Breath

The day I shouted at the wind

I flew – my voice – away

and air contorted with the sound

of breath in desperate play.

I didn’t hear it echo round

where congregations pray;

perhaps it will return, rebound,

on judgment day.

A syllable or two,

a vowel,

a consonant or two,

a howl;

a new expression as a ring

into the void, no-thing.

Bard

Shall I tell yer a story of grandma, a bonnet; shall I tell yer a tale of a pig and her brood? Look out at that beanstalk, a bridge and a billy goat, ancestors of bears and uncountable wolves. Around they go baby - old stories like fountains - and, after all the axes and giants returnin’, shall I tell yer a story and make it anew?

Andrew - making a day

Ask a stranger’s name

and call them by their moniker

again, again, again. Smile!

Pose some little question

about themselves, a happenstance;

their tiny likes and dislikes, fads,

(and food’s a classic - fries and puddings,

vegetables, drink?) Persist.

Question ‘are you married?’

with a little twinkle

then ask them, now, to help you

in some small way – like, get a drink.

Call them by their name, again.

Say ‘I love you.’ Smile.

life as it is

I once met a teacher,

a spiritual man (say, a preacher);

his favourite saying went like this,

‘Rocks are hard and water’s wet;

that’s the way it is!’

He’d parade in front of

hundreds of eyeballs, talking love:

I can see him now in photographs,

mouth open, spouting stuff

on rocks and water: fair enough.

Today - I realized that he was partly right –

bending knees, on this and that, I also felt

that water sometimes turns to ice

and even rocks can melt.

Stutter

I

I’m

I’m a

I’m at

I’m at a

I’m at a X

I’m at a X roads

I’m at a X road

at a X road

at X road

a X road

X road

road

I X

Woodburner Glamour

Roaring hot and hard today;
heart of orange, lumber, flame
fed by hand and fed by draught,
breathe and splutter, have a laugh.

See through my window
bellowing shadow,
feel my face shining,
hear my voice singing;

guffaw a minute,
take without effort,
always adore me,
eagerly gaze at me:
red-hot I’m bolder,
blue and I’m colder.

Choice

Inexorable logic on logic
plotting formulae into my spreadsheet
with cause-effect, sine-wave, a particle,
pi - on and on – such an effort

but I’m born of melody, mixed
out of salt into soup, grown of sunlight;
a writhing, a forcing, a molecule
grabbing for first breath at midnight.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson,
a Daemon stands beside me,
an anchor, idealising destiny

and that is surely how I’ll know
a good friend from a sour one,
the dark side of the moon or balmy sun.

Give & Take

Today – hooray - my diary has gaps,
I’m trusting it’s an easy day,
tittle-tattle with some chaps,
I’ve time to spare and rest and, even, play;

when Dave steps in the room,
miserable loon
‘I got news for you!’
handshake, troubles, dear, oh dear

and Stevie had a crisis,
I thought that we had cracked it
but Mark sat down
with spreadsheet, frown;
all in all, I’ve gotta shrug and laugh:
this is this - (and this and me and they) - move this to that.

Arrivals - Xmas 2010

The screen flickers, then changes
and times of trains are moving, changing.

This time of year, many things change;
although one thing seems to never change
- a tension between truth, half-truth and lie,

elastic, it leads from sunshine into shadow, night.
These days, it’s easy to deride
Truth, offering other headlines
from a mind – my trickster mind!

What occurs at eclipses, in deserts, big plains
is perspective – beyond our superficial terrain

and, as times up there on that screen change,
a train might arrive
carrying prophet, shaman, seer – or even a friend of mine.

Ta

For seven years I wrote a diary
nightly, asking ‘What’s my learning!?
‘My little contribution?
“A highlight from today’

in blue workbooks; a kind of romance
from days with tiny pieces, drawn
from wells, lively offerings,
brighter moments dawn to dawn.

It would be easy to get cynical;
say it’s weird that a younger ‘me’ believed
it important to catch those little fish
from pools of curled anemones,
urchins, delicate algae, crabs:
but No I say Hello and Thanks.

Old Tony

He likes to rabbit on, old Tony, giving all
and sundry gobfuls, earfuls, chatter
box, old Tony can’t half natter, talks
for England, verbal diarrhea.

Does it matter that he throws his words
out willy-nilly? Aren’t they just like seeds
or skimming stones or pips or dandelion clocks,
hoping one might stick like chucking pasta at a roof?

And Sigmund Freud, he knew
that smaller words will hold you;
id or ego,
if but try or is how no
just now so
me and
you.

Shy Chris

He walks in a bubble
- slow - or at the double
he keeps out of trouble,
grows a little stubble

and, as far as I can tell,
(when I chatted to shy Chris today)
every bubble’s shiny, small,
contained and neat and tidy

and so we talk, breathe out,
trying to expand our film;
try to merge a personal bliss
or hell before young Cupid’s dart
(or Death’s old rusty axe) – flies
and we bulge a little, weep a little; burst.

Hand me Down

I’m not joking when I say
a lock of hair from my great grandma’s
head was handed to me in a small
green box - when I was twelve;

cut off by her own mother’s finger and thumb,
stroked by my grandma
flushing cheeks, to see an
echo of herself and her mum.

One night, my dad took the lid off
and what I’d like to understand
is why I need a reminder, curling around,

twisted by an ancient strand of
hair that came out of her brain
for me to clutch, remember, time and again.

Ping Pong

I kid you not. I once was in the Utah
desert when a middle aged lady
looked at a skunk woofing her pizza,
not daring to stop it because of
the pong. A line of toothmarks shrunk her dinner
to a D, a half-zero, a part open tin,
like a button broken or a knob of lemon
bobbing about in a tonic and gin.

But that isn’t my motive here;
it’s more that, when the shaman suggested
we stay up all night guarding our circles
with fire and ritual to stop foxes and wolves,
the lady saw moons in the sky. Somber,
no alcohol, two moons, no kidding.

Wed

Doubt not what this little ring meant
when it slipped on my finger last weekend
completing the C in commitment
part of a glory, an eight,

but that’s only the half of it:
a golden band – small - but still great
slipped beyond my finger’s crown,
while repeating some words - not my own.

But what’s it really about?
Can anyone give me a shout-out
on the meaning of commitment, or love,
haha – guffaw - nobody can have
an answer, I hope that they’d blank;
it’s for husband and wife to work out.

Warm Welcome

Some mornings I reckon
it’s gonna be frosty;
nose-tingling hoary,
unsafe to walk on

but today, before a new dawn,
I came out my front door
and the sigh of a zephyr
came up from the earth.

Unusual near winter
that the ground sends a balm,
a hot breath, an out breath,
a generous kiss,
rekindling my centre
to let out his warmth.

Fast Food

At a time he sensed was right
up he stood like a reluctant schoolboy
twisting keys in his right hand pocket,
excruciating as an amateur only

can be, and he started to sing, quietly
and human, a song we’d all heard before
- at least for the chorus – and he sang the verses,
growing more confident with our support

and do you suppose nothing else happened
that night as he opened his heart like a rainbow?
A melting of oddness and newness ensued
and the tune that was sung by a small Irish crowd
swelled like a wave from our depth, in a song,
and I filled, overflowed, by the beauty I cried.

When the shower’s dry

how lucky are you
to switch on a first pulse
of water, feel cold energy hit your
hand, your arm, withdrawing back to shivery
wintry air and fiddle with
dials and switches until
the spray warms up

enough to step into
a new stream of heat
and tingling jets hitting your
thighs, your chest, your face. To wash without
soap; no bubbles or lather or
flannel or effort or work;
how lucky are you?

One banana, two banana

I hope
when I go
‘banana’ you
know there’s no
fruit there, don’t you,
only a few dots on a page
in black and white. So whose
banana is it then, the one we are
seeing and tasting? And why a banana,
considering all the other fruit we both know
about and all the other words we’re sharing here?
Some even have b’s and a’s and n’s but, despite that,
who decides whether your banana’s voluptuous and perfectly
yellow and curved slightly, zipped up, and/or marginally over-ripe?

Face value

When I look at the face
of a clock, it seems pretty
simple – all about hands
washing a face - time and time again

but I know, behind the numbers,
a faithful engineer has expressed
in manifold tiny detail
torque and cogs, design and energy

(worked loads out) and, even when features
seem fine on the outside, lots
of whirring’s going on behind scenes
- winding up, turning and ticking along -
crafted by skilful hands;
whenever I look into a face.