My Poetry: Grief Held His Hand

 

Grief held his hand.

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Grief held his hand.
Comforting him as the clock ticked,
While dogs barked outside,
Unaware that soon
There would be no time
And no more breath to draw.

Memories embraced him.
Their first teenage words,
Exchanged between strangers
In a long changed park.
Bed-bound looks of forever love
Swapped, through eyes fast fading.

Portraits hug the walls.
Documenting a past
Begun with post-war dreams
Of a country cottage
With children in every room:
Decades of hope fulfilled.

Tears cling to his cheek.
Black cars line the walled road.
People dressed like shadows
Sniffle and shuffle,
As he reads the blurring words
He cannot look up from:

“For fifty-five years,
We remained devoted to each other.
She was my one
and only love,
The best wife a man could wish for.
I miss her so much,
One day we will be together, forever.”

 

My Poetry: To be Bored with Life

To be bored with life,
Is to no longer feel
The sun’s warmth on your cheek
Or the wind’s kiss on your neck

To be bored with life,
Is to ignore the complexities
Of the blossoming trees
And the dance of the butterfly.

To be bored with life,
Is to miss the smile
Of mad bag lady
And the phone calls of friends.

To be bored with life,
Is to dwell on yesterday
No longer believe in the now
And see no tomorrow.

To be bored with life,
Is to hope
That tomorrow the sun will rise

And the shadows burn out.

My Poetry: The Stamp Collector's Daughter

The stamp collector's daughter.

---

The suede-tongued teenager
Curses the light.
Sliding onto the pavement
From the shadow of her past,
She tip-toes to the “shop”
For the morrow’s rations,
Hiding from a summer sun
That cannot warm her bones.

Sounds of cars then birdsong,
Quickly disappear
Among the hum and sighs
Of the nine-to-fivers
That crowd the fume filled paths
As they scuttle past
The ghost,
Of the girl from number nine.

The denim-cloaked teenager
Sits like a cat,
At the edge of a curb.
On her street corner alter
She rolls illicit notes
Through finger and thumb,
Preying that the high priestess,
With her alcoholic visions,
Can save her soul
With pills and powders
To lift her anchor
And set her free…
…Until tomorrow.

My Poetry: Oh, Morrisey

Oh, Morrissey

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Just because
I’m listening to Morrissey
Don’t think he made me sad
It’s not his fault
I fell out
Of the wrong side of the bed
And the girl of my dreams
So please, please, please
Don’t think
I’m listening to Morrissey
Just to feel bad

 

My Prose: The Sun also falls on Shale.

The Sun also falls on Shale.

The sun cast fragments of light through the heavily clouded sky as he stepped from the building. The pale faces of the Shalites looked down, focusing on the pavements where the streets were littered with golden, rotting leaves and shards of hope. Broken hope was the only currency here.

The frightening reality of Shale had fell like a blow to the head. The anonymous stranger’s cheap shoes clunked along the corridor in a slow death march to the manager’s office. In studied theatrics learnt from the revolution that led Marie Antoinette to the guillotine - let the managers of the world eat cock. The chop was swift and the passage from Churque to Shale seamless. The shabby stranger’s vision narrowed and his head swirled like he was falling down a helter skelter whilst high on ephedrine. The colour drained from his lightly tanned skin and the whispered platitudes of the reptile eyed drones fell like bricks around his feet.

He was stuck in some form of parallel world. In Shale, time was no longer measured by Big Ben but the rising and falling of the sun. Hunger indicates dinner-time. The metaphorical whistle that sees thousands of souls in Churque, cloaked in white coats or work soiled overalls, stopping at their allotted time for half-hour, thirty minutes, 1800 seconds; like cattle herding around the fence, the stench of shit and moral depression floating across the break-room on the merest of breezes or on the rotten breath of “colleagues”.

In this parallel world the alarm clock is retired and the day is stagnant. The dream of the weekend lingers long into Wednesday, as Thursday becomes Friday and Monday just another Sunday.

In Shale red apples are left scattered on green blades of grass, their sour, rotten flesh repugnant and devoid of attraction to those wandering the offices and halls of the proxy fatherland Churque. The sun also falls here, but it also rises on naked fruit trees and the streets are paved with ghostly bodies floating around in the ether of unemployment. Even the serpent pets of Lucifer, huddled together around their supermarket name badges, are staying clear of the palling aura of the Shalites.

We are the lost souls left with the receipt with no way of paying the price for our parents lust for the original sin, until just the sight of stacked shelves in pound shops cause the fires of hades to rise and ignite blunted emotional outbursts: fantasies of kicking small animals, dreams of sewing up the mouths of the Job Seeker representatives, imaginations of hanging the smiling few, who tread the unholy pavements, with their own intestines.

Here, there is no tomorrow and no yesterday. In Shale time is remorseless, the dull tick of the second hand taps out incoherent songs which echo, but never find rhyme nor reason. Here music is too powerful to hear without the buffer of booze or self-medication.

Today the sun rose on Churque and fell on Shale.

 

 

 

My Poetry: Until Sleep We do not Part – part2

Until Sleep We do not Part – part2

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Old memories cupped in crippled hands
Keeps you close despite the distance.
An old box of silver and gold and soft veneer
Holds silent quotes
And dormant frosted thoughts
Of dust and stone and summer months,
Where crimson thoughts coloured our talk.

Like a subservient sun under fading skies,
I sit in silence.
Your memories tug at my flesh
Like hunger, like truth, like love.
Haunted by whispered hopes in purple patches
Waiting for the clouds of Hades to descend again
The whips of thunder to crack,
Flash and moan,
Till something breaks and the trickle of tears
Stains the kitchen table.

Then as silent as a thief a frost creeps across the room,
The night cradles the moon,
But the night fails to sooth
…and the booze retreats
……….and the day’s embers fade
……………..and the roses begin to decay…

But until sleep we do not part.

My Poetry: A Requiem for Lyme

A Requiem to Lyme

---

I gaze out from my office window
The world appears to be sketched in pencil
and shaded with pastels
A hundred different blues shimmer behind the ancient rooftops:
What secrets lay hidden behind the newly painted doors?
What dreams lay broken in the postman’s soul?

The gulls are aimless
The tourists drift
Like splinters of an old ship lost on a rolling sea.
Little fish fight for air
Against the rising tide of small minds
In this tiny fishing town
Hidden and almost dormant under
Jurassic rocks
And fossilised remains of life,
When to eat and breath and to procreate
Were the only pressures
Placed on the human tongue.

Today I look from my office window
And feel the colour draining from my cheeks.

 

My Poetry: Until Sleep We Do Not Part - part1

Until Sleep We Do Not Part - part1

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Skin drawn tight
Across immaculate bones
White and open like a canvas
Not yet etched with emotion.

You sit curled like a cat
Silently across my knees
As a cold winter sun
Creeps across the room.

Light fades to dusk
And only silly words spoken
About the outside world
Where the rest of world hides.

And as night turns to morning,
Just before dawn.
While your eyes rest to gather strength
I watch in awe.

...and until I sleep we do not part.

My Poetry: The Moon Holds No Mystery

The Moon holds no Mystery

---

The moon holds no mystery
The stars no romance
I dismiss sunsets with a glance
And wont give the birds and the bees a chance.

But when I look at you I melt

The sun swollen roses are odourless
Watching clouds pointless
I dismiss a puppy dogs’ eyes
And wont give sonnets and verse a try

But when I look at you I smile

When friends tell me I’m crazy
I shrug it off with a maybe
I dismiss the rumours
And wont give doubts the time of day

Because to be within your reach is to be divine

My Poetry: My Heart Grew Dark

My Heart Grew Dark

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My heart grew dark,
With the thought
You’d never see the stars, again.
Feel the sun on your neck
Or my kiss on your cheek.

How you’d never rise
singing your favourite song
Or smell the white roses
Along the road side
Or feel the kiss of wind on your lips.

But, my heart grew light
With the thought
You’d always be here
In the warmth of the sun
And the flush in my cheek

How you’d always rise
When I played our song
Or studied those roses
By our bedside
Or…whenever I remembered your lips on mine.