VIRTUE WILL BEAR US TO THE SKY

Immune from shape
Thought recreates itself
Anew on every slate,
With our troweled hands
And laboured fruits
Contributing to its purpose;
Traffic guiding and
Delighting in the work.
And from the burden of a back,
And ventures taken after,
It performs all miracles
Available and blows
More dust from more
Unknown coves than we
Ever conceived alone,
Or collectively discovered.
Swum up from a lower light
With previous windings,
Mixed and counter signed,
Delivering linguistic
Fixes before we realised
We needed them,
And certain of each bond
Of threaded words;
Whole in the outcome
Offered from such depths
Once cooked and coached,
And made possible by
Us, and impossible to
Refuse, regardless
Of the constant ceilings faced.

USANDTHEM

My father made the sun shine
And the stars sparkle;
He made the day and night equal.
He saved me from the world
And had a new one turned,
Set fair and meaningful
And true.
Ideals were stacked correctly next
To actuals,
Dreams and aspirations
Kept in context,
Clarified and ordered,
And informed.
And always us and them,
Us and them,
You and we,
Our family troop:
Its sometimes relatives and friends
And streets descended from;
Occupied,
Not lived in mind,
But settled.
With no need of flag or tweed
Or tune to bear before us,
No language barrier or age
Or sex discriminating us,
No lack of love or trust or humour
Sweeping through,
Just us and you,
And any strains that grew
Were sieved out of the mix when
Thoughts of coarser fools arose.

PROGRESS

Final decay
Was not in the grave
But above,
When stone crumbled
Like quicksand
Windblown in the fold
Of God’s love.

RESURECTION

With his pitch and posts and cooking bowls
He approached from winter’s distance,
And with those worldly goods slung horizontally
Across his back he appeared as a shuffling crucifix,
Convinced of his salvation from the snow.

At the middle interval he paused, unsure of whether
He’d seen us or if snow blindness had afflicted him,
Until the wind, assaulting his last elements with one
Final arid strike that nearly felled, compelled him to
Continue before certainty was proven true.

And only yards away he heaved a better breath
Before unloading his belongings to embrace us,
But as he did so he tipped forward from his poles and,
Raising a mist finest icing, fell face down. We rushed to
Comfort but his spoilt eyes said more than we could soothe.

We were as lost to him again as we had always been,
Though stood tall and blizzard blown we thought us noticed,
But thinking of the wretched weather
Should have taught us more; such stretch of un-trod
Paper with this footnote as the only message left.

YIELD

Here is where we have landed,
Where our stand will be made,
Now the sirens have stilled
This island’s civility;
A distinctive form of English terrorism,
Filtered through old prayers and hymns.
We’ll request the projectionist to pause
In time for a refresher course;
To sweep us new born baby clean,
Of all but baby born debris,
And to our terry cotton staple
The freshest christened labels.

Now is when we take control,
When our new dawn will fall,
Before the batteries have done
With venerable England,
And denied its populace
A worthy occupation.
A clockwork object spliced back into action
With every frame a clearer one;
Swelling as its celluloid,
In colour bright and simple noise,
Explains to people safely home
About steeples and domes.

RELIEFS

I’ll keep what grief I have to myself
For he was the only one worth sharing it with,
And I’m left amidst the remains of others,
Or the residual wisps of what they were meant to be.

He has gone ahead and I am at the mercy
Of these drifters, stark against their background;
One day they may have responded to
External stimulation, but not this one.

Today they float in and out of sight and have
Absolutely no interest in what they see,
Confined to their own panoramas and unable
To stretch themselves beyond a stereotype.

They are examples of puppets, and simplistically so,
Hung for good along a doweling rod with no fixed points,
And slipped behind shoulder blades or other corners,
Gliding until grounded.

He resides here more than they; not in spirit or
Apparition, but in memory of omission,
And though I may never compare, I do not want to,
I only wish to meet him again in elation.

FUNERAL

In charge of
Something larger;
A smarter sort
Of bravado.
Light emitting from a cloud
Creating a new corona for our commonwealth.

Gas plasma bursts
From one last black hole,
Highlighting the best shape
We’ve been in since birth.
It holds and releases,
As it grows and decreases in equal measurements.

The full extent
Of the next generation was sent,
And I prayed so long
That my lingering prints fell off,
Once polished by their burden,
For the world is a harsh place to live in without him.

The flame remains,
But without flicker,
And settles as
The sight of our time;
It’s not often that one has to wear a burial
Suit as often as this, so try to keep it crease free.

UNDONE

We can be delusional
Until we analyze our maladies,
And find their faults exploited
By folk who should know better.
Preachers, politicians and
The lesser spotted body guard
Who follow them, and
Validate their handling.
Our little empires of doubt
Are ploughed over in the night,
And parodied ravines dug
For morning sacrifice;
Simple insecurities increased
And multiplied until we
Don’t know our past from
A hole in the ground.

NEWYEARSEVE

NEWYEARSEVE

That day I had no wood
To touch
To keep sore thoughts at bay;
No ladder to avoid
Or leave
Tough luck beneath in case it fell.

That day I had to stem
The fall
Of man into his own indulgence,
And shepherd what flock
Remained
Out of despair’s good fortune.

That night I had to face
The first
Day of my tribe’s responsibilities,
And announce to the world
The last
One of my predecessor’s reign.

That night we all had to feel
The cruel
Fate of chance upon us,
Although the caretakers and practitioners
Of change
Told us it was the way they wished to go.

ICECREAM

It’s not that five pointed pipe
That rectally winds from a silver
Machine to a cornet and
Looks like a dog did it,
No this is scooped and shaped
With a flat spatula by a maestro
With less muscle than grace,
And the patience of Italian saints.

MORTALITY

A scratch of some description
On the back of my hand
As an indication of
Yesterday’s activities
Maybe, and another
Grazed day,
Or received during
An evening’s attempted rest.

Or an exit wound from some
More intentional tool,
Regardless of whether
Once pinioned through a
Palm or in-between the wrists
Carpal bones, measured
Out as evenly as possible
To indicate its matter.

Or a brush with other materials
That do not give or grown under
The weight of human presence,
But leave a lone impression
Know only unto them, and
Me, being on the receiving
End and still convinced
Of my mobility.

RAPE

As pretty as a poppy field,
And twice as high.
Undisturbed in surface yield,
And lemon bright.
Whose lofty blinding flower stems
Arouse the town
With all the warmth of spring’s new scent,
And its renown.
Brushing dust against your frame
When it is sprung,
Whilst fever sufferers complain
About their lungs,
But they are usually the folk
Who moan a lot,
And are the first to invoke
Afterthoughts.

WOMAN

In the middle of the street,
Being swirled around by the wind,
Were the pages of a pornographic magazine
Intermingled with several shredded newspapers,
All vying for my attention.

Advertisements for assorted vices,
And all kinds of inducements, fluttered by;
Personal columns dispersed between neutrally
Coloured women, and stories beginning to curdle
Even as their pages separated.

Readers wives, and even seedier
Lives, were displayed in uncompromising
Lights, and here and there were couples involved
In connections too abstract for even the most athletic
Or aesthetic amongst us.

Whilst further up the road than you
May have wished to go, propped against a
Wall, a lonely centre fold stood out, with more
Staple holes in her than anybody’s love of piercing
Could ever have reflected.

And though you may suppose that this
Smut belongs in the gutter, you can’t help
But love her, in her beautiful perfection, with
All her life before her and beyond; a vision of Eve
In her prime before Adam came along.

SCATTERED

Those seedy little seasons
In-between relationships,
Where anything that’s going
Flows through your head and
Does not quite drain, coloured
As If a master’s brush
Has touched your face.

And though you may feel
Clean when next you meet
A steady soul, the puddles that
Found themselves a loophole
To exploit remain to hamper
Your attempted foundations.

And you’ll find yourself requesting
All manner of deviations that your
Newly moved in partner can’t
Take part in, as you were not
Like this before – but then you
Were, remember – when you
Where on your own and
Loved the flood.

ROUNDSIXTEEN

A whole generation of kids
Coming of age with
Less than two parents
Behind them or more
Than three in front.

Unsure of who’s who,
Or what to call them,
Or whether to allow
Them into their room,
Or refuse their advance.

And then the one parent
Relied upon all of their
Lives decides for them,
And one stranger leaves
As another danger arrives.

And the arguments go on,
And the cycle repeats,
And suddenly school is reduced
To a few seconds’ thought
Between bouts,

And the object that
Remains once the bell has
Begun is the pummeled
Mass of an adult who has
Been rung out before the count.

SELF

Couturier and catered for of cloth,
Vendor and purchaser of alcohol,
Espouser and follower of politics,
Preparer and consumer of food,
Holder and hammer of angst,
Preacher and laity of faith,
Miner and pit of wisdom,
Dealer and buyer of vice.

SETASIDE

Summer thumbs more used
To shelling peas than peeling
Shells from Christmas almonds,
But marzipan won’t wait for
The ingredients of the season,
And anyway the farmer let his
Field of sweetest legumes fester
For the sake of subsidies,
And I don’t need a green
Moment right now.

I’m making my cake and keeping
It for a later date when the
Need for a sweet out ways my
Salad days and I will have
No care for calories or their
Specifics. Print a sell by date
Upon my overcoat and I’ll
Outgrow it even if it means I
Have to rot more thoroughly
Than any farmer’s field.

PURGING

With the arrogance of the ignorant
He felt no inferiority,
Managing inadequacies
That manifested themselves
Fitfully as equals.
He baited them with indifference
Until they made the surface,
Where they were feted with servility,
And whilst swirling in the comfort
Of the status he accorded and the
Assuaging manner offered,
They relaxed as he expected.
Then as the second hand announced
The hour he split his front asunder
Catching all there unawares,
And whilst still slippery from sleep
They were no match for his deceit.
He shredded them with their envelopes
And stuffed the contents into cushions
To prop up his next project,
Which as usual would be the same
As the one before, as they were
Always returned unknown.

SKYJACKED

A lip sync stop
And a jump and a hop
To the top of
The complaints list,

A compact case,
Roughened rouged face,
With the grace of
A militarist.

A landlord’s nightmare
As the solar flare
Of armchair
Critic hissed,

And all concerned,
Who had not learned,
Were told in turn
Of this.

LAYERS.

She hit me with an acrobat,
Collected on her route,
A single spinning individual
Abandoned by its troop.

And though it spun it did not turn,
So lateral swipes were dealt,
Until in untold anguish
My skin began to melt.

And as it dripped I registered
More pain with each degree,
Where seven levels of sunscreen
Had left their mark on me.

And having bared my muscle,
Sinew, vein and bone,
It left at her instruction,
As my cover was blown,

And everyone could see me,
For what I really was,
A collection of creation,
Lax and ludicrous.