Chaos Matters

The difficult bits

2012-01-28T09:47:00.001Z

Those trenches we dug with our teeth
trying to wander quietly assuming anonymity provides a cloak
but there's a rhythm you evoke by peeling
the air taking bits
and infusing them with
things we rarely see
or even briefly glimpse
in the region of stars
aimed for by deep space missions
despite the emissions
they head for the stars
reasons to be glad
to live in that age
would be so heavy
and large and
to never decay

so we are safe for the moment
living with pigs and rice
better than exposed twice
to the rain falling as it does over famine

the air itself laughs
as the trees perfect
their slow dark arts

and winter is coming

Pattern

2012-01-21T07:47:00.005Z

the crystal bush that shatters
its fruit is myth its bark well learned
each crevice explored with
the closely melted fluid
seeps into connections
wired up constructions
that ache in the open rushing air
the kiss in the corner of the train
the near descent down a flight of stairs
moments that choose your fate
determine future patterns
we call control luck
we believe attraction
is the painting her eyes
make the next playing card
wake up and not recognised
that face worn by her new lover

Wake

2012-01-12T18:59:00.000Z

sixty mutant teeth sunk into the flesh
of the feet of the pounding beast
red its tail shifted in the spectrum
the air was shaking in delight
thrills spill into the deal
the lighting rods attract smirks
and the tears roll off the face of a stone angel
alone in the night
the only one inhabited in the private graveyard
anyone who could afford to visit was already there
the blind man pokes his stick at the letters inscribed
no, that was not his father's grave, it was the next one
it has been several months and he had forgotten to count
he felt it was urgent his father had something to tell him
and when he got there and listened he was told what to do next

the red tail swipes at the air
the thin pain runs along his spine
his legs dangling there all hairy
and up to no good
his arms akimbo relaxed
and ready to kill
to slice you up
and let your blood spill

this is what you thought when you walked into the room

Escalation

2012-01-06T21:46:00.000Z

indirect looks around the latency of a curl
the fast takes on the bough of progress
the little way she gasps and the moment is lost
into a denseness that entices pleasure
a closeness of the rub of a thumb
or the bordering incline of the
arch of back of an advertising rune
a fleeting echo of dance
the eggs that time
dragged from the net
the wheels that run
them out of town they burn

dark smoke clouds up in a drama of noise
the noose that bears truth tightens
three notches away from loose
and we bear witness to pain
inflicted by the state on the
individual for nothing other
than a mere right to his time
as the government slices it up
our contributions become absolute
as society would collapse if one breeder
is made a lever or at least a fierce priest
someone who can hold you down to judgement
here in the deep the sonorous hold on the centre
the woven threads, each a course committed and cunning
each a force, a long shot, a vice

it is bleak in baton rogue despatched towns
where the supermarkets can not attract enough people
who can afford to eat to pay when they went through the tills
they can arrest every forth it becomes an equation

them streets over calculated
we over calibrated their truths
to the inevitable hunger that drove
them to act ten thousand to one
the governments fell like playing card spells
and utopia arose because we understand integrity
we know the value of working as one
we understand the truth of the platoon
the misery of nights alone spent jousting
in the wonderdrome or a world so alien and
crap you the protagonist is covered in spray from
its inevitable aftermath

bathing in electrons
carefully arranged by
governments
to inflict belief
so they can do things
they knew would be unpopular

a docile happy population is better than
this mystery a fevered response to crowd
terror is not shooting at them or spraying them
it could be dialogue between the 1% of the crowd
who can argue as well as your best
or the fake thrones you throw,
the cast aside bits of our monarchy
sliced up rare beef for the aristocracy
more for less seems the inside streak
cast upon thy avarice

Nobody is going to be held aside
questioned for activities you regulated to inflect
down at the local they hold the threats of the harmless
while the rats find sewers and a watery grave

In from the wilderness

2011-12-25T22:31:00.004Z

I imagined she would go on a ski holiday in Switzerland
As glamorous as my imagination could afford
The type in which Italian ladies wear sunglasses
and sip on wounded gin in the shadow of a feather canopy
a slight breeze, wind machine, side lighting provided by the water
the sun lying low and the rum raw and gold drifting by the percussion rattling
the winter afternoon in the islands, no tourists to hide the wonders

the ways in which mothers teach their children to dance and stay warm
the cafés no longer use English and the rats know it is safer co-existing
and the music is based on the myths the people are vexed by
the wave in the air crashes like coffee beans in a grinder
the weird way in which rivers turn only later to decide
suddenly those rules simply no longer applied

I imagined she was having a different dilemma to me
the webs around buildings left by poisonous ivy
the baleful way trees pulse and sag
under the malign influence of that slow drag
the sticky fingers of wind that curl around trees
and then pull them to the ground
grinding away both knees

These feelings I believe are found in the box marked
"do not open box" for inside it are bits of the clocks
ensnared with gold particles so minute and coherent
they slip through space time intact the rare looks
they get, do not give back

Belief ballet

2011-12-24T17:15:00.001Z

Eventful afternoon pulled aside into the warm glow of a concern
momentary weakness blinds lowered eyes wide open
she was to play her part to perfection
rehearsed benefits at today's price
none of this was necessary
but the force of personality
is what betrays us to bleed sweat
the belief in the dreams given back
for half an hour as transactional eyes
guide you with speeches
that certain gaze you mistook for silence
soon you are taken along in that comfortable coach
to the isle of the hidden glen

the alarming aftershock of hunger is greed
keeping it to oneself and trying to win the rewards
of a feathered kindred hungry cold and wet child
wearing fashion armour suits crafted with the finest price tags
there is a way that nature prepared us for this
when they speak of the natural order
of things it is difficult to avoid collusion

it is no easy task to say no

beyond the boundaries
outside the canvas you became used to

whipped sea

2011-12-22T13:22:00.000Z

bear witness
for the future is untold and yet
unfolds like the hands of a flower
flexing creating an image of beauty
the future unfurls as new drops of rain
fall on the desert picture
lying on the deck of a moored boat
isolated beach island with palms
sweeping up the misery that the
wind brought the night before
as the rain swept lands were torn away
knives slashing at the canvas
as the winds ripped the sea into the air
violence riven rain surging muscles
inspired blood droplets and sweeping
blades the sheets and solid spray
the turgid ovens rudderless vortexed
tidal pools screams and doors flying

stories locked in the cupboard
dreams by little pieces of eight
paint my picture

she lies in the sun
haunted by rumour
ancient legends that matched
what was happening to him at that moment
resonances with history

as the blade separates skin
the life that flashes by is finalised
delivered and departed

echoes are detectable but as they
die down all that is left behind
is beauty

Chamiera

2011-12-13T18:55:00.001Z

Enjoying the moment he helped another, a walk in the sunshine
Do not get burnt wear white do not be afraid to dive into the river
Run around in rubber flip flops and get eaten by insects
if you were a bit older that would be you zooming past on a motor
scooter -so then you would wear shoes in the heat
then you would not be in the need to be around family
moving like a bullet describing a groove into the ground
you're so set in your ways you pay your bills before celebrating
you teach the little people to be big people,
even though adults are such experts
as they run from room to room looking for that mislaid comb or the tin opener
as you talk about the day to day fire erupts in all colours
someone bites but its the little shocks you remember the most
and so as each year passes as the hook is screwed into the wood
something to hang your hat against, except that by the time you inherit the hat
the wood will have rotted and the hook long forgotten about
buried under the volumes of days turning
now, unless you have cut your hand, left a scar
something to tell your mates
you end up saying nothing
and that you think is worse
he got fat because he wanted too much
you starved because you spent all your time filing the gaps you saw

Beauty of Time

2011-12-05T22:14:00.001Z

As it passes we regret its progress
drawing as it does the colour from our hair
leaving latticework creases in skin
footprints left by experience

We look with the same eyes
and see the same things as before
yet each day they mean more
inspect each molecule
the regard for food in animal eyes
is the start of all thought

The look the bride gives the best man
as the ring moves from his trembling finger
thanking that momentary function of memory
returning to check his jacket and finding it in the wrong pocket
his brief moment of guilt what if he had forgot
and everything were to unravel
how could he forget it then?

It would worry him until he drank too much
champaigne to recall - that was his intent
to drink more than he should have done
his speech to wish his best friend calm waters
that he had left behind and instead what he said
was brief and meaningful

he released his best friend to another life
he watched him drive away in an old Citroen
"Only just married" scribbled on the rear

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:04:00.001Z

as the leaves clear and the wooded

glen is filled with the laughter of small birds

creatures ready to open their eyes appear

and a warm rain has settled the earth below

the forest sways in the music

of the morning

Chaos and Matter (1993)

2011-11-22T00:00:00.001Z

The shoes fit like gloves

onto the tender hands that caress

midnights fears away

like the wandering feathers

of an untied goose

blissfully

through the ancient

artifacted sites of quarries

like a curdle forming in cream

or a crystal growing

tenderly

the capsule arrives

and takes you to the golden forest

the passing lights of time

that thread a pattern

into wandering moments

past all mutual experience.

togetherness and isolation

the isolation of ideas into categories

the isolation of individuals into types named and defined

identified and pinned down,

your sacred soul

a whisp of light

song and dance tiger

we know your movements and are set on the

hunt with dogs

casting shadows upon the plane forest wall,

the sawdust residues of music

its dust blowing glassy threads

singing in pale light

the orchestra of chimes

the body following behind the wall

its black and brittle eye

watches you sit and think

while you pull levers trying to close the gap

between chaos and matter

4 May 1993 4:25am & 31 May 1993 6:58pm

In it together

2011-11-19T08:38:00.001Z

we bail out the banks
and they put up their rates
so they sell them at cheap
discounts to their wealthy mates

we feel out our way through the
democratic dark
they starve off our services
and close up the parks

the government's harsh measures
for the people that voted
but the few who avoid taxes
their companies are floated

Summer Shock

2011-11-19T05:33:00.001Z

those summers
in the hot pools
we walked up a long hill and over rises and falls
we knew where we were going but not what it would be like
although we had seen it before the expectations were
clean and the decisions were made by adults
we walked and felt like it was going to be too late
so ran a bit and tried to catch up with time
walking in a dream is always a little latent
for the dream may finish and the shock of waking
is like the shock of cold water
struggling up that dusty path
leave Richard behind or he decides at the last minute
that he was doing "something else" teenagers were like that
going off on their own adventures, forbidden tastes we were never
going to know about but it did not matter
for the hot pool emporium the excitement of the city in the sky
the summer projects of an middle aged couple
became the extended hobby of the unseen hand of a wrinkled man
who just could not stop building for his dead children
the summers we spent on that hill feeling singled out
as we took the cover off and slipped our feet into the thermal wonder
the heat was supposed to relax and make you stronger but it only
made you exhausted
feeling let down arriving last and then left out
you wander off alone
as you try to fit in with the others
eventually childhood ends but it is not like a movie
loose ends are left unfinished
the unknowns are not carried with you,
as you learn to keep memory you realize how to do things
what the results are and have to do them again endless days spent
at the coal face of debts and what you have to do
the man who stole the innocence was never gentle
he pulled you out of the memories with the same sudden shock of the real
that makes dreaming metallic and childhood inaccessible
memory is like that
it no longer matters
the evening approaches and the adventures had to finish
but the dream ends suddenly and you find yourself back in
the web of your own making, the decisions you came to to solve
the mystery of the frameworks, the banker smiles as you sign the
documents but that is the last that you see him
and now its just a number that reduces ever so slightly
year on year a you fall into a skin that never stops growing
and your children carry babies who have different aventures

Tales in the Wind

2011-11-13T08:26:00.001Z

physics was never an option
seared into the sky are trails left by travellers
that morning moon hangs there incomplete
exhausted after a night in its proper amour
waking on the other side of the bed
another world so familiar fades from view
the last thing you remember are turning eyes
across the water turning like a galaxy
flashing signals across spaces
and dancing nebulae instruct

the wisdom of draped limbs
over branches defying risk
a speaking cat sings in this autumn madness
conducting an orchestra with bluebells and
agriculture, these swaying spears
sweeping vistas shaped by the breath of air

a majestic canopy overhead
contains mystery and she shuts the door
so that the night stays outside
as he opens an eyelid
memory tricks tales of sorcery
wise words from the village
the season is coming
words carried through the breeze
with great care by sailors in airships

overhead they tend to our fragile
selves mediating feeling
predicting the weather

The Progression of Humanity

2011-11-12T23:32:00.001Z

Out of the trees hanging by its forearms
the orangutang weeps at the prospect of
the sweetest fruit rooting in his agile palms
he sings from branches several octaves too
high for the swooning crowd, the startled
men in bowler hats measuring, always measuring
the ladies in studded shoes with diamante gleaming smiles
never dance for fear of losing lottery precision

That whispering of strangers you hear in the dark
the park by that lake where boats drift for lovers
as they run fingers making streams in their wake
feeding the animals comes naturally to some
weeping at danger brings the evening bells down
from the tower and Quasimodo himself cuts the bonds that
held history together

Dreams about angels always end with falling
the swinging orange hair of his arms
describes the future
the civilisation thinks itself smart
when it is just old Mother nature at work
carving out gentle recipes on the back of
the royal playing cards
the tricks and the trumps
elucidate the precision of power

for Sarah

End of the novel

2011-11-06T11:56:00.002Z

I think then I shall sleep sound

knowing the wind has played its

sombre notes upon my ribs

torn in distance

floating backward in time

nothing you know will dry

eyes flooded by seething weather

uncertainty haunts each note

as the song falls away

each page a weary skin

the silken book covers

are eyelids that meet and

there is nought else to read

Mongoose in the Mudslide

2011-10-30T19:20:00.002Z

Faux pas down the river.

The assault of reason upon confusion.

The mixture of bags of onions and syllabification.

Convince each other there is

mutual belonging and trust

when there is (in fact, simply)

leather and dust.

Mongoose in the mudslide

Bracken broken bones

battles between being and banter

the tension of meeting required by distance and this insinuation

knowing the tension unfolds

you lie on the carpet

your feet behind the corner of the room

your mind displayed stark upon the sunken wall

the epithets grew steel spines

the instructions were tattooed underneath skin

unknown except to the body

these tales of story

unfolding dimensions of the explosion

ripping and re ripping gravity

slicing the silver horses

washing dirty egg skin

and having counted every bone in his leg

decided that walking to Scotland was

abruptly no longer possible

Nature at its finest

2011-10-22T19:22:00.002+01:00

The cruel twist of a single word
that turned an evening back into daytime
when it is the time that the monsters fear most
as the humans pour hot black chocoloate
over pastry and thrust tridents into anchovies

the beat of normality, the things that let us in
swimming living things in the air
competing for their right to fill space and
fill the emptiness within,
the space we create to be filled

Natural trouble

2011-10-20T23:08:00.002+01:00

from the archives - revised and titled

SATURDAY, APRIL 02, 2005

Is there anybody in the park?
When I arrive there late
my fist is grazed
by the raw iron gate
but the catch slips
and I am with the trees
listening to the buzzing
of cicadas humming
Sibelius and the graceful
wing brushing at the air

The bark holds on
a brittle magnified skin
more divine and elegant
than our sloughing cover
our coughing splutter
and gasping breath
that the trees lap up
cleaning the air

originally published without title

Around the Corner, Around the bend

2011-10-20T23:03:00.001+01:00

It floats like fire in the air
seeping its penetrating path
unguided by fortunes or flavour
happy to sing
happy to bring beads to the market
and trade them in for metal rings
the bells on the road
things you believe in
inside and out
the rain and the day
wearing it down
Keep an echo on the harmony
and a tinge on the value
its time to abruptly bend this
and take it around the corner

Passing the test

2011-10-01T07:14:00.004+01:00

Love is when you can hold her and let the tears flow

when speaking does not make you feel like a ghost

Love is not scarred by false schemes or sorrow

until it becomes old and the bones become brittle

days spent in each other fall into tomorrow

words matter less than the regard of her eyes

as she looks nothing else will make the trees lie

Love is graceful but not required, it is sides of a page

is it struggles to turn no desire nor judgement burned

No list you must tick for the completeness of the mix

Love is being able to read the words in the sky

Being able to soar and fall while in flight

No forgiveness or measures or conditions aside

Love is gentle and feared ferocious and alive

When its Time

2011-09-26T23:48:00.001+01:00

When it's time to take a lover

the morning sun changes colour

When it's time to say its over

the lake ripples move and shiver

When it's time to make decisions

avoid cutting deep incisions

when it's time to say goodbye

tears run down wept from each eye

you think it's time when it's not

you think of speaking before it gets hot

you take your time and wait for a sign

but you feel oblique and wake up during sleep

when it's time to take a lover

work so hard to be the other

when its time to be asleep

you fall into drifts of snow

nowhere to keep your words

nowhere to go

Death of the Comic

2011-09-25T02:53:00.002+01:00

words fail to reveal his faith
he stands and screams as the sun
drifts behind rain the wind is a sorry excuse
"what we need is a hurricane to clear the streets of God,
to release the prisoners of reason!"

He was blinded by hallucinations
they saw bugs draw out the blood from trees
singing insanity on the streets silenced denials
unobserved secrets uncovered connections between people

the currency of brilliance and blah blah
understood echoes and belief
dug up from the disjunction of tangibility
embarrassed to watch the disrobing of the minstrel
the disruption of his life
strangled by the hands of poisons

when stars die
it makes sense

he cried but we only laughed
as he fell into indulgence
and explained what he saw
on the way
down

we lost his words
he stopped saying them

we kept laughing
thinking he played dead

Love fails

2011-09-25T02:27:00.000+01:00

As again sleep fails to relieve concern
the waking dream unburdens tradition
and whimsy unmasks love
her faith now seeping
away from thee

planets may return to predictable
paths and the designs
of warriors slashing
and spilling life
on the battlefield
of passion become fashionable

seen from the outside
all that remains within
casts uneven glances

the veins of pity
unearthed
cold metal prisons
the eyes have no light

Words, bitter and failing

2011-09-25T02:17:00.001+01:00

Where words fail feelings fill
Where flying does not bring distance
and silence does not wear down
the barbs given by eyes as the sun rises

in days past
those ancient accusers
failed by fountains of fear
basking in stolen bitterness
and stalked by angels

the twisted and turning words of betrayal
the uncurling lips of treason
skies lost to clouds that are burdened
with vapours and memory

When you speak the truth all precision
is imagined

When you say such words the birds
pelt down as snow braced lessons
in reasonable failure

the dance of hoofs in the dust
laughter by mercenaries
their payments now drunk and sleeping

Their charges slain
and bleeding stopped
as the visitation ends
our hands in the joining
of failure

frightening forgetfulness

age overtakes solemnity
the winds fall silent and
the air remains still

her children speak of
their mother imprisoned
by jewels