Friendship

In a desert

I turned into a beast

parading round

and, with heart and hands

honest, I ate

up sweet friendship

to find an answer

more acceptable

(not so bitter)

than one heart’s one truth.

Every

thing

moves-on soon

enough; hands

with their creases

and leaping of minds;

shadows in the air,

women singing,

a last kiss,

fire’s out, some

where.

Spring

That fire has been burning for a long, long stint

and one blue ball twists and turns akimbo

delighting water, up and up, to air

and a whiter flower bursts into gold

and a tiny creature sucks at liquor

and that tiny creature’s gobbled by a flying bird

landing in a treetop, hammering a song

for Spring, for Spring, carousaling Spring.

Tea Leaf Terry

I saw a quite disturbing affair

once –  a UN worker lifting a brandy glass

at a car boot sale -

flitted around as dusk began to fall

and spy-glassing - as if looking for dregs -

she stuffed the little jar

into her coat, glanced like a ventriloquist’s doll,

and walked away on wooden soldier legs:

quite a disturbing affair I saw.

Banker from Yorkshire

When train rattles south

- warmth - it is - we face

and warmer still - we might arrive

kipping with an open mouth

and b’hat self-pity

leavin’ snow behind a pace

into a sleepy London city

and t’other willful acts we may conceive.

Just now

inside a notebook, on a table in front,

I wrote lots of words - with letters revealing

something not around before; I suppose

a relationship - paper and pen and tipping nib

- and I’m hoping that between the scratchy paper,

turns and lines, a spirit-charge of

electricity could light a shadow,

unleash a note, arise from a dream

that I scribbled in a word in a

notebook on a tabletop out there.

Double Dream

One day I dreamed a tiny dream

and dreamed of dreaming up a dream,

conjured from my brighter side

dancing in the high-day sun,

sand between my tiny toes,

hands and fingers up and reaching far,

far out into a web of stars.

But, in the dream, my dark side rose

and howled a wolf onto the moon,

chased a rabbit down a hole,

savage supper all I caught,

until I woke up in this dream

and jumped into a well - to cool -

before I woke up in my dream.