My Poetry: To No-one at 7.30am - part 2

To No-one at 7.30am - part 2

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I have to be honest,
in poetry
and the way I say yes and no;
so I read Corso and Ginsberg
and a copy of the paper news
while you sleep
back and bum
facing me.
I touch the mole
on your thigh
to remind me
where I am and are:
I’m your boy
fighting to stay warm
in cold bourgeois dream
listenin’ to the dustmen
earn a crust
beneath our window
while I wait
to bully a mouse
to make mine.
So forgive me father
if my art declines
cus the bread I make
can’t be breaked
and its crumbs disseminated

My Poetry: To no-one at 7.20am - Part 1

To no-one at 7.20am - Part 1

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I woke weepin’
cryin’ out for
my imagined loss
crystal beads
of salted woe
decorate my rose
flushed flesh
which droops
like apologetic
fruit, bruised
by caustic
playground words.
The weepin stops
an' a salt crystal necklace
glimmers in the new sun’s light
like a sailors code
no-one understands.
So I lift myself
out of active sleep
and leave

the bed.

My Poetry: Hold of the Dawn

Hold Off The Dawn

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In the humble
drifting
moments
between dreams and morn
syllables slip
from your wine lips
thick and sweet
like honey from a butter knife.
I reach beneath the covers
my lips taste silk flesh
in the moments
before the curtain’s drawn
before the Robin’s morning call
before a world wakes
beneath slate skies
and winter winds that bite
hard at the heart and hope.
These moments
between the death of night
and birth of day
are no time for speech
just gutteral sounds
and touch and belief
we can hold off the dawn.

My Poetry: Love's Mist Retreats, Again

Love’s Mist Retreats, Again

---

The solemn deathly mist
clings to the shoulders
of the harried man
who hurries
like a doped lab mouse
through the shadows
of his solitary bliss.

His tombstone soul
runs from the hand
that conjured forth
that deathly mist,
 ten thousand years

of minstrel and poet
verse and song

could not explain.

It just is, they would hiss,
that solemn deathly mist
which lightens
the blackest heart
like hope’s blanket cast
across the barren banks
of despair and pain,
both cursed, as they are,
by light and shade's shadow.

Now, as he runs,

the maid sits staid and sad
with just the thoughts
that fill her head,
words of minstrel

and broken poet
leaves her blind
as the mist of love

retreats again.

 pic: jameswoodward.wordpress.com

My Poetry: Your Death on my Birthday

Your Death on my Birthday.

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I read the last lines
of a book so big
it took two hours
for me to realise
I’d finished it.
Laying, naked
but for the cover of a bare bulb
solitary tears snake
down my face and neck,
soaking
into the crumpled sheets
that wrap around me
like a coffin cover
as I sink into the mattress.
My thoughts slow down and return
to her funeral,
the tears I restrained
now strain my guts
as I remember how
I felt your life’s energy
move from wooden box
to solemn ash tree
which harbours
the mined souls
from two hundred years of death.
Each fading, yellowing leaf
a post-it note
from wherever they lay now…
I read the last lines of a book,
and I remembered your death
on my birthday.

 

This poem was inspired by the Patti Smith book 'Just Kids' click here to buy it or have  mozy: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Just-Kids-Patti-Smith/dp/0747548404