Stop rooting around
and gazing at the finery.
Stop staring at the bottom
of the bin they’ve put you in.
You’re worth so much more
than those wailing sighs,
and blodshot nights,
that bruise your heart
in awkward fight.
Don’t you understand?
There is noble majesty
in the darkest maggot bowl -
burning bright and lighting
rusted scrape and tin,
and meaning so much more
than other unkind souls
will ever mean to me.

I saw them.
Kissing in the whispered breeze,
Like tandem bulrush reeds knocked
And fervent in lover’s wind.
The careful stoop of him meeting rise
And hope of her, leaning, bowing, bending -
Brushstroking the air in abandoned pose.
In tender togetherness they moved
Like star-twinned vapour trails,
The ones that fade through necklaced night
Before ascent of heated azure days.
So strange, I thought to see them here
To see such delightful intimacy.
And then, I realised.
These were
memories.

Can you run faster than the truth?
Can you catch it in your hands,
And throw it back to us?
Strike the bullseye!
Split the apple!
Storm the ramparts!
We all have targets
in our hearts.

Does a flame know when it burns?
Or of its brethren’s fellow toil?
All burn bright because they must
And all of this is down to trust.
Is this faith, or faith in destiny?
No call to idols and unproved deities,
Who comprehend these things that vex
Apart from Artist’s charcoal scratch.

Let us be caressed
like refreshed lovers,
underneath fingertip rain.
Let us lie below the sky
and feel the wake up calls,
falling like soft arrows -
into valleys of tired skin.
Let us smile amid the downpour.
Let us swim in rivers formed.
It is Summer and now
we should welcome rain.

There’s more here
than you shall ever know,
and that’s the way
of things.

Here,
we are all but only here
in this strange
invented place.

But together
we roll, as two -
like bonded wheels
over ancient tracks.

Any more than this,
we dare not dream -
but that’s O.K.
by me.

Obvious really…

I
like,
punctuation.
It really helps -
to frame the words.
Like breaths and sighs,
and pauses - reigning track of thought.
But then, sometimes, it’s frustrating;
stutter and muddle - jolt and bolt.
Things come out …. fractured
and staid. But then again -
I’m getting there.
Wherever,
that,
is.

Hunched
and squinting,
at the screen.
I lean toward
your soul within.
Bunched
and hinting,
what it means.
Slim rewards
are everything.

Only when the glimmer ends
Will we pine for shinest moon
Then gone will be the argon sky
And footprints in the light.
Only when the clouds contend
Will we wrestle grey cocoon
And gaze in open barreleyes
At fortitute of atoms bright.
Only when the stars descend
Will we soar yet soul marooned
As tethered flashes leaping high
Like lost balloons in age’s flight.
Then alone, and only then,
Will we know friends.

Hello.
Are you there?
I said ARE YOU THERE?
Or did I just imagine you?
Maybe you are just a shadow
emboldened by my propensity
to see faces in clouds.
And as hollow wind moans,
maybe you really are just a figment -
detached and wandering the sands,
but too dispersed for me to see.
Hello? Where are you?
There’s tumbleweed twisting
over the waiting ghost of me,
and still I cannot shake
this stupid vanity.
Hello, is that you?
I just love it when
you visit me.

It’s the colour she wears
and I see her everywhere.
I see her in trees
and in hillside shows,
I see her on grassy mounds
on bankside river flow.
She throws a shawl upon the land
and playss her verdant hand.
It’s the colour she wears
and I see her everywhere.

When you become a father
The world turns differently
And wheels that used to spin
Now roll with soul within.

God, save us from the dullards
And the pedants and the mean
Give us strength to rise above
The cloying webs they weave.
Send cutting winds that blow
The ties of their mundanity
Let them follow wiser ways!
Reminding all of our humanity!
Lord, steer us from awkwardness
Away from oafish push and shove
Take doubters and the unkind sane
Move them like the wings of Jove.
Give us joy in our creativity
So then we may again believe
In you, above and willing on -
And caring for our frailty.

I wanted to write
but now I’m not sure.
Do I feel sweeping and
glorious or mystical?
Should I forgive my vanity
and doubt, clasp together
opposite arms in poetry?
My eyes are tired,
and so are my bones
and without caffeine
I cease to be.
Why bother?
What is it I feel
so driven to say?
I really don’t know
(and tonight I don’t care).
We can sort this out
another time.

Words,
like butterfly dust,
blown as windseed
ether-cast thoughts.
No more than breath,
thrown to skyhold
clasp of sparkle stars.
Mist and cloudsong,
feeling’s balm -
like heaven’s never
rain.

She smiled, like a cello on its side,
and I bowed my finger cross the wires.
A nervous student, without notes,
without manuscript or lines -
I felt brutish and naive.
But then she sighed,
and all symphonies
combined.

And who put this barrier between us?
It refracts the knowing of who we are.
This splintered view, smudged
and denying the truths of everything,
it diffuses our connectedness.
We orbit such frayed outskirts -
you and I, like lost and aching birds
mist drenched, circling.
Reticent to land.

Poorly fish,
gravel stilled as he now is.
Despite the occasional flurry,
the current that used to buoy
now pins his tired body down.
Flat-finned and waiting, he lies
patient for the quietened sand -
perhaps, remembering sparkle
and bubble rise of leaping youth.
And I too, recall this golden flash
amidst the world it swam within.
And we both now wait for the end
as I watch and will him to the rise,
to fight for food and light -
to health and extended life.
But now, all he knows is this;
A fish that does not swim,
is not a fish.

Eat for the hungry,
for they cannot feed themselves,
then swim for the dust-bowl kids,
who crane to catch the water drops.

Be stylish for the ragged dressed
in sun-bleached *ethnic* clothes,
and laugh out loud for desolate hearts
who know not love nor family.

Run free for the stumbling ones
when they cannot leave the dirt,
you can wake and smell the roses
for sake of sewered folk and down.

Speak joy for these muted souls,
Rest serene for all their wearied toils.
Then sip tea and watch it all, on your TV
(for those with no electricity).

Let the
water flow
down stoney slope
through hillslip mud,
breaching kid built dams
over oldwash twigs.
Let it filter,
let it purify,
let it flow.