Shipping

 The Shipping Forecast


It's sometimes hard to listen
To silence, to
The Shipping Forecast.

Thought free-wheeling and soar,
Careless lists.

Daring humour.

Places we'll almost certainly love,
But never go.

The Ship Girl.

She holds my gaze with strength,

And balances me in her hold.

The simple words

"Sail with me."

Initial Thoughts

 

 

Initial Thoughts

I'm (Of an age), Ive never described anyone as a jalapeno

Before.

Now, I have.

But a sweet one, fiery,

But with a lovely aftertaste.

You opened the door,

To me, my dream,

Messed reality,

How? Is that even possible?

Three days it took me to recover.

You drew me,

From the shell, old, brittle,

Hermit.

Naked, vulnerable, released,

Realised, re-awake....

Smokey grey eyed vixen,

Over enthusiastic perhaps,

But steel, no rust.

Deeply drawn, deep down,

This hermit steps to the cave mouth,

Scary breath, of fresh air,

And that cliff-edge love.

More Time Please

Near Menheniot

There's an overgrown brambly gate,

Locked, long forgot, galvanised,

Under the viaduct, in the cleft of the valley.

I hid my soul there, brambled,

As the Riviera train clattered above,

Carrying my mind, East,

To return, to return, to reclaim,

Wafting fluffy seeds, late,

Smells like a fox,

Turning towards your house,

Scratching my heart into the stoney

Pillars of never never..

 

Introspecting Times

I'm quite sure there once was a time,

I had some idea, focus, goal,

In fact I had several,

Person, place, achievements, milestones,

Come and go, come and go.

Very high, very not, survival,

Certainty, peace, love, soul-sharing,

Turned into day-to-day silly decisions,

With huge ghosts of

Love, person, place, achievements, milestones,

Because millstones, and hovel life,

So damned close, so many times.

White heat connection,

Souls welding, becomes the

Mis-welded close call, soul mate,

A Western dream becomes a Northern sunset,

And love funeral.

Intensely deep sod-everything love,

Turns into “fond cousins”,

Clinical, cynical, funeral,

Two mourners, no sandwiches.

A Small Death

We've been angry, been sad,

Purely loving, crazy, mad,

But this numb limbo is new,

Nobody can help to get us through,

To clarity, to peace,

Safe space, release.

Need you, can't have you,

Want you, miss you, love you,

Your limbo matches, needs relief,

Third party, maintains belief,

Clings to hope, of rekindled fires,

I slump and bow, heart in mire.

From such mountain height, to have to fall,

Is a death so, sad and small,

Cling to connections that once made sense,

Brings no easy love recompense,

Trapped between fierce love, and not,

In sadness cold, not fiery hell hot.

Come then, release me from the vow,

Tell me of your love now,

For me, or him, or just yourself,

Don't ignore me, or leave by stealth,

Heads held high, hearts now numb,

Where ecstatic breaths are now dumb.

 

More Faces Than The Church Clock

 These two pictures, and the poem have something in common. But I won't spoil it by telling you.

 

Run With the Chicken Man

Find the damaged orphan,

Show him flowers, circuses, jugglers,

Caravans of retreat and healing,

Different spaces of understanding.

Nurse, cajole, encourage, lead,

Lend a hand, lend your heart,

But keep a tight hold,

When the pet doesn't sit.

Won't do tricks, play dead,

Or husband material, really,

Then pull to bits, slate and stab,

All thousand aphorisms, false lies.

The orphan retains sense of self?

Goodness, why not then judge?

Pull to your kitchen table dissection,

Abandon, while you run with racier types.

To expensive islands, flashier cars,

Halls of mirrors, see your sayings,

Made real, with hollow ambition,

Then shut the door, icy orphan doorstep.

While you run with the chicken farmer,

In pubs you slated, hated,

Hypocritical healer, no nightingale,

Just the judgmental dog groomer.

This one has little in common with any of it, but is a healing place to wander....

Communication(s)

A Bit Slack.

Casually strolling, with intent in pocket,

Mentally rolling, if time flies, we'll clock it,

And wishfully thinking, of days of beginnings,

Summer nights drinking, and casually singing,

Songs of last year, and tomorrows new children,

Piercing your ear, and getting a hard on,

Driving to Scotland, and losing your mind,

Passing through Lakeland, surprised at your find,

Then sitting back, with your girl on your knee,

Threading your track, being totally free,

Then realising, its all just a dream,

Its not surprising, when you're as slack as you seem.

There are four walls, well, hundreds when you look, but they keep the cold out, and the cold in. They keep the world out, and the world in.

There are no wolves.

There is just the clock, and the fear.

The survival instinct.

The guilt. Shit, the guilt.

Shame.

The reason to keep going. You tell me.

 1989? Jeez, I knew NOTHING.

Not "Maudlin'" at all Tonight

I had a lot to say, but then deleted it. Seemed best.

The complicated thing about trying to organise your thoughts, your "projection" of them, and then to tie them in to poems, or whatever, photos maybe, and real-life, is a thing to either grab by the horns and crack on, or one to worry about and never do it.

Current creations are not ready. Current photos, maybe.

Both are a bit thin on the ground. At least ones I want to do anything with.

I want to shout at the world, but am old and grey enough to know that that is pointless, so shout at myself instead.

Say What You Want About Jacko...

Both of these bring tears to my eyes. I'm sure there are better covers if you look hard enough, but the strength of Michael Jackson's lyric writing shines through. Pity I never really "got" him at the time, well, I did, and it just wasn't speaking to me.

Dark Dreams (Last Night)

Dark Dreams


Running into the mirror
Away and before, in front and bleeding brow,
Cheeks, shards, glassy emotion.

No authority, just anonymous threats,
Instinct drives you into survival, bloody,
Cornered, no papers or legitimacy,
Run rabbit, come with me…..

Face to face with fear,
The tattoo, the world’s pain now,
Hundreds of thousands of reasons, instincts,
Threats. Silent phone calling, locked boxes.

Hand in hand we flee,
In front, but only just, emotions,
Survivalists, bleeding and illegitimate,
Rabbits in the state spotlight.

Analogy, dark dreams come true,
Mirrored in rainbow oiled muddy puddle thinking.

Nowhere left to run except into the oily mirror,
And cold sweaty wakefulness, instinct free.

Ignore The Video

Just listen to the song. Simple as that.



Now have to try to find what on earth Jhelisa is doing these days, a voice like that shouldn't be cooped up....

Emotional Crashes

 

Dare to be Different (10/9/03)

As a child, paraded views of what went before,

This house, this hill, that battle, that wall,

This uncle, this cousin, and given little space,

To make connection.

A calculating machine, DNA programme,

Making just the same mistakes,

Duff data,

Make interesting connections,

Parading hill/house life choice loves and walls,

All of us have them, perhaps.

Left to create the internal being,

The centre to your life experience,

A pilot, driver, witness to the outcomes,

Or a soul, perhaps,

A created being.

Discarding much of it all,

Is miscalculated in some ways,

Making your own rules,

Making interesting connections,

Parading your own madness, before hills, and houses.

Choosing your own loves, and walls,

All of us have them, perhaps.

Duff data,

Interesting lives,

Walled, hill or wood-dwelling uncles, No DNA.

A Serious Truth

If you met yourself, would you speak ?

If you changed the eye colour, length of nose, hair,

Earlobes, moustache, pissedness, breasts, hips,

Silliness, speed of living-ness,

Loves, likes, etc...

No, its still just a person.

Change anything at all, and I still love you, the entire human race, with all your failures, pettinesses, loves, weirdnesses, obscure habits, obscure thinking patterns, bizarre dress senses, acute mental states other than zero, and the datum, etc, etc...

I can now see you all for what you are.

I can now see that its all alright, everythings just fine,

Its just not a problem.

Is that my doing, or hers ?

Or something more ?

30 New Pennies.

I'm alive

My ears, damn them to deep hell !

Chilling to a silent fire,

Melt to hear the phone bell.

I'm dead

Line busy, damn the thousand !

Slinking electron-node journeys,

To the tone of line-jamming.

My lips remember,

Damn the memory of intense mockery !

Memories of follies,

Games drawn in intermittent glance kisses.

The eyes bleed and weep smoke tears,

The lungs tighten on your (dying) breath,

And my mind-cage door is open

Walkabout in the outback of your dreams.

We're all fucking dead.

Dead, alive, alive, fucking dead !!

Your tongue remembers,

My face remembers,

My legs remember,

Your hair remembers.

We'll wake in dodgy dwellings,

Wide stinking alleys of Northern exposes,

And both at 150 arms lengths,

Parallel stretching miles to a call-box,

And the cold night star car dog fox rain frost.....

And your cloudy breathing.

Smoking in orange light pools,

Grubby country street hangouts,

(Sharing tenuous common moments with her memory.)

(Stone my village heart headless horseman snorting nightmares.)

I know I'm alive,

Walking through stone fields to

The stone badger with

My stone head in a felt cap.

Missed Again

Still not allowing details of my personal life to seep through, well, not too much, but focusing on the writing.

People often say that they can only really get it on with their creative side when they're a bit flat, or down, or whatever. I wanted to write when I felt optimistic, but maybe they have a good point. As with the other hand-written stuff, this will eventually get t(r)yped up and re-posted....

Am glad that Blogger hasn't been as infected with emoji crap like FB, as there are a few I could add right now.

Compliments of the season to all. x

Poem. Old.

I can't even date this, but when I was fiddling around with trying to get some of my thoughts on to paper I ended up coming back to the old archives, totally unfinished, and disorganised as they are...and saw this one, and it seems so bloody apt right now.

 

Forgive my handwriting, maybe I'll transcribe it one day.....

The recurring theme, and I have a long drive ahead of me again.

2016 you tested me, nearly as much as 2012. Not quite, but Jeez, work on that sense of humour, please......

Dungeon Wood (Real Place)

As a sort of follow-up to the post I did on local history, based around a wood near where I am currently living, a phone call earlier today caused me to go look up the Bridleways Group, and their claim across some land I'm involved with....then when I did, it turned out that it wasn't the land I had been lead to believe, so that was ok, instead it seems that the equestrians are trying to claim rights of way all over the place in anticipation of a major change in the law coming up in the not too distant future.... Kirklees Bridleways Group Looks a bit like they're "official" doesn't it? They're a voluntary group even if it seems they might be sanctioned by the local authority, when of course they're not.

 

 Still, the internet meandering that the whole episode lead to my turning up this one:

Dungeon Wood

I just get lost in old maps....

Most of Dungeon Wood appears to be a chunk of Beaumont Park these days...... Wish could see how it used to look 100+ years ago...

Archive Test

Exactly what the title says...


Old Blogger pictures

Older ones

Even older...

And more...

(That's over 2000...though there just might be duplicates here & there. I didn't deliberately upload them to these albums, it's just Google doing it's thang...)


Maybe, just maybe they're not all lost forever. I know there were hundreds that got deleted a while back, but some managed to be auto-saved by Blogger, so when I lost the first of the four seperate hardd drives along the way, some got salvaged. Still, I reckon about 20,000 plus disappeared permanently.....

Maybe I'm relying on the external 2Tb drive too much now....

Eeek!

G+,Google Drive, Google Photos, Picasa etc etc.

How very confusing. Since Gooogle acquired Picasa, my old "Blogger" albums have now been archived. They're still "there", they just aren't obviously shareable anymore.

I probably still have the majority of the photos, and the text that went with them has all gone anyway, some of which I admit was my own doing when I tried to reinvent myself after leaving Lower Chatts Oakenshaw, 4 years ago, and some of which I repeated the exercise on when things at Cliff Road didn't go the way I thought they might. Like all the Paxos photos, and Crete and so on. Silly really.

Now I think that I wish I hadn't done either of those things. A picture of two, five, fifteen years ago, in context was always just that. A snapshot of things past. Why be ashamed, embarassed even? If someone new comes on the scene, can't they accept that at nearly 50, I'm bound to have some sort of history.....?

It still feels as if the Google acquisition is editing my past, albeit inadvertently, and to an extent, with my assistance.

I have often speculated about where this blog should go, as it has long lacked direction. The people I have shared it with over the years know my identity, so I can't suddenly turn it into an anonymous diary thing, which was a thought at one point. Facebook gives you a good dumping ground for "sharing" found links/stories/items/news, so it's not going to repeat anything from there. So what? Maybe I ought to steer it towards the creative side again, photos and writing. Leave the "god what a great band this is..." and "OMG how shocking" sort oif stuff to FB.

I cleared the decks at home for a big life-move to the West Country lately, which has all gone totally tits-up, and that really is another story, so watching my old Blogger photos disappear into  the ether, for about the fourth time, is hardly a new thing, it's just an opportunity to start again....

This is me, taken relatively recently near Yateholme, Holmbridge, with Gwyn. 2e is there somewhere, in the undergrowth, after I had retraced my last-twenty-minutes-or-so steps to find a lost item, a fit-bit watch or similar. Happier times.

It's less than a week to Christmas, and I can't help but feel a bit bloody wretched about how things are panning out. It's hard to be optimistic at the moment. Sod 2016, you were a bugger. 2017, I sincerely hope you've got something nice in store.

There is a little cottage far away.....