Not a poem yet ...
Returning to London (after time away)
Is like discovering an old favourite jacket
At the back of a wardrobe.
One of those great old
leather ones that your girlfriend made
you relegate to a hanger.
On putting it back on,
One admires one's reflection
And wonders why it was
Sectioned to those shady, packed confines
Of sartorial exile.
Six months later,
Or thereabouts. You might catch
the tired, sad reflection once again
And, with a sigh, realise it might be time for it to
Go back to the mothballed recesses
within once more. But until you have a new
jacket you'll keep wearing it just the same ...
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Paradise-on-Sea
Sussex shit. I'm still only in Sussex. Every time, I think I'm going to wake up back in paradise.
Shivering, collared up, sitting in the weak watery English sunshine.
Sipping powdery coffee
'Neath the dockyard chimney
jutting skyward from the
grey-brown Shoreham shingle shore.
Bacon-gristle soaks bleached white bread -
congealing quickly on the cold chipped china plate,
a fresh breeze whips soiled serviettes from green tin-tables -
its mad-drunk, fluttering, stuttering, flying-flotsam dance.
This should be hell.
And I, having glimpsed paradise,
Sucked down diamond-draught air,
Gorged on verdant emerald hills,
Lain back and stared at the soporific sapphire blue skies.
Yeah, I,
I should really know.
But it's not.
I'm re-assured by
The traditional, cyclical, elemental struggle of the Brits -
Where grey skies, sleeting, cold-showers are always just
A cyclone away.
And if I've learnt one thing,
Heaven's promises - burgeoning beauty, endless tranquility, peace.
Soon turn to trappings of a surreal, Hell.
After all,
Aren't forbidden fruits
Plucked to escape that constant, anodyne, endless, Eden?
England - grim land of opportunity.
Heart of a lost empire,
Who's disparate children have mostly flown the nest.
You still hold something for those that wander back;
But I wonder how long it will take -
Before once again, cloaked and clogged in the mundane,
An adventurer's dream pulls me back to Paradise.
Shivering, collared up, sitting in the weak watery English sunshine.
Sipping powdery coffee
'Neath the dockyard chimney
jutting skyward from the
grey-brown Shoreham shingle shore.
Bacon-gristle soaks bleached white bread -
congealing quickly on the cold chipped china plate,
a fresh breeze whips soiled serviettes from green tin-tables -
its mad-drunk, fluttering, stuttering, flying-flotsam dance.
This should be hell.
And I, having glimpsed paradise,
Sucked down diamond-draught air,
Gorged on verdant emerald hills,
Lain back and stared at the soporific sapphire blue skies.
Yeah, I,
I should really know.
But it's not.
I'm re-assured by
The traditional, cyclical, elemental struggle of the Brits -
Where grey skies, sleeting, cold-showers are always just
A cyclone away.
And if I've learnt one thing,
Heaven's promises - burgeoning beauty, endless tranquility, peace.
Soon turn to trappings of a surreal, Hell.
After all,
Aren't forbidden fruits
Plucked to escape that constant, anodyne, endless, Eden?
England - grim land of opportunity.
Heart of a lost empire,
Who's disparate children have mostly flown the nest.
You still hold something for those that wander back;
But I wonder how long it will take -
Before once again, cloaked and clogged in the mundane,
An adventurer's dream pulls me back to Paradise.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Love of Our Lives
I never thought that she,
Unsentimental and restless,
Would come to mean so much to me,
Baggage-laden and remote
As I was.
Yet it became plain,
Once I have truly lost
What once I could have perhaps had,
I realised, again, she might be
The love of my life.
Just 12 months to polarise,
As my life turned from hope to regret -
Why so late to realise then
That we might have
Got it so wrong?
And after all is said and done
It never seemed to be the
Right time for us to be one.
And as time and distance drew one nearer
It drew the other further apart.
If the constant measure of love is pain,
And of course the misery,
Then I'm forced to reflect again
That love of my life
It was certainly she.
But what is real? Then or now?
Were we just looking for
Someone, anyone to fill the void anyhow?
When the music stops in these
Modern day musical-chair romances
Do we really make the most of our chances?
Will we end up with the love
Of our life - or is the epiphany, we can't
Go on alone and we make ourselves
Believe this is the One?
Unsentimental and restless,
Would come to mean so much to me,
Baggage-laden and remote
As I was.
Yet it became plain,
Once I have truly lost
What once I could have perhaps had,
I realised, again, she might be
The love of my life.
Just 12 months to polarise,
As my life turned from hope to regret -
Why so late to realise then
That we might have
Got it so wrong?
And after all is said and done
It never seemed to be the
Right time for us to be one.
And as time and distance drew one nearer
It drew the other further apart.
If the constant measure of love is pain,
And of course the misery,
Then I'm forced to reflect again
That love of my life
It was certainly she.
But what is real? Then or now?
Were we just looking for
Someone, anyone to fill the void anyhow?
When the music stops in these
Modern day musical-chair romances
Do we really make the most of our chances?
Will we end up with the love
Of our life - or is the epiphany, we can't
Go on alone and we make ourselves
Believe this is the One?
Thursday, March 30, 2006
We Are Storm ...
Possessed by his muse
Holding the flitting sea-gull
As an imaginary kite -
But he'd lost it, and his
Muse was full of shite.
"We are storm ..." he justly said;
As life blows us from shore to shore
Sometimes tempestuous and wrecking
Our lives - and other times just
Steering us to where we should be.
Reeking of the whisky
That held his life together;
His veins flowing with dope
That flowed through the all -
He sang like the beguiling sirens call.
"We are storm..." again he sang,
As the winds blow us from coast to coast
Like a tempest wrecks -
Yet here walks a round-jawed shadow of
my old dead friend, who lives 'neath the
stormy seas, with his mates,
Full fathom five.
Holding the flitting sea-gull
As an imaginary kite -
But he'd lost it, and his
Muse was full of shite.
"We are storm ..." he justly said;
As life blows us from shore to shore
Sometimes tempestuous and wrecking
Our lives - and other times just
Steering us to where we should be.
Reeking of the whisky
That held his life together;
His veins flowing with dope
That flowed through the all -
He sang like the beguiling sirens call.
"We are storm..." again he sang,
As the winds blow us from coast to coast
Like a tempest wrecks -
Yet here walks a round-jawed shadow of
my old dead friend, who lives 'neath the
stormy seas, with his mates,
Full fathom five.
A You Shaped Whole
Unfillable, the you shaped hole
That rots in my heart;
So cannot be whole.
Leeched-white bled, in your passing -
Mine, Lancelot-like,
Remains unhealed.
The you shaped hole, it spreads
And fills the void
Of all my dread desires - this
You shaped whole I take to bed.
That rots in my heart;
So cannot be whole.
Leeched-white bled, in your passing -
Mine, Lancelot-like,
Remains unhealed.
The you shaped hole, it spreads
And fills the void
Of all my dread desires - this
You shaped whole I take to bed.
Bare My Soul
Irksome itch that wanders
Unsatisfied by all of this,
No matter how much sugar squandered
To sweeten this life I found.
Maybe devour you, swallow you whole,
And for a brief second, candy-glutted,
Belch out the shape of your soul.
Unsatisfied by all of this,
No matter how much sugar squandered
To sweeten this life I found.
Maybe devour you, swallow you whole,
And for a brief second, candy-glutted,
Belch out the shape of your soul.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
An Angel Stood
An angel stood
and feathered my guilt
and helped build a hammer
to fracture my heart.
She made a collage of it,
My dreams, holding her
In confined paper,
The stars ...
I read her stars
And through black and white
With astrological applomb
I am hanged - once again
Fractured and corroborate.
Is she not for me?
Not now -
Not forgiving as angels should?
I will let her be.
I would have her clipped -
But she
Flies free from me, again
on my guilt-edged wings.
(with thanks to ex-Priest)
and feathered my guilt
and helped build a hammer
to fracture my heart.
She made a collage of it,
My dreams, holding her
In confined paper,
The stars ...
I read her stars
And through black and white
With astrological applomb
I am hanged - once again
Fractured and corroborate.
Is she not for me?
Not now -
Not forgiving as angels should?
I will let her be.
I would have her clipped -
But she
Flies free from me, again
on my guilt-edged wings.
(with thanks to ex-Priest)
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
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