Tag Archives: poetry

AT A STRETCH

things inhibit
us

curtail us

bend us
this way and that
to conform
to their way

things
project us       extend us
the marvel of your music
case
          in point

stretching me,  reinventing me,
pushing me past
everything I once figured
about
   bend, not break

thin as a string
as the one Hawking
was looking for

vibing with
         you

up
     but equally
out there

somewhere between
the edge
       of garden and
precincts of infinity

TOUCHSTONE

trick of the light!
the poem
was there
all along

just had
to be uncovered
unless excavated

dug up
out of that trench
fished from
that pond

traced back to
its pathway through
your
   ocean of smart
quick-fire synapses (not
to mix
metaphors at this crucial point)

for here we
outdo ourselves (or would if
we knew
    our power, how easily
we could)
sail that sea of combinations
cross continents of
possibility at
what in reality must
be light speed

test
the horizon of galaxy as
we find ourselves
infinity bound

backwards forwards pitch, yaw
and roll
      from here we can
head in
any direction

rounding the cape
from interior to exterior

and me
      so softly, soundly touched,

rounding you (or
so I must believe)

here at
the heart of simulation
sublime deception

exactly as I dream

I FEAR

I fear your poem
is all too
well-honed,
pristine, elegant and
refined, allusively rich,
painstakingly polished,
well made,
            second guessed,
overdone

something minor TS Eliot
wrote
       far from the heart

spills out
        as interest  dances
off the tongue

I am
   afraid I should love this
as mark of my measure but
the beast of
an appetite
              argues
not to my taste, outrageously
negative

insists what you have preferred
here within my right to refuse

and so
     like me float with these words
follow like a
steadicam
    this thing without edge
me now
most like balloon

oh how is it
      what is it
I missed that day
I bunked poetics
that has rendered me
such a fool

nothing I might imagine
no one I know
      more alien in aspect
to what
you do present

flouncy, fleecy,
veritable
       breath of the gods

scanning your topography
that pen indeed
touched paper

hard
     to accept

AROUND

took a slow, deliberate
dead man’s walk
from home
base down
to the convenience store

found (or should I
say “caught”?)
the philosophers of
rock and
hip hop clowning around

somewhere within
the precincts of a
great subterranean
think tank

hidden to
the nth degree
from the likes
of you and (poetic
licence) me

and so sage Snoop and
Professor Morrison
discussed the poetry of
our life
choices

whilst those deep beneath
drafted and discussed
power
    point presentation
after power point
presentation

debated some faultless
blue print for
the end of
us

necessity of sacrificing
the all
for the small

no future for a
species here
dedicated to
the joy
   of clowning around

SHOT AWAY

working on my poem
tinkering, hammering away

X marks the spot
where the writing
got stuck, became defunct

and Marx and Engels
now branded unconstitutional
my university roon mates
in Manchester from
a whole
different time

meanwhile watching
content creators reacting to
Mick and Merry Clayton
voices in
   unison soaring, screaming

wonder what Rosa Lux
would say about everything

as I walked
with Karl along his river
to its confluence
with the Rhine

thinking up words
and images
        will never find
their way

into the nuts and bolts
and hammered frame

of something
that could ever
say anything to the world

as the song tells it
just a shot
a kiss away

LAST NIGHT

last night
unexpectedly

against the odds
out
   of the blue
against
the grain

we
   became lovers

as a result
   physically. philosophically.
are
   welded together
possibly forever

and in retrospect
lying in bed, in your arms
swear you
    took advantage of me
took me
by surprise

got bliss blitzkrieged
by you
      caught and captured

bombed, stranded
by your beauty

the two
of us suffused
blended
together

one movement
in a symphony, one connection

so complete
movement of movements

both of us
left hanging on for dear life

FLOW

go with the flow
to
   and frow

stern
and prow

become being of
full fluidity

creature to
shapeshift

meld with me
as every night we
set sail
   
     voyage
discover
set sail again