Worn Sweat

Into the early morning
Not far in time to sleep
Deep dreams
Horizons and sunsets

Escape or creep back
As if to the Inchcape
There far from the west
Of wayward slumbers

Up and over the brow
Boldly off the Wolds
Off the clay and chalk
Off the sleep time talk

& the bare, fair set
Mazy wanderings

Up and over the treetops
Torn away from the trunk
Ripped off the branch
And the twig and skunk

Of the night time
Cigarette
The scared
Worn sweat

Which bared those unfair
& crazy wanderings


This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text

Onwards sprinkled poppies

In the seventh summer
Slip, I dipped on the
Trip to pink flamingos

Now my seventeenth number
Flip, I’m clipped on the
Strip of fairway gringos

In between the innocence & the heartache
What seems the green grass, the second class
The mother, the child, the both without a father

In their seven rows
Strips of once wild poppies
Nipped in bud, for the county flower show

Now my seventeen insecurities
Drip into my shattered mind
Rainy days; the sipped sour wine of impunity

In between the hazel & the hedgerow
What seems the pasture, swift past rapture
The other, the wild, the both without hope, rather

To be in the seventh seventeenth summer
Somewhere between home & away & eternity
Graveyards & birthplace; endless, timeless journey

Trips to pink flamingos
Stripped bare the fair play gringo’s; swathes
That wave, rave on - onwards sprinkled poppies


This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text

Incest and other conversations

Mottled
Colours through crimson bottles
Glass with past you do wonder

Petticoats on soft skin
Racehorses on close run rails
Fairways these last days of summer

Cared for with loves
Deeper understandings

Shadows only on the raindrops
Or the quenching waters
Blast furnace you do recall

Cold beers; for brow borne beads of sweat
Share incest and other conversation
Cast figures days when daylight fails

Shared with untouched love
& deeper misunderstandings


This poem didn't quite make it into the collection Rainbows On My Spectacles - Love Through a Lens
To see what did click anywhere on this text

Shame of sensation

Green wheat
On the sweetest day of summer

Where Tennyson heard
That Byron was dead
He engraved the news, deep
In the sandstone of long memory

That first day of summer
& the corn was high

Or would be later in the year
For Tennyson, the corn
To disappear, life too dear
Cleared of his father’s reputation

Feared of shame and sensation
An odd kind of situation

Humans with emotions

I walked there
And back again
Looked in all the windows
Opened one or two of the doors

In truth I wasn’t really looking
For there is nothing that I need
But I liked the time just to wander
To see the pigeons feed

The pensioners study
The racks of three for two
The tins of pilchards are past
Their sell by date; nothings new

The flautist plays
His electronic mandolin
He sells lots of the Big Issue
It’s hard to stay so thin

The schoolchildren size up
The cost of liquorice sticks
Choose one colour or two
Or better value in the lucky dip

The opera house is open
The autumn catalogue is news
Blues Brothers, or Tourandot
The eclectic amongst you choose

Sun shines on the fountain
The dress shop picture is quite a pitch
Tourism given over to pride and prejudice
Thank the Lord, Chatsworth made it rich

Back past the old disused spa baths
Stone flags; great worn slabs
Weathered for centuries, but now
In the hands of developers
With tentacles like crabs


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Indifference

If only it was indifferent
Instead it is silent
Mute

If only it was significant
Instead it is blank
Brute

Charles Causley I believe once said;
“That a good poem was always about something else”

If that means different
About some kind of piled up, pent
He's really quite astute

If that means insignificant
Is that to slide down the blank
And blind refuse shute

Carl Dennis wrote;
“And write about the life
You can talk about”

You left to walk away
How often have you heard it said
Or said it yourself

You would talk, but
Have not a thought to say
Just words with which you play

Jane Kenyon in her poem Happiness:
“No, happiness is the uncle you never knew
About who flies a single engine plane”

Over moor of purple bramble hue
Under cider presses wooden screw
The hope is ever new

In factories and submarines
We bang the drum
Tam the tambourine

The love now blue
Was for a while
Ultramarine


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Moving Picture

I look at your picture deeply
I look at your picture
Your eyes smile
Your picture moves
I look at your picture deeply

My focus fades
I re-set the locus

I look at your picture deeply
Once sad, my gladness now

Sees a smile
Your smile, no more tears
Your years don’t fade away

It’s past two in the morning
Here’s hoping

I look at your picture deeply
Sepia tone fine grained paper
I smile
A scarf, a pendant locket
It was taken a good while ago


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Round wrung floodlights

There was a shaft of sunlight
Right across the flags
A spot of cloud sunk sunlight
From mad, to sad, to glad

Observed with interest and culture
Slight refrain she nags
A spot of cloud sunk sunlight
From boy, to lad, to dad

Nowhere to take you
Except from peak, to peak, to peak
A lot of round wrung floodlights
Poetry, fiction, drama, strad

Instead beside the iron bed
Led from the here and now
Taken to a memory, shaded
Shadow of the Bhagavad



…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

You vouched to play

Quotations and reference
Citations and severance
Plantations of preference
Visitations deferred

How many more curriculum vitae
How many thanks but no thanks
Toe the line you’ll get your chance
Pride or prejudice, unjust romance

Social came just the same
To see for what you do
But looked right on, straight on through
Interested in 'selves, no interest in you

You brought the kids up on your own
Mostly now they’re resolute
Education will be their suit
Inspired by what happened too

Worlds away the musicians play
Caribbean, calypso, contraband
Extemporise to realise
This land is your land, is my land

So computer hack
The Union Jack
Take no more flack
It’s just the sack

And anyway the other day
You vouched to play
Down Islington way
At the Crown and Anchor

So thank her and her sister
Not so much her son, odd mister
Her Kingdom come you just kissed her
And for that we say your hips please sway

Your rhythm and your rumba
Your echo and your number
You dance, while all we do is lumber
You are our soul

You are reggaes rock and roll


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Lay Quietly

The gossamer of finest denier
Cast into still air
Still its ether hangs

Tall pampas grass
Faced into the ocean wind
Still it stands erect

Silk scarf so finely spun
Lays light upon your shoulder
Still its quiet resounds

Spray so fine; hardly a mist
On the crest of sand and down
Still its hope glistens

Perfume; worn with a lovers touch
On a neck nape softly under spun
Still its dream captures

The vacation so easily missed
On the calendar often read
Still its love we kissed

…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Every day a calendar (My lady love in lavender)

Lady love in lavender
Every day
A calendar

My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender

My lady love
My baby love
My lady love in lavender

O poppy fields
And cotton reels
Every day my love she steals

O lady love
My baby love
My lady love in lavender

O baby love
My lady love
My Lavender

In fields of corn
Our passion sworn

My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender

O baby
My lady
My lady love
My Lavender

Under silver clouds
With sparkled shrouds

My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender

O baby love
My lady love
My Lavender

Ever tender is the night
More tender still
The morning

My lady love
O baby love
My lady love in lavender

O baby love
O lady love
O Lavender

Every day
My baby love
My lady love
Every way my calendar


…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus to find out which poems did make it click here

Fabula Night

Tenderfoot and follow through
The midnight hour
Son of February did arrive

The midnight hour
Change gear, accelerate too
An heavenly coastal soporific drive

The midwife from the north
Burnley thought, to deliver life
The midnight hour

Swathed in satin, torn in silk
The midnight hour
How many years before the strife

The midnight hour
Last moments of a couple be
What chance on a future wife

Dolphins call as surf waves roll
Cope unsung the artist’s knife
The midnight hour

Eastern shores of risen sun
The midnight hour
Lonely road to cottage tied

The midnight hour
Tenderfoot and follow through
Happiness through moonlit cries

Change gear, accelerate too
Away so far, you soon replied
The midnight hour

The mid-life lad down from the north
The midnight hour
Unknowing that their love had died

…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campuswhich can be found by clicking here

Grow Up

I re-read your old letters

See what I took to be excitement

I read with interest

Of the love I thought I saw

We had many complications

With so many children 

Yet to become grown up

But you said it would be fun

We would work

Through our complications

And with the children gone

We would have twice the fun

I sent you new letters

Tried to raise erased excitement

But I wrote with a dualistic interest

As now I also fed on our lost love

There were complications

For we grew apart

From the start we lost our sight

Forgot it could be fun

We were not inspired

To work together

Through our complications

…and with the children

All but one now gone

We have given up -

We've messed about

& pressed out all the fun

…this poem missed out on the collection Massage slow, mellow in - Love off Campus which can be found by clicking here

Lonesome

I laugh on my own, but I am not alone
No, you are here
You do not disappear

Is this the same
For lovers in grief
The disbelief

Shown by friends and family
Who do not
Cannot understand

You have not gone
Not away
Just to another peaceful place

Where I join you
Everyday
In my own gentle way

This one didn't make it into the collection Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland, to find out what did click here

Town Boy

I sit inside the Christian fellowship coffee shop amongst a melodramatic search for reason; day dreams of retreat, into sublime silent solitude, sparrow-crumbs of memories in flight across my mind

Actually I pay my fare and sit astride the Easy Rider metro double-decker bus; visualising moorland heathers of golden crimson that one day we might have walked upon together


This one didn't make it into the collection Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland, to find out what did click here

Simultaneously stomping, stamping, smashing down the stairs

Simultaneously stomping, stamping, smashing down the stairs

Entrance, what an entrance, crashing, lashing, loads of noise

Argument, discord, simultaneous stacking, lacking thought

Pulling, sullen, mulling …togetherness ensues, chocolate drops consumed

This one didn't make it into the collection Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland, to find out what did click here

Now a little story

Now a little story
Of the girl in the balloon
Who touched life, not a moment too soon

Light cried the captain
We need somebody light

I’m light whispered the little girl

Bright cried the captain
We need somebody bright

I’m bright whispered the little girl

Fight cried the captain
We need somebody who will fight

I’ll fight whispered the little girl

Might cried the captain might turn rough
We’ll need somebody tough

Might be a lady whispered the little girl
But I’m bright and I’m light and if it turns rough then I’ll get tough!

Hop aboard whispered the captain
Overwhelmed by her presence

This poem for Sarah didn't make it into: Watercombe - Love in Open Moorland but to see what did click here