Month: October 2020

I searched thru the bathroom

I searched through the bathroom
I didn’t give up hope
I searched in every corner
Until I found the soap

Please don’t leave me dirty
With that I cannot cope
Please before you leave me
Leave one bar of soap

I stand naked in the bathroom
Where you came to grope
The bathroom too was naked
Without a bar of soap

Love it meant nothing
You only want one thing
You didn’t want to marry
You didn’t want a ring

Now before you go away
To widen out your scope
Please let me clean myself
With one bar of soap

I cannot love you with your love
Your love was fast like dope
You cannot love me with your love
Your heart’s not made of soap

I cannot cleanse you of your sin
And change you into gold
Made from love and kisses
Before you can grow old

I make you an immortal
Like a skeleton in a grave
I’ll cleanse your bones and stop your moans
If you can be brave

I can make you wholesome
I can give you hope
If only you would leave me with
Just one bar of soap

China is a glassy tree

China is a glassy tree lit by lightning funnelled like neon the tree falls into a field of flames
China is the arm of a god who scoops up little Chinese women from the celestial bridge.
China is a pool table in a black and white film about green tea

Are we waiting in meaningless longing for China to become cathartic?

China is a slither of moonlight from a broken crescent moon that floats like a feather from the dragon’s war song
that tore out the lungs of the Tong Emperor as he floated on the melodious song of the Yellow River
And here in the inner world where no Chinaman has been
The Phoenix appears like a black corpse eaten by tigers as the flimsy silk gowns of Chinese girls are like cumulus clouds in mid-day sky who vanish when the red eyed sun opens up the door to darkness

How the Chinese young played with the ladybirds of future kicking their feet in the clear waters of time
And climbed the trees of everlasting life that grew amongst the distant mountains

Young Chinese lady whose belly is on flame with lust who looks at the flora of the Chines low lands
And sings to the white bones galloping in the horizon whose love grows like a new morning from the new laws of love

Gather China into your bosom and rock her tenderly
Look into the little eyes of China and sing a tender song
And when the hissing of the snake demon upon the Forbidden City stops
The ocean will send sea serpents to war against the shadows of the night

The lost treasure of the earth

The lost treasure of the earth, the teeming machine wildlife giants the flimsy things that fluttered the colourful tapestry of flora.

Imagine it, bursting with hue and noise of creatures the opposite of our days, roaring, singing, crying creatures
in a climate so different to our seasons.

Their blood flowed back to front, their heats beat inside out, their minds thought upside down, their spirits crashed through life and death.

They lived in the dreams we never dream were born into a world like another planet, their ecology was like a strange unreal necklace, a shining constellation in oceans of space.

They sprang up and then disappeared, they came from nowhere and left their footprints in history, their dramatic appearance was mysterious, they vanished like the light of autumn sunset.

What makes living things come and go what replaces them with different worlds? The interference of the human species is but a giant gnat bite to this power of life.

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood
Went to west wood
Across the wuthering heights

Charlotte said to Emily
I hate these long dark nights

Jane Austen
Loved a warden
In the shape of
Garden bird

As the wagon train
Made of sweetcorn
Entered the holy word

Barbara Hepworth
Had the last word
When she baked
A scone
To Alfred the great
Who burnt the cake
You’ll never
No you’ll never ever
No you’ll never walk alone

The dead embryos

The dead embryos
Metamorphosize
Into little people
You can only see them
In the moonlight

Like a plague of golden grasshoppers
Passing thru a pool of moonlight

The dead embryos
Tumble out of a dustbin
And rolled into the street
The hungry cat
Tried to stop the traffic with a scream

The dead embryos
Love to fly
With flocks of birds
They glow a little
Then turn off their lights
The birds ask for their names
They do not know
Never mind they say
You’re welcome to be with us

The dead embryos
Land in Neverland to sleep
Where every Christmas day
Father Christmas
Finds their vacant nurseries
And learns their names
Where one little girl
Half asleep will make a wish and ask
If you find my little brother
Give him my love

Why be so obscure

Why be so obscure
Why hide in the burning bush
Why leave wood-chips of existence
Why leave vacuum-packed slices of flesh on the shelf

Why stare with one eye from the crack of a door
For blood leaves as one from the wound with only a scream

Now the police line have to carefully examine the whole field
Turning over pebbles with a biro looking for dead hairs
Finding decayed plastic food wrappers
The rusty pocket-watch of the old farmer

There’s hardly enough evidence to satisfy an archaeologist
Someone must have died here
But they’ll never know who

Chinese Girl Is Walking Quickly

The Chinese girl is walking quickly
One hand in a pocket
One arm swinging

Under a crystal cold blue sky
She knows where she is going
She’s walking quickly

But in her heart
Something is happening
In her childlike eyes there’s sadness

Her legs are dressed in slacks
She wears a quilted jacket
She looks neat and clean

She takes the left fork around the block
And I carry on my way
But at the end of the road I see her again

Walking towards The Lion
One arm swinging
One hand in her pocket

In Carbon Blue

I have the carbon copy of love
Blue words from blue paper
Impressed into a receipt book
Like little blue birds of lettering

Oh, sadness tries to bring forth tears
Blue tears from a blue heart
Impressed into a receipt book
Like little blue birds of water drops

But they do not appear
The receipt book is left blank
The sorrows hover in my heart
Like a suspended rain, going nowhere

Oh, I have so many receipts processed by dreams
Dreams that use the blue carbon paper
To remind me of what I’ve paid to you
In tears

Her Valiant Heart

A picture of my mother as a young girl
Sitting on a crate in a dishevelled back garden
A scarf turbaned round her head in the manner of the working class forties
In an old photograph
Always smiling for the camera
Most often with a gaggle of girlfriends
Perhaps teasing the men and trying to get attention
No guile, no pretensions no obvious ambition to take on the world
No showing off, just being herself, I think

Now I think of her last years
In a dysfunctional family
With an unloving husband
Her thick cracked hands
Her toothless face crinkled with age and worry
Her valiant heart deprived of affection
Her ears used to verbal abuse

How much of it was her fault
Her stubbornness; how she made a virtue of ignorance
But that laughter was always there
That delights in teasing menfolk
Even after the worst of marital experiences
A smile would gradually come back to her

But there was no rest from work for her
Bitterly she took the role of a drudge
I don’t think she was ever complimented for her work
Or given enough money to make a success of it
The home was kept clean and tidy
But the lack of love was telling
Except in her later years
She managed to gather some nice ornaments
Geese, swans, and collections of plastic figures out of boxes of teabags
And the prettiest curtains in the street
Of little blue, yellow and orange flowers

But words can’t say how hard her life had been
But more than her hard work
The injustice done to her through lack of affection
That she endured out of belief in her marriage vows
And one of the last memories I have of her
Is of a person who gave up hoping for affection
Who stood at the doorway as I went inside
And of the lost little kiss she was capable of giving
No longer existing in her heart for me
A few months later she was in hospital for the last time