Category: poetry

A fear of tragic pasts feared imminent

You revealed the face within your face
Human,lonely,humbler than the ant
The pathos in your  eyes  made sad my gaze

The other  face,  phlegmatic, has no grace
With it ,you  appear  quite confident.
Yet you revealed to me  your  hidden face

I know now of the suffering of your days
A fear of tragic pasts  feared imminent
The pathos in your  eyes  made sad my gaze

The Lord says you’re his lamb and gives you grace.
Yet you must hide from men intolerant
You revealed the face within your face

Like Jesus, you were scourged and in disgrace
You   wandered feebly like  itinerants
The pathos in your  eyes  makes sad my  days

If God exists then would he not embrace
The lost, the lonely, even the vagrant?
You revealed the face within your face
The pathos in your  eyes  made  men seem base.

Give me your hands

 

I can’t love you
without loving the whole world too.
I can’t open my heart
unless everyone can be part

Wait for me.
I’m not afraid.
Wait for me.
I may be delayed.
I see you in my mind
Smiling, sad and kind.
I can’t love you
Unless I love the lost too.
Give me your hands
Outstretched across the  strands
We’re all one.
Life has begun

I have seen the face within your face

I have seen the face within your face
Humbled ,showing pain which  rent my heart
I have  felt the ache of your disgrace

You felt  worthless like a worm misplaced
Your heart was struck too  keenly by sharp darts
I  have seen  lthe face within your face

A child  whom no one  even once embraced
Your reticence and silence played its part
I have   shared the ache of your disgrace

A  bullied child who came last in the race
I  condemn men  blind , who had no heart
I have seen the  pain   hid deep inside your face

Then your  mask slid into  its  old place
You  caught the train  and re-lived this same hurt
I have   shared the ache of your disgrace

I hate the  people proud  but, to me ,base.
Who made your  soul and all your being smart
I have seen the face within your face
I have  known the ache of your disgrace

I will taste divine

Make my heart into a cottage pie.
Already it is minced and lies estranged
My enemies insult me with their lies
And my last will and testament is made.

An onion and a carrot chopped up fine,
Saute with these my heart till all are gold
With herbs and spices, I will taste divine
A mashed potato will a rooftop mould.

Do not forget my blood to use as sauce
Though now it’s cold, with garlic make it boil.
For what is gravy but the blood of choice
With sliced onion in ethereal olive oil?

O foes and devils eat me and you’ll be
Transformed into this self, your enemy

We don’t meet

We do not see new  people as they are
We clothe them in the dress of people past
Freud  gave names to  this and more bizarre
We still  do not see  people as they are
But “recognise”   in them  who we   look for
Reality   will  have them soon declassed
We do not see new  people as they are
We  embed in them  the love of people past.

This love unreal will soon give way to hate
They ought to be whom we wish them to be.
Then down on them, we bring the hand of fate
This love unreal will soon give way to hate
We do not even think it’s our mistake
Nor that from our desires they   should be    free
All  love unreal will  then become  our fate
They ought to  be our   longed for  fantasy.

He hung on me the clothes of his desire

I love him but he does not love me
Although he  did seduce me with his art
His    complex face I still may wish to see
I love him  so but he does not love me.
I puzzle over this anomaly
And wish the grief of lies  to leave my heart
I love him but he does not love me
Although he  did seduce me ,broke my heart

I detest him  yet for I was then unknown
He hung on me the clothes of his desire
And when I called him once on his i phone
He  labelled me a whore and  quite  unknown
His fantasy was not one I could own
Tried,judged ,condemned to perish in his fire
I detest him   hate him for I was then known
And knowing me, he sent me to my pyre

Images odious or pure

This odious slander pains my heart
Commodious, strangled ,sore  we part.
Invented words and meanings seen
Where my heart has never been.

When evil is conceived to spite
In the darkness with no light
I’d like to tell you,save your breath
The vision ‘s created by your wrath.

Children fear those faces seen
In flowered  wallpaper and in dreams
Some see monsters,some see elves
All conceived by their own  self.

If imagined demons writhe
In the corners of the mind
Hard indeed to be secure,
To wrest from fantasy its power.

And to feel that others lie
When  your image they defy.
Yet to  a mountain, lions are nought
A gazelle in fear is caught.

Images  odious  or  pure
Must be  shared by  human viewers
Like awakening from a dream
We realise   we need not scream.

Though sometimes Pollyana’s ways
Must to anxious fear give way.
Life is good and life is bad
Double vision is not sad

 

 

Together we can play the music

You play on the clarinet;

I play my old cello.

Your music is poignant;

My music is mellow.

I can’t play from your music;

You can’t play from mine.

I have longer fingers.

You have bigger hands.

You play some from memories

which I don’t understand.

I play from my own history,

You compose your own.

You have tortured feelings,

which I have rarely known.

Would you play my music?

Then it must be transposed;

but we can’t transpose our feelings,

Unless we are s first hown

By some blessed vision

From the dark unknown.

I love the music that you play.

I know well you love mine.

But can we play together

In some meaningful design?

Transposing keys and feelings

Is an arduous lifetime task;

Much easier to play pretend

and never,never ask.

I cannot share your lifetime hurts

and you cannot share mine.

Is it easier to share happiness

and supremely holy wine?

Oh,play your poignant music for me

with your meditative art.

I shall listen with my ears.

I shall listen with my heart.

Then I shall respond to you;

My instrument is here.

I am playing quite new music,

I feel you drawing near.

Together we are moved to play

A completely new design.

I seem to know your feelings

And I can hear that you feel mine.

Together we now make a work

For torment’s sweet relief;

Though this music is so tragic,

Its design has brought me peace.

Play on,play on,for now I know

I begin to understand,

without more words or gestures,

but those from your curved hands.

Fish nudge me with big grins and teeth white

I’m in deep now,never been this deep before
The world’s hollow like a shell and I’m out its door.
In so deep, the ocean has its own startled floor.
I’m down,down.down.never been so dark , so more

I can’t rightly tell how I got where I am
I think I had an accident,fell over, then I swam.
Sometimes it’s a loss, be times it’s a man.
I guess I only do it cos I know some folk can.

I don’t know if the joy is worth the pain
Would I choose to relive if, I was born again?
The deep joy is the amazing gain.
But the sorrow is  damn sad, let’s admit it plain.

I’m in deep and it’s over my head
What was I thinking of,when I fell  out of that bed?
I look up and  the sea’s so  turquoise like  that mist   is red
When we get good and mad and wish some loon was dead.

At first, it was all just black,black pain
But from the bottom of the  well, I looked up with awed love again.
That’s when I recalled,feelings are deep and sane
Joy is much greater when we’re in the deep,deep zone.

I dunno if I’m  ever comin’ out.
We can’t control it,ain’t that what life’s all about?
I’ll never love with innocence again,nor not feel doubt.
But I’m no teapot and the devil ain’t got my spout.

I’m swimming and the ocean’s so   mysteriously bright
Down here we don’t have no day nor no night
Fish nudge me with  big grins  and teeth white
Sea flowers fondle me and whisper,turn off that light

Why write poetry?

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/one-true-thing/201401/jane-hirshfield-why-write-poetry

Jane Hirshfield: Why Write Poetry? Jane Hirshfield is the author of seven books of poetry, including most recently Come, Thief, and the classic collection of essays, Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry. Who better to ask: Why write poetry? Here are her in-depth, thought provoking answers to this two-part question:

Jennifer Haupt: Why do you write poems, and why would anyone want to write a poem?

Source:

Jane Hirshfield:

One reason to write a poem is to flush from the deep thickets of the self some thought, feeling, comprehension, question, music, you didn’t know was in you, or in the world. Other forms of writing—scientific papers, political analysis, most journalism—attempt to capture and comprehend something known. Poetry is a release of something previously unknown into the visible. You write to invite that, to make of yourself a gathering of the unexpected and, with luck, of the unexpectable.Poetry magnetizes both depth and the possible. It offers widening of aperture and increase of reach. We live so often in a damped-down condition, obscured from ourselves and others. The sequesters are social—convention, politeness—and personal: timidity, self-fear or self-blindness, fatigue. To step into a poem is to agree to risk. Writing takes down all protections, to see what steps forward. Poetry is a trick of language-legerdemain, in which the writer is both magician and audience. You reach your hand into the hat and surprise yourself with rabbit or memory, with odd verb or slant rhyme or the flashing scarf of an image. This is true for discovering some newness of the emotions, and also true of ideas. Poems foment revolutions of being. Whatever the old order was, a poem will change it.

When young people ask writing advice, I sometimes say, “Open the window a few inches more than is comfortable.” As with all offered advice, the words are tuned first to my own ear and own life.

Read more by clicking the top link

Except for changing angles of sunlight

It’s autumn. yet it feels like summer bright
Despite the earlier ending of the day
Too soon comes starlight and deep   night
It’s autumn yet   it feels like summer bright
Except   for changing angles of sunlight
No more long  evening hours for children’s  play
It’s autumn yet it feels like summer bright
Despite the earlier,   gentler end of  day

Your absence has so distanced us in grief.

Image

I try to feel through dark and distant space
To where you dwell in a so called “heavenly” place.
And you are far from those of us, who care.
Our hearts are dulled with loving thoughts not shared
Your absence has so distanced us in grief.
We can neither share our loss, nor gain relief.
I stare into the spangled sky at night
I see a space  devoid of  any light.
I feel into the edges of my soul
I sense,somewhere, a partially dismembered whole.
Would new technology ever aid my view,
As I search around for some tiny trace of you?
How can  you choose to svanish in the night,
And never ,from then on, be in my sight?
I wish that I’d been there when you went off,
Then I could have  told you how I love.d
Shall I never hear again your gentle tenor voice
Enchanting me once more with your  sweet choice?
Shall I never  find the laces from your shoes,
Floating gently back to earth through these  elm trees?
I see more flocks of gracious geese flash by.
Are those your fingers tracing lines right through the sky?
Can you  see these same  geese from up above?
But you’re on the other side, too far  away
I look at all that’s near,as I’m still here.
I know now you’re too far away ,too far away, too far away ,my dear.
I know now that you’re too far away,oh dear.
How can I learn to live with love, not with fear,
As I go on ,now, down these coming  empty years?
So sad that you’re not near,not here,not here,my dear,my dear.
Shall I sometimes, in the night pretend,pretend,pretend,pretend,pretend,pretend  you  are
Oh,that heaven were not  so agonisingly .so wickedly too  far
So we  slide down the escape chute of the years,
Like children clutching close our teddy bears?
And we cross the ghost filled plains of  ancient wars
Which cover most of Europe with their scars.
How can I compare  my losing one I love
When screaming poppies  haunt  below , above?
When bones  of Jews tortured  to their  ground
Make the guilt of  Europe ever,ever  bind
When gypsies ,gays and  women big with child
Died unimagined deaths in a Europe  so defiled

Wild Geese

 

Leaves  fly off so suddenly
Small birds float on the wind
Like boats astride a choppy sea.
Their swaying soothes my mind.

Wild geese fly past at dusk again,
They head towards the North.
The holly berries glow in sun,
Nature  gives all birth.

I gaze intently at the sky,
The clouds hang dark and low.
If I  were  too a mere wild goose
I’d know which way to go

But I am left with only words
To find my destination.
Yet words do carry down to us
The wisdom  of   lost generations

We use old words in unique ways.
We structure them to form
A new design not seen before
A new sentence is born

I send my words with love to you
I hope you safely catch them.
Give me answers from your heart
And I’ll do my best to match them

Beautiful colours embraced in the sky

  All that morning in  the bright  sun
 The leaves unfolded   one by  one
The birds sang sweet songs in the holly tree
I felt they were doing it just for me. 

                         

In the evening as clouds rolled by
Beautiful colours  embraced in the sky
I stopped my tasks and chores to see
A whole new world created just for me

 As night came down with her navy blue sky
Outside my window ,I looked up high
I saw the shape of the pale glowing moon
And blackbirds were singing their heart-rending tunes                        

                               

   As I looked up past the holly tree
  I knew the  whole world was created for me
And if you  take a long look up too
Remember the  whole world was created for you

Immense and silent is my empty heart

Inside me  is a gap where love once dwelt
Immense and silent ,swallowing all my hopes
A sorrow unacquainted aaks for help
To direct me how  to live, not merely cope.

I feel that  gripping  hand upon my heart
A sorrow in the belly’s pit beside
As he died my anguish made its start
Its   heavy desperation  pierced my side

While he lived I dwelled inside his shade
Protected  and   much loved I did not know
That every tree must fall  into  its glade
Destroying those who live there with its blows

Unprotected from the intense sun
I’ll burn  to ash  and  join my loved one

Words rise up like geese at dawn

Source
 

Words rise up like geese at dawn

When with pale sun new day is born

The words approach and dance in line

The choice of words is mine

Words spelled here by sense and sound

In clause and sentence weave around.

Which tempting words shall I now use

And which shall I refuse?

The fire lights up inside my heart

So now my writing hand can start

I sit down at my desk and say

“This is the way I spend my day.

With words I sing and play!”

So you are gone

So you are gone  who once declared your love
For that phantasm conjured in your mind
For onto me you brought down from above
A torment bitter and   sharp words unkind
.Used to  friendship from within your books
You did not understand that I was real
Irritation grew  the more you looked
You threw your poisoned  arrows  at my heel.
What once you loved then you began to hate
If not ideal ,intolerable I must be
And then you cursed me with this  sorry fate
Our child was born and him you’ll never see.
Premature and born in desert grey.
I carried him alone from death’s dark way.

The Fall spread across the world

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 kmow.

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.

Focus is sharp when we hunt.

When a  child’s born ,she usually cries

As the stimulation of birth  has its price.

Yet we must leave mother’s womb

Then create  a cocoon

Where our psyche a world may devize.

 

Metaphors spring up like  spring flowers.

Similes enchant by the hour.

How rich our own minds  may be

When we perceive all we see.

For relaxed eyes  don’t  enjoy being  narrowed.

 

Focus is sharp when we hunt.

Yet maintained it can too often stunt.

We need a  broad view,

As the owls always knew.

If only we saw back and front!

Butterflies can light upon a rose

Butterflies and the clock

Butterflies can light upon a rose
And sparrows miss the prickly holly leaf
So thorns deter most larger, useless foes
Bring safety to small birds instead of grief

The butterfly is symbol of the power
That weakness has in entering Sacred ground.
A butterfly can fly through hail stormed bowers
Their wings send waves across the world by sound.

A cat too has its claws as well as fur
Yet cats do have a a modicum of choice.
For those of us for whom they have a care
Claws are held ; miaows or purrs are voiced.

Am I a holly tree or fragrant rose?
Am I the cat who may unsheath her claws?

Different points of view

IMG_0074 The old red wall is dressed in stems of wood

In wintertime, we see the ancient bricks.
But in the springtime come the flower buds.
And we see no more of Jack Frost and his tricks.

Which vision is the true one,we may ask
Just as with the faces we each show.
Is there any virtue in that task
For reality’s impossible to know.

Each perspective gives a vision new.
The more we see ,the more we realise.
Other cultures have a different view.
Argument is futile and unwise.

As when and where we stand gives us our view.
I  must perceive quite differently from you

And learn the feeling Arts

Shall we cling to grudges from the past.
Distorting vision;injuring our hearts?
Shall we   loosen that tight grip at last?
Shall we cling to grudges from the past,
When grace is waiting  for all us  poor outcasts?
Soon enough we sinners shall depart
Shall we cling to grudges from the past,
With derision ;injuring our hearts?

Shall we   choose to hold our wounded heart
Yet not retaliate  and hurt this friend or foe?
For  indulged anger grows and  war can  start
Shall we   choose to hold our wounded heart
Contain our rage and  learn the feeling Arts?
For all of us have   traversed Arctic  snow
Shall we   choose to hold our wounded heart
Yet not retaliate  and hurt this once   loved foe?

Trying to glimpse another through their veil.

I embraced  the ambiguity like a bride
Who fears  disclosing that her face is fake
And while we’re on the subject, I take pride
In stealing water colours  from the lake

Ambiguous  in intentions we don’t know
We send out signals full of first class news
If this rebounds  an artist might then show
Our vision rests  upon our point of view

Seventeen types of clarity are mine
Fifteen from my  mind and two from pride
From this glass I make a view divine
Though Sunday someone said they thought I lied.

Ambiguously ,we hover by the scales
Trying to glimpse another through their veil.

But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”

Sometimes when bereft  I’d love a snail
Though it might wet my bed with silvery trails
Would  snails be lonely  living in my house?
Shall I be but fit to  love some  louse?

I  hugged a rowan tree  and now it’s dead
The council said they’ll give me oak instead
It stood upon the pavement by the gate
But now it is what McCall Smith calls “late”

I  wonder  if self massage is the   thing
Some perfumed lotion stolen on the wing.
I    stroked my arms with Cream E45
Now they say I’m not allowed to drive!

I was sad but now I am at peace
All I needed was a plate of eggs and grease.

As I ran off and thousands were in chase

I can’t buy any clothes for I’ve no space
Yet in the autumn women like new coats
I wonder should I transform my pale face
And wear a golden necklace for its grace
Though it might prick a lover in embrace
At least it would sort out  the men  from goats
As I ran off and thousands were in chase

On the road to Dent

On the road to Dent there was a pool
A river in the dale had made a loop
So out your clothes and into it you lept
While  tame sheep  wandered  round me in a group
Eating ginger biscuits as they trooped.
On the road to Dent there  is a pool
To pass it by,you’d have to be a fool

When we feel

I do not wish to feel this sadness now
But who decides,who chooses what we feel?
If I were strong I might use a  large plough
To knock my feelings level  when they grow
Bur  that is not allowed by God and co.
Yet who denies his  measuring  the real?
I do not wish to feel this sadness now
Think, who derides,who cackles when we feel?

We wished to see the flowers when in full bloom

We ‘d  hoped to see the rose gardens in June
But on the 1st he died and travelled on
We  both enjoyed   the roses in  full  bloom

We used the dark to see the stars and moon
But by the 1st  I found that he was gone
We hoped to see the rose gardens in June

As  I tell,  dark death arrived  too soon
And  took away  the  life of   a  dear man
We  wished to see the  flowers when in full bloom

As he  lay,I sang  to him the psalms
I  knew before the doctor’s he was going.
We meant to see the rose gardens in June

Then  there with me he  re-encountered calm
I had not gone there with a plan
We  longed to see the  flowers  enchanting blooms

May was cold and bitter with alarm
That was when he fell , yet rose again
We  hoped to see the rose gardens in June
We    loved the  scent of roses in their time

We feel our love absurd

 

Art though my own and may I now love thee?
Art though my own and shall I  thy wife be?
As waiting long  lays waste to love and joy
Art though mine,  or with me do’st thou toy?

O treat me not like  stuff disposable
O treat me not  as one intolerable.
For if  thou touch then thou hast made a claim.
And from  the heart, to lose is to be maimed.

For  women are not like  to sheep or goats
We have hearts to feel what thou hast wrought
And if  thou come to steal then  thou’rt a  thief.
One of many , causing women grief.

Do not touch with hand or with sweet words
For  if thou  lie, we feel our love  absurd