a sliver of a moon highlighting
a stone house by a river
full of young people, rushing
hither and thither, a cascade
of sound, untramelled energy,
a highlight of laughter, a blaze of eyes,
no disguise
in so many intelligent discriminations:
of face, of education, of class, of race
we knew it couldn’t last:
some retreated for forty years or more
but I always knew I’d return
in ...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

The priestly fathers love to laugh at Quasimodo
A dirty-broken gypsy boy, who climbed like a monkey.
Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, our joys & desires.*
Priests, bejewelled with gold crucifix, lusted after young Esmeralda
Her wild gypsy eyes flashed and she kicked and she tore and she screamed.
To save Esmeralda, magically, Quasimodo lift...

Read and leave comments (1)

Read and leave comments (0)

Missing the wildness of my younger self
I degenerate into words. Waiting, between
sentences, for the muse to catch up with me,
I fulminate, flash like lightning, explode
So that I catch myself thinking this
Is all an act to compensate for the time
Brian climbed that tree before disappearing
To Japan, for all eternity. I wish Haiku was true.
A cherry blossom flash of inspiration
To can...

Read and leave comments (0)

Liberal elites don’t have a clue about the white working class.” The Washington Post

White privilige
what a joke
we occupy space
vicariously
some days we hang on
by our finger tips

Scared to look down 
or up or to the side
we hide from ourselves

Some days we hover
on a magic carpet
of hope 
that things will finally get better.

That our Rita will be offered a council flat
...

Read and leave comments (2)

 

Lurking in the shadows — on a groggy
gas lit night. He, who followed so many
to their deaths, in this age of the machine,
sits alone, bereft of sight.

In his mind's eye he sees the tender white crosses, -row-on-row,
glow deathly white on a whirlwind night of swirling snow,
he hears the creaking branches, catches a whiff from below,
of lying Lady Fortune a-floating on the breeze,
...

Read and leave comments (0)

Ye gods! circumstances compel me speak
Ye gods! using children as target practice;
From the first of the world
Down to our own time
Don’t frown, don’t shake your head,
Listen to this elegy for the innocent dead.
For soldiers silenced, banned,
expelled, made as if dead.
Life continues for some but the crops in Galilee
Are no longer joyous.
goats and sheep forgot, humans will not
Some...

Read and leave comments (2)

The ease and simple grace
Of this man who’s died
Cannot be lied about
Cannot be denied.
His echoing presence
Still sings in my head
Still sings in my heart
We’re never alone,
Never apart.
Like the mocking bird’s song:
These mimus polyglottos,
These speakers of a hidden art,
sing and recreate
moments that survive
when we were all alive.
Oh! it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird
And it’s...

Read and leave comments (0)

The land was sodden; even during the short breaks in the rain, drips cascaded from the trees, driven down by the briefest of breezes. The sky was bruised black and blue. On this deep set All Hallows Eve in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twenty-seven Miss Abigail Prince hurried through the woods, lifting her skirts to avoid the worst of the mud, she’d finished her work in the big hou...

Read and leave comments (0)

moon sad, as only the moon can be,
cast silver shadows, a spectral plea,
a part of my tapestry of daily grind,
dreams weave deep in mind:
gather close, come, intertwine,

caught in glimpses, unaligned.
eyes fix firm on a stranger’s gaze,
a silent dance in an intricate maze;
lips take shape, sound mute, spirit sings,
heart takes root.
in glowing fires in daring eyes,
her hair cascad...

Read and leave comments (0)

Calculus creepy croaks a loaf,
gamble with diligence, excuse with repose
sunday afternoon-summer in jeans, bobby dylan, the kinks

and my pal bought-sold this three-wheeler,
b...

Read and leave comments (0)

A river runs through me -
the river of life -
with its twists and its turns,
its banks out of sight.
(early morning mist
scatters dregs of the night -
O! the unbidden tears!)

Flotsam and jetsam
of years pass me by
i swirl in a whirlpool
float in the sky.
(the azure blue heat-haze sky
of childhood all gone by)

Down in the depths,
murky and drear,
i listen to my heartbeats
ta...

Read and leave comments (1)

Read and leave comments (0)

First light: a new beginning
rising at the crack of dawn
feel the air against my skin
walk, with the aid of a stick,
listen to the dawn chorus.

Thrillingly,  it’s already late September
over a year since the funerals started
on St Patrick’s Day,
when madness brushed with death.

Now, I’m thinking that when I return
home with Charlie I’ll read
words I can never forget:
“The world i...

Read and leave comments (2)

You are my moment, as you read 
your eyes are full of tact, unembarrassed, laughing,
my dream is just of continuing.

We cannot add up or divide words, as we can numbers,
yet, words are equally intractable
friends & family die in the blinking of an eye
you cannot eat your words.

Nor can we précis longing, hiraeth,
homesickness tinged with grief and sadness,
but we certainly can str...

Read and leave comments (2)

In whispers soft, shadows creep,
Dolorous days, the depths of sleep,
Mythic tales of derring-do
Seize the day, no foreboding thrall,
For here am I, standing tall.

Carpe Diem is all we know
In fading light or flurried snow
If I can  just hold on, hold on tight,
Will life's journey lend me light?

I dance where sunbeams gleam,
Sparkle like dust motes in my dream,
Bounce off the twi...

Read and leave comments (0)

The sadness of sundays
persists
even amidst
the various
reds, yellows, browns and golds
of stormy autumn
and as I walk
I have in mind
the fragility of a veined
porcelain
hand.

So, who am I to resist
this child's
every imperative?

https://youtu.be/BnBWxAaGm9Q?si=crbOmLQHYdHZjsY1

Read and leave comments (0)

 

The devils' in the detail,
these flashes in my head,
i'm always feelin' poorly
said the livin' to the dead;
the skull beneath the skin,
my friend, has fled.
His never-ending searching,
his suicide at dawn.
Who  wins the faded glory
of the decency we mourn?
Who hears the call of morning,
jazz rhythms in the night,.
Berlin before the storm
troopers roll backwards
into this ver...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

a blank piece of paper,
blows in the wind,
skids over people
ducks under bridges
this heavenly graffiti;
passes a litmus test
of meaninglessness, yet:
illuminates manuscripts,
tracks lovers' letters
random epistolary acts,
despatches from the front
in black-lined envelopes,
disquisitions on semiotics
written enticingly
in small handwriting
fabulous confabulations
stutterin...

Read and leave comments (0)

Read and leave comments (1)

“No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face.”
[The Autumnal]
― John Donne,

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash

Moments of the past
do not last:
kicking leaves
in stormy-autumn
tumbling heaps, red, gold and brown
deep-set colours all around
echoing the silent dread
of the silent tread
of the day of the dead.

A memory-lost, a memory-fo...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

I want to smell the tender roses,
Before their petals droop and fall,
In that one garden, in St Petersburg,
The most beautiful city in holy Russia,
In the whole world this city stands out.
...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

“He watched the scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of life) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed him.” James Joyce, ‘Dubliners.’

I make the sign of the cross, today,
the last Saturday in August 1999,
for Jack who d...

Read and leave comments (1)

 

Slow breath in
hold   then breath out
pause for a wee while 
then in that brevity
I kick sand
on Sandymount Strand.

Now, I am out and about
waiting while Daedalus fashions a cow,
so she could mate with the bull,
pregnant, she bore the Minotaur
fruitlessly.

Heavy clouds sweep in
off the Irish sea
to blow these dreams away.

It's 1943
and Ireland is neutral,
the Nazi am...

Read and leave comments (3)

DELPHINIUM BLUES

Blue like the sea
Like the sky
Like your eyes
Like me. 
Muddy waters
Lead belly
Blues
Getcha every time
12 bar blues
 That 'ol gone fishin'
 line.

https://youtu.be/3VEpQo2w2tw?si=YKvp_4_OVZfyUB9S

Read and leave comments (0)

I do not drink   

But I am living under this mountain

That might crush the life out of me

Any time, any day

So, I drink anyway.

 
 Lucifer, Brightest of Bright Angels, stuttered out

"'Non Serviam! I will not serve!'”

And that is enough, and more than enough, for me

To condemn all the big words spluttered by politicians. 

 
I will not serve that in which I no longer bel...

Read and leave comments (1)

At the concert in the Apple Market,
When you were still David Jones,
Your south London twang,
Accompanied the many undulations
Of time.

Your wild androgyny
Mirrored the mirror
Of myself

David Bowie, name bought off the shelf,
Skimmed the water
Of childhood,
Like a dog shakes off rain,
You accelerated — changeling

You lit up, spot-lighted,
An iridescence of sound
Ziggy!
Yo...

Read and leave comments (2)

We take giant steps
When we let ourselves go:
Step into love
Step into eternity.
Nano steps will hardly do
Outside where full blown life
Blows me away from restrictions,
Predictions. Derelictions. Do not smile at those trapped
By circumstance, by failed romance.
Instead take a walk while spring flowers hibernate.
Too many of us stay inside, hide ourselves away,
We do not live the lo...

Read and leave comments (0)

Generation 27
Lorca’s blood wedding
or so the whisper is,
packed full of vaginas bleeding
into lemon-tree- soil,
a foil for the mere conjugations
of eternity. 

The toil, toil, toil
tilling the soil, soil, soil
of life in wgat was Islamic     Andalus.

Priests chant the rosary
like it was El Maleh Rachamim,
or the Mourner’s Kaddish
(which it probably was, if the priest
was a Co...

Read and leave comments (0)

He nailed his voice
to the heart of a mast. Sailed the seven seas.
Learnt to speak up for himself.
Spent time in jail in South Africa
For defending his black friends
From the beatings of the Boer.
The winds took him hither and thither 
In wartime, he never felt complacent.  Rest assured.
Never self-indulgent. A convinced
and sentimental socialist he shared an in-pouring of grief at childr...

Read and leave comments (2)

 — I’m not from around here — 

In my imaginary cottage in the hills
I am immune to the world’s ills,
Or so I like to think.
On evenings of freezing fog,
I throw another log on the fire
Watch closely as the flames reach higher and higher,
Take another sip of whiskey,
Pat the back of my young dog,
Who can feel the spirits in the breeze,
Pick my book up from the stone floor,
Read Mil...

Read and leave comments (0)

Read and leave comments (0)

Tràighean: the Scots Gaelic word for ‘beaches’ 

The reputation of the beach
is gaelic
it has many tongues to tell
from the time of the women
now it is a hostage to steel and silicon
the flotsam and jetsam
of this barbaric age

we cannot throw our souls away
we will be no richer
if we make a stand
at this end of the world
listening to the broad Atlantic’s
slow, withdrawing roar

...

Read and leave comments (1)

 

" Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?" Robert Browning

I hear the mountains spring back to the moors.
strangers look up and down the brown-blue mountains
seeking summits, I guess
and it is always the weaver of water who welcomes us
into the new H2O, the fish screech to taste sharpness,
& swim in order of merit as we water tears at our home comin...

Read and leave comments (2)

That time has arrived, when, in England
To thrive n stay alive, 
We must learn how not to offend
The pointless book ends of the woke,
Those who can not take a joke
Without choking on the very cheek of it.
Rhetoric will be banned, 
As will the rising intonation in conversation
Suggesting a statement
May well be a question? 
No originality of thought allowed.
No challenging of the convent...

Read and leave comments (0)

The wind blows ever sharper,
as the temperature drops,
– I am recalled
to a dialogue with the dead.
My grandfather, Jack Prince, 
could no longer gather
the brightest of life’s strands together
he'd lost too much in war.
Nothing can compensate these young men,
millions dead before their time,
their bravery and their genes lost
to all further generations.
We slink again into ordinar...

Read and leave comments (0)

If all the days of all the years were made of wine and gold
I’d roll them up into the light of intelligence in this one dog’s eyes
I’d pat him and stroke him and tell him unashamedly how
This friendship across species was the best that man could get.
He’d tell me I was some kind of Buddhist — he’s cantankerous and pithy 
that way. So rock me like a good old boy, befriend me like the wind,...

Read and leave comments (0)

Seeds — for Connie

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Seeds we plant, unknowingly,
in the flat lands of the past,
bloom in least expected places:
in shadow, rain and clay; unintended,
they disperse, gather to a greatness,
perambulate on windy days, follow
custom, mulch. Humans harvest,
load, deliver, sell, eat. Cows chew the cud,
create protein, stare, moo amicably, 
in blesse...

Read and leave comments (2)

rich metaphors drawn from the sky and sea
rich funereal language, baptism and burial and birth,
blossom and harvest, wise ones and  children.
from the lips of children we must learn clinging
to life is not enough.

smoke over Mosul. Mosul’s churches where once
the Jacobite heart of Christian belief was celebrated
amongst the ruins of Nineveh along the same back paths
and alleys that the J...

Read and leave comments (1)

Words cannot echo mood.
It’s impossible to convey
the trudging numbnesses
of everyday.

The semi-detached gaze,
the tight closing-in upon oneself,
foreshadow pent up tears
and the tingling that stalk us.

The dim lingering terror in
almost everything I do
enables me to live day-to-day;
fear meanders like an ox-bow lake,
and can take years to settle to that flood-tide
that knocks...

Read and leave comments (0)

From trembling thin arms to thunderous cries,
A childhood stained with hunger's cruel guise,
Clinging to mother, seeking her solace tight,
In a world where shadows cast a daunting fright.
Constant threats and abuse, such a heavy weight,
Youth stolen away, no chance to abate, too late,
Billy the eldest boy, burdened beyond his years,
In grey short pants,seeking  resilience through tears.
...

Read and leave comments (5)

 

To live a life in a day
the difference is plain
there’s no doing it again.
A flight within the 4th-dimension
no squirming weasel words for you
just a graceful flutter and decline
on a wing and a prayer.
No absence of synesthesia here.
just a mingling of the finest bouquet
with the deepest regret in a minor chord display.
The tug at your heart and the tear at your chest
just flo...

Read and leave comments (0)

An unholy roar began to build
that cherry blossom day
thunder in the air,
a miraculous quiet,
a low rumble, 
a terrible tremor,
a move towards total devastation
in the air, on that very day
when the earth begins
to tremble and shake
uncontrollably.

Look! 
all the skies scorched with fire
and the air explodes
fusing flesh with flesh
into a whiteness
from which the dark shadow ...

Read and leave comments (1)

 — this is England — 

Photo by Milind Ruparel on Unsplash

Acrid November brought to mind in late July:
That lack of light, that all day twilight!
How can anybody live through such visual misery
without declining into snake, or toad?
Even the trees have no leaves,
cold will rise to infect our eyes!

We are, unfortunately, not Italian, nor Etruscan,
just woolly-backed mammoth barba...

Read and leave comments (0)

Photo by Kirill Pershin on Unsplash

icelight in my eyes
iceflowers on the wind
a storm black night
stings me awake
my dreams scatter
light dissipates
night fritters away day
sky black with cloud
disperses time into verses,
made of earth, in grave colours;
no black mass here
no candles in the wind
no witches zoom to the moon,
no lifting of the spirits
just gloom
as men fall in...

Read and leave comments (0)

It is not the cruelty of children that angers me
But that my hesitation to commit the word to air
And, aye, maybe, to the ear, the heart, was treated as an affliction
By those with the polished shoes and starched aprons;
Sometimes I was not even there when they mocked me but I knew
What they did and ‘never-a-bother-it-was-to-me’.
But it was. I was brought up to be brave but inside I was ...

Read and leave comments (4)

KAFIRISTAN

(a continuing genocide)

The Buddhas of Bamiyan (Dari: بت بامیان‎; د باميانو بتان) were two 6th-century monumental statues of Gautam Buddha blown up in March 2001 by the Afghan Taliban.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan

Nuristan, in eastern Afghanistan, was formerly known as Kafiristan (کافرستان, “land of the infidels”) until the inhabitants were forcibly c...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

Mist and fog and waterspray blind
this winter-of-the-heart hideaway
i stop and wake and sleep again
clouds disguise the fall
I fail to face
as surely as the grave decays

everyday this sheer cliff path
crumbles just  a little more
Listen now!  
to these screeched warnings of the gulls,
echoing through this thin air
seeing you there
glistening as the light fades away
I slip t...

Read and leave comments (1)

 

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

 

Nostalgia has barbed-wire teeth,
establishes its grip and never lets go,
Nostalgia skews, twists and shapes 
how we experience the world and its doings
Nostalgia consummates our lives with lies
composed of dreariness and disappointment.

Looking back with rose-tinted spectacles
turns us into reactionary, pale conservative
clones who love t...

Read and leave comments (0)

 

FOR SALE:

 

BABY SHOES  

 

NEVER WORN

Read and leave comments (0)