This poem was written many years ago, in between jobs, one dark (in more ways than one) Friday night. I think it’s safe to say it’s one from my window period

This Town.

So cold, the moon wears a scarf
Of cloud, bombazeen in mourning,
Quarter of her gone as if by cancer.

The sky drips spiderthreads, not water
As such, just so much as a lover might give
Of tenderness before a quarrel.

Belisha beacons wink, not for traffic
Or children, just the night – met by silence
And a vigil of criss-crossing darkness.

And such silence, the gleams
Of wet light on pavements, the blood
Of a Friday night, in this town.

Yet again I find myself returning to my poetry blog and another year has passed without updating it. It is not that my life stagnates, it is that so much happens! The last year has been a time of constant re-awakenings, and re-negotiations with life itself. I have completed one year of my journey into becoming a person-centred counsellor, only 2 more to go, 3 if I include the Master’s Only recently did the idea of bringing my writing into the therapeutic arena emerge, and only recently was I able to to consider this in a pure sense – not, look at me, see how I write, but “I write rather well, how can I use this therapeutically for myself and others”. I have been on a journey. Scrub that. I have just begun a journey. Not that this post is anything to do with that – I wanted to post something, a poem, and dug through the rather sparse output of the last couple of years. Not the most noble of subjects – I was ill, and wanted to write. I had forgotten totally, that I had written this. Hopefully, I will write more, as it looks likely I may be running a therapeutic writing workshop over the summer

It

It grows in me,
symbiotic after a fashion,
shall I watch it,
pretend to accept its presence,
its slick motion through the gut,
its reproductive rumblings
as it appropriates my body for its ends?

It’s a life form, that’s all,
bacteria or virus, I evolved from it,
I share its cells even though I grew
to know a pain it can’t imagine
in its simple divisions and multiplications,
ignorant in its blissful simplicity.

It does not strive, it just is, then is not,
without fuss or ceremony or worry.
It has no face to lose, no memory,
it is just cells, a set of building blocks,
passing on its form, its structure.

Shall I watch it, let it use me up,
accept our symbiosis, its invasion?
It will not let me be, I heave again,
slave to its ignorant, ingenious persistence.

I was not really going to publish them on my poetry blog (which has been neglected of late) but I showed one to somebody and they said other people might appreciate them, as there appear to be stock funeral poems that people always use, and these were a little different, so maybe people might be able to use them in some way.

I don’t know if that’s true, but if you do stumble across these little poems, and feel you could use them for a memorial service, feel free to adapt and use them as you wish.

Sailor. For Dad – 1934-2007

You sailed into this world
Seventy-two years ago,
And your life unfurled
Like the sails of ships
On the seas you loved.
As you journeyed we got to know
You for a while as you slipped
Between the islands of our lives
And stayed a while to laugh and love
In the harbour of our hearts.
But now it’s time to sail again,
To say goodbye, to bid farewell.
As you sail from shore a final time
We’ll keep love warm as you journey on
Until the day we sail ourselves.
Father, husband, granddad, friend,
Sail on, you’re free, sail on.

The Laughing Girl. For Mum – 1934-2009

Where did she go, the laughing girl,
The dancing queen with her cheeky smile,
The bonny lass we loved?

Her voice is quiet, her body still,
She fell asleep and will not wake,
I’ll tell you where she went;

She’s gone to find the laughing boy,
Her flame haired sailor and his smile,
They’re happy now but far, so faraway.

And yet we do not lose them,
They leave behind some essence,
In rush of leaves or swell of sea,

Light of moon or warmth of sun,
Each splash of rain, each waking flower,
And always in our minds and hearts.

You’ll always be here inside us -
And in our hearts you’ll
Be forever dancing, in the stars.

Mum loved to dance, but for the last 2 years of her life she couldn’t even walk.

I hope you’re dancing now, Mum.

In any case, I found this one from the mid 1990′s. It’s a love poem of sorts – but a realistic one I feel, containing the nerves and uncertainties that can prelude a relationship – is it the right person, should I take the plunge, what if it all goes wrong? If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that nothing’s permanent – including relationships and feelings within them. Maybe the only “constants” are uncertainty and impermanence – but if that’s the nature of things, then it’s perhaps a natural thing, in balance with the weather, the seasons, the tides….

Tides

Almost close enough, your voice,
Like the stretch of sea that touches shore
To dwindle and fade to perspective.

Gulls would know in their squawking ignorance
That tide always returns to sand -
To roar and soak and take residence;

Why do I stand here, a wise man with net in hand,
Doubting the inevitable cycle of waters,
Doubting nature – if only because I must be a man,

Unaware of my hand in front of my eyes,
Unsure of the imprint you make in my mind when
Rockpool creatures in their dark would know it?

Then your voice like a bottled message
Rescues me from silence, hits shore, tells me
That tides, low or high, are planned, are perfect.

Anyway, realised I’ve been neglecting the blog lately (circumstances are hard, but that’s no excuse) – so even while I may be going through a dry period writing-wise, I do have many poems that I feel deserve to be read. So here goes with a poem from a period that was very creative for me, back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s! The weather had been very hot, and I had been drinking a good deal – when suddenly the weather broke, thunder began to rumble, and the heavens opened, and I couldn’t resist just going out in the yard to let the water flow down and experience it fully – after which I wrote Downpour.

Downpour

Furnace of rain
On roof, hoofbeats
At window, tongue
Of storm drooling:
Just glass and brick
To keep me from the thrum
Of automatic gunfire.

It is this white chaos,
Tracer of rain in night,
Makes me stand outside
And taste the flak
Of clouds, dumdum
Bullets smacking
At the heart of land.

It will not stop.
It will not stop like
My hand that spars
With words in the flurry
Of the pen and page.
It will not stop;
But my flashing hand
Assigns a state of pause:
There, words like rain
Going out to sea,
Falling away like a lover,
Bequeathing a dry silence.

Darkfall

Almost November. Someone pulls
A drawstring, tightens sky,
Murk seeps into streets
With a smell of smoke as crisp as leaves;
Stars start to look colder.

The country is at war:
Flak every night, boom of munitions,
Enemies sizzle in midair.
Cars are targeted as fallout and shrapnel
Keep the wise within.

Rain offers an uneasy ceasefire,
Killing off squibs and forcing retreat.
Desire smoulders in front of TV sets,
Interrupted by a sinister knock -
Not witches, these days, but killers.

Without this darkening, pausing
Of the world, we could never
Learn to treasure summer,
Not appreciate the skin of safety
Our windows, walls and doors provide.

Just two months, then it’s Christmas.
Afterwards, days will grow healthy again.
Today it was twilight at 5pm.
In this dark, just walking home is fear,
And fear is every passing stranger.

Alcohol

Deeper than a lover’s kiss,
Fire-belly dragon breathing backwards,
Spreads its galaxy of warmth
Through twists of veins
To starburst eyes.

Lights up the void,
Sprouts craters on the moon of mind,
Licks at wounds
The day leaves like sparkles
Scattered on a sea of skin.

Quilts guilt like cloud on sky,
Letting memories go like birds,
Oils the gabbling tongue
In dry-iced, cocktail-hour
Hiatus of thought.

Burns at heart like coal,
Now black, now red, and beating
Its SOS: signalling
Blood-sack filled with fumes
And the clot of knowing.

This is
The crucifixion in amber,
The kamikaze into darkfall,
The abused and abuser,
The wasp-in-a-jamjar desperation.

And over and over and over again,
Rising into spikes of light,
The cat-got-your-tongue-and-killed-it,
Flailing, threshing, fretful,
Never-again morning.

Pilgrim

Day snakes
Along miles of track,
Trees either side sprint
Into distance,
The engine pulls me with its drone
To a place I might connect with.
It is an arrow
Splitting through landscape,
Tunnelling the innards of hills
Digesting the day into darkness.

What am I,
Hurtling towards
An unwritten future?
The hands have scraped
Past the hour
A million times before
But never like this,
Slowly, cautiously,
Their quartz world
Unaware of me or distance.

What will I do?
Close my eyes and hope
The transition will be instant?
Lose faith like a dying rocket
Scratching at the sky?
Clutter my tongue
With pregnant narrative?
I move, shrill as a rising note.
Another station gone,
Another to arrive at.

Hopefully, at the rate I update this poetry blog, I will have started writing again by the time I exhaust my back catalog of poems. For anyone interested, I’m finding it hard to even contemplate sitting down to write. I think the spark may be gone, but I’ll keep trying, and in the meantime I do have all these odd little poems I wrote back in the days when I could string a sentence together…

Travelogue

A tear spoke in his eye
As he approached,
As transient as the travellers
Waiting for connections
But permanent here.
Not much to ask for,
A cigarette, a light,
But wanting too much more.
“Too old for this,” he said,
To sleep on the streets,
His only hope the hope
Of not collapsing
Today or tomorrow.

A tear scribbled down his cheek
As he showed me his hands,
Tattooed when things were different maybe,
Love on the right,
Hate on the left,
His life tossed between the two,
And the travellers
Complaining about the delay
Indifferent to either.

Tableau

Faces. Pictures. Lines of light
In downpour whipping
Up emotion, splash of feet

Departing to warmth, to love;
Flume of traffic, spark of tyre
On surface, grind on grind

Of movement, drill of cogs.
Just these, within this window
Frame, then blink, snap,

Splice to some new, not entirely
Unconnected scene. But undirected,
Just the ad lib of players

In perpetual rehearsal, reacting
To reactions, flow on flow
Of drama without beginning

Or denouement. Then cut, dismiss,
Leave just this littered
Screen of pavements,

Specks on empty frames,
Over and over flap of reel at end,
The incomplete flicker of rain.

Darkest Before Dawn

Movement, just there, branch
Like a windscreen wiper
Over moon. Ineffective.
Then stillness till the screech
Of car beyond
Reminds me of houses
And all that goes with them.

Pennines, slumbering jurassics,
Backdrop to the carnival
Of streetlights
Pitched along
The midway of the valley.
If only I were out there,
Looking back at where I am!

How we hold the past
Like a scrapbook, defacing
The future with memories!
My feet paused here last summer
And a snowfall later
The star-and-shadow sky
Looks much the same.

And however far my feet might
Take me, the return
Will be just memory in reverse;
Even though my hand
Can blot a constellation
It is only for my eyes -
I cannot halt the time

Or change the motion of the skies.
If only it would all stay still,
These moments might collect
Like evidence, a photofit of being.
Too soon, the sun, edge
Rising to slice at sky, opening
The wrists of morning.

Agoraphobic

The world is too vast today,
Tops of buildings
No nearer than nebulae
And dizzy as stars.
How you must envy the girl
Who does not fear the sky,
The clouds her wig
In procession of pleasure,
Intimate with blue.

Love is always too far,
Distant as colour from monochrome,
Perfect as the world that waits
To suck and spread you out.
How you must envy the man
Who sits and shivers
In his dark, hating the walls
That squeeze out atmosphere,
Unafraid of openness.

Your view is cinemascope,
Lens at every angle,
Surrounded by voices
That hush and shush you
As eyes hammer nails into flesh;
Light drags you this way and that,
Kissing you and kissing you,
Greedy as a vacuum
And as merciless.

No choice but to ripple inward,
Hit the deck as life snipes,
Crawl from the crowd
And find some womb to hide you.
How you must envy the walking
Who do not suffer hurt from space,
Who do not need to fear,
Who do not feel the stretch of emptiness.

Interregnum

Old sorrows in the night,
Rain like a galaxy at the window
Under streetlight, web of darkling
Fantasies my cold soul,
In its madness, spins.

The sky is my fretboard:
A million notes I play like chaos,
A thousand twangling nothings
That stir the heart like pain
And overture the morning.

This stillness, its grief:
The quiet mind filled
With the prophecy
Of dawn seeping upwards
Like a lapping tide.

And there, that edge of sun
Like a rough blade
Hacking at the wrists of clouds,
Lets out its slick of red
Spraying light like an artery.

New sorrows start the day:
Rain like a bloodstain at the window.
Under the chill sun, meanings twitch
At curtains, birds gather:
Familiars, hieroglyphs, portents.

Sleepless in Surbiton

Shadows patrol the ceiling like the bulks of boats
As fish might see them from their dark.

You float beside me, stirring now and then
Like a buoy that signals the edge of deep water.

Rest won’t come to me, maybe because
I haven’t learned how to dream here yet,

Or because, close to your seaweed hair, I know
That this last sinking is all I will have left of you.

Our bodies turn and touch, two pebbles
Stirred by the churn of water, snatching breath.

If you wake I cannot tell, can only sense
The flutter of your heart, frantic as oxygen escaping.

And then you turn away with your deepening secrets,
And I look at you, lying like a metaphor

Of sand presenting itself to the ocean, and outside
Blackbirds signal dawn like gulls on a dreary spit.

And I slip from your side like a tide going out,
Leave in those rockpool eyes, this starfish of my heart.

Letter in February

She likes the snow. I am gladdened
By the warmth it gives her, the little
White flames of beauty clinging to her hair.
She is mystery, and comes from
The home of the snow. The flakes are
Her nostalgia, an intricacy of memories.
The snow is my love, irrevocably drifting.

OK then, Office Hours. Dedicated to the millions who look from the window of their office, and dare to question the 9-5 slog…

Office Hours

Sky snares attention,
Roofs lean towards the perpendicular
Of desire, shadows
Serpent in corners,
Billow and writhe
In peristalsis of fire.

Surely some tenderness
Waits in the fingers that press
Hot wax
Into the blindness
My days describe?

Chill teeth
Nibble in the guilt of winter.
I have no bones
For the nipping dog to shake but mine;
My clacking life portrays its end
In the thousand little failures
That the hours cast up.
And I have done little
But bleed since the wound
Of this
Place opened.

Whose hand casts the spell
That diminishes success?

When will love fill this mirror
Where I hang my emptiness?

What future can declare itself
Against this endlessness?

(circa 1992)

Vision

A footprint on the moon? Yes, a step
In the once-happeningness of pilgrimage;
Then, the furtive overlapping of cloud.

My heart tills an alertness of love,
Setting store for tomorrow’s troubles.
I hunker down by the field of drought

To see what can be kept, what withers.
Seasons choose wetness or dryness
But human frames adapt, improve and swell

The harvest of mere accidents.
Still among scatter-crow panic I drop safe
In a hearth place of anywhere.

This hold of mind. This net of being.
These lines I press and furrow, my smudge
Among the the fingerprints of vision.