K

Those aches I once inflamed

Lie spent, plainly dormant now

Lusts desires so surely tamed

Pain, sans pain, stilled somehow

This poem is from the collection 

Q

If only I saw this scene

Would that be of any matter

The willow that weeps 

As the Wolds turn flatter

To write these few words

Am I mad, mad as a hatter

To be neither read nor seen

Is that really of any matter

In years of invisible moons

Amid daylight’s soft scatter

Witnessed by a singular one

Yet to share; does it matter

This poem is from the collection 

Trait

Every turn

Every face I try to learn

To forget

I let myself down

This cheerful clown

Isn't yet reset

Every step

Every image that I kept

Without knowing

That each flick of hair

Is shared

By a thousand girls

Each twirl

Is just another pearl

Of shared deportment

This poem is from the collection 

Team Colours

I almost bought the linen shirt

Because it reminds me of blue

A blue I can't quite remember

A blue I can't quite name

A blue of a different September 

At the start of a serious old game

This poem is from the collection 

Really John, Really Free

I am a compulsive escapee

A dedicated-slave, seeking

To seek out the free

Free place

Free time

Free to entirely be

I want to be really

Really John

Really free

Freedom found in the shopping mall

Freedom found in the café bar

Freedom found in the queue for bugger all

Freedom found in my motor car

Freedom of the silver stream

Freedom of the beachside dream

Freedom of the coffee and cream

Freedom to be really mean, really mean

Thanks to John Otway & Wild Willy Barratt

This poem is from the collection 

1966

Join me in my private pool
Clear water sparkles shades of blue
Cast aside your tip-tap stiletto shoes
Join me in my private pool

Join me in my private pool
Hockney's picture caught it true
Bring your love, so rare and new
Join me in my private pool

This poem is from the collection 

In-volatile

These convoluted words

What of them

I could not say it otherwise

Could I

What is it anyway

Thats had me

Led me to write

For all of these years

Where is the fear

Or the joy to kill

What's the story

Left unemployed 

For none to thrill

In that unsettled mind

Four square walls

Neat but thin 

Of the kind we swore

They'd never catch us in

Two solid doors

To the rill & pond

Double glazed windows

That settled still

The wind and voices song

Runaway, as one might

Though you can’t run free

Things don't change

One day of that you’ll see

Yet to have had the chance

To have pined for love

To have racked ones soul

Those times apart

You'd have to say

That as a start

It's the gift of life

This gift called love

Love that's found

Love that's lost

Love on the rebound

After love that died of frost

Love that calls

Most nights and days

Love in dreams

On overnight stays

Love my means

To stay untrue

Unsure what's me

Less certain what's you

But isn't it the same the whole world through

Less of anguish

More of desire 

More to be happy

Less to tire

To ramble off

As often as to ramble on

To hold our hands

And sing our songs

Ups and down

On dull or

Desolate days

Turn the tide

Stay on together

Don't go on those

Without point

Separate ways

This poem is from the collection 

Reserve Place

Springs steps stand inflexibly

Yet again the leaving feeling

It is what's in the seam of me

Tender times touch insensitivity

In my mind I'm still seeking out

What to do with endless dreams

This poem is from the collection 

Landlocked

All in all I have the Gaul

To explore far beyond the sea

Standing tall with etch and ball 

I'm finding out who is, yours truly me

With Withnail I stood, but failed to see 

One afternoon beside the amber Dee

There to stand our coats in hand

We had downsized, minimally

This poem is from the collection 

Desire for Song

I want to sing

I wanna bit of a thing

With the boy stood next to me

I see despise

Clear in his eyes

I want that entered deep in me

Side by side in dreams

Yet he's the one who's free

Side by side it seems

Yet he's the one with the cherry tree

I want to sing

Hey you pretty thing

Take some time with me

I see lost cries

Near in his eyes

I want that entered deep in me

Side by side in dreams

Yet he's the one who's free

Side by side it seems

Yet he's the one with the cherry tree

This poem is from the collection 

Don’t wake me next time

Starbursts; millions and zillions of stars bursting out in cascades just as in a firework fountain. Reds at first, a continuous vast outpouring of tiny specs of the cosmos huddled together as if lava flooding from a volcano. Reds that slowly turned to purples, to blues, to whites, all as starbursts; starbursts with endless unlimited energy, starbursts that fired and flared before their gradual replacement with more distinctive patterns; definable shapes, hoops and ovals, ellipses and paisleys, swirls and loops with translucent and fluorescent membranes, as if of the jellyfish on the seashore.

Gone, in that split second of the eyes opening and the eyes closing; gone again, the images turn to nought but grey and black, the excitement is gone, the hope of image capture is gone, the belief in disbelief is gone; all left are my words, that may or may not describe those few moments of unbridled wonder and meditation, that entire starburst of once in a lifetime.

This poem is from the collection 

Escapology

I have no more desire

My desire’s run through

I have no one else to tell

My colour’s turned blue

The unsteadiness of breeze

Rocks me as the aspen leaf

Thoughts of a ne’er-do-well

My riptide spurns its grief

I have the telegraph time

My rhyme’s still to choose

I haven’t a defining spell

My delectations are loose

The dull grey cloudy sky

Folds away as the thief

Tomorrow I’ll maybe dwell

My hope is thus so brief

This is the final poem from the pamphlet

Vagaries: Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Embellishment

The young man, tanned attractive youth, with a ruby earring and a swallow tattoo;

He swung the waltzer capsule with all the energy, and the raw emotion, of a wild animal on the chase of its prey

The young girls, bland attractive teenagers, wearing satin and denim with strings of imitation pearls;

They squealed with all the delight and the expectant joy of a wildebeest in the mating season

By the candy-floss stall a bubble machine cascaded bubbles, they floated freely all over the fairground, some of the glowing delicate orbs landed, gently, on to Sapphire’s velvet collar;

She was already dreaming of their faint, heady & passionate significance

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Mother & Child

It brings out the romantic in me, the nostalgic romantic; to see the young girls blowing bubbles in the park. To know that they will grow up and enter the romanticised world of the bubble. The bubble of a first love, entered with all the innocent joy of youth, or re-entered with the passionate experience of maturity.

Of course the young girls were competitive, each one wanted to blow the bigger bubble, each one wanted their mother to be the proudest. The bubble was what tied the child to the mother, what neither could hold firmly, yet what neither could ever give back.

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

I Chose The Bubble

From within we see the stars, the sparkle
From without we see the sparkle, the stars
For the sparkle, and the stars
You might read fairgrounds and music
You might hear the symphonies
As the notes, one by one, slip
Out of your gossamer sheath

From without we are tears, and heartbreak
From within we are heartbreak, and tears
For the tears, and the heartbreak
You might read strangers & lovers
You might hear the sighs
As the embraces, one by one, slip
Back in to your gossamer sheath

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Out There

I know this is the mist of the East

I know that I kissed her in my sleep

I know that to resist

Is to take myself, I insist, elsewhere deep

I know this is the light of the day

I know, with hindsight, I had to stay

I know always to be right

Is to stay on the inflexible way

I know this is the rain of the West

I know my pain is born in her breast

I know to rake for endless gain

Is to forsake the truth that more is less

I know this is the dark of night

I know the lark sings silver white

I know to walk through beauties park

Is love being caught, in her line of sight

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Protective of You

Only once ever before did I touch the outside of a bubble, a surface that glistened profusely, but one that I assumed was entirely fragile

& yet, today, you guessed it

I am lighter now, than the me that I have known almost forever, so light that my density is less than that of the bubble

& so, today, you guessed it

With the lightness there is a clarity; a clarity so pure that the rainbows of the bubble diffuse entirely

& where, today, you guessed it

The lightness, the clarity and the fragility take me to the essence of love; it is of love in this bubble; love here & now

& today, you guessed it

At once you joined me

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Fete

Leaning gravestones

Strong sun, cream teas

Babies crying, dogs barking

Demonstrations of twisting wool

& the reupholstery of antique chairs

No rush to their conversations

No doubts in their belief of faith

You enquired about the moneymaker

The boy gazed out into the further distance

His eyes entirely free of unqualified expectations

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Dying to Travel

The hearse followed me north, past the Nottingham & Grantham turnoff; they overtook me on Gonerby Moor (He was escorted by a flashy Peugeot Convertible with a private number plate).Earlier in the journey, after listening to Paul Heaton’s Acid Country I had said to myself that I would like that song played at my funeral, though I worried that the crematorium would clip it, cut it short, and you need to hear the whole thing to really get the sentiment. 

I thought that I had lost them by the M18, but then, just thirty miles shy of Leeds I spotted the casket, with its impressively close suitor still heading north. The sunshine boy of Billericay returning to the clouds of Durham City

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

6:23

Grey skies

Don’t stop the birdsong

Windblown hedges

Don’t dampen their spirits

I have risen early

For no real purpose

It is too soon

To make my love her tea

Poetry doesn’t begin this way

Even for Mr Bukowski

Why, by now there ought to be

Profanity, or words more profound

But, as the too slow camper-van

Crossing the New York Bridge

I also am moving too slowly

I need reminding how to flow

Perhaps a meditation

To contemplate the light

Say thanks to all creation

& the wonders of the night

Maybe an invitation

To a debutante’s ball

Or another Gatsby glorification

To sound his lost lover’s call

Besieged by past temptation

I stride out towards the fall

There is no simplification

When love to know is all

The love of one another

The brook beside the brawl

The sister and the brothers

The familiar tone to stall

As richness becomes discovered

& spitefulness turns around

The day moves on and upwards

Old sad thoughts they fall to ground

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Rationale

I had no reason to write

Yet I did write

I enjoyed the process

I was pleased with the outcome

A door, that I had closed

Was ever so slightly reopened

A thin shaft of light, streamed

Through the airborne dust

There in that movement

I imagined gaiety, the energies

Of love, carried on in twirling

Multicoloured specks of life

I have no reason to write

Yet I hope to write again soon

To engage in the belief, that 

I might then give back the light

To a door I am able to re-open

A little more each day

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Sea View

The remembrance of loss

Caught me

In the empty hallway

I trawled through

The back catalogues

For a clue to the half light

That drifted over the bannister

Beside the bedroom

Where we first made love

Comforting

In its layers of bedding

It is where we go

When no one can see us

The memories crossed

It wasn’t you, it isn’t me

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

A Flickering

Shadows dance, made

By sunlight, through net

Curtains, at the window

Birds talk of chance

I surmise a certain circumstance

Where all beneath the dress

Was unveiled, & we set sail

As the light faded

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

In Awe of Neruda

I write to no one now that I have lost her
Yet still I write
Of the ocean’s moonlight reflections
Of my own dances with the shadows

I am as no one without my writing
So I go to illusory pasts
With mountains & meadows
& I cast myself

To the vague details of the mind
There to find nothing
That might give the consolation
Of her skins sensitive sensations

With no one & being no one
You might expect a desperate tone
Yet alone, as you now find me
Is a new found treasure

The pleasure of meditation
That well chosen gifts evoked
Fresh thoughts provoked
Of those hours we talked

Before the melancholy set in
The follies of that life;
Where we meet, where we part
Were we start, and where

Where do we finish

I write to no one now that I have lost her
Yet still I write
Of sunlight in the marketplace
Of hot coffee in the Paris pavement café

I am as someone with my writing
I roam around the sculpture parks
Visit historic European gardens
& I fast, fast upon myself

From the incidental revisions
There to rediscover precision
Among the gifts of creation
A purpose, with an inclination

With one and being someone
You might expect an elated tone
Yet alone, as you now find me
Makes me variable as the weather

To untether the indignation
My present pretence revoked
Old ideologies rattled & stoked
Scented flowers smoked

Before the reverie begins
The very stuff of strife
Where we laugh, where we cry
Where we hope and where

Where did she die

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Less Strong

She stays more dreamy than in sleep; to face up to her fragility with dignity

He touched her eyelid so soft; panicked at the thought to end in a penniless croft

Rambles of a ramblers themes; he often caught her drift, yet also missed his chance

Fate undone by circumstance; there in the queue, where she knew of but the few

She reads in joyful voice; of her new-found, long-lost friend; it is why we depend

To send the desires of her spirit, she impresses her lover’s letter, with the stamp of wax

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Over There, Believe Me

Shadows; words lurking in the in-between spaces, demonstrations of my counter complexity

Maintaining a conversation, however ill advised, brings with it the difficulty of understanding my inner self. Brings with it the need to clarify, at least in words, my present physical and mental states, however troubled they are to get to the  surface

There is a nearby indiscriminate pain, slight but present, a pain of what I take to be of absence; near and in my shoulders, near and in my gut, near and throughout the whole of my body, near and in and among the veiled shrouds of my absently defiant yet mostly mistaken mind

These are the bubbles of joy and guilt that bounce along my arterial veins, just as the surf turns to the oceans with the expectancy of incredible life, just as the clouds turn from the sky to leave the transparent blue, just as those Saturday mornings opened with the opening of a white cotton blouse

I read your seventeen words, twenty-one thousand times, without any hint of desperation

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

I could say her conversation was inane

Early start

Yet much later than the sunrise

Looking at a picture

Of a bridge over a canal

It could be that Turner stayed here

Though on reflection I don't think so

I believe he was painting in Chichester

This is Chelmsford, with a cheerful oriental waitress

I could say her conversation was inane; but

What good would that do for anyone, least of all me

If I had more than my ambition

The jazz singer sings

Yet without any ambition

Isn't my day going to drag

Although the breakfast is good

& I might have the same tomorrow

There then, that's a thing to aim for

To smile, be jovial (on the surface)

Irrespective of the slow tides that ebb within

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

The Key to Room 149

Seven o'clock is the wake up call in the hotel suite, next door but one

Down the corridor a door slams, the first executive is on the move

I press my mobile alarm to snooze, feel the early day sensation in my feet; the baths, showers and WC's set the plumbing pipes in motion

My meeting, a presentation by others, is at Ten AM, one hours drive away; as I enter that point into the iPod I realise it is time to turn on my own taps

Time to begin my mornings ablutions; but first to make a cup of English tea, while the tub fills with hot and lukewarm water; I mix in the complimentary bubble foam

I submerge myself in the three quarter length vessel; it is not a delicate movement, yet I am supported by the handrail. The shampoo is eco boutique, I put some in my travelling bags, next weeks rooms may not be so luxurious

My untidy stubble means I need to shave, it is a man thing, and tedious; that's why midweek I mostly wear the unkempt look, unless, as today, I am the public face of the company

Back at my desk, still writing, but now hurrying, for breakfast is at eight sharp I told myself last night. I put on yesterday's clothes, I will change later, after a couple of rashers of bacon, with soft fried eggs

I put the trousers in the trouser press and go; the chambermaid smiles, she offers a warm good morning, it's been quite a while since I was a regular, but we do remember faces don't we; especially honest workers

The restaurant waitress is equally welcoming, asking sincerely how I am; she points out the weeping willows, starting to turn to leaf; I tell her that they are further on than at my daughters in Derbyshire where I have just visited my new born grandson (will he always now be in my conversation)

We talk some more about weeping willows, she has one in a pot at home; the meal ends with black coffee, toast and strawberry jam. I return to my room, passing pleasantries, again about my becoming a grandfather, on the way

The writing has to stop, time to focus and concentrate on the work; reading back I see I have told you a lot of little things, yet there is much more that I have left out

Next door’s telephone is ringing; it is left unanswered, she may already have left.

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Sark

I was in the moment

On the headland meadow

Laying on the grass

In my green striped shirt

I was simply being

Being; in a place

Where I wanted to be

It was such a moment

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Bedroll

I forget how many times I've turned over for passion

Or was it for compassionate leave

To grieve for nights that wander by no more

Or was it, for some misguided reason

To try and even up the score

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Chimes Café

Some places get it just on right

With cream & green & rattan

The aroma of the baking

Travels with the light

The old cottage window

Preserved from the past

Candlesticks and flowers

Nought that moves too fast

The coffee & the flapjack

Tiled roof’s up to the sky

Another makeshift morning

Slow time; simply wandering by

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop