Unshared Light

sharp luck

dumbstruck

today it hurts again

last night, dreams of you

which now means

you in me, past the light

what does it?

cert sign that some untouched world

of togetherness

must together be brought?

or retrenchment of a spiral one

of me

stuck in me alone?

sharp luck

dumbstruck

the more it hurts again

vast insight

of you in me

beyond what might

keep within quiescent tone

what is desire?

truth that the old may well collapse

because already rising in its wake

are the first suns of the new?

or is fire more reckless, less controlled

issued oftenest one way

spoiling the fruit of any return?

dumb struck

sharpluck

I am lit again

cast outright

into the battered sea

of you star side

whether or not it be

by the night

Come by the night

Come by the night asking

Come by the night asking for

An exchange

by the night

come

Come by the night asking

a water-maker

for

a soup-spinner

by the night asking

a connection-dweller

for

a fate-delayer

The night asking

a light-retainer

for

a life-explainer

Come by the night

asking

by the night

for

a love-availer

for

a lozenge-sharer

by the night

distance-taker

come

truth-recaller

heart-breaker

come

group-builder

for

a hope-restorer

come

and come

world-destroyer

Come by the night

by the night

the night

asking for…

Your exchange.

F is for

Feather tickles on the soles of little feet,

A worn through gaze outstaring early crying eyes.

Moments for life of life-stages shared complete,

Impossible hours of love turned hate’s disguise.

Limitless seasons of care without defeat,

Yardstick measures as to whom and where it applies…

Of many, many-few are set on repeat

Reductions of a world made on fewest ties,

Under trees of blood, the shade will show deceit…

Stand no more homes ‘til the World-as-Home may rise.

Fort-reigns of raining four-pronged forks

An iconography of crust

detailed fairy-tales spill their entrails

sea men fun-fried sand-land sun-dried

wind-tunnel-routes that tear through sails

the ocean with something to hide

An ideology of thrust

Launch pad analysis of gutters

My hand to hand-over smile stutters

Cropping up rocks, crapping out clocks

First class to tone town through brown docks

A geometry of must

Beseeched and reached, far-to-near bleached

“Each to their own” whispered the druids;

But their lemon trees found impeached

Wooden spoons to child-rearing fluids

A chronology of the Just

Quotation marks give the impression

of speech-pattern thoughtfully split

but what sort of head-spun expression

has soup to tongue hole and clit?

Quart-trains of trained quartz

A phenomenology of dust

sprinkled scrapes of sceptical specks

scupper sparks of step-sick aspects

spit-spectacles of scrap-spill sports

skin-skip spurts of spoilt supports

A geology of trust

The dig minds lines of fund finality

The dig spine-grinds from thinned duality

These humans send sun down beneath

Seek a Spring curtained by its leaf

A geography of lust

Love has time-zone terms which it hates

They cut its freedom to draft, to roam

They punish it with anchored fates

Give it eyes and a shallow home

A choreography of rust

A bronze cut sits atop alone,

A ton drop of metalised bone

On a stone throne atoning for

Air-time, water-use and sun-lore

The poetics of mass murder

“There is an Evil that hates us all”

echoed long, a soul-hollowing call

on weatherman, high priest and blithe fool

for great Good is struck by Godly rule

to conquer Darkness, sunrise or fall…

“There is a Good that can do no harm”

rung out in the wild bombastic calm

of steely kisses flown street and farm

wrapped and loosed by the lip-splitting charm

of the Brotherhood, come arm-in-arm…

“There is a poem aft every war

sung aloud on hills of blood and gore

but which authored on a further shore

not yet alive, not yet here, unsure

a world of fewer people, not more…”

“Only bad poetry goes to war”

chimes hence with a victim-settling score

neither an all-or-nothing God nor

peoples disembodied to the core

saw more Evil than Good fade, withdraw…

“The world trades borders on futures present”

pangs with an earthquake fury incessant

as Good-looks now look fleeting, unpleasant

in the eyes of poets tongues tumescent

wax-working a hyper-waning crescent…

How to resign

If it is going to be me without you,

the meagre possibilities left me instead

I will exhaust

making sure

the world knows

the size

the magic

of that which I have lost

whilst its arms

seem loose and wide enough

to embrace you still

look after you

keep you a little longer

however far away

you might end up from me.

The world

must

and will

be made fully aware

of what it, at least for now, has been given

lovingly

to care for.

With this poem,

I try to jerk its elbows

to attention,

and say goodbye to you.

Are you in Love?

are you near full

from bone to wool

climb up or crawl

wall after wall

with the hot truth

that floor and roof

melts age and youth

hoof, nail and tooth:

the blood red seed

of love’s long deed:

the art of need

the heart to breed

from form to dust

and back if must,

in core, in crust

giving and Just:

from the drenched plain

to suns that rain:

hope within pain

goes love’s refrain,

whence heated kiss

printed in bliss,

fore the abyss

or sung like this,

will call on you,

vein and sinew,

to burn up True

as warm as two.

Coincidences

History has a way of looking at us from different directions.

come here and

observe how our neon-lit signifier of beauty, love, passion

the garden Rose

has naturally spread out some very prickly features

so well-shaped and sized and nicely aligned

by accident or design causing maximum harm

to anything approaching a fully hands-on inquiry.

next stand back a little but

be slightly more specific, and ask

from which side of the triangle of time

has

this contrast combination

of barbed flower

stemmed

did the pretty rose strike out its defences

specifically

to shield itself from the up-close spine-pinching intensity of our strongest predilections

or is there hidden beneath the petal-surface beauty of our passions

a darker side to our love

as significant favour for the rose was developed

not prior to the becoming of, and not in spite of

but precisely because of and in more or less daytime awareness of

its thorny double life?

then, finally, with both more open and more closed angles of the eyeline in mind

make demands to know what difference it would be, overall

if difference at all

historically

how would

the warning-sign rosiness that our garden Rose should carry now anyway

change

whether its sharpness arose because we can love things into extinction

or that our love a little more prior to itself than that conceals behind its flower-head first appearances an almost-rooted need for painful contradiction

that is

how would either of these truths save anything

or anyone

now

anyway

Missing suns

Pity the poor sunflower

On the overcast days,

What soul-vibrating power

Will hold its wanting gaze?

I know its struggle well

Rooted in this limp place

Of my own coldest hell

Adrift of your gold grace…