Poems
Pirouette
How long ago she managed to hold
herself on toe, and twirl, and twirl
with grace and charm, bold
as the little ballerina girl
who stares at her tonight,
the sad ceramic leg now chipped
and immobile. ‘Sleep tight’
she says ‘sleep tight my love’ light lipped.
The little mirrors have lost their sheen
a cloudy eye confirms,
tracing leg line flecked with tourmaline.
So these are nature’s terms,
So these are nature’s terms.
Office Pantoum (for Don)
Answer to the call of duty
With decorum and tact
Bow to your superiors with deference and grace
As corporate law commands
With decorum intact
Refine and shape your act
As corporate law commands
Denigrate yourself in serving protocol
To refine and shape your act
For rise through rank and file
Denigrate yourself in serving protocol
Never dare to disagree with those in power above
There is rise through rank and file
For women who speak in soft and sultry tone
Never daring to disagree with those in power above
Sustaining status quo
Women: Speak in soft and sultry tone
Avert your eyes to apologize
To sustain the status quo
With your mastery of fixed form rules
Averting eyes to apologize
Men must follow suit
With equal mastery of fixed form rules
Of hierarchy and rank
In suit the men must follow their leader
In drunken stupor at bar barely loosening bonds
Of hierarchy and rank
Easier to succeed as man in man’s domain
In drunken stupor at bar, with bonds barely loosened
Frankness forcing fixed forms of intimacy
Making it easier to succeed. But as man in man’s domain spending
Half of life on jam-packed train
A form of intimacy rather avoided, frankly
Sweating in the stifling summer heat
Half of life on jam-packed train
Thinking of other life
Unlived
The Wind Flies Them So High
We singed a song on bike at dusk
While searching road for toad
Hemelet was left at home, forgot to wash the knee
Jeremy not finish yet so can’t we wait for he?
Kite was flied and toad was see’d
And of that night remains
The untied knots
Of gentle thoughts
That nub of life contains
Pastoral
Yuzu, Mint and fallen apple fill the famished air
Nature-claimed cabin – still stands on boar-wild soil
‘The old man died here’ long lines on her face let on
Roots and tubers trespassing world-wearied walls
All he owned on broken floorboard
A game of go – mid game gone
Forgotten
Aloft
I put them on a boat and sent them out to sea
To eradicate from memory
Spouting vitriolic
And bombastic bile embolic
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
The Russian at the stern
The Brazilian at the wheel
The continental cads roped and hooked about the heel
And as ballast or’ the bulkheads
The American I did furl
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
Aloft!
Dreadnought we fear their leeward tack
Windward wake and worried
The five will feature knotted true
Skull as lonely seamen do
No fathoming these figureheads
We’ve been jib rigged fore and aft
Salt Breathes Life
Gentle sound of clams purging sand
As ice cracks in early spring registered only by tiny attentive ears
Sensitive to sound with time in life to listen
No need for extraneous ornamentation
With richness of line, pattern, shade of shell together
Forming mosaic rivaling sand mandalas
Salt as balm stirring life
Salt as evil stifling it
Take your pick
But either way, as mandalas are brushed away
Something terrifying about last gentle movement
Before boiled death
To Hell with the Villanelle
To hell with the villanelle, write your poems in free form
The fixed and structured dampens flair and lively play
Avoid the past to the last and vow to not conform
Trust narrative’s imperative else’ your poem be lukewarm
The form must not determine what you feel, think or say
To hell with the villanelle, write your poems in free form
Break from the shackles of the past, escape what was the norm
The fixed forms hamper freedom, they’re not relevant today
Avoid the past to the last and vow to not conform
Those derelict and dusty forms today cannot inform
What the young and vibrant have to say and why they won’t obey
To hell with the villanelle, write your poems in free form
Avoid the cold and calculated, opt for open loose and warm
Hold your ground and rage against all you must inveigh
Avoid the past to the last and vow to not conform
The master’s of the villanelle you cannot out-perform
Write from your heart and soul what you feel you must convey
To hell with the villanelle, write your poems in free form
Avoid the past to the last and vow to not conform (April, 2019)
Fall
From that impossible height
Taught ropes
Allowing tranquil sweep
Through ancient terraced canyon walls
Eons deep
Youth and yearning soft as liquid light
Frisson
As vehicle of God’s good grace
Vested in surplice and stole did arouse
In solemn mood in bride and groom a trace
Of gentle love as lei of wedding vows
With little left of former power to flaunt
In memory of youthful primal play
As daring can, and indeed will do when filled with want
Faced the pair in loving pose to pray
With soft and sultry voice of earth and sea
As net to fish his wanton words enmesh
With heated lips to open ears he whispered earnestly
To join as three in free and final dance of flesh
Passions stirred awaiting what they lacked
Alas they mingled not, for he was sacked
I Learned a Lot from Larkin
Simply said with light and limpid touch
A finely chiseled phrase works wonders
Nudged to the left but not too much
When register is right
Form and content quit the fight
Images held for just enough time
Jog the soul gently midst dull daily grind
While riding on the train
To help us feel with heart and mind
The shape of glass in rain
Rhyming couplets now might seem a little quaint
A British thing perhaps, that conservative constraint
Halcyon and soothing
Formal play to ponder pain
How to leave a word alone, alone out in the rain
Relinquishing the grandiose allows one to convey
Such depth in lithe and sylphlike forms
One seldom finds today
Let the little words hold weight
Cut the fat, truncate, truncate!
My little ode to you now done I’ll pass it on to everyone
And when my friends come round to chat
I’ll tell them Larkin’s where it’s at
Gone for over thirty years and yet
Fresh images, still now, beget
A Question
O wise one please enlighten me
On art and artifice
‘Artifice is trying to be
Of art, well, art just is’
Cages
You can see the leopard’s happy
In its fabricated pen
With space to run and stretch its legs
Left to right between the pegs
But he’s a little tired now
Let’s go see a different one
That moves and looks alive
Of course they do, just like us dear
Listen carefully and you can hear
Their soft and tiny voices crying
Bang the glass - it runs away
Jumps from the wire and on to the tray
I looked into its eyes before it moved its head
The one beside him’s sleeping
Or is he maybe dead?
Soft and tiny hands are held
Wonder wandering restlessly from cage to cage
Do they sense the numb and listless gaze
Is of a different order
How easy to ignore the horror behind the door
They are there and we are here
Borders hardened over years
Learned so thoroughly
Subtle preparation for
The greater discountings in store
Trailblaziing
I slowly traced the great network of interlacing trails
You made with your hands through the sand
On your knees in the park
Your last kingdom
This raw play of imagination
Moving your body through endless space
Now that the screens have claimed your attention
I miss cleaning the dirt from your knees
Smelling the fresh grass stains
And wonder what is lost in this forging of new trails
Through vast electronic fields
With you, immobile, staring into flat space
I've heard the cyber prophets say
Bodily play is falling away
With ever more to explore far from where we are
I’ll remember your face, utterly absorbed
Fulfilling innate earthly desire
Trailblazing
Gartenphantasie
Come dear children enter in
Through copse and boscage paper thin
Traipse till dusk grafts life in snow
Trapping moonlight afterglow
Only in this limpid light
Will they approach you free of fright
Softly stroke their brittle beaks
To find the lonely ones who speak
Of past regrets and future fears
And listen till they’ve shed their tears
Life is rendered richer now
Newly colored and spun
Through quivering words
Of tales from birds
So consider your journey as done
Grand Gran
A visit with you then
Was like lunch with the queen
British and lavender clean
A twinkle in your eye, cig in hand
Everything regal and grand
I’d listen to your stories
Of Shanghai shops and of the war
Of British ships and glories
Of the colonies and all that fell before
The lovely liners brought you
To this gentle western shore
Where you could scan the sea
Driving scooter on the quay
Through sand salt woven windswept land
Shopping list in wrinkled hand
To buy the dainty doilies
For Royal Albert cups of tea
We’d drink with scones and butter tarts
Or Yorkshire puds and pie
Before I’d say goodbye
And kiss you on the cheek
In reddening room of crimson sky
At end of dying day
And wave to you from the road outside
Where they say you passed away
Who has time
to follow the gentle sway
of my pedicles and umbellets
but the children,
their birdy eyes and fragile fingers
delighting in my decay
in the breeze that tilts
these fourteen crests of seed,
my progenies survival
held in these handsome stilts
soon to be tossed as weed
or set in suspended animation
preserved in liquid amber jars
for my limonene and manganese
my seedling's tiny stars
my fronds a sheer chemise
my last and lonely sexy dance,
a little strip and tease.
Birdhouse
A boy. A man. A birdhouse.
Boy balancing on toes, head slightly tilted,
touching the tip of the v-shaped roof.
Just enough height and light to glimpse them
through the little aperture,
their only source of light.
Boy to man: ‘They look like pterodactyls.’
Man to boy: ‘they’re related.’
Boy’s elated.
But to the man, the frantic movement
of the five gaping beaks,
necks strained as if gasping for air,
is haunting
Bird’s heads tilted up,
necks perpendicular to the tip of the v-shaped roof.
Just enough light and height to glimpse him -
the boy’s glistening eye
almost filling the little aperture
through which they will be fed tonight.
Tiny birds. Small boy. Old man.
The sum of their lifespans but a breath of geological time.
All gently connected for an instant
in the dying light of early night.
Man to boy: ‘it’s time for bed.’
The Star Gage
The tiny inkblot paper thin
Impossibly lets light within
Renders real within the brain
All that’s seen in light’s domain
As mirrors play their tricks on light
Inverting letters left to right
Here the world divides
Inverting letters left to right
As mirrors play their tricks on light
All that’s seen in light’s domain
Renders real within the brain
Impossibly lets light within
The tiny inkblot paper thin
Commuting
I saw a child today
on the train
red glove held firmly
in grandmother's hands
and something in the way
they gazed at the rain
shattered my future
dissolved all my plans
Coeus vs Aurras
An entertainment in which sound and sense do battle
Does sense not side with history?
I counter sound holds mystery
With meaning lost in flowery prose
Just listen to the blighted rose
Please hold your tongue; let sense hold sway
I shall refrain from trite cliché
Let logic guide the mind’s release
You slight the role of blind caprice
Now Jejune rhyming is the norm
As rhymes and word play strengthen form
Structure has authority
That pinions word’s sonority
As so it should nay thought’s decay
Does sound not sanction verbal play?
Not with meaning left in lurch
Nay, sound is seasoned through the search
For what, I ask, if not sound sense.
Through sound we stall and buoy suspense
With loss of syntax rifting norms
To which your paltry prose conforms
Envoi
Here the entertainment ends
As they refuse to make amends
To thoughts and feelings felt replete
Both shun admitting sad defeat
And of the viewpoints they possess
Both are valid; nonetheless
As words are merely words not law
The battle must here end in draw
Peitho
With eyes like stars in disguise
Through the pallid night light stalks
Steals her men away from their wives
On orphic evening walks
Garden Sestina
The stream
diverted from its natural course
allows a little of its water
to feed into pails
in early evening
as the sun slowly sets.
The garden boxes, arranged in sets
next to the stream
partition the light of the evening
altering its course
from the ruddy sides of the pails
flushed with spring water
to the edge of the garden; water,
soil, sand and larvae set
for sweet sleep under the pails.
The trickle of this tiny stream
runs its wondrous course
through children’s toes, evening
out into a small tin trough. The evening
air lingering on the surface of the water
also runs its cragged course
moving from the trough to the sets
of children’s toys before returning to the stream.
The placement of the pails
allows for easy ladling of water, with the pails’
lips positioned over the beds awaiting their evening
meal of minerals, from the life-yielding stream.
The soft light reflected on the surface of the water
directs the children’s attention from the toy sets
to the slow creeping course
of the sun’s setting light. As a matter of course
garden etiquette demands the pails
are filled every night to assuage the sets
of small creatures yearning for evening
sustenance. The children too, dancing in the water,
are enchanted, drawn into the life of the stream.
Of course, penning this poem in the early evening,
charmed by the children running round pails of garden water
was an easy scene to set, gazing at the trickling stream.
For Charlie
Your supersonic cyber savvy art and words
Eyewink light and candid crisp
Soothes my soul and keeps me young and yearning
Just write like Charlie speaks and words will flow
I say to myself racking little brain
Battling fear and loathing
Trying to write a poem that just manages to float
A few inches off the ground for an instant
Before collapsing under its own weight
I vow to lighten tone with tongue firmly held in cheek
Toss “breadth of our domain”
Get up, dry tears and start again
Poem dates
The Wind Flies Them So High (August, 2018)
Pastoral (January, 2019)
Aloft (March, 2019)
Salt Breathes Life (March, 2019)
Office Pantoum (for Don) (April, 2019)
To Hell with the Villanelle (April, 2019)
Frisson (April, 2019)
Fall (May, 2019)
I Learned a Lot from Larkin (May, 2019)
Cages (May, 2019)
For Charlie (June, 2019)
A Question (June, 2019)
Trailblazing (July, 2019)
Gartenphantasie (September 10, 2019)
Grand Gran (September, 2019)
The Star Gage (November, 2019)
Commuting (December, 2019)
Coeus vs Aurras (April, 2020)
Peitho (April, 2020)
Garden Sestina (April, 2020)
Pirouette (May, 2020)
Who has time (July 2020)
Birdhouse (July 2020)