28/12/2020

Candles Quiet

 

The pulse of a candle

Expands and shrinks

With the breath of those

Who pause

To watch

 

Faster it flutters

The flicker fizz of flame

Throbbing as it throws light

Sight blurs and twists the room

A geometric dance of lines

Chasing angles in a fit of joy

 

Angels in your mind

Link up with one another

The rational brain is unlocked

And allowed to walk off

Somewhere else for a while

Restless energy

diminishes in waves

Replaced by a blissful balm

23/11/2020

An Autumnal Bath

 

Following ancient gunnels like a torrent

of water

Curious, mindful

Pooling in a white bone pit

At eye level with the ground

Awaiting wonder I watch

The spiders have been at it

Their silver webs lace the ivy mat

This phantom geometry

A patient beauty humming with existence

 

Everything in its place

 

Take this fallen tree

Its roots hinged out of the earth

To form a living throne

Seat of the everlasting now

The root formations mirror the interlocking

Of branches in the canopy above

They are the flailing limbs of woodland sprites

They pattern the sky

Just like they pattern the under world

As it is above, it is below

 

I press my fingers into the wet moss

New bliss

I note the soft spongy bark

New waves of bliss

I lie in an autumn pool of colour

In pure incessant red and yellow bright

Heaped leaves where my feet once were

Now whipped up in a cyclone flurry of earth scent

Oh yes!

The depth and substance of that smell contains

Life

Contains death

Gives way to life

Death to life, Alive

08/10/2020

Gazing at Swifts

Black dots of activity swirl in whirlpool intensity

In blissful radial symmetry

Swifts frantically prepare for night

Form phrase from flight

 

Birds in natural chaos

Order themselves in a flurry of spirals

Darting in clusters for their home

The gasping jaws of the cave hold safety

They weave between stalactite in glee

Oscillate like water breathtakingly

 

It is an urgent surge

The days last dance

Fork tailed swifts charge the last throws of light

Scatter in reds and freewheel on air

Where the river leaves the mouth of the cave

they muster with hypnotic energy

I know in that moment

Part of me is forever free and made for synchronicity

 

24/09/2020

Unnamed


Water makes the world chant

A steady whisper heard by billions

of twitching bodies

Resonators constantly receiving

the unfinished news of the living

 

Liquid norms undulate above and below

Even within us

We clatter and churn like water contained

Dash after dash after dash

No longer at home

On our home

 

Listen to the humming secret in your body

Beyond the unseen and insular

A mysterious and intimate knowledge waits

A language we were born with

Wordlessly it cycles through our existence

Evaporating off the dry husk of hardship

Returning in fresh downpour time and time again

02/09/2020

Echoes and Edges

Echoes and Edges create sonic worlds inspired by poetry. I had the  opportunity to offer some of my words for them to improvise over. It was a pleasure to hear how the words animated and took on fresh expresssion as a result of their work.

You can listen to their latest response to one of my poems 'On these things and more' -  here





01/09/2020

Chatter Speech Screams

Anthropocene we know you will not pause 
Gears grind gung-ho, macho ideas win 
for now, drowning rains we debate the cause 
We callous conquerors turn from dark skin 

Elemental fury has me shaking 
Land ice is sweating to kill in cold blood 
The seas surge god like, human hearts aching 
Flood after flood after flood after flood 

The angry planet holds some special good 
You can hear it at the mouth of a brook 
Each tree has a tongue speaking for the wood 
The loose jaw of nature an endless book 

We have to realign, do something and weep 
Change is here, we are all called to leap

13/08/2020

The underwater sound of Heavy Hearts

Last night I was visited by Killer Whales

The thing is I never usually dream of other animals

We were on a kind of theme park glacier

The Whales grew increasingly impatient of the hoards

People who interpreted their presence as a sign

evidence that the human project was blessed

The scientist she told me that the Wales want to be acknowledged

That they wait vigorously to pierce our hubris

so they can broadcast their soundscapes of truth

Visceral messages which would melt our hearts to water our brains

And dissolve our muddled certainty

These creatures are restless to repurpose confusion  

They do not play with our fear they seek to channel it

We have gathered tears from their tear ducts for decades

Yet still ignore their grief

 

A groaning churning world preoccupies us

We dally with positive spins

Thin, cosmetic delusions

The longing for a panacea twists us up

corkscrewing our heads deeper into the sand

Swerving past the gritty grains of truth

As we dash around for cinematic moments of hope

And cast ourselves as saviour to the play things.

 

Play things they are not

They want to be met

They have been tapping out a message

Let’s start there

Swimming through the broken ice of reality

Their heavy hearts are more than facts

Their swirling every day is not friendly

The life all around us is kinetic in its disbelief

Insisting on relatedness

Calling to our wild selves to awaken

And commune with the textured anguish of the deep sea

Their urgency will soon be ours

Discomfort crashing in with intuitive waves of knowledge

Intrusive is the truth

That time is up

 

Killer Whales burst in to my consciousness

Wanting to be acknowledged

Some humans have been diligently listening

I woke up from a dream to write this

30/04/2020

On these things and more

When all about you is tornado
And despair
Think on the unrelenting scale of space
And the persistence of a seed
Think on those eyes shut melodic moments
On limbs everywhere responding to rhythm  
Think on those who share what they have
And when more room is made at the table
Count the ways we look beyond ourselves

When all about you is indifference
And cruelty
Dwell on ravished land restored
And moments of play and creation
Dwell on the glimmering touch of rain
And the vulnerability of honest communication
Live in the unfurling flourish of a fern
In that spiral eddy of a lazy river
Then measure the scale of our collective imaginations 

When all about you is shaking
And sorrow
Keep pace with the surging voices for fairness
And the flight path of a swift
Keep pace with roads blocked in the name of peace
And every night spent under an open sky
On taking a stand and being stood by
See the shape of smoke at fireside cooking
Weigh the immediate joy of gratuitous giving

When all about you is yawning
And broken
Meditate on our distance from the stars
And your footprint on the sand
On the expediency of a feather
Hear stillness and singing and laughter
Meditate on first smiles and last smiles
And a gaze returned
On lifting up another's voice, on pause, on listening
Sense the pleasure in logic and the art of intuition

Yes, ruminate on justice, purity and goodness
Know the quiet truth of your changing feelings

Know that people are taking risks for beauty


05/04/2020

A Celebration (BC)


I cherish the imprint of that day at the beach when we gathered together
Before duty solidified and we understood our new reality
When the spread of disease was a tremor on another shore
Still we greeted each other awkwardly, the usual embraces blocked   
Our gaggle of friendship both bonded and stretched by uncertainty
Sense of time stalling, future oblique, for some work already lost

Walking in pairs there is speculation over what more will be lost
The footstep rhythm gives traction, we are drawing strength together
Learning from one another what our response can be to uncertainty
We have met to be held by the landscape, the ground of reality
Outside wide open, our community will not remain blocked
Tracing the glorious flourishes of a slow river to the shore

Shoes off now, warm soles, dirt turns to sand on the shore
Sunlight thrashes over a new horizon, it finds us lost
This global concern so intimate our collective future blocked
Radiating heat and truth the earth is holding us together
So many in danger of falling through the cracks, this is the reality
The fault lines were already there, let there be no uncertainty

Wind whips through my hair, clarity replaces uncertainty
The glance and drag pattern of the sea strokes a glistening shore
Ripples rush off packed sand, it is an iridescent reality
In a totally new way I am in this moment, lost
Our smiles touch and this fresh presence we all share together
Hushed conversation gives way to laughter we are no longer blocked

Somewhere certain elite scramble to profit from disaster, they are blocked
I have a fleeting hope they will change, or listen, or melt into uncertainty
Meanwhile clothes are abandoned, the gentle waves call us together
Swimming is life, we breathe in a cleansing, inhale the shore
Sand falling through time, a groaning system forever lost
Perhaps we are in the birth pains of a new reality

We dance to warm up, born is a playful reality
May this world wide tragedy flush out all that is blocked
Let us struggle and dream for what might be gained as well as lost
Where there is wisdom let it be claimed by submitting to uncertainty
We dash off dunes, rejoice in the sun, give thanks to a cartwheeling shore
Devising games, sharing and innovating this is how we are together

That day we were not lost but present with reality
In lockdown may we be alone together and not remain blocked
Remembering the stability of our shared uncertainty on the pristine shore

18/03/2020

Another Now


Our imagination is in a wild dance with reality
Feral thoughts collide and
populate new territories of the brain
Iodine stains creep across the
stretch of a prostrated mind
Darker tinges leak into one another
Pollute innocence
Create dissonance

I divert the sinister advance with movement
In my body
One foot forward and twist and shake
Rhythm and breath transfer to stillness
Shook silent

Seeking the quiet creases of
this pickled fist of panic
Where all that is good swirls
I pay attention there
Grasping hold of precious fluid
White matter dashes with light
and waits for the dark

Ascending to a higher place
Look outward
Feel this moment
Follow the fissures
to hope
which waits in
Another Now

27/01/2020

Walking in the dark



Walking under street lamps
Light to his inner broil
Abscence of work is toil
No direction

He doubts each breath he takes
Shadows shrink and get bent
The dance of discontent
Passion nowhere

City fox strikes a path
In the past friendships led
For the people he bled
No plans for self

Too much on another
Owl, wolf, tree still mortal
Death a one-way portal
His own waiting

Crescent moon rests obscured
His faith on shifting ground
Still located around
Relationships

Like the lamps and the moon
He must find his own light
An inner hunger bright
Yet still borrowed

Who generates passion?
What star shines on and on?
Love when the heat is gone
Live for each other