Tag Archives: writing

MEASURE

MEASURE

measure this poem
give it substance
give it
a location

somewhere in that
relativized field
of space slash time

slash everything you
have ever read your
brain is filtering through
to bring
you ready to go
find , see yourself
in this quintessential moment

as for me
I will just look back
on the process
that brought
me here
put me on
this page

a ghostly presence
a whispered voice
a teasing
play of
sound and sense

only clue
to you
    I may have
found my way
to drop a
hint
of life,
suggestion of
touch

put
this as
hypothesis
of length and breadth
and depth
and time

somewhat
transparently
before you

COMPENDIUM

COMPENDIUM

sorry to
bother you

drag you away
from what
you are doing

to tell you
to keep writing
writing writing
don’t let
them get to you

give me, a, compendium
show, me your heartfelt
give me
your best work

let them read
what you have written

watch their sky
turn turtle
power
of your
words

got them playing hopscotch
through textual minefields

so much horsepower
surging through this compendium

write what you want. every style and font
words long
as a
brontosaurus
tiny
as a flea

write
   beautifully
write insanely
show
contempt
show respect and
true endearment 

and, if they try to stop
you flex muscle
get your head down
flex all that muscle

write twice as hard
thrice as crazy
five
times as determined
expend energy
blow a gasket or
two

So
let them get
the message
my message to you
being
     the thing we
got to keep shouting

KEEP WRITING
KEEP WRITING

write
to the death
my darlings
don’t let them
suppose, impose, repose,
ever presume to
presuppose
throw
    the whole book to
get at you

yes, I think you’ve got it,
can hear it
bouncing  around in your
head: keep writing writing writing

no compronises
the more they try
to stop you
the more you need
to bunker down
with paper
and pen
power through, say
what
you have to say

do
what you have to do








THOMAS

THOMAS

I came across a
wandering consciousness
attenuated, stretched thin,

tight as
a bowstring
wanting to sing like
an angel but
with a mouth full
of hourglass sand

and him in the desert
burned dry by drought
and yet
by spiritual fire

a pilgrim, seer to
the core
shaman even
yet dressed so dapper
as if in tiny thrall
to the demand of the pristine

these figures of balance
first the thunder
(and who
can do it better?)
and then
the softness, whispers,
soft rasping like
abrasive snakeskin
rattler
from that
ever expanding continent
where you
were born

which you duly renounced
somewhat on faith, also
perhaps a degree
of calculation

and love
you for it
how could they fail to

and so we met
you
at that moment
though already
the greatest of us all
one I knew
only most
vaguely

finding you here
walking
somewhere, if not
entirely linear
clear
in destination

shadowed by
something ghostly yet
incredibly present

and me
there amazed, so in need
of this inspiration, this
conjunction

only now
at last
able to see what
it all did mean.

ENOUGH

ENOUGH

managed to scrape together
enough time
to write this poem
which none
of you are going to read
I could not be more convinced

the days of carving, shaping,
wordsmithing lines
together

seem so
long gone, irrelevant now,

sweet for the stuff
they wrote in
a bygone age
Medieval, Renaissance,
Romantic, Victorian
and
mind-
bending modern
or shamelessly
meta and (self) reflexive
decidedly
post-modernist

HATCHLING

HATCHLING

by no means
profligate
or ultra fertile

I have fathered
(just to offer
a conservative
estimate)
around twenty
thousand children

or perhaps, being
somewhat elapid
in my nature,
I should call
them hatchlings,
think of them
as true
to type, reflections
of my serpentine, often
venomous demeanor

not brown
like the Aussie
brown snake
nor black, death-velvet
mouthed like
our own
dear black mamba

but up with this gang
whose wisdom so far
exceeds what
I can barely
achieve posing
as human

twenty thousand offspring
(and maybe some change)
so don’t
ask their names,
their achievements
and titles
where and how
documented, perhaps
preserved
no hatchling of mine
has any respect
for all yout acadenic hypocrisies
and concerted double dealings

trying to live
their lives, make their way
slither into
your consciouness, root out
rodents and such like

many
killed on the spot
victims of crude misunderstanding

so many
already disappeared, barely
seeing light of day

the odd one, perhaps
even this one (for what
ever rational, logical,
critical, aesthetic reason),
destined to remain

DUCKED EVERY MODULE

DUCKED EVERY MODULE

“The mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, and from without.”
 Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of Poetry (1821)

ducked every module
on Romanticism
during my
English degrees

and yet maybe
that is exactly where
my antipathy
to the movement
must have
originated from

kind of imagining myself
a poet, sort of poet, or
something not
too far from that
as I wandered down
towards the River Tame
(tributary of
the far more
famous Mersey)
stretched out
to the East and West
and South
the Pennine Moors
Bronte territory,
roughest, toughest, most desolate
part of England

still
  a ways to walk
to get there

and me for now
meandering riverward

slipping through my neighbour
crazy Gordon Shelley’s
immaculately
      mown garden

passing the tiny glade
of wild narcissi
     (dangerous lure, that
purity)

and down into the hollow
graveyard for one single
completely
    broken piano

its innards spilled, everywhere
rods and hammers
and scattered keys

leit motif
   for someone’s life
if not mine entirely

try to duck things
and they still
get to
nail you
one way or’t tother

RHYME MINE

RHYME MINE

turned over a stone
was expecting
a scorpion
found
a solipsist

expecting
a scorpion not
my totem
or taboo

in which case
should have
thought fish cusp
with ram
   and asp
would have been apt

but as sepent kind go
I do like to flatter
myself imagining
I must, could
be a mamba

a syllabic or alliterative few
metres of snake

claiming you as mine
as soon as cobra eyed you

swept
you into my coils

bade you, forced you
to teach me
couplets
ever-steady rhyme

turned over a stone
not expecting
to make
acquaintance

DEMOLITION

DEMOLITION

am
playing the game
DEMOLITION

not to be confused
with the poem
or the sometime-
to-be-finished
novel
of the same name

have so far today
clocked up
millions of kills, soon
to break
my own record

expect
globally, out
in the real world,
people lining up
to get
inserted into
the game
assume the identity
of a key character

as for me, however,
being just
    your run-of-the-mill
addict

could not go
so far, invest all that, make
that level of commitment

live
total fight or flight
from
   shockwave
to shockwave

beyond my mental
emotional capacity
to play
   dusk to dawn, dawn
to dusk
(possibly for all eternity)
from a first
person perspective

right now right now
as we hit
      the last stanza

I am somewhere in my mind
playing the DEMOLITION game