Fine - (05?)

Colloquially speaking,
it is just a case of a
'Wayward Spirit'
which sounds,
when put like that,
quite charming;
sparky, don't you
think? After all,
it's not like you
'Served up your soul'
on a silver platter,
extending invisible
grams forward in
a fine spun, porous,
net-veined manner.
Let’s not split hairs.
We are refined; both
delicate - marked by
subtlety of discernment
and even though
I cannot often follow
these fine distinctions
between design
and the undevised,
my soul has always
wandered wayward
through transpicuous doors
and home: no silver platter,
just a fine-tooth comb,
to serve.

2005?

dawn to day

Liquid sliver rolling still

in flowered cups, champagne flutes

of stained glass, droplets globe topping

the bell cluster comfrey. Cold moon glow. 
When all should roll, all statues.

A dawn blue mist slow rising

to rays of warmth - a morning kiss

to roll a splash of beads in the birdsong,

an awakening to all sky bound

and breaking fast for butterfly and bee.

How the night sky changes

How the night sky changes
when there is so much fixed in movement.

People fall by the wayside of a heart,
free-fall from a sphere of influence,
each a star, the centre of their universe, seeds
on a map - vanishing.

The other side of the moon is still there, of course,
as are we, here on the circumference of this sphere
where giants race to peer long lashes over the never-ending hill
like it were a rainbow, thinking gold would be to see you,
hold your small hands to say thank you,

when light is already there and here,
sensing what is missing and what is missed

by the brushes of blinking
when giants have stretched,
yawned and slept.

Heavens 

whimsy 2013 abc

It's about it,

It’s about the things we cannot write down
until all those people die - or we do,
whispering to stars making libraries in the sky,

all about the things that make us so elusive,
when elusiveness could be elu-civity, or lucidity,
for when we wanted to be as clear as day.

It’s about the glass stanza, somewhere in the middle
which breaks, and turns to such, and such; re loyalty,
stupidity, the inevitability of lines, sides,
Tribes, and many other rhymes.

It’s about illusions, delusions, fantasies, the ramblings
of drunken libraries, open books, doors ajar to moments of moonlight -
stars, stripes, scandals, newspaper articles, and silence.

it’s about peace in the middle of warring factions,
fractions, multiplications, and subtractions;
when a pie is not a pie, and there’s no point at all -

- measuring an expanding radius, or running
around on edge - it’s always about returning to the centre,
putting pen to paper, or tapping on the keyboard to begin.



2013

https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/it%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s-about-it

Levity,

She said she levitated in the hallway

appearing in the dark mirror
puppeting her reflection.

There she was, framed

by a colourful, delicate bell collection,
undusted, one rung for dinner.

She too a belle,
and in moments of levity
must have been smiling or serene.

I imagine her rainbow

the walls, her elaborate 
dreamworld sneaking out of the letterbox
and taking this long to get here.



17-06-2005
edit

Sensitive to goosesteps and gunshots and

We always hear the gunshots

And then the jackboots

Striding over goose steps.

And the goosesteps across my heart

And goosebumps in my throat.

And the goose fat in the pan.

And the goose.

Just stop. Watch.

Close your eyes. These goose 

steps are not dance moves.




6/2020

Spring to Summer,

Spring to summer is a glass bubbling births 
of chalk stream baptism and wood fires warming 

slow motion, extending over silver stumbling stones 
stretching a dance through cobblestones, weaving

the trees with cats-eye star imprints; sarongs,

or in a beaded chain of Whitstable iced pearls.

In the melt of what is new and what is old
Dover nets fill with the cliffs and the fisher's soul.

As we sort wheat from chaff like the next farmer along,

Love always brings in a harvest more than golden auburn.

The history of labour and loving is as undocumented

as ever, except for the note-taker maker shakers, there 
would be no history written for love’s unpaid labourers.

With the harvest lurks searching horizons 
for weather; clocks and vanes. Love rests 
in a bouquet fed to the deer. It resuscitates
in wild flower wild-fire colour hypnosis 
with no scent at all, and yet it blooms. Synesthetic 

Love is...always in the heartwood hay and leaves 

when seasons dictate work routines, just like

clockwork; twenty-four, seven.




25/07/20

Cinderella River

Beauty weaves from ugly threads

and back again to mud.

Who would have thought clay is oh so fine

knowing sand is oh so coarse?

Mining for gold is a not a pan full of guilt

and a pan full of silt. This is an ancient guild,

heading upriver to lowlands

where chalk streams rock spring,

reminding us

of where we were just now,

not of where we’ve been,

wading the watercress beds,

tangling our ankles. We shouldn’t have been there

then. But now, when the catkins flower

and seedpods on top sail downriver, we can remark

on how this one shakes and this one shivers,

spinners crazed, the fluff dancers dizzle,

the wind to them a blur of noise – and of those

that glide, awe and grace on their silvery tipped backs of down - 

it is time, to tell of The Mimram and The Bean,

reclaim all vocabulary that had run dry.

When it is too early, hunger-stone warnings

sing gravel voiced about poverty and disease – but

when our Cinderella rivers bloom,

the clearest train of thought flows through the chalk walkways,

receding inwards or moving on,

making the path of least resistance seem easy.

Is it then we should talk of slicing rock, of mud; of settling?

For what damage could these new words do

if not used before the gush of rain?

The clay beds lift with the slightest ripple,

the catkin are surrounded, like new-born chicks tugged under.

Flocculation weighs too much,

that sticky grip of clay ancestor, efficient as pike.

There may be time later, when spring rivers run dry in Summer

to discuss the efficiency of the hexagon, and its resistance.

Reaching an equilibrium early,

when there is so much left to say before the fall,

is the unsettled matter, and the rock.

Sitting by the river, panning the silt,

when it is time to say nothing at all.

5/2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrHNazNfORU

Rivers Run

Professor Pond Skater

You remind me of the skinny kid at school,

a stick-legged try-hard pond skater

on fields for gorillas, broken,

but unbroken, because already broken

you’d learned early to protect invisible wings.

When you were small, smaller than most,

like for everyone, the world was a boundless beyond.

The race to nowhere was on - towards oversized confectionery,

eyes bigger than the horizons of a tiny pot belly

biting off more than, you were always less than

the winner:

the gorilla;

skating figures of eight,

walking on water’s thin ice.

For you, gorillas always flew.

Likewise, fish always did ride bikes.

What a Geek!

Now flanking plankton at a lectern

seven days a week.

English Rain

Here, it is not The Tropics

where wide brimmed sunhats

double up for a performance of rain,

leaning smooth ledges of rock

for water to fall; tumble and stream - not in sheets,

droplets, nor cats and dogs:

uncountable reams vanish relentlessly wet

into a complete absence of baked goods,

into a steam-fresh sauna of rainbow and sweat.

Here, we do not surrender, parched,

cracked skin, desperate for soothing.

Here we do not exhale in awe.

We are the hunched resistance,

each sense locked on drizzle’s drivel,

the wrong stoic shoes, shuffling the puddles,

heading somewhere, shivering.

Here, we do not surrender, arms open wide,

bathing in gratitude, sighing – we grumble,

soak up each driving droplet,

count each miserly strike against uncovered skin,

mumble silently, penning the ledger of losses and wins.

Here, we are the abacus of recrimination. The reckoning,
head bent on recording highs and lows in the density of mist.

Steadfastly onward, when grey could be as soft as a shawl,

soft as blaming a tarmac sky for missing bows of rain.

Here, we do not surrender. We may unpeel layers later,

hang them all on the back of a tall chair in a noisy room

and order from the bar; or, on the back of a bathroom door,

when water pouring a steam-fresh sauna of rainbows

wrinkles the skin, and warms the bones with its breath.

For when we wanted to say

For when what we wanted to say

would take an awful lot of ‘tell’.

a soapbox, an apple-cart of overturned words

too showy for a time when metaphors

are overdressed for funerals, nor fit for our joy.

Where to begin? It’s Spring.

There’s birdsong and rebirth, pumpkin seeds and planting,

for when, what we wanted to say

should be scooped up in handfuls of berries, not kneaded into earth;

when seedlings are re-homed in wishes and signposts

pointing this way – for when, what we wanted to say is

it is this way hope returns.

05/2020

Are we there yet?

“Are we there yet?”

Like on a road trip down south;

Not much scope for “I spy with my little eye…”

70 plus, on the open road,

Fields full of yellow flowers,

Sweating in the back seat, inhaling smoke.

Nowadays, nobody starts with,

“Something beginning with Y?”

“Are we there yet?”

From the radio. It’s not the 1970’s, rubbish stacked high,

Dad’s got a stash of petrol in the garage

Next to the sardines. No.

There are no sardines,

Lined up like soldiers

In makeshift shelters,

In lean-to larders.

There is no petrol; no Gerry can,

No Swiss army knife that can do everything.

 “Are we there yet?”

Father tutting fly tipping

masonry mercenaries on the back road. No.

“We’re nearly there.” When

Are we there yet?

Is just around the corner.

It’s just over the next hill.

It will all be over by Christmas

With a red flowering sunrise,

Mushrooming.

4/2020

The Rats are snacking on unsatisfactory data - 2015

There were things that happened which nobody saw.

Some Outstanding things happened but received no score.

Some Good there, was excluded from the latest retort.

Some Bad and Ugly, and what wasn't caught

When Room for Improvement is a split second thought

In a million interactions which cannot be bought

Or filed on a spreadsheet, or statistical report.

To those measuring Excellence, your Monitoring is flawed.

Your half empty apple boxes rot to the core!

When adjustments fill boxes with adjustable scores,

Your Scientific model, is unscientifically sort.

There are things that happened which nobody saw:

When asbestos-dust the rats had chewed, fell to the floor.

(Though the rats which were poisoned aren't there anymore -

Decomposed and eaten by new rats with claws,

Munch asbestos at Break, dusting Ofsted Reports.)

2015

abc
secret teacher dittys

https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/rats-are-snacking-unsatisfactory-data

song - 2015

The reeds take on the movements
of long gone swans when I said
something is always part of something else
as you are a part of me -

The murmuration of starlings'
whaleshaped curve of fin following
the movement of oceans,
the way I follow you - at night,

the moon, cinnamon to nutmeg
as you are black, the black
to my brown curl, brown skin -

when you are black to silver,
a dandelion clock - and I'm your
grey haired girl.

2015

https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/song

1. Soft water, sweet. (Tattoos - draft whimsy)

Soft water, sweet.

To leave a city

take a road a path a track

a river to where

softer water finds

calcium intentions

bathing octopus-inked

skin leather shell swirl fossil

flower and quill. She had carved a film

of salt line crease fold graffiti

circling an arm turning

in water, the dream

scape never seen whole.

To twist when an arm is soft

divides lines spread smudges 

mushroom to lightning strikes, 

our burnt toast heart swirls with legs!
Jumping beans! Turtle eggs. Blue egg 
breakfasts waving in blotches 

from a bandit’s nib. The painter, 
the pig's-ear carver artiste,

his bandit brush and her inky gun, 

painting cathedrals. Our cerulean inks 

are melting drops of nostalgia...when 

nostalgia is sweet, soft, water.

sarongs
soft charcoal lines
Garden shed poems
Nat and Jimmy

The Owl's Soliloquy - 06

There is beauty
here on earth
with every blink.
Do we need
a dream,
projected on a wall,
a techno-coloured
alchemy, constructed
from it all?
There is beauty
here on earth
in every blink.
No apology
to perch,
an owl
up on a church;
wide eyes
open through
the chink.
Now my head
may spin around
and my feet
not touch the ground
and they say
i am a ghost of the night,
but I'll always
come back down
with the food I have found:
to your rest,
to our nest;
so tragically
positioned
on
the
ground.


06
a species, 
builds nest on the ground
edit nostalgia bin

Lily

Lily

You were my heraldic fleur-de-lis
but the dictionary says
you were a large trumpet
shaped flower,
bulbous,
that you lived
lily-livered
on a tall stem,
gloomy.

You still send three petalled
messages to me;
in your coat,
in your arms,
the pure white
of freshly baked rolls.

Hunsdon Mead -

Wildflower wildfire, the mead half

cut, intoxicant breeze weaves the oat,

wheat, and Lennie’s alfalfa – hay grass

for giraffe, sheep and llama, speckled

suffragette sarongs in far off skirts, bell
and buttercup swirls for butterfly, moth and bee.
Still, a golden buzz glows at sunset,
half the hay here cut but not yet baled.

A tractor trail, assassin’s work. To walk

like this, is to walk with the fallen,
no wild flowers for the vase on the table.
This loss is hay, a dusky husk underfoot.
The sky pouring a horizon of bees pondering  

low golden, a white owl hunting tatami flatlands.
One light threads the needles, a sunbeam all the way
through to a hay-auburn, at King George fields,
and this mead-gate in front.

sarongs

Sherif Ranger River Lea

The Forestry Commission doesn't rhyme


As we tiptoe the proscenium arches,
balance barefoot on the tip of a click 
of spur, contemplate the beautiful curves 
of water, she hunts processionary caterpillar 
marching collective hopes up the laden oaks,
binoculars a skyward starling, ever forward, 
upward, close; no hope of saving the world, 
the nests spreading through scrubland 
to playgrounds, overhanging basket-burns 
for children marked by GPS; a spray-can 
grafitti tin rattles in the woods, the clack
of ribcage ball-bearing hearts 
in the heartwood, and a shotgun scarring 
between the old trees, a jaguar, the deer 
and she scoring the bark, red or blue.


for Lea

Loving the Potter

Loving she who takes the clay
deep from the mine and looms
great clods into fine porcelain cloth
for lace petal cups; her own delight,
and mine, to see her bloom.

This weave of sheer reflective glaze
is tapestry; if fired too long,
or cooled to quickly,
the loved up clay is doomed.

Twice fired, twice cooled; timing,
and sharing precious sips.

Mistiming,
and I arrange flowers in a cracked vase,
sweep broken tears and china chips
into the basket of my arms.

2009

abc

Pluto's vase -

Uncorked a snort of geranium

from an empty blue bottle

in Pluto’s vase on the table

 – the cork smoothed

by horizons and sea-wash.

Love’s empty bottle in a vase.

Pictures on the wall, warm fire,

silent night before the stars,

a three-planet, comet flyby – black and white

ancient daisychain trails a blush of firefly,

electrictronic button mushroom emoji petals falling,

oil clinging to the dab dab blue bottle, evaporating

chem-trails off a comets back.



neo/jup/sat/venus
Wildflower 
Mowed the Mead
Dysneyland
Loving the Potter

Galanthamine

Essence, type daffodil; snowdrop and a bluebell,
might slow Alzheimer’s, as a bunch in spring of either,
brings back one memory or another, tinged
with something fresh, fresh as nostalgia.
She’d often speak of their blend with one other,
when pestle and mortaring the petals of a rose.
It was a machine that told me she could resuscitate
a frozen flower by touch alone, a breath,
and the proof was right there in the scent,
a longing, a locked-in memory. Unspent,
if she had never before met a rose.

They were not her favourite flower - tulips, yes,
anemones spiraling out and over a plump vase.
They were sea creatures until, otherwise;
otherwise, how was one to know?
What memories, longing, and nostalgia,
would come with a bunch of bedside flowers,
when anemones are sea creatures,
and petals sleep in deep freezes?

Where we were, when everything
is mostly dark, and mostly cold,
ordered, warding off the chaos
of the thaw
for one less. Narcissus,
milk of bluebell, for nightmares
- for tears
which dampen heat and cool like sweat,
some in flames were met in the flannel on her brow
holding a hand so tight memories burn,
burn out, and some burn on so bright.

What if no one had ever shown her
the soft petals of a rose?


2013
Kate Hirsch

everyone a love poem

everyone a love poem

I am the one who wrote every one a love poem
to you there in the space between words,
where good or ill spills in a sigh or inhale,
no zephyrs, gossamers, nor one shard
of broken light on a morning window sill, there,
residing in my internal rhyme is the rhythm you are.
You are my assonance, the jigsaw in my reason, my choice,
when the echo of my voice and all my lines break
down to the space between syllables, where you are
letters, I am space.............while agendas form a line

standing staring at the backend of their own queue,
allow me, for I am eve angelical too - in the sun,

seedlings have already moved mountains
in stretches, my love poem is remembering - the planting,
the understanding, the not knowing, how love grows.

2013

abc

Klezmer - notes

Notes

Klezmer, two silver-haired ladies,
heads lean together, one dabs a napkin
to her potato salad lips, the dribble
of Salmon juice on her chin, the napkin
splashes across her hips.

A greasy handprint on the tablecloth,
like the one on the stone by the entrance,
marks a place of transformation, and I wanted to ask,
after we wonder how we became so old,
if we all must wait until we are silver and grey
to sit and feast together this way?

“When?“ she laughs,
“After you find a nut to crack
and remember your visionary universe!”
They chuckle and bob to the violins.
“I love these transitions between movements!”
she says, shaking-up her drum tambourine.

It’s easy to see her half a century ago
by the sparkling of her eye,
those branches woodwind, her whispering leaves,
a girl grown lean, a woman
in a grove of chosen trees.

Back to the table with a slow clap Klezmer wind-up.
The slow passion of gypsies riding through
Inspiration; fountains of story and lore -

happy times, when first circle companionship is blessed
and I am for one moment there
- when they are with visions, birds, and totems,
and the rest is reportage.

2011

abc

Grandfathers - Oapa

Oapa - grandfather

Grandfathers wear hats, different kinds of hats,

many, of nations and teams, and rank and file

and class and table and I think of one of mine,

Oapa, always sitting at the head of, in an office, 

on the road, in his castle, by the rooftop turrets 
in The Blitz; tin hat, radio, siren, waiting

and listening out for the engines, the bombs to hit,

the sound of his erstwhile countrymen, or back

interned, sitting and listening in a hut on the Isle 

of Man for the next boat coming in. Waiting

and listening, back to the songs of Berlin

turning to goosesteps, turning to

ashes of musical score, books and birds

on a wire, war; his Morse code crystal nights

stargazing, waiting and listening for just a word.

Top hat, tails, marriages, contracts – in the level-headed

whisper of baldness and sunspots, stories in hats,

cellars full of suitcases, in ledgers and transactions,

stories there, wanting that we should live.



Robin's earstwhile, poem
Oapa-