Uncategorized

it is a longer way, mostly uphill then, down.   we go round one way one day, then another way, another day,   avoiding people.   mainly, yet we talk to the stone mason who likes to a…

Source: #walk 6

“For those who suffer from it, the compulsion to write is a mystery. Doing it is a misery, but not doing it is much worse.” Peter Lewis  born 21/2/1928 died 1/03/2016.

The wrong end of a telescope.

 

When the lie was told

and the fracture set

people I thought close

weren’t there, weren’t near.

 

When the lie was set

and dishonour bound

the house phone

stopped ringing, ringing loud.

 

The door-bell left

Untouched too,

no emails or messages,

sought my domain.

 

When the lie was set

no friends to be found

and no voices raised

to shout the lie down.

 

So the world snapped

into its own disgrace.

Where were the people

I thought were near?

 

Where were the people

I thought so close.

The silent friends

not knowing what to say.

 

But that’s the problem

when nothing seems real

and you look at the world

from the end of a telescope.

The Cardigan Road Late Afternoon.

 

A skein of geese crossing

high above the road,

 

Grey clouds on a cold day

and starlings, a bursting cloud

 

Over rain sodden fields,

and the road unfolds

 

Like the days of the year,

the hope and the yearning.

 

And change comes to meet us,

the story still to be told.

The cruelty of lies.

Why do they always say it?

I really wish they didn’t.

We must meet and do this again

is how the repeated saying goes.

 

And then I never see them again.

Why do they want to meet me?

Is this about some vicarious pleasure?

Like rubber necking a disaster.

 

A car crash is that my latest persona?

Just some form of wreckage .

To be swept away like any other kind

of useless write off – pissed right off?

 

I watched when you saw me

in the window as I turned

aware in that way that you do

when you sense that someone

is watching you but saying nothing.

Then you turned to look away

and that has stayed with me.

Crows

It is an un-contestable truth

that crows are the greatest artists

of this whole wide world

creating art from nothing

 

But I acknowledge

that this assertion

may be arguable

to some I presume.

 

But what do they know?

From early dawn

unseen by the waking world

crows create sculptures

and ready-mades

from all they find.

 

Corvids invented

conceptualism

before humans

claimed it their own.

 

Jackdaws and Jays

with their cool

grey blue eyes

masters of this work

re-arrange leaves

effortlessly, so easily

into intricate patterns

of choice and design

 

In which Rooks

judging with their beaks

exercise an exquisite

taste for blunt humour

 

Ravens however remain

aloof in their rule

completing aerial feats

loop the loops and

arabesques in displays

of deep disdain.

 

Without corvids design

the constant effort to re-arrange

it would look as if

nothing had changed.

 

That old fiend Duchamp

would have appreciated

the crows efforts to lay

everything bare

if he himself had not

lost his wit

from endlessly

taking the piss.

 

Poe would of course

laugh rapturously

from the shallow

darkness of his pit.

Yielding

 

Yielding to the push of my fingertips

The door opens swinging easily.

In the mirror at the end of the hall

A black silhouette gold edged

A moon eyed trout.

Caught. Mesmorised.

By the blinding gleam

Of the poachers torch.

And in the same beam.

Entrapped and transfixed

in the cold white

Electric glare. A fluttering moth.

I stand there. Staring.

My own reflection before me.

I look myself up and down

From one side to the other.

From one hand to the other.

Workmen’s hands.

Shit, shit on this earth

Why do I have hands like those?

Those pathetic absurdities

Hanging limp and loose

Looking as though they’ve been stuck on

The ends of those stick thin brown wrists.

Thick fingered flesh.

Waiting to be used.

Something to be done with them.

Touched and turned over in them.

A rough edged stone perhaps

Warily feeling for smooth

Surfaces fingered, stroked and pressed.

 

Every morning I step off the train

I make my way through

The green drab coats of men

Their hands dangling

In the morning air

Limp-pink, washed and cleaned.

Forgotten, flapping.

 

And down there on the black beach

Down past the turmoil

Of smoke and steel

And the cauldrons of molten slag

A dead sea gulls wing

Half buried, left on the shore

After the high waves

Had at last receded.

Made to flap by the wind.

Grotesque as everything is there

As though it were imitating

Its’ own once beautiful flight

And deaths mockery all that is left

To remind of its once graceful past.

 

Silently men merge into lines

Following one another

Through the murky dawn

The sky not light with sun

Cars slowly move and churn

The dust on the road.

Brown dust that rises and falls

Continuously. Unnoticed.

Staining the rooves

Of the houses near

The looming hulk

Of the steel works.

And as cars speed out

Along the road

The dust swirls

Up into the air

And is turned

Into a thick brown cloud.

 

Each morning

As I make my way

To the steel works

It’s the same.

Head down. Eyes staring.

Old eyes staring now and then

At young faces that pass by

The night shift on its way home.

And from beneath the brim

Of cloth caps unseeing eyes

See everything.

 

The door swings shut behind me.

All is dark again.

Mindfulness

In the house warming

Klaus spoke about

his experience of moving

to the run down valley

a former mining town

where he now resides.

He recalled the first visit

to a doctor and noted

as he sat down the doctor

barely glanced his way

seemingly unable to take

his eyes from the computer

dominating his desk.

Klaus spoke politely

in his soft German accent

making no effort to hide

the wryness of his smile.

“When you have a moment

I will tell you the reason

I am sitting here.

It may be of interest to you.”

 

A day later I paid a visit

to a doctor too

it was an emergency

I’d thought I was lucky

to be given an appointment

so quickly on the same day

The young locum

sat down and started

to conduct a conversation

while fiddling with the printer

he opened the paper drawer

slamming it again and again

At some point I stopped

speaking he didn’t seem

to notice this at all

he apologised but now

his back was turned

away from me.

He phoned admin

and another person

entered the room

and I watched as the two

conducted an animated

discussion on matters

of computer technology,

and which of the doctors

had left the printer jammed.

I sat quietly listening,

it was pleasant enough

I suppose sitting there

listening to the discussion

and for the moment

I’d forgotten the pain.