Poetry
Below are a few instances of my creative writing. Please feel free to feedback and comment.
(All work is copyrighted)
Muse (2011)
I can see, in my mind's eye
The sun's celebration sending ribbons o'er the sky
Pouring through the thick Sycamores
And the wheeling leaves of chestnuts on grass-carpet floors
And in this quick idyll, in the chamber of my mind,
Runs a shadow across a fence, no body aligned,
That kicks up leaves, laughing with the trees
Who I run to clasp and but smoky air seize;
Where a soft, hard body I should crush
The empty greet of my hands is hush,
And a whisper dangling over browning leaves
Taunts and darts and, evading me, leaves.
Yet when I dream, a hand comes creeping
Into the invisibles I am dreaming,
It has your fingers. It has your nails.
The more your arm, the more doubt fails.
Your shoulders now, your naked back
Smoldering down the chimney stack
Weaving through my sleeping limbs
Your thighs evading my bed linens;
Then you are lying there on my shape;
You sleep unencumbered in my nape.
Friends (2011)
The heavy thump of my heavy heel falling
From my heavy grey boots, while the rain is calling
The songs of another world and another world's joys
A world I've secretly known since I was a boy
A world of envy, greed, dark and regret
And a semblance of trust never truly met
But for a little few I could hold in one hand
A merry contingent I could never disband
- and this motley crew with their quirks and their quarrels
Whose disgraces don't match their abundance of laurels
Validate my breathing this air
And my taking of this world, and the invisible things there
Which only serve as a window to the soul;
That only I see while we all grow old.
The Long Train (2009)
Down this long ticking track
The coke train chokes;
Over deserts and mountains,
Through soft sand and city smoke
And on its back it carries
The souls of within –
Some flounder ending journeys;
Others with feet full of fully adventures begin.
This tick-tocking train
With its click and its clunk
Its labouring steam-chain
Pouring out of its trunk
Is taking me home
To my scorpion’s nest
While each station bemoans
The ghosts of the west –
But I fly by shy of their tales of rye,
The shade from the sky hiding a sly dark eye,
For it’s fathoms below
That I’m bearing aloft
With my pen to and fro
With words stone and soft –
And a poem apart from Yosemite falls
And carries songs across mountains
With angelic calls.
So that is my calling,
That is my need,
And it is my falling
And it is my greed.
So meet me in sandstorms
Where this train must end
And I’ll spin you stories
Of long lost men;
Meet me in deserts
Of failing amends
And learn from the silence
Of why we are friends
Tale of the West (2010)
And so I’m always on the run
to hide afar from things I’ve done.
I fly across these dune-pecked sands
with the .38 Magnum in my hand –
On my charger horse I ride,
the sun’s lazy chase close by my side.
I’ve been running for ten years now,
away from sirens, cities and towns
to bury my head in holy songs
and steal away from all my wrongs.
They say I’m free but I know better;
for to my journey I am fettered;
to my freedom I am shackled
and by the running so am I tackled.
It’s too long now since I saw home –
slow fields of golden meadow foam –
there is my standing house of youth
where I knew right and wrong and truth
and in that house sits my father, quiet,
calmly nursing days of riot
that will creep up to his front door
and steal poor footsteps across the floor
where money is sucked from all good men;
no one is the banker’s friend.
He can’t afford to die in peace
and so resolves himself to fleece
to pay for rough victuals and pleasures
and night’s solemn promise of long moonshine measures.
I robbed five banks for him to live
at peace and with his life to give
to others much less strong than he –
for he is strong; as strong as me –
and calmly he is sitting still
watching the mutant world grow ill
from his window on the prairie
to distant cities that now fright and scare me
and still I’m waiting for my debts to pay
as the shadow shortens every day
and I’m so lonely on the run
and know not what it is I’ve done.
The Pen Thief / Adulterer (2009)
It is sitting still
on the desk – ambivalent
to me; indifferent to me.
I see it – a glance at first,
and frown at its taunts.
For I know that it’s not my pen
sitting still. Some other is going
to use it for notes. Dates.
Telephone numbers.
My pen-wife I left at home
wrapped in her notebook –
but what does it matter?
I’m not about to write.
But then the hot stench
of inspiration climbs my spine
clouds me until my
eyes begin to water
scalding tears of ideas
onto this foreign carpet.
I look around.
No one.
A flash. A grab.
The pen is mine
cuddled in my fingers
and with the hot desperation
of infidelity I scrawl
scribbles – lines on a blank page
that take form and
bound in shapes of ivy
or peels of summer rain
quickly across the world
of an idea into
this, my notebook
and with the hurried
scuff of clumsy apprehension
I go to replace the pen,
telling myself I got it
out of my system
but then insipiently
I sniff that smell
of poem just outside
and look around.
No one.
The pen is mine
until the poem’s done.
Truth (2012)
Let us call truth T.
Let us call freedom F.
Let us call poets P
and sculptors S.
Let us assume that actors are A
and musicians M
and let us all agree
that T is their end.
That is to express T
by virtue of F
using not I, but me,
with sufferance and stress.
Therefore we can say
that my T is sounded by M,
my words read by A
and all lies summarily condemned.
No?
Then can it not be that
P + A + M + S = T?
F
Do we not discover
(by definition of T)
that we can recover
all things that have been?
Or is it that truth
was there from the start
and this idle proof
more to do with
matters of the heart?
But Love, then, I am sure,
we can’t call truth
for it is too pesky
and stays so aloof.
So, keeping our maths
abreast of the problem,
are not our T and n x F
in fact less of a solution?
I’ll have it my way
(thank you very much)
where the late July sun
is rippling over the shadow
on the grass and the
evening chorus yielding
down from the pools of trees
and is keeping my unsettled self
quite calm. I’ll have it
so true or not, I can fall in love
with the pigmented sky
swallowing my dreams
of tomorrow, and to be left
utterly uncertain
of whether my muse
is interested in me.
Please take your T and F
Off.
Finality (2012)
There will come a day
when bowed faces
traipse from cars
under nodding umbrellas
along succinct paths
to bid their friend “goodbye”,
and they will drink
and talk and remember
all of the stories that
ran backwards under their
very light feet. And
it will be typically ocercast,
but the same sun
sulking behind steel clouds
has sung from their smiles.
And though you may
spend everyday living
inside the feathery nest,
steadily build over many years,
of fear, in your darkness,
you know that the road
is blessed that brought you
to your closest friends.
And though you may
have been driven down
into this putty of soil
by things you cannot fully know,
you know that the road
is blessed that taught you
what you believe.
One day it will be me
not knowing how I
am being remembered
by people drinking heavily
in their drab suits.
I wish I could be there
to make any last apologies
and to take one last drink
with my loved ones.
But then I would have forgotten something.
I’m alive. Very alive.
Though it is never a storm
and it is never a peaceful June day,
it is so saturated in colour,
and only the tiniest atom of which
is mine.
Dreaming of James (2012)
It wasn’t at night
I know. Lucid
it happened just before
the grog of my eyes
tearing themselves open
forced me to wake
properly which might be
why I stood in front
of the microwave and
cried because it
was so fresh like
a frost submitting to May.
I had my arm around
my friend Rea who
was more than a friend
and you were standing
at the top of the stairs
smiling and protesting
about sleeping in the
dining room, so
independent you wanted
to go to a hotel
because of your leg
which was still bad
but didn’t look it
a pain only you
know about, really.
And you wanted
a photo of us
before you deftly
scaled the stairs
like jasmine my wall
and you were smiling
as your great chunky
camera snapped me
and my laughing friend Rea
who was more than
a friend which you knew
and it made you smile
I could see the pride in
your eyes that weren’t
sad your smile didn’t
slope to the left into
rolls of chin your step
was sure and steady
you wore burgundy trousers
and you were taller than
me and my friend Rea
who was more than a friend
which would have made
you a great-grandfather
and your smile was
your whole face and
your hair was wild
and thick and white
and you looked at me
in the half-light
your hands in your pockets
and you looked into me
past the veneer
into who I am to
tell me that you
will always be there
in me somewhere
tempering my demons
so that I don’t have
to be afraid because
you’re proud of me and
nothing else matters
without words and I
smiled and my friend
Rea who was more than
a friend smiled and
you left the house and
my dream and I
woke to wheelchairs and
warfarin. I forced myself up
and cried a little
and made a cafetiere
and thought about
phoning you. Which I
didn’t do. And I thought
about phoning my friend
Rea who is not more
than a friend
to tell her. Which I didn’t do.
I just did what I do
everyday and got on
with just thinking about
myself.