Icky
Personae on a stick
Lick, lick, lick,
A poet missed the trick
Thick, thick, thick,
Black keys of Magic
Stick, stick, stick,
Another attempt to kick
Down the drain of sick
My final dream pick.
ce soir j’écris
Writing is a journey, onwards and upwards. Looking back is like driving down a cul-de-sac, not finding reverse or ways of turning back; getting stuck in the world of old wounds, old truths, old words, and old yous. Writing is a journey down a new path, a new street, a new road in another neighbourhood, in a new town, or another country – feeling cold, feeling lonely. Writing is a perpetual journey into the unknown - a place we should all find to time to appreciate, rejoice and celebrate.
After the Fall
White eyes reaching for the skies,
Powdered snow and bleeding nose,
White coats rejecting your ceiling strolls,
Powdered pills prescribed as solidified
Hell; with pretence on the canvas
We paint every day in solid light hues;
Darkness moves in the brightest of light,
Invisible selves roam in circles of eight
Behind closed curtains you sit and watch
The world spinning out of control; your
White eyes searching for a sunlit sky
With powdered winter snow, naked
And undiagnosed.
Pie in Sky (adventure in iambic pentameter)
Above the mountains high a godly sphere
The snow-capped hills and vales so deeply green,
A lush view speaks of fingers crumbling pies
Divinely minted master chef’s delight,
Below dead lakes the cods sit silently
Their final bills unpaid their race away
Curtailed, with nothing left but crumbling pies
The master chef has left them all behind,
Of metaphorical pies this speaks one truth
One voice we silently abused before:
Let go, fly high, towards the sky of pies.
Savage Saunter
I walk in darkness along neon signs
Telling tall tales of lives in fast lanes,
Of hope as the glue that binds
The sinners, the righteous few
Portrayed as pastoral winners.
I walk in darkness along tree lines,
Ageing trunks recount in truth
Their experiences of life
In the slow lane.
I walk with darkness all around,
Contemplating grinding get-goings,
Our directionless dawdles where
Headlights show the way.
I stand in darkness, refusing to take
Another step until I find directions
To my Atlantean, utopian home
In the forest of old.
Perchance
If perchance I came across a vessel
Once filled with life’s sweetest elixir,
It would leave me long to ponder
On who were its blessed giftee;
Who did stand to drink, to gain
From love’s transforming tonic,
And who would leave this perpetual
Rite’s tool behind, in a world filled
With single entities.
If perchance I came across a vessel
Filled with life’s sweetest elixir,
I would give praise to the gods –
Toast and drink my righteous fill
Of love’s transforming tonic; Then
Roam my forest for the fairest doe
Worthy of a chiselled epitaph
At the closing hour of our lives:
Lives well lived, and lives lived
In love.
Marks Will be Deducted
What’s in a name, I ask, well aware
Marks will be deducted with absent
Quotation glyphs: oh, the pain of
Writing a life’s work in dialogue
When no one will ever be bothered
To read. Like a poem hidden
Inside an ad for a rundown car: tax expired but likely to last for another
Hundred thousand miles
Of continuous prose. I consider
Blank verse but want at least one
Rhyme to stretch across the bonnet,
Or boot – either will do. My name isUninspiring.
A&E
My own sorrow, the reflected echo
Of a rusty spade beside the hole
I kept digging, never called forth
The rain; never left any hope of ever
Finding a door, an escape out into
The world of normal, into your world
Where A follows B and the light
Only comes on when buttons
Are pressed; dangling from above
The hole is not a hole, I could not
Call the spade a spade, the light
Is off and there are no buttons
To press, the whole alphabet
Is merrily dancing around a tree
Except A follows E, and there are
No tears to shed.
A Kiss / The Sweet Lips of Hybris
I need more hubris, less restraint
To comfortably channel
My God given gifts; compare myself
With the masters of blank verse,
Surpass all that came before
And any pretender subsequent.
I need to shed all fear, immerse
The self in a bath of philosophical
Foam, scrub my stained skin
Of any blemish: seek purity
And a native soul in residence
Where angels fear to tread.
I need a pen, paper, and unlimited
Supply of class A medicamentum.