Category: Poetry

I began writing poetry as a teenager and never stopped. I read poetry, my all-time favourites, are Marina Tsvetaeva from Russia and well, dozens of others.

The Crimes of Art

These crimes of art
That makes fools
By suggesting
That we know nothing at all

That drive us
To oblete the questions
Growing in our souls

Fearing the light we produce
Do we turn away from the light?

These tricks of art
These pranks upon society
Whose waves start to roar
Against a portion of a dream

This giant of jest
In the jesters hat
Oh how he laughs
At the joke that destroys us all

How do you call goodness
Into question?
By destroying the things
That you feel good about?

If you do not wish to see
the murder
close the door and do not believe
That goodness is strong

The goodness inside
Does not need protection
It needs reality
If it is to question

Oh poor sleeping beauty
The beast is also part of you
Why should it be denied the love
That you both aspire to

Do you sleep to calm the inner beast
That grows hungry and further apart
Or do you stay awake and try to ease
The pain of him in your heart

In the machine of life
Empathy has its mechanism
Without it
You will walk upon one leg

If you lock up the room
In someone’s house
where a loved one lives
you destroy yourself

if with a social tattoo on the arm
you burn the blood of the soul
you will make the person lose their balance
but they will not hear the alarm

so that they are drawn to the water’s edge
and do not see the danger
or they speak harsh words
to a complete stranger

so that they hob along
like a cogwheel missing a cog
yet they do not know
into what harm they go
or what harm they come out of

so that they need to learn
why they go through pain
they can’t explain
and bruise so easily at the missing thought
that enters everybody else’s brain

Notes
firstly i was thinking about how art works in society and then I began to think about people who through the fault of society are without some emotion

I’ve known years

I’ve known years
Where the sweetness
Went out of the honey
And all that was left
Was the tasteless jelly

When the grey clouds
Droned gloomily in the sky
And even when the sun shone
The song veiled the light

I did not know myself
I could not tell the shadow
From the candle in my room
And I lived blindly alive
Unknown by my parents

Until she came along
And tore right through the curtain

Have you ousted?

Have you ousted the totalitarian state?
Or did it trike the surface
You’ll see an island topped with white
And think it looks nice and wholesome

Evil like an underwater volcano eruption
The magma grow like a malignancy
Beneath the surface of the sea, disturbing, shaping
who hate it constantly for fear of inking

Yet it break the surface of the ocean
And build a democracy on ashes
And people are in awe of it newness
And forget the fire and the crash

And standing a mountain of evil
They build a hall to the devil

I helped build the pyramid

I helped build the pyramid for the pharaoh
My vote was my slave-hood
We raised it high up to the sky
A symbol of his god hood
We thought we were all involved
In creating a brand new world
But when the cap went on the top
Our vote counted for nothing

Time has proved one thing about our king
He was not the man he thought he was
I watched a grave robber steal his things
And saw his grey corpse crumbling

Stand aide

Stand aside
You politicians
Please do
What I say
The time has come
For changes now that
Love is on the way

Stand aside
You arms dealers
Turn guns
Into hay
War is ending
In one crushing
Love is on the way

Take off your clothes
You educators
Of the world
At war and play
For a new form
Of education
Love is on the way

Notes

I have been reading the magazine Index which is full of great writing. “Stand aside” I think, could be a song. My interests in ancient history and geology/geography and the bible have played a part. If any s or w is missing from words its because my laptop keyboard among other things has gone funny since the new windows updates pushed themselves onto me. I’m not sure about how these poems read, maybe too foolish, maybe not. I wonder about democracy and if it is all that it makes out to be.

Winter songs

The great lie
Have you seen it
Surfacing on the ocean

The great lie
See it grow
It covers the globe
Like a shadow

It grew in the heart of the primeval earth
Until it became earths greatest curse
It was gathered like blossoms of small pox
It uses arrows, swords and rocks
It controls the air space
It controls the borders
It hates peace; it loves disorder
It cloaks the mind with astral shade
It hides the dark assassin’s blade
It bocks the pathway love has made
With its armies from the grave
It unifies hate and breaks up love
It severs hands for prevalence of

The great lie have you held it
In the palms of your bloodied hands

I live in the fourth estate
But I can do nothing
God can do something

The forth estate I god estate
All the rest are nothing

Public opinion varied
Like ground cover in a field
So much public opinion
Denied and made sealed

Take the forth estate
Its easy to control
With guard dogs and weapons
with threat to your soul

and somehow amongst them
followers are easy to find
for waging war on their brothers
for breaking down the signs

I live in the fourth estate
I do not find it easy
Fighting through the garbage
Looking for a clearing

And if they decide to make
An artificial night
The populations of the earth
Go groping for some light

Without the forth estate
Without the common light
They must protect your freedom
Until they get it right

In yakin berg
He stood yakking
To the herd

His most popular yak
A stab in the back
In the dark alleyway

He replicated
His stature
In many public places

His best friends
Were all there
Stone statues
with his faces

Twiddling the knob
On your radio
Listen for voices
From abroad

Switching off the lamp
In your little room
When you hear
The clanging of a sword

Who would dare
Be brave as you
When spies were
Unwelcome guests

But you risked your life
For sanity
And you thirsted
for righteousness

This is part of what words are about
Freedom from tyrannical governments
With every limerick that you write
There is the battle of right and wrong

Get your official version
See it on TV
Climbing up a ladder
Away from likes of me

Ta ra da boom de ay
Ta ra da boom de ay
Deceived manipulated
From birth to clay

Reflections of reality
The plinth of free speech
Full of graffiti
As prisoners talk freely
In their minds
With access denied
By military action

The press
Was a frozen iceberg
Floating
On a cold sea

Melting
From the inside out
Becoming you
Not me

They took away
The village elder
Who kept things
Under control
And connected them
To the juggernaut
To the flattener
Of our souls

You wear the world out
With your grind stone blues

You wear out the world
With your wars
On your own
Or on foreign shores

You wear out the world
To the bone
And in its ashes
You will sit alone

My bones are watering
They are so tightly squeezed
I see the world turning
On a wind of worries

I ache
For words of comfort
But only an emptied skull
Have I
That once thought love exciting
Yet now beneath the earth I lie

As different to the flesh
The spirit is
It cannot be caught
Or hit by a fist

But few know
Or understand
that live and die
In this land

In the sky
way up high
you see the stars
before you die

We manage love
with used matchsticks
We see in darkness
with madness and fits

Flowers in the wind

I tried to think
Of what to say
But I couldn’t think
Of anything

I couldn’t think
Of what to say
For your kind words
The other day

For shadows of windows
And the play
Of light
In your mind
And the release of flowers
In the wind

I spent all of
My waking night
When I awoke
I had forgot
Until the sun
Shone on the box
We call memory

Though it rain
Or thunderstorm
Oceans tear
And meteorites burn
Thank you Shruba

The release of flowers
Into wind
Stalks and petals
And childish things
And all that beats
And all the wings
Thank you

I’ve been shut up
Like a lion
In the coliseum

I hear the
Racket
The Romans make
It’s not romantic

I’ve been
Caged up
Beside the arena
I press my face
Against the bars
And I see her

I don’t know
Do I love her
Or eat her
The Christian
Named Anita

I’ve been caged up
I’ve not been let out
The crowds are gone
The Emperors done

A small cool hand
Upon my muzzle
I fall asleep
To dream of the jungle

I’ve been caged in
By the gremlin
He feeds me meat
And water
And in return
I must learn
To make blood flood
The arena

I’m a lion
Not a beast
I do not kill
I do not feast
For sport
Like these
Human demons

Let me loose
Let me free
I’ll hurry back
To my acacia tree
And watch the sun rise
For they can never be
As free as me

There are no roads
There are no rivers
In the universe

The universe is nothing
And they would go nowhere

Sunlight said to sound
I’ll slow you down
I’ll get there first
I’ll wear the crown

Said sound to sunlight
Do not fear
Listen
I’m already here

Look at the stars
At the constellation of the guitar
That plays for you

If you love her

If you love her
Go to her
By accident
Or by thoughtfullness

Chose her at her
Most vulnerable
Time

Hum quietly
To keep yourself
Calm

Be as
Motherly as a hen
And as fatherly
As a drunken football team

Scream
If you feel like it
By borrowing
Her make-up mirror
And hiding behind it

Now is the moment
That the weight of the universe
Sits on you shoulder

Deserters
Will be
Alone

If everything worked
The way it should

There would be love

Love separated
From time and space
Free to move
With grace

Tangled up with plastic bags
Bits of it
Thrown away like rags

This kind of line
Is regrettable
Nut true

And spoils it for me
And spoils it
for you

The news
is blowing across
the land
The news
goes by
from mouth to mouth

it started in the arctic north
it went more north
than south

it’s a dust storm of news
a mile high in the sky
it started as a rumour
now it is a lie

He said the end is coming
the salami has been chopped
the van is stuck in Calais
the ferry man has knocked

He said he saw it coming
I wondered what he means
Preparing meat for market
Bleeding it of dreams

He said he saw it hanging
In the slaughter house
You know he is a tough guy
But it turned him to a mouse

She stood outside the window
She pointed at some meat
The butcher wrapped it up for her
As he dreamed of fields of wheat

The music rose up like a fountain
People laughed and loved
But you turned off the water
And stood in fields of blood

A Goyim child at Passover
Crawled drunk across the ground
The angel of death ignored him
And continued on his round

The music rose like pink sleep
And kissed a heavenly face
But you in your bloodthirstiness
Cut of the human race

A community’s cuts and bruises
Will heal up in time
Taught by music festivals
And Passovers of bread and wine

The Christmas star

Two Ice sculptures

Two ice sculptures
Fall in love
Melting
With love
Melting
Melting
Melting

She never argues

She never argues
With a spanner
Or gets upset

It lies on the ground
Beside her
On slip of the tongue
And it will all be over

The train

The train
Leaves the station
Of mirrors

Far into the universe
It looks back
For its reflection

Fools and their cameras

Looking at love
Thru a colour filter
I take a photo

The photo shows
The disassembly
Of all hat I needed

Christmas star

The star system
Sirius
Has come to earth
It walks awkwardly
Down the high street

It points its silver pointed hand
And walks on silver pointed feet
And talks from a silver pointed head

Your reflection
In the silver pointed head
Gives it a face
Yours

Soon it absorbs
All the Christmas shoppers
That fall down dead
Like wet laundry

The river of time

The river of time
Lows everywhere now

Twisting light and darkness
Together
Braising them
Like hair spread out on the ground

It flows along the street
In every direction
By the legs of window shoppers
By the stationary homeless
Asleep in shop corners
Around the lovers
Looking in the jewellery shops

Only the man in dark glasses
Sees these rivers
Flowing thickly, eternally
Everywhere

This was the morning

This was the morning
I climbed into the attic
I was a boy made of dust
With an aching in his heart

Mother was a flower in the garden
Father was an angry mole
I climbed up into the attic
Hoping to find some way into the future

But I was wrong
There never was any way out of the attic

I remember typewriter

I remember
When I had a typewriter
I typed up my poems
With great immediacy
I would pore over them
For years and years
Until they evolved
Into sand upon my skin
Then along came
The transformers
And poetry was never the same

The words I write down

The wards I wrote down
Yesterday
Have been attacked
By a Microsoft flatbed scanner driver
I picked them up out of computer memory
Like drowned flies out of a bucket of water

Jonah

I spent some time
With the holy spirit
I offered it my heart

But the universe seemed so vast
And the universe was so dark
It took my fear of falling
And made an eternal metal badge

And pinned it to my pride
I was confused that I could not cry
How does a man run from a dream?
Where is there a place to hide?

You can wash your face

You can wash your face
In my bucket of tears
You can wash your hands
Until they are clear
And when there’s a fire
Inside your soul
The bucket of tears
Will make it whole

You can wash your body
In my bucket of tears
Then dry yourself
Of all your fears
And when there’s a light
That shines in your hair
This bucket of tears
Will have no care

Here comes the cat

Here comes the cat
With its triton tongue
Standing in the kitchen
Emptying its lung

Slavering with hunger
Impatient with disease
Angry with the universe
It scratches its fleas

Let me out of this siding

Let me out of this siding
Let me be on my way
Find the man who pulled the switch
That sent me into the clay

Let me out of the siding
Clear the track ahead
Maybe there is still time
for life to stop the dead

Clock metal

Clock metal
Time is
Clock metal

Seasons grow
And die away
The Gregorian calendar
Has had its day

The light comes on
The light goes off
That’s all my friends
And that’s enough

The winter solstice

The Winter Solstice

The winter solstice quietly switched over
Does the universe have a north and a south pole?
Are magnetic poles of stars a mixed bag
The glacier is afraid of death and prepares to swim away
The eye of the earth opens and the earth breathes its first breath

I’m sorry girl

I’m sorry girl
That I do not think of you
For the sea is crying
And I hear the seagulls call
Their laughing and their crying

I’m sorry girl
That I don’t write for you
For the mountain breeze is blowing
I hear the eagles swooping
And I want to know what it’s like to be free

The goalposts

I stand between two goalposts of my personality
Imagine frost on the playing field
Imagine an empty stadium

I am one man defending two goal posts against both teams of autumn leaves
If only I had wings like a Robin or strong legs like a horse

I stand between the goalposts of my personality
I should try harder to unite the two into a snowman
Or a figure of eight toy train track under the floodlights

If only I had eternity under control
If only I didn’t keep letting the goals in

I always wanted a real coat

I always wanted a real coat
A human coat
I am a coat
I am a coat of flesh

The shame of my nakedness?
I am missing the designer label
Untreated against the weather
Unblessed by the sky

Here I am in an ancient wall carving
A captured soldier paraded naked

The pope and all his holy water
Cannot fix my tattered coat
And the ghosts of Adam and Eve
Gather it onto a pile for the charity shop

And what is the shame of nakedness?
That it grows old and dies

Vowels of thunder

The vowels of God’s name
Are like four centuries
And the consonants
Are the sounds in-between

Adam and Eve
Dug a grave for God’s name
But the vowels sprouted
Like trees out of the ground

The consonants spread like oceans across time
Where the gigabytes of ears cannot hear
Where the megabytes of eyes cannot see
Where memories are spread thin as frost

Where a Robin humbly hops about
Free as a bird

Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin
Joined the crowd
At Woodstock
It was a surprise
To see her there

Captured by a camera
Pouring a beer
Seated on a chair
In a psychedelic dress

No one noticed
The music moves between them
The iron torrent of time
In a moment of peace and love

She has her little bit of the field
She has her part in the music

And she has her part
In the irrigation
Of youth

He worked in a small Parisian Zoo

He worked in a small Parisian zoo
Caring for the animals

He was a young man
That went home to an empty apartment

One day in the zoo
He saw a beautiful Italian woman

The zoo seemed empty but for her
The animals were slightly peeved

He lost interest in life
He forgot to feed them

He watched her walk out of the zoo gates
And climb into the back of a sleek fast car

Next day as he was feeding the chimps
She was there watching him

She joked about his long hairy arms
She brushed her hair over her ears and laughed

The next time she came to the zoo it was raining
He gave her an umbrella and escorted her to the snack bar

Sitting with him at the table her humour returned
She made fun of his work in the zoo

He got tired of being the butt of her jokes
He made his excuses and left her alone

The animals were concerned
All day he wasn’t himself

He argued with the macaws
He shoo shooed the lions who sneered at him

He broke down in the reptile age
His floods of lonely tears moved them

Next day he came to work in a tuxedo
And continued like that for weeks and months

Feeding the animals and caring for them
And his tuxedo was clawed and dirty

He was looking like a tramp
When she came once again

The leaves in the trees were turning gold
The flowers in the hedges had lost their petals

The windswept pathways were getting colder
The darker nights were arriving

A tall man with a square jaw
Battled through the wind as the night fell

He searched angrily up and down the zoo
The keeper told him he should leave

The young zookeeper was locking up for the night
When he saw something move in the hedge

He reached in and grabbed a shaking hand
And told her the man had gone

She squeezed his hand in gratitude
So he walked her home in the sunset

The animals became very rowdy
For that time of the season

Like when you tried

Like when you tried
To recover a letter
From a letter box

Your whole being
Was in trepidation
And concentrated
On retrieving the letter
That revealed your heart
To another

And posting your fingers
Through the door
You felt stuck there

As the recipient
Stared in amazement
At your tiny fingers
With the painted nails
Doing a puppet dance
And wondered
Should he applaud
The impromptu performance
Of guilty pinkies
And goofy fingers
As they retrieved
The letter at last
And ran for it

The Badge-man

The badge man
Of Limehouse
I remember him
Walking into me
In Westferry Road
I suppose he lived
In the old flats
Off The Causeway

Every inch of his jacket
Was covered in badges
And he wore a cap
With many badges fixed to it

He was old
His eyes were shrunken
He didn’t seem to have any teeth
He was a relic
Of the post war
Anti-establishment
Rock and roll suicide
Sex and drugs brigade
That had escaped
He had never given up
He had never grown up
He grew into his role
Until in his old age
It was perfected
He was art and rebellion
When everyone else
Began wearing suits and ties
He began wearing badges
An individualist
With something to say
Who inherited his freedom this way
And amused his nurses

I loved him
I envied his attire
Such a rare bird
and Armageddon
Will never affect him

Imagine
They found him alone
Dead in his dusty flat
Like a Peter Blake dummy

They took his
Suit of badges
And un-picked it
They put all the badges
Into a card board box
And gave them
To the charity shop

Then they burned his body
Without honours
As another reject
Of society
Being pushed into the flames of obscurity

But not oblivion
He was the Badge-man
Our heroic urban myth
A visual sign
That said
You have not saved
Everyone
In your version of society
And you never will

Let us
Grow our suits of badges
And swarm all over London
Harmless and crazy
In this conservative and square
Sheep dip
Of a world