The way to lead a long life is to get a chronic disease and take care of it — Sir William Osler, MD (1849–1919)

 

Pale waves of mist twist, kiss & bless you
people as you patrol these walkways in the sky,
rain seeps through the holes
in my heart, so scared am I here alone.
Above, slippery streetlights shine,
Below, rats scurry into mind.
These are the concrete estates
of the heart...

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That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

- Poem XL
― A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Along this strand opposite Holy Island
pebbles fit softly into the palm of my hand,
pebbles that spent their eternity rolling on the floors of seas,
smooth and silent.

Others, more ragged in texture, dragged themselves
thr...

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When your closest friends
are dead
what's left to 
be said?
Nothing except
a fulsome regret.
We spend half our lives
speeding along the highways of desire,
putting our feet to the fire,
we luxuriate in time,
time laid up in store.
We think we know
what life is for.
Rich or poor.
We don't and never will.
Looking back I might as well
have lived with a sack over my head
unaware of th...

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— only love can break your heart

Translating the rain is a dangerous business,
In the past the priest or rabbi took on the mantle
Of expectation. But you knew from the very start
Which mountain range the rain came from.
Your languid, watery eyes can be deceiving in rain.
Fountains are rain corralled, water on show. I’m tempted
Into sleeping on your neck. A servitude of roses suffices.
...

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Every day I awake to a blank slate
upon which the hieroglyphics of fate
make their mark and spark a reaction
in me. Nature or Nurture? Genetics
or the Environment? Heaven sent?
or just somewhere to rent?
Written in the stars? Or, twisted by chance?

Let us make the best of it,
let us inject some zest into it

Reach for the stars, be kind: reject
Inshallah, God’s will, no bette...

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You stood tall
trousers' ending just above
your ankles;
long limbed, you were, 
from school boy's
putting on
into manhood's 
seeming self-assurance.
I liked you reticence,
your quiet smile,
your facility with languages,
101% in a Latin exam.
We both read in the Victorian
reference library - spared by the Luftwaffe,
condemned by the civic progressives,
soon to be replaced
by a c...

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Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary. Boris Pasternak

That nagging inkling in the brain
that nothing ever can be the same.
Nights are purpled with false intent.
Days are spent deciding what is meant
by strange congruences in the sky.
Feet that will walk upon my grave pass by,
unwieldy...

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It was only after your death that I realised
why you disliked windy weather
crossing the broad Atlantic
while still a boy
for arms and food
needed at home.
I never knew exactly why
or what exactly those hypocrites  at the orphanage
did to you
but I will not forget
and I will not forgive.

I only knew that you were buried
with a back full of the white scars
inflicted by those sadi...

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Standing here,  soaked in my own blood,
my brave heart thumping
arrhythmically,
your shadow and I spy
firm, thick wood.

Those dark lights of Christmastide
afflict us
red and green sunset drops
coagulate,
create this awesome flicker
of a fire of dampened desire.

Candle-light and in the mean time,
we mark the end of this hologram-life
sans investment grade material, sans flight
...

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faith, trust, and fairie dust

 

The moon was sad as only the moon can be
men in tears sought to flee the nightmare of their lives
dreaming that with fingers we can pluck
the calmness of flowers, the depths of moments,
the completeness of a live birth.

Now only white sobs slide into our eyes
the smile of a mother, a lover,
on the fortunate day of our first kiss.
the past is a ma...

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the song of the slumbering summer season of 1914 under whitespread skies 

in the depths of my daily despair
obsessive thoughts, songs & stories,
coil and twist me into words, 
in this wise fool’s daily darkness
 I finally find my feet: moving
under the whitespread skies
of a forgotten England.

 

memory, a mere nothing, always incomplete;
curdles thoughts of my sorry England, 
word...

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The memory of what has been,
And never more will be. Wordsworth, 'The Lucy Poems'

When my collie-cross, Woody, races
across the field: ears tucked back,
tail tucked in, aerodynamically complete,
he looks so natural, he looks so neat.
I can hardly see his feet as he runs so fast
across the winter grass on this early spring
day I think of a coarse farming man 
leaning on a 3-bar gate ...

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Lurking around corners — on groggy
gas lit nights, whispering death
steals into this age of the machine.
See the tender white crosses-row-on-row.
Oh! so-many windswept nights of swirling snow;
creaking branches catch a whiff of Lady Fortune’s
ill-luck in this unpleasing freezing breeze,
and pleased, I was, immeasurably,
more fool me!

 

Old Lady Dark...

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A refugee is someone who survived

 

When my broken heart beats ever faster,
when my eyes, unbidden, fill with tears
and my memory skips back to the truths
of childhood fears— the bullying and violence— 
I seem to hear the music of the spheres
drawing me closer, whispering how the fault
tumbles down the generations, infects the years.
My father, an orphan in the 30s, beaten & abuse...

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The air was thick with spray
wetly coating my face and hair
the gulls screamed everywhere
while the ragged cliffs, defaced
with echoing caves, stood still.
These seals, shapeshifters 
of the wild sea, called each
to each.   Careful not to slip
from their seal skin they danced
on the beaches under the moonlight
in their human form.
If their skin was stolen,
they were forced to stay ...

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“He is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

https://www.duille.com/product/the-avenue-in-the-rain/

The draft dodger and the hill billy 
defamed their much-famed republic
intimidated and bullied a multilingual Jew,
who knew a little about persecution,
who had devoted years to standing up
to an orthodox Tsar...

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“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.” ― D.H. Lawrence

https://rinephilbinart.com/places/fanad-lighthouse-donegal-wild-atlantic-way

Wild is the minute and clear is the day
a world of smell and sight and sound,
the portals of discovery all around.
I enter this world, this newfoundland:
not...

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Sanskrit sati (“good woman” or “chaste wife”), a Hindu custom of a wife immolating herself on the funeral pyre of her dead husband. The Sati (Prevention) Act of 1987 criminalized Sati.

 

Moths fly high
this cold delight
of a summer’s night
their wings sing,
but my mind’s not right,

 

See the showers spark high
like flaming air
sizzling on the water
blowing in her hair

And...

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i.m. Captain Keith Douglas January 1920 - June 1944: soldier, poet

In Calvados you have your cross
And though we won, you most surely lost.
Your sacrifice, at twenty-four, to modern ‘wit’
Is nothing more than a crying bore.

Who now has read Alamein to Zem Zem
Your story of the war in the western desert?
For though you certainly knew how to kill
You did so with no draperies over you...

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David Rodinsky was a reclusive Jewish autodidact who vanished in the 1960s. His room was found undisturbed 20 years later.

Shifting shades afflict the ghost of David Rodinsky
As he returns to his room in Whitechapel, London
For one last look at the Aramaic and Hebrew texts
Which provided him with the hex of disappearance.
Where he came from nobody knows. Was he Jewish?
Yes and no. Was ...

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There’s an absence that appals:
closed doors, night sweats, white walls.
Is it the thing we first forget
which will eventually beget
this cringeing in the night
this too-familiar fright?
Or is it just the neurons as they play,
at hide and seek, all night, all day,
which make us stare forever
at that place that’s out of reach,
alone, bereft of speech?
Or is the child within us still ...

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We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. Umberto Eco

These fingers point at letters
those letters point at words
and then the disturbance -
occurs.

My love she was a vixen
she howled in the night
those feelings they just left me -
despite

This mourning which continues
throughout decades, in a line,
my lover she engages me -
in time.

These swirling skies of fortune,
this ...

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"Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art." WB Yeats

Full-flame forgetfulness
insinuates the day away
robs us of memory
and wont fade away
despite wordy tantrums
in this annex to my life
spoiling,  rampaging
along the avenue
of years,
unbidden tears
trample down my face
memories stored in lace
memory not history
abides against the rules
wise fools breed
monuments to ...

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I took old snail upon a trip,
upon the live-long sea,
old snail she is so silent,
more silent, still, than me.

We wander forward on the tides,
and scurry back in time,
but all upon a Tuesday- drear
old snail she speaks in rhyme.

With metaphors a-plenty,
right on the cusp of nine
old snail becomes ye old March Hare
and leaves us all behind.

https://youtu.be/Vl89g2SwMh4?si=P-Q1...

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et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, naturamque nouat. (to arts unknown he bends his wits, and alters nature) Ovid, 'Metamorphoses' 

Your vernacular usage is privileged as the only discourse
Suited to the now compulsory affirmation of mediocrity.
Democracy. That’s fair enough I suppose. S’far as it goes.
Does it gather to a greatness like the ooze of oil? Toil. Toil
For endless gold and...

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I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment. David Bowie

In the apple market
your south London twang
accompanies the many undulations
of passing time.
Your wild androgyny
mirrors the mirror
of yourself.
You help me 
skim off the water
childhood,
like a shaking dog.

You lit up, spot-lighted,
an iridescence of sound
Ziggy!
Your songs were the water
I nee...

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A lay may be a song, a melody, a simple narrative poem, or a ballad

haunt my days
he whispers
butter me up quite
she replies

the green groves
of her painting
sleeping
in his eyes
now
there is
no disguise

her speckled dust
in faded sunlight
in his too-familiar sight
her soul
declines to take flight

she’s a-tumbling
through the grasses
O! she’s a-dying
of the light
h...

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When my head lifts,
prior to sleep, the 40s
bounce into view, neat?
The 50s started
to slide ’em aside
those deep-finned beasts
that continue to glide.
The 60s, are gettin’ closer now,
familiars growl into view, Bethel, NYC too
yeah, the 70s punked up fast,
copied like crazy,
didn’t last. 80s were
AIDS and Princess Di
the miners and Roxy Music,
90s so near, choosin’ a Blur, or an...

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Dream small dreams — for Marianne Faithfull
 

A scatter of images
a-flame in my head
the burden
of nothingness,
dead.

The bellows of memory,
with sunrise all a-flame,
the pumping of the blood
and the naming of the names.

This richochet of meaning,
explodes in my mind,
I seep into simple
as I climb into rhyme.

A glance and a gesture,
of times nicely coming along;
look a...

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I wish that I was born a thousand years ago. I wish that I’d sailed the darkened seas. On a great big clipper ship. Going from this land here to that — Lou Reed ‘Heroin’

https://www.calaverasarts.org/blog/art-of-our-ancestors-competition-winners

Today tears cloud the inside of my eyes
my view is metamorphosed into a blankness
that pervades my waking hours, retreats only
in sleep.
Moo...

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“Do not be afraid; our fate
Cannot be taken from us; it is a gift.”
― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

A rose in December,
when it snows in July,
as far as we know
the expected will die.

Common sense has infirmities
deformities, affinities
to pie in the sky;
as we try to get by.

Nothing happens too late
that isn’t taboo
a floating moon slips
above stone-built walls,
a story of end...

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Some decisions:
seemingly reasonable, rational,
seek to wipe out
sentimentality, romance
as if we lived by rules
more fools we if we do.

Time
leads me back to a field
in high summer
in Cheshire -
a piece of the rich south
here in the north - 
the roads are far enough away
today
to lead us to a silence:
provisional, yes
passing, of course,
but still silence
we shared a ...

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Splattered on a canvas

Or, scrawled on a wall,

Art

Is just

A husk of form

Without the artless agony

Of daily life:

The strangled scream

And the carving knife.

https://youtu.be/IzPQ_jA00bk?si=7BIHf1FtgOGt03JY

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https://www.baselessfabric.co.uk/is-it-hot-in-here-jason-hall-visits-a-crematorium/

1,2,3 I'm just waiting here, full of fear,
of what will be, will be.
I can't get around anymore 
the coffin's at the front, near the door.
Flames behind curtains,
at the end of the craic,
God knows I loved him
so that is that.
He was the one who spoke
reason, to me
we walked by the river
he yearne...

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Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought Percy Bysshe Shelley

Low slung August sun shadows stonework into
deeper shadow lands —
phantoms adrift on the wide Sargasso sea —
and so unruffled, these lawns,
and all this frumpery.

So much then has time
and its opposite
done for me.

It was along these lines that we walked, it was
beneath these swaying poplars we kisse...

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Now, only the vestiges remain:
Conduct a forensic examination,
Then scatter the remains:
See the fragility of the body,
In the furtherance of the truth,
Note the devil’s-in-the-detail
We are condemned at the root.

A roof for his daughter,
Over a precipice-by-the-way,
His peculiar ways of thinking
Are alive today.

Some Russians worship icons,
In China there is smog,
Tom-Al...

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Say to the soul, sigh
so kind & honest he seems
to be when he greets others
courteously.
This abrogator of responsbility
this pretended fakir;
I cannot trust with my eyes’ intelligence
& I was stung in my heart, grievously.
He, dressed in pretended humility she
hoping she’ll prevaricate her way
into heaven.
She does not understand that if she
fails to expel the sycophants’
doctine...

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“Taliesin, don’t be sad if you’re alone
on Ynys Môn you have battled mightily,
despair will bring us no advantage
no woman sees what supports her.
Courage is invisible. Study The Mabinogion
God will not violate his promises.
We must suffer in Gwyddno’s weir
where our stand against the Saesneg invaders
will end in defeat! We must learn how to fail
better, being sad will not a...

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Lurking around corners — on groggy-doggy, laudanum-lit
gas lit nights, whispering death came to this age of the machine,
he has much drink taken, he’ll be dead soon.
Never mind.

See the tender white crosses-row-on-row
so-many windswept nights of swirling snow.
creaking branches catch the whiff of Lady Fortune’s
croaking of a pleasing freezing breeze,
and pleased, I am, immeasurably,
...

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  A persistent geography draws near a bloody tear
in the momentary blindness of a sunshine daydream;
of all that life could’ve been.
Instead we have the normal crucifixions
the splatters of human brains
all over underground trains.
In my beginning is my end, my friend,
the starting point for music and poetry and art.
The gulags and the camps, the massacres, the genocide
stretch fro...

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-heads weave into fragile, thin
paper-like skin
echoes the savage-silent-dread
of memories-lost, storm-tossed
dust-motes float,
gossamer webs
glitter in the rain;
words thought, but never said,
misrule-misled,
in the very eye of the storm
memories replete
old-ghosts fled,
chapped, red-raw hands
from working this mid-winter land.

https://youtu.be/I3x01BYDmDY?si=hMSMBYtf9p6bHWAh

 

...

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When I were a boy, a nipper, a kid
wildflowers on a concrete waste
were always blindingly yellow, for me.
Flowers rooted in the cracks along the road
for me, the yellow-bloomed, only for me
whether I was hungry
or stuffed to the hilt, which was rarely,
a slash of yellow beneath the sun
was reason enough to have fun.

Later, we prisoners saw our lady Sunne
and we gazed in awe,
seein...

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County lines spread evil
across all the living and the dead
their line is our time
we need them, dead.

Or fled to
a spring day in late fall,
when she can no longer cope: 
be tall or not be crumpled or be  a spuperfluity
of hope.

She has lost the lines that link
her to her family tree 
so now the link is broken
and she is free.

Road, rail, phone,
needle, plunger, sink
in an...

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Light is a wave and a particle too
it does not matter
if a particle's partiality
parts with the classical concept
of duality.

A wave can be a particle
and matter, or matter not.
Behaviour at the quantum level
is unpredictable in the extreme,
so firing particles through a mountain
isn't as unreasonable as it may seem?

Like position and momentum,
or like photons and matter,
wavi...

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Photo by Kirill Pershin on Unsplash

Icelight in my eyes
Iceflowers in mind
storm black night
stings me awake
dreams scatter
light disperses
into verses,
black with thunder
the earth, in grave colours.
No black mass
no witches’ moon,
no Christmas lifting of the gloom
all gone, gone, all too soon
see the dead a-glimmering
shadows in the room
brimful against the sky.
Alone...

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A raggedy thin cotton dress
On a little girl playing out
On this freezing December day.
She’s thrown out by her mama
Left out by her friends
Deserted by her daddy
Neglected by the world
In the end little Ellie is just sad.
Her school calls the doctor,
The doctor calls the nurse,
Torn this and that way,
Little Ellie's just hurt.

https://youtu.be/S83EiI7Yuxk?si=cLPEceTT0FpxwrU...

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 We are all pilgrims who seek Italy

Goethe

 

Etruscan vases, fragile and thin,
the bright lights of an Italian night,
flowers as red as strawberries
on lips, the sound of summer breezes
in the trees; the sweet smell of baking
bread, unhelmeted boys on vespers.
singing songs that worship an emperor; 
truly, only kisses cannot be interrupted,
no holy days here, no mysterious nig...

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