play the flute?
Did Abert Einstein play with Newts
Can you love or are you lorn?
Do you know that teeth have roots?
Were you chatty, were you mute?
Did you love in golden corn?
Can your dentist play the flute?
Do the men say,you are cute?
Do they love your curvy form?
Do you know that teeth have roots?
Read the music, play a storm
The Albert Hall is very warm
Can your father play the flute
Do you know that words have roots?
How my heart sings 