Between Storms

Bolts.

Just put sky hooks and restraint,

Right out of this arena.

All is bolts.

Bolts is all.

Nuts, screws, nails, hooks, hinges,

Bolts to perspex.

But perspex is best,

To shield and save,

Protect and survive.

Deflect gamma, alpha, theta, beta,

Lead lined particles particular,

To this region of your thought,

Arenas of doubt.

On the subject of which,

Who, what, how, why,

Simply bolted to this screen,

Of larger term perspex disbelief.

With worshipful lords and

Forgetful protection.

Where the shiny perspex

Thrives, and survives.

Before The End.

 

Boxing Day 95. Edale.


Staring over thirty snowed moors,
Take the mind,
Lost the paths that age brought,
Fill anew with wonders long now sought,
Now lost, now found in vistas,
Wind blown skyline,
So rare and fine,
Thirty miles or more.

Burnt Earth

 

The burnt earth that slips from the foot,

The drizzled hour in this grave of trees,

And innocent tyre tracks shout your name.

The discarded stone circle with hints of modernism,

Scorched black and flaky edged altar stone,

Desecrated by the Roman Catholic sandalled steps,

And abandoned by newly educated free-men.

Here the ancient is at your finger tips,

Just beyond instant response touch taste,

And the strength of the is/it flows from the ground.

The steps you felt yourself guided to take,

Or maybe the hidden scene shifting guardians,

Or something still less paranoid calls you now.

Here we stand, in this dream scarred once-grove,

With sacred moments of sheer swimming love,

And hand in hand we silently soak and our clothes

Catch the smell of recent wood fires.

The burnt stone under-hand blacks your skin,

And sadly we move through and deeper into

Our new found reborn living loving and the sun.

Soft drinks carton pirouettes a mockery play for us,

And I have you lightly on my silver thread.

 

Here & Now

When the wind blew its strong words

Through my own life sentence

Carrying off dust whorls and girls,

And innocent, bystanding animals,

I wavered, and weathered, and long stood firm,

And drifted, and sifted through the wreck,

Searching and filtering, smashed up timbers,

And debris, and desk top exercises.

Recreating a stronger, deconstructed man,

From upturned cars, and tumble weed,

And ancient lies and mindless theories,

Thrown through the air, to crash, here and now.

Malkin House Wood.

Rock mass drunken landslide sentries,

Strewn in quilt leaf blanketed backdrops,

Fail to prevent this arboreal penetration.

The functional steel blade carves a vicious scar,

And spells out a fancy's name, yours,

But nobody notices.

Stone heaped dead quarry in green shadows,

Summons the time spirit to refresh race memory,

And chants the woven spell of love dreaming,

Interspersed with tiny pangs of blue guilt,

And a buried sword by storms revealed,

Leaps to hand to cut you down,

To half my memory size and gives me

A moment to think.

You won't leave me, shadowed green girl ghost,

Entwined with ground ivy and dead bracken hair,

I encountered your white magic and loving prose,

In distant delled copse laden deep glens,

And can't forget no matter how hard I try,

I can't walk away.

 

Mad Moment 1

You can drink what the hell you want,

Wont bother to list it all,

But, so far as this continuously drunk fellow,

Tries to extend his experience,

Raison d'etre, perhaps,

Is concerned,

Red wine equals truth, and poetry,

And, subsonic pedantry,

And a conscious madness that only

Water can take away.

-------------------

Mad Moment 2

Forever, I'm trying to find a touchstone,

Every time we meet, trying

Trying,

Trying,

Trying,

Trying,

But there's an empty, burnt heather moor,

And a suicidal keeper,

And a dead candle,

And yet I so want you to understand,

And this touchstone is too damn hot.

 

Love, Don't Love.


I loved you since time began,
I don't love you now.

I loved you since time began,
But I don't love you now.


Eat my dignity,
My masculinity,
Make toxic remarks,
And screw me up.


Maybe its because I loved you,
That I don't hate you now.

Maybe I should have just loved you,
And maybe I should love you still.


But eons after our birth,
Our death engulfs,
Entwines, and ingests,
Incinerates, and drowns,
And now, its late.

I love the memory of you,
But reality is bitter green death.


I love the memory of you,
But the reality can hike.

I loved you since time began,
But I don't love you any more.

 

Late in Tonight.

Like mental wedding gowns,

The sheets beneath the duvet do dance

And at this ungodly silent hour

With ringing ears and pints of water

I lie and contemplate

All the lies before.

All the lies I've fed myself,

While true to most of you

No guide rails at strange junctures

Or day by day by day.

No real hints of global anything.

Journey Child.

Journey child,

Wayfarer

They call you,

Names of slur.

Innocence in a strangely place,

A world of 100 years ago.

Child of horses,

Of running-dogs,

And fighting cocks,

And mystery.

Tarot cards,

And old scrap yards.

They'll never put you down.

Inside your head,

Where the old one said :

"It's all here for you".

She told you then

Of the evil men,

And how to get you through.

Journey child,

Slightly wild,

Seeks the temple altar.

nOT rEALLY tHINKING

A Little Strength.

With a little strength

I lift my eyes to yours.

Superman could not hold their glance.

Bitch

Bitch ! Slitch !

Cosy kitsch,

Your towers of darkness

Roofed caverns of belonging.

Whispers beget lies

And I drive out this anger, in solitude.

Turrets and slits of moorland castle,

Reduce me to dust in all your hassle.

Embedded in sea leaf beds of forest oceans,

We dance in disbelief and

In microscopic detail

I knelt to pray for salvation.

Ears open and eyes wide,

Seek to know what lies inside,

Try to learn what we can find

Buried precious love in our minds.

And lengthening shadows perform angular plays

On littered pavement cracks and papers,

And we descend into the tube-station to sleep,

To sleep the conversation of long train journeys.

To kill our love in smoky, dusty, upholstery,

Rattling Eastwards in comfort.

And the towers of you

Sooth my soul.

Bitter Elizabeth.

Bitter Elizabeth, come home now,

The accuser, fallen prince and priest,

Preaches honeyed hemlock sentiments,

To your deaf dumb blind ears.

Bitter laughter returns to your bruised lips,

And a vision before your blacked eyes,

Reach sunnied rock-free beaches,

And believe the prophet who loves you.

Bitter memories based on childhood thought,

Entertained before your adult believings.

Forget the preacher, free Elizabeth,

from the internal, infernal, dead tears.

There's Blood On The Streets.

When did the silence encompass the oracular sink ?

Could the echoes have carried the lost voices to your door ?

Now you know of the truth in comedianic laughter,

The dull sense of emptiness in a room full of sheep.

The glint in the eye of the child that stands now buried

Deep in the woman who will outlive the lie.

Faith in the thought that everything's wrong,

That no-one can hear the depths of the song.

But the snow-fall of silence in this chasm of dreamers

Can not chill the belief that the clown is for real.

Sitting upright in the custard-bath of vision,

Casting out feelers to the punters of tension,

And retracting to the chorus of harmonic inner voices,

When dancing through rainbows and killing for pleasure.

Replay the video to peruse at your leisure.

And the inter-racial marriage of money class and wealth,

Is purely temporary, a way off the shelf.

There's blood on the streets, in the road and drains.

Now return to the caves and groves,

To the playgrounds of child-men and quiet hidden shores,

Retracing the innocent.

A Wire Basket Of Thoughts.

A hidden treasure, a love, (Heart.)

Some reserved emotion.

The preserved elation, disguising hope,

Merely a wandering stranger,

Across grey sky and mood.

Much scurrying and burrowing,

To arrive, secret place in enchanted fate,

Hinted at, a trim tail feather,

Adorning the morose and free.

See the herd of tame thistles,

Feel the grip on the noose,

To impart a mortal wound, to the lady.

The passing black sheep,

Heavy with longing regret,

A cliff away from the sea,

A deserted castle,

(A flooded tear well.)

A choked sob and a look,

Knows your wheat ear deafness.

A subdued division in my reality,

A wispy cloud over a green,

Seeing cavalry and much new death,

A tall chimney, and freedom.

A church spire and within,

A lone gull and a water tower,

A sleeping immortal,

A powerful evil,

A saviour for England and me,

A wire fence and the tick of a clock,

A booby trapped valentine,

A pierced ash leaf,

An intrigue and a timber yard,

A smile from a stranger,

A wave from a child,

A motion from within and a cry,

A silent howling and a flood light,

A deserted union and deception,

A journey away and towards,

A sparkling jewel and a golden chain,

The memories of an unknown love. (Heart.)

Afterword

Dear All,

This letter is carried by a messenger,

Witness, archivist, collector of reasons.

Shoot the messenger, shoot the messenger,

Shoot the message.

Dear messenger,

Collect as much as you can,

Pickle and preserve, collect and collate,

And shoot the all.

Avoid dead end traps and trapped reasons,

Which, if true, should be an autobiog instead,

And duck when they start shooting.

In the event of the receipt of this note,

You'll know what to do,

And who to shoot,

When to stay or go,

When to dig, and overturn stones, and sods,

So, why you ?

So why me ?

I may have sent this note to another,

Or six, or ten, or none,

Any material removed,

Must return,

For my survivors to burn.

Please allow free passage to the archivist,

Understand, and help, and feed.

Like sacks of paper into the shredder.

Like shreds of my life into the archive,

To dwell a paper pseudo person,

In peoples minds.

So, why, if its all bloody pointless ?

Shoot wide, or shoot to stop,

Uncover these secrets, expose me at last,

Who cannot expose my truth...

No, that's not it either.

So, WHY ?

If the messenger carries this to you,

You'll know why.

I'm waiting for a message myself.

The Done Thing.

 

Alice.

Alice sits miserably alone,

Upon an ancient stone,

In my dead garden,

In the garden of the dancing dead,

Of a much related dreamscape,

- She alone sits out the party.

My head camera encircles her.

The central star in this dead cast,

Of a dead play, the deceased.

"Dramatis personae morteunt", or some such,

At least that's the remembered memory,

Much used and ill forgot,

On dark fire-hearth story-telling nights.

Foaming fountain hangs motionless,

Highlighting the pointlessness of it all,

And the dead angels mourning,

A banshee wail for the living,

For my god and those of us,

Who know what it is to be alive.

For tomorrow we will meet our fathers,

On short shorn lawns in the garden,

Unliving and eternally sunny and dead.

That girl sits forgotten as I muse,

Tossing the idea over to attract attent,

To persuade acceptance of this living corpse's "invite to dance".

- He alone captures a sly and brief glance.

 

Anger Works in Mirrors.

How many times have I driven home?

Slept in the van, the lounge,

Gone over the edge, but lived?

Shout louder if you really want me to die.

Passion’s one thing pussycat.

You throw fifteen different angers.

My footwell’s full, of blood, of tears, and beers,

I smoke another, drink tinned soporific,

Freeze my head and heart.

Hardly the song I’d choose to sing.

Shout, but only after misunderstanding lounges.

I can’t do anymore.

Fifteen times, I’m out of here.

Got the hint.

Anger, like light, works in mirrors.

 

Another Willing Mistake.

Waking in a strange room,

So strange, its almost natural,

For a Friday night,

Saturday morning introductions,

And the photos of your child.

Too late to panic, so just enjoy,

Damage done, or not, so warm,

So calm and beautific in embrionic,

Waking loving and living.

No consideration has yet occurred,

As in this guilt love your form is stirred,

To consequential ramification, or shit,

Radical information that a mistake was it.

So welcoming and gently adult,

Too real to belong to me, I said,

Too much history and overlapping,

When you wake in your mate's girlfriend's bed.

 (20 years ago it has to be said.....)

 

Before The End.

Start with a question

As the bin man chases crazy whirls of

Trash and crisp packet trails

And fails, through thick glasses

To see

Just stand still and it all comes back.

With my back to the Church

On her steps,

With dark whirls of past life

Wall-Of-Death-ing my head-track

Trying to focus and to be stronginresolve

Simply exist now, and thoughts to dissolve

Not revolve, crazy whirls

Church step sandwich

And crisps, no less.

 

Belladonna.

Throw open that window,

In pours the light of today,

Motions of the airflow,

And the things you can't say.

The sprig of Belladonna,

In the bouquet of your heart,

When I saw us together,

I knew we must part.

Draw back those curtains,

The bright light of today,

Now I am certain,

There can be no delay.

 Bespectacled

 

Bespectacled laughter frame illusion shock,

Kind of reversing of a normal clock,

Stroll in to casual heights,

Delight in these nights,

And please stay intact.

In fact

If you must shatter clatter fragment and split,

Kind of conversing with a human pile of grit,

we could try harder

To conserve this larder,

And love once more,

Sober and lonely.

Great myths were born forlorn and consumed,

Nothing else I think could be presumed,

To relate to this, our parting shot,

To be happy with the sad man's lot,

And tell tall tales,

In late bar conversation.

To talk of feeling the ceiling and new depth,

And to speak wordless to catch your breath,

To delight quite briefly insanely,

We must depart now quite gamely,

And write false red letters

To disbelieving reading voyeurs.

 

Betrayal

I know I'm going to betray you,

Even in your unmoving big black eye,

The knowledge that this is true,

Brings a hideous and secret doubt.

The borrowed, plastic yellow handled knife,

Past sharp, and nearly past blunted,

Is my conduit, the medium of this traitor,

Losing, flinging your trust away.

Big deep red globs, on this wet stinking floor,

as I denude your chest, belly, throat, groin,

Then chain your neck, in not words,

Your eyes unmoving, as so I pray.

Pulling this functional chain, slowly you rise,

Above the floor, as your feet drag, I twitch,

They seem to twitch back, oh god, oh god,

Then aloft you swing, and at last are skinned.

Bigot Bitch.

And that supreme black leather bigot bitch

All hate-studded and perversely hung,

With chain and mail and device,

Stood at this London/Nurembourg and said :

"So what the hell are you ?"

"Colourblind bastards ?"

And we hung our heads in shame,

Not to ever rise in pride,

Bigotted bitch whirlwind dance, the flame,

And I felt a little death inside.

Before they all raised the Voice,

And the bitch had stole the crown,

"To arms ! To arms !"

I draped my cloak on dead oak chair,

And sank into brandied minute monumental well,

And prayed to a white god,

To forgive the white men,

And the black, and everyone too.

And drowned in world spirit of uprising,

Frustrated race memory daemons,

To kill all our children,

Not to forgive or forget. Bitch.

If I'm ever going to finish the older stuff, I have decided to just crack on and post them willy-nilly, basically alphabetically, (ish), and hope for the best......

Hardly any are contemporary, so don't take offence anyone!

Oh, and the same for FB, I am not going to post any full sized pictures anymore, as I think that some might have a tiny bit of value, and I've been thinking cards/prints, etc, but these might still be good enough to steal if you're that way out, I don't know......

Quick One

Herons.

From this tranquil hole, gentler springs,

scent, light, peace,

My eyes picked up her approach,

Did my heart fly, soar with herons?

Banking, turning, wheeling, in the promise of life?

Did she burn with star-fire, rhetoric?

Fireworks, dragon-souled, and infinite majesties?

I caught your smile, let it enfold,

Warming and welcome.

And held out empty arms to return,

Such gentle spring love,

Scented, tranquil,

To hold the promise.

 

Brief Existence

In the middle of this brief existence

a note of shattered glass hit the words

that remained behind forgotten

on a beach of stars and fish and anglers

waiting until the glass was gone and

left until the day has ended

where we started and came in to hear the words

that the girl was chanting as she said

she knew how lovers can do nothing

but destroy and burn the fires

that lit that night in your eyes

and glass was everywhere to see

and the waves rolled over the young angler

as he waited for his song to start and

then to join the dancers in the circle of old stones

where the spell was cast and the words

were so ancient and beautiful

girls upon the waters that flowed into the sea

that never stopped and never to be in love

again and again she cried she needs you

more than I guess the right way is now to stray

and wander like the glassy child whose eyes are deep

and run down into the roots of all

so tell me child why can't the sailor come to jig

upon this shore of yours and sing and play

harmonica with demon steps and horn‚d voice

that brings no fear to those with ears to hear

the loved one that hides within the very middle

of the broken chord that battles in the chant

of a girl who knows what love can be

to those of us who don't understand

just how far from either end

of this incorrigible existence lies the middle

of this brevity that is full of broken glass

to dance upon to the crazed old tune

of the drunken old sailor who would be beached

with anglers given just half a chance.

Dance.

 

Echo.

Listen carefully, and you will hear,

An echo of me in you.

Watch closely and see,

Me, in everything you do.

 

Think of Gardens

That all-drown word,

All poets flock to worship,

Contains duties, tastes, hand-cuffs,

Joys and tears.

Heart-warmth, gloves,

Passionate release, agendas, their's,

Tools to unwrap meanings, argue,

In poisonous allegory,

Deep longings, but bloody hobbled, Achilles,

Drowning in the mirrors, and diaries,

Planning-man,

Lost hope, Davey's Locker,

While drowning, think of gardens......

Prickly, and complicated......

 I am slowly bending to the share things you love, like "your dogs" thing....

SORRY!

Upstreaming

Took a long hard swim upstream,

Push, flick, kick, turn and leap,

Air burns my gills, but then, next,

And again, my instinct driving me.

Then

On my side, on a rock,

Missed, confused, water-less,

Stranded, again,

In your world, alien.

Is a long hard twitch and thrash,

To return to mine,

Would've made it too,

But got fast in this ancient landslide...

Five moons of drowning in air,

And beer and insanity, depression, crazy time,

And "Waltzing Matilda", and car crashes,

And texts, emails, silent and abusive phones.

The waterfall, just out of reach,

I remember the deep warm seas, of life, and our holidays,

And pour another single malt,

On my side, on the rocks,

Not this time, on her own,

Ancient medicine for broken gills, water-less...

Twitch, thrash, in this ancient insanity,

No more bloody car crashes,

No more crazy waterfall texts now,

Please, I'm burning, waltzing beers.

Just Pictures..Well, Mostly....

I have been wrestling with the idea of trying to make a couple of quid from my photos for some time now, but as I get enthused, then battered down by the reality of my attempts, I start and then stop......

I won't bore you with the details, but a few weeks back I spent about £25 on some ink, and got 8 (only 6 useable) A4 prints, and am feeling that while yes, the quality seems pretty good, that there probably ought to have been more or less double that.......

Sheesh....

The local printers in the village can do them cheaper, and still make money.....so maybe that's the way forward, apart from exceptionally personal ones.....

Happy Cows

 

Patriotic View of "The Monkey Nick"

The fields on this particular stretch of my Saturday walk were teaming with hares, just too quick and too far away to get any decent shots, though, believe me I tried.....This one was gone about a second later....... Honestly, I saw four hares in each of four fields, and six in the last......

"Stairway to Digley Res...."

"Moody Over Goodbent"

I love this one, and the more I looked at it, I came to realise that it's not some alien invader, but that the shutter speed, 1/160 must have just been a teeny weeny bit slower than the flap of the pigeon's wings, but only fractionally....... 

And again the shutter was deliberately slightly slower on this one, even without carrying the tripod for such things........I know it's hardly stunning, but I shoot what I see.....

 Now all these are either 1/3000 or 1/2000, the camera simply didn't like the 1/4000 attempts as they were too dark to use. It was an extremely shady place, and I admit to having to tart these up a good bit to make them useable, but I love the effect, and am wondering if they, or at least an odd one, might make a good card?

Not these two though, these are just the "I love my dogs" thing........which, to be fair, I think I have managed to avoid overall in this blog, but hey, once in a while you have to get all indulgent......

Normal service will return, and I'll get back on the poetry.........