wisteria
Linux etc. WISTERIA
Wisteria is a collection of poems written within the space
of one year in four different places: Littlebourne ( England ),
Murren, Interlaken, and Seelisberg ( Switzerland ).
Wisteria is an expression of what was for me,
the greatest and most rewarding change in my life.
Thank you
Brian Robb and Humphrey ( my brother ) for your help and consideration.
CONTENTS.
1) Wisteria.
2) When peace comes.
3) Psychotherapy.
4) Pub craw
20) Spring.
21) On going to her door.
22) Dhyana.
23) Room.
24) Give me a light.
25) Street life I.
26) Street life II.
27) Mother.
28) Wind.
29) Tree.
3o) As Nora.
31) Wind II.
32) Threads of truth ( or declarations of a serpent ).
33) He.
34) The painful birth of a reluctant word.
35) Without a backward thought.
36) Silence.
37) In memory of Ithica Argos ( scholar ).
38) Feeling.
39) Less than half an hour.
40) Jazz.
41) Finished poem.
42) Trees in splendour.
43) Through the open window.
44) Two planes and a hole.
45) The divine nectar of the fullness of life manifests itself.
46) Dawn.
47) Birthday party.
48) When the love of God shines down.
49) Ten past eleven.
Written in Littlebourne.
WISTERIA
The leaves outside my window hang and flutter
like green coins on a waterfall,
green and luxuriant discs
dogtags and jewellery finely pointed.
Pointing the way back to the mother earth
from where they are first weaned.
A gust gives a vigorous shake
a spasm through the tendons,
but they remain.
For all their lives they hang and twitch shudder and shake,
giant mobiles on stalks only upside down
dancing to the sibilance of its own fandango.
While the voluminous violet wisteria blooms stand
Christmas tree like
aloof.
It could be a swine at times,
dashing the light from my life, but not for long.
The time came
and I armed like a samurai cleaved a path
through its virgin tender green growth
and now for my pains I've a bleak window full of glaring light
friendless and relentless
discolouring my books and dehydrating my pens.
This was my first attempt at writing a poem and I was very
pleased that it came to me so easily and effortlessly.
WHEN PEACE COMES
Peace comes when the mind is still.
The ravages of tormenting thought hurl and banter
diverting attention to well meant confusion
A sentence, a sound, a colour, a call,
lolling on a bus stop sign post laughing at the serious
horror of the unsaid things we lock away.
Peace comes when the mind is still.
Moonglow and afrighted orbs wheel and dance a jigger and snigger.
Zoological bullshit and meaningless muck,
tramlines and boatsails clatter and rustle causing a hollow echo scaring my wits.
The diphanous sensation falls and the quietness calls
" Know thyself .... " fades and EIectra's bloody face appears
haloed in gold bands of golden bondage.
Peace comes when the mind is still.
Random effervesence breaks down as thematic order performs a correlation.
Convoluted barriers itch and tickle
while quantum qualities coordinate correction..
Brahma steps easily from mind to matter
from earth to shore from stem to seed.
So bliss pervades the ragged remnants of long lost God forsaken beings
and misplaced memories.
The dance of life turns Latin to Greek into jazz moderne
at the sound of silent percussion
calling a rhythm.
Peace comes when the mind is still.
Stop ...
And flowers are handed round to every one
The flower is a sign that shows the way
through the darkening gloom and the vales of tears
and the quickening impasse of endless fears.
The white cloaked bard with staff in hand will herald the course
and change the events for better things to come.
This poem was a reflection of how I was feeling after the spiritual
experience that came to me after learning Transcendental Meditation.
PSYCHOTHERAPY
In Jungian terms I strove to find
the proper phrase to form a rhyme,
but divergent opinions and misconstrued obsessions
forced my hand and caused it thus:
She loved it while the wild eyed and eager boys
were sitting upon her pinning her arms to the ground.
Her excited eyes and her fiery golden hair told me all
as she struggled playfully enjoying the game.
Now she's alone,
no boys in sight,
her rich golden hair shouts her inner feelings but no one hears.
They've all gone home.
He wouldn't have been much help either
for all his jargon. Loneliness is loneliness
whether it's conscious or sub conscious the dilemma's still there.
PUB CRAWL
Evening falls and mist curls up off the marsh,
as would be revellers shut their doors
and wives behind and trek off
to the spangled pubs.
Time is caught in a whirl by the scruff
of its neck, given a shake, wound up
and set down again.
Opinions become resolute as worker
shirker and apprentice trot off to
their nearest.
Jive and sass falls and flows.
their meaningful words deteriorate caught up
in liquid jargon slang and hang them all.
The philosophy of life and putting to rights
comes thick and fast, tripping off the hundred
lips of earnest faces.
EMERGENCE
You don't know what you're worth,
you just don't know what you're worth
until you've shaken down your " doubtful sugar of verities ",
seen the seeds and lovingly brought them out
from the black ignorance of your physical self.
You don't know how much your worth,
you just don't know, 'till you've seen the sparkle
in a wise mans eyes that tell you I know and it can be done –
Until you've held the heart of mankind within your own,
Until you can say
At last
I'm home.
INCIDENT IN A DREAMHOME
He looked at her and conflict flared.
With ball and chain with steel and web
a raging battle 'sued. A flashing bolt
from cranium bit to densely packaged
vein. She countered with a snarl from
eyebrow more furious than a bed of thorns,
a Stop this if you can and flew without
remorse. The electric air was smokey charged
with blue and tattered rags of memories and
best held hopes were hung about while clangour
fell on toothless stumps of twisted charcoal trees.
These are yours my dear He hissed
and tossed a fold of photographs, just to judge
her face.
She, calm by now though numb within, a wreckage shell
or stone. Felt lovingly
and held the package fast.
She felt I've seen this all before,
it comes and goes in every home on every silver screen
I've read it with an unbelieving eye in all
the glossy mags.
And here am I a hollow reed watching my secret hopes
all being torn to rags, but it's all quite sordid really
it isn't gay or fun.
There's no one to applaud or cry except this
demon husband licking his lips as if they were my bones .
Wide eyed terror the stricken game is crushed.
Her once free and lively energies all spent.
His eager face flushed with Mans pure greed,
granite visage, hewn rocklike spectre gaping at his work.
I did this. I made her thus, I squashed her like a Jew.
I sqeezed out every ounce of me that she kept locked within .
His blue temples bulged
his muscles squirmed and his nails dug right through.
He waited,
silence.
He turned her over in his hand like a dead bird
fearful in case he'd gone too far.
She, mute,
averting his eyes
summoned her strength
and like a shakey colt walked out.
While he, in disbelief,
never saw her again.
This came to me after listening to Roxy Music's 'In Every Dreamhome
There Is a Heartache'
INSPIRATION
It's happening again just like I hoped it would,
And they're quite right really It's just like a Demon or a Fox of inspiration
lurking deep and glowing darkly within.
It isn't really a part of me, at least the me I thought I knew,
It's a deeper purer crystal thing, A bit of Self trying to come through.
It's a chirping bird,
a chemical substance catching and sparking off life
in the timeless clay bottom of an ocean bed.
I've the ability to move walls or paint on them,
Erect spires or hurl them down without moving my finger.
Christ, am I frightened? I dont really know,
I just know it's meant to be and it is, it is.
Others don't complain so why should I ?
But still I'm amazed,
I'm looking through a glass at an ordnance map
... My road is here, my road is there and there and there
I'm not frightened, I'm amazed.
I see the lines, the contours of red and green,
thin lines etched shaping the fold of hill and hump,
scoring the road, the path, the trampled lane,
the cries cross railway line, the stile, the dale,
the unmarked way.
My eyes water like pools from the intensity of concentration demanded.
But I sit back,
refocus, take a sigh of relief and repeat inwardly
How lucky I am I don't need maps or a compass,
I just get up and go.
Whistling down winding farmyard lanes,
an impregnable bubble, a boundless explorer,
a humming bird gorging myself with the fullness of the riches
of all that is free and lovely.
CYCLAMEN
Cyclamen have long tubular brown stems
with the delicate she petals of the flowers
blown upwards like can can girls pink frothy petticoats.
Inside out. In swirls.
The pink miasma leaves the blooms and glows about halo like,
it's more than just confined to the edges of its petals,
it's infused in the air of the room.
The flowers have stopped dancing
caught, camera caught. Suspended in time with the music stopped
and the laughter and gaiety silenced, many years ago.
All that is left is the scent of leather dancing shoes,
chorus girls hair and absinthe.
UNTITLED
Don't run your fingers through my hair
it's the only stuff I've got, your nails are
much too sharp and hurt
and I'm not like others, who like that kind of thing.
My hair's thin and falling out, so don't make matters worse
and dandruff doesn't impress the girls I'm told
So don't.
Don't touch me as if you were sorry, a tentative twig reaching out.
Be firm, I'm almost stone and much waking is needed
to make me turn and realise that it's really you.
Don't look at me like a liar or a masters dog,
your brown eyes are bold so talk with them to me assertively,
with authority,
I'll not feel weak for it.
In fact I need it and it comforts me.
PHONE ME PHILIPPA
Phone me Philippa, phone me and say,
What colour is the sky tonight?
Let's go out and see .
We'll walk along the deserted beach and watch the sea catch fire,
walking up to the edge to jump over the waves
as they roll in up to our rolled up trousers and
scream when they catch us unaware.
We'll leapfrog over the groynes and laugh at the silly things most lovers do.
Then the time will come and you'll turn to me and say,
– I've got to go now and this all didn't really happen, forget it all,
it could never be. Mine is the life of the mystic,
but yours is to be gay and free,
go with boys and look elegant in public places.
Phone me Philippa, phone me and say,
I'm bored and longing to talk to someone I know
I can trust.
So we'll talk and play scrabble by the
old log fire and count the glow worms that burn
in the cinders and watch the smoke drift listlessly
up and up and up.
The sweet safe smell of the old logs burning I will
always remember, the library books shimmering
and you long legged before me.
Phone me Philippa, phone me and say
– Let's go out in the rain –.
DRAGON
I have a dragon emblazoned in gold
upon a tin lid.
A broken tin lid.
Fiery writhing dragon curling about
devilishly amidst his own glittering
flames.
A forest dragon wrestling in the foliage.
Mouth agape,
Moustache flowing, whipping like a strap.
Chinese dragon, wild, untameable, locked in
the metal of the guilded tin lid.
Flailing tendrils and savage fang screaming
out fire in the pitch dark night.
Scaley dragon, do you exist ?
Are you real monster or do you only adorn the cover of my little tin lid ?
Does your fire really burn the air to cinders ?
Can you devour men and trees with one puff
and can your fangs easily disembowel a pig
or have you got lost up the rugged stairway of evolution ?
Your long large reptilian skull was likely crushed into shards
in a tunnelled timeless cave, never again to quicken the hearts of those
who mortally feared you.
I gaze rapturously at the horrific power engraved on my golden tin lid,
instantly hurled, floating back aeons to your time.
APOCALYPSE
Christ looked around to see how the Churchmen had fared
He did not like what he saw.
He crushed the holy spires and temples in his palms.
But we've kept the faith in its purity.
The wide eyed Churchmen screamed.
And He stuffed its waste down their pious throats.
Christ looked at the wise books
and wept
while he burnt them,
thinking,
– The time has come to see how wisely Man
has used his talents.
The time has come to see how carefully
he has sewn his seed.
The time has come to see whether his existence
is worth continuing –.
And Christ looked for signs of orderliness
within the maelstrom of despair Man
called life.
He studied his calculus,
He threw his dice,
He measured with infinitesimal precision
and decided
Next time I'll start without religion
CRIPPEN
I've seen him strutting by, that scissor sharp insurance man,
parasol in hand and a fixed determined air
stepping out.
With every step
a harsh down payment of money earnt.
SUMMER 76
The long hot hazy summer weather's gone,
The languid, lazy lolling weather.
The blackberry picking
air, the tea on the lawn, the hammock swinging
and the playing in the golden corn.
Our ice cold drinks
and sea side salads have now all
given way to hot pot pies, Thai chicken curry
and other red hot things.
This sultry atmosphere, the droning bees and oppressive scent of pollen flowers.
Long stately hollyhocks, hiding girls in gingham frocks.
The bare sun bats down and bakes the land for miles around.
Then in the afternoon it's down in the Daimler to Mcfarlanes for foliage shrubs,
piled in the boot and on the back seats,
the rich scent was hollow sweet and heady as we glided round the winding roads.
Call to God and hope this hellish hot weather will continue,
praying quietly as I mowed the lawns, clipped the beds,
moved about and divined the mysteries of this old world garden.
Yes the fig tree stands for ... While the artichoke would be so and so.
Ah yes. And that seedling peony tree I planted, I must keep an eye on that.
LOTUS SEED
Here I am, locked, clapped and bolted
in this brittle seed.
Lying, waiting, latent force of vital
growth.
Locked and hammered into an anvil black,
granite veined seed.
Seed of life, seed of Nature.
Lying.
Waiting.
Concentrated power of creative necessity.
All my functions that I will possibly have
cause to use
are set and compacted into hard flesh,
dormant flesh, within me, waiting.
Waiting.
Waiting for just a single luminous
bud of clear white water.
Who would believe that such a
dehydrated withered pip or husk like I
could break forth with crashing life
and shower the air about with
the deafening noise of natures colour ?
Here I have lain for three thousand
years in this stone pyramid grave,
reverently placed in a golden beaker
at the foot of my countrys' Pharoah.
Lying.
Waiting.
Waiting for the time, the time when water comes,
the water that I will thirstily infuse into
my system, my dormant vital system,
Water, my life blood, my sustenance.
My Being.
MURREN.
Brother sister can you hear me ?
Looking through my half closed eyelids.
My ticket's used and my pockets empty,
I sent my telegram for haste,
to call
and let the stars and moon know that
I am here.
My socks are wet and my hair's on end,
I had to steal a comfortable chair
to make my head feel soft and to let
my thoughts feel more
at home.
MICHAEL AND KIRSTEN.
She shook her thick brown rusty hair
and with full clean face and open intent
thought, as she looked at the handsome
sunburnt Australian boy.
I like the look of him,
I like his well groomed hair,
I like his supple body
and if I look long enough he too will see
that he likes me,
he likes my thick red hair
and my full and wholesome graceful body.
He will like me till he aches
and his muscles plead inside, just as
I do for him.
He will have no resistance, just as I have none for him.
He will not be able to
hold his eyes from me.
Just as I cannot from him.
Our eyes lock together back to back,
caressing the other with our palms and heels
together,
as our salty tears fall and stream on
our skin,
together -.
I break the reverie and put my glass of tea
down on the hard round table.
Having eaten too much I feel obscenely full.
Interlaken
MY LAND
The hills of my blanket scene appeal
and soothe the eye as colours course
and bath the mind, this alpine land is
mine all mine.
The echo of the whipped white snowline
shakes the ponderous image and life
takes a grip.
A foothold in the land means a vibrant
existence for years to come.
The very moss that clings to a shattered rock
can gasp and breathe full life spirit.
this Spirit is all of lifes desire, an omnipotent
veil throughout what is and all that ever
will be.
My land this is.
It's part of me and when I see all this as
one with me I know I've found my
home.
A LACK OF INSPIRATION
A lack of inspiration ? Call up the muse,
bring on the demon, let him have his play.
Burst a few magnesium flares, excite the limbs.
It's not through a lack of ideas, it's just what
has colour and what doesn't. Drop some bunting
from the rooves, a ticker tape effulgence
is what is really needed.
Hurl a few atoms about and dice with the cosmos
at will. Eventually the thread will break and
the dams will flow. But don't be recalcitrant
or apathetic or the storm will catch you unawares
and toss you off your feet.
Wear your eye thus and catch the meaning so
as it gallops at you full face,
like a nightmare rider from the sky
dappled with the fire of the sickle
burning moon.
Open up the drawers shake out the dust,
give your head a good airing, how have
you stood is so long ? Breathless musty
and dark. You should be ashamed.
SPRING
The clouds are clearing.
The weather in retrospect throws off her
sluggish shroud.
Dons a crown and collar,
clears the affidavits and notarisations
with an elbow. Settles down to work
renewed.
Exegis of power, blots down the lazy turf
tuft by bladed tuft.
The sun unsheathe her blade and
scythes the dead and dying from the dormant
plain with an energetic sweep.
The journey was hard and cold on our cheeks
but we made it, blustering through like
young lambs quick and wet from a
mothers smooth tongue.
ON GOING TO HER DOOR
On going to her door my hand froze
upon the lock.
On putting my head to hers my heart
seized on the beat.
On the shelf of heart and spice
her trinkets and perfumes.
On the hand the iron will of fleshes
time for play.
On the air a scented boon of damask
husk and flower.
On her tongue the rolling low long
growl scattering my resolution
to the corners of the room.
On her eye a continent of heavy
tropical fullness drawing all to
her sands for more and more.
On that reflection is cast back to taste
what and how it was and shrug the slow disintegration
as angels take it piece by piece
to cast it to the sleeping fishermen in the hot somberoed air.
Seelisberg.
DHYANA
The Aztec carpet slides and shudders across the floor,
upturning my image of continuity.
Its reds blues and greens stick jigsaw patterned in the ether.
The room contracts and expands breathlike
causing the walls to flutter like coloured birds,
with a rythm at my back, talking, fluting.
Softly now. loudly now.
Quivering.
Hissing.
Bamboo and sand, palm and garlands.
A gourd. A rattle.
Now a plaintive call from the forest
singing of life, of love, of now.
Happy and soft.
I'm flying now,
rising and falling with two leaves printed to my palms,
my hair is flattened and my cheeks glow.
The world is set out below in a celestial pattern of green brown and misty blue.
High, up over the trees, gliding with the crow,
as I wheel and dive on the warm currents of velvet air
pushing, pushing me, up and up.
ROOM.
The four warm walls are gluey cream, patchey here and there,
but still quite warm.
Enfolding me from the riotous crisscross noise outside
which sometimes pushes through the slit in my window,
There.
The banging bell with its cracked wooden message
calling the holy to come and pray,
or if not Then just to remember who they are,
what they are and who made them thus,
The twittering bird running like a sweet river
surpasses all that my imagination can hold.
The room again and my eye rests on the tartan red green rug
that I've lived with since I was so young,
a bit frayed and getting thin
but its life is still wholesome and meaningful.
Guru Dev frowns down as always, with unbelievable power
through the yellow cloud of buttercups in a glass
Buttercups that I picked in a daze, a bit self consciously,
Images and thoughts bounce like balls
as the eye comes to light on every object,
those soft warm slippers,
that letter ( I'm not quite settled about that one,
I put it down after reading it, feeling; I'd heard <
it all before ). Those books of mine,
poetry, novels. Some lying near to hand,spread out at a special page.
GIVE ME LIGHT
Give me light O blessed lords, give me the eyes
to see.
Give me the strength to walk upright and do
what you command.
Let me step on your threshold and feel your
warmth.
Let me come inside and feel your heat.
O let me know where to put my feet,
O let me know which step to take.
STREET LIFE I
Elongated protaplasm night life. Hot
tarmac street. Lamp lit street. Seething
night life. Gold glow. Kentucky paved
streets. Synthetic building. Special smells.
Harbour side. prow and bows.
Sizing up.
Checkin' it out. Cigarettes. coffee. sweaty tables.
Martini signs.
Warm blondes. Tight skirts.
Hooped sweaters. loose. Defiant. Willing. Soft.
Watching with absorbed eyes.
Cranes stitched black the harbour skyline.
Hawser crossed newly sewn scar.
Frying tonite. Lucky chance. Golden wheel.
Come in and get laid.
Real girls. Loves old sweet song goes on and on and
so does the greenback.
Round and round.
Johnnie B. Goode. Indian summer nights.
A man dressed in a blanket and a feather with an
immovable silence printed on his face paces the sidewalk.
The immortal Edison light bulb searches out and banishes
the dark alleys, corners, backyards, dusty tenements.
Parking lots.
Drive ins flash colours to a hundred silent cars that
sit throbbing. Watching.
Newman.
Reynolds.
Poitier.
Striesand.
Gods to whom we turn off our car lights and sit
in silence.
Bars. Rinky tinky juke box music. Beers. Cools.
Budweiser. Colts. Soda pop and the fat bellied sassy
barman cleans a spot off the counter as you ease yourself
onto a stool.
STREET LIFE II
Oblong shafts of light. Streak. Slice. Penetrate dark
Cars flash and hoot. Scream past in a flurry of metal.
Stars pierce the sky. Velvet. Soft sky. Galaxies survey the scene.
The steel pavement rings like a bell.
Feet Clatter, Ice cold wind lifts up old forgotten newspapers
Flacking them against shop fronts.
This is a time we are most alert. Hunters.
With every cord of sense picked up.
Walk with penetrating purpose and immoveable
determination.
A look that would make a cop baulk.
And think That guy knows where he's going, you
know what I mean. It's written on his face .
The city cries its own loud inherited song,
vibrating into the night. A raging hyena.
Hackles roughed up. Restless,
waiting with primitive patience, pulling like a devil on a leash.
MOTHER.
My mothers milk was still on my lips
and I learnt to cry and talk,
but I wouldn't know the meaning of this
as I struggled on my hands and knees
pushing back the horizons of my experience
under the safe closeness of my mothers eye.
She, to me then was tall and handsome.
A lady, someone you would't expect
to have reared a family.
Her immaculate suits and dresses
her red lips and thick brown hair
were filled with an authoratative beauty.
She would push the pram up the long hill
home with my brother and myself sitting in
it until she told us it was too heavy and
one of us would have to get Out and walk
holding on to the side.
WIND.
The wind howls and hollers round the
house creaking the windows,
flapping the shutters.
Out on the lawn the Lime trees bend
and sway under the hand of the
invisible wind.
But the trees are supple and bend softly
with the anger, twisting first this way
then that unharmed.
This is their defence, they bend and sway
like grass,
How I wish I could be tall and green and
pliant like a beautiful tree,
twisting this way then that. An immaculate tree
with silky leaves as soft as cheeks.
But I am stiff and rigid, I do not bend when
I should. I am hard and brittle and this
is my weakness. Being hard and strong
I am weak and ready to topple and fall
into the bottomless river of green grass
that rushes rippling about my feet.
To sway and flow would give me safety
from the heady torrent that crashes like a
city upon my senses stinging my nose, my ears,
my eyes and my fingers.
I retract and withdraw from these harsh feelings.
This is my weakness and timidity. I shake
and tremble at loud noises like a soft green leaf.
TREE.
The soft leafy tree sways,
its green leaves shake profusely
flashing green and yellow greenness,
its tender fleshy leaves heave
and breathe.
Life flows through its green
its pale green leaves, turning the
yellow light into deep emerald
green.
Each collective leaf describes a
huge pulsating greenness which breathes
and glows a suffuse hazy green.
A deep and irridescent breathtaking
green which you've never seen anywhere
except in a tree.
AS NORA.
Chinese lady. Butterfly at
your throat. thick painted red lips
on an egg white face.
Bare shoulders, a brazen embrace.
Deep black eyes, flashing magnets
here and there.
A shoguns lover on a definite painted
black bold strike sheet of bamboo leaves,
waterfalls and
mountain scenes.
Your cultural backdrop of silk screen
privacy.
Your dolls house.
WIND II.
The wind keeps blowing and whacking,
threatening to do some damage,
maybe uproot the countryside
or turn the land into a dusty desert.
It might flatten the mountains and make
a blanket of Mount Shiva.
The wind doesn't start right here,
it comes from Italy or Spain, so it's said.
And rushing across the borders like
a pack of clowns it kicks around
this peaceful delicate land of
New age Inaugurations where the
angels and the Gods are being
born again today.
It'll blow itself out like a tired and
drunken man, an over excited child,
and fall into oblivious sleep with one
last, wasted puff of breath, to empty its
heavy lungs and cheeks.
THREADS OF TRUTH
( OR DECLARATIONS OF A SERPENT ).
You thought your arms and legs and rings
would protect you from the seething eyes,
A violet scarf about your head
would claim an emminence that was not yours
A painted nail a silver clasp ( little intricacies
of detail that we would not notice
unless a list was made ) would give
authority to your words as they
tinkled off your pretty lips
But how you wore your straw.
determines whether you rise of fall
to that sewage level you detested most
and would not bat an eye to put your gentle foot upon its neck.
So when your skirt fell about your feet
or your will resided to a warm and
lasting nothingness and feeling his lips
upon your neck:
It was for a very different reason,
it was something else again,
an action you could not quite relate, but
sure and hotly convinced
that it was
Not what everyone else thought it was.
HE.
Dive suryasahusrasya
bhvad yugapad utthita
yadi blah asdrsi sa syad
bhasas tasya mahatmanah.
( 12 - 11 ) Gita.
With burning streaming eyes
my body turned a deep metallic gold
and calling out His name, the name
of He, resounded about the world
which I could clearly see
and feel and taste and touch
as my body slowly expanded to the
infinite size of He.
He, to whom I called with tears
in my eyes and a colossal
bliss throughout my
new born Being.
I was. I was.
And the planets and galaxies
responding, confirmed that
this was true.
A golden arc of purple expansion
slid through me like a
sheet as time roared by,
making time a slightly
inconsequential thing,
while the unbelieveable immensity
of the sheer effulgence of
His prescence, burning sun upon sun,
turning gold
into a shimmering white
hot ever burning clear bright
radiance.
Gold upon gold.
This untenable almighty strength
which was He
propelled me nearer
toward its raging core.
Closer and closer
I rushed with its raging
wind behind me.
My body was seared to a quick
ashen nothingness
and 'I' stepped out feeling
clean and whole
as I came toward this
almighty conflagration,
close until the fire and I
were one
merged
insolubly.
THE PAINFUL BIRTH OF A RELUCTANT WORD
Slide on and wriggle across the paper
you tricky grease scaled pregnant
little word.
Slip off the oily nib of my pen and
sprawl, scatter, tumble like a
broken bird.
Dance and jerk your fettled grey
green body, shiver like a bursting
running fire.
I know just what shape I want
you to take,but your rubber jelly
coated arms and legs thrash and beat
an epileptic madness with anger
pouring out Of every pore.
Your screaming pains my heart and
I must turn my head aside as I
inscribe you this or that.
Everlastingly.
Written.
There. I've done it, the job is
done and I now feel quite weak
and of course
Guilty.
WITHOUT A BACKWARD THOUGHT.
Without a backward thought
I'd plant my foot into the seat
and tickle the flashing skies of
my golden memory, for time
is a sluggish bearded breed
of goat. And soaring headed,
casting out the winds of my
fathers, a e tiff headed wood
locked process in the brain,
bear a soul, a burning coin
up to a cloud.
Without an inward eye
all stuttering would seize
a stop, placing angry palms
deafeningly down to say
No more . All matchlocked
tin time cross polished
infatuation, flimsy sheep eyed
willy nilly love thrown torn
upon a hard backed bone of sea whitened
sands.
Without a down beaten sound
would a fern leaf loined savage
shout down
this outraced breath breaking,
sheet flapped dirge of coloured
countries to my sun.
Washed through the oblong river
green wilderness where a sage scented
leather boiled river man, thigh soaked
up to his cracking cloak,
shall call me silent from a thin
red tongue.
SILENCE.
Silence rushes in upon my ears
and makes me sit or walk or stand,
deftly shapes all actions
into well rounded achievements.
Silence creates the towering
chestnut tree that hovers
and sprays a waterfall of
leaf and colour.
Silence gives birth to the single
word that rules a nation or
gives hope and direction
to the hungry, cold and poor.
Silence bubbles within silence
to give meaning to our every
thought, dancing on its way
through eternal bliss
to more and more.
Silence. Silence, Silence
is full of pure unbounded
latent energy, fat and glowing
just ready to burst forth in
an explosion of coloured
confetti.
IN MEMORY OF ITHICA ARGOS ( SCHOLAR ).
Ithica Argos platonic platitudes
perused by bankers of the
Venetian life
divine the career of all young
scholars who, having enough
of the cellular cortex to veneer
extra mural palatine boudoirs
but not enough of the hard
corporeal silver coloured collateral
commercial coinage, would otherwise
fall, platitudes and all
to tubercular ramblings amidst the
vernacular shylockings of rotund
Marseilles bar club owners.
Irretrievably lost to the dead
flesh embrace of a spawning
silver fish slither woman
in a coagulate velveteen seersuck
chemise, bulging in fetid
foetal condition.
Thus caught, ostensibly
in the Marseilles nausea
of birth, rebirth germination
and death.
The scholar breathes, defiles the
air with the posthumous dedication,
a publication, avowaI
and high appreciation
to Florentias school
of the first epoch
of the blue demise.
To Ithica Argos platonic platidudes
we fall, genuflect ingratiate
the scholar deify.
And hurriedly celebrate
inaugural reposession of chimeral
rightful throne as critics pay
homage and austerity for criminal
misrepresentation of the misunderstood
artist, now in sweet angelic repose
in Christs ethereal chamber.
FEELING.
Feeling my way around my room my
hand rested on the smooth hard roundness
of a bentwood whicker chair;
The cold wood-cold smoothness
tingled softly beneath my fingers
then I touched the cold shiny flatness
of an old photograph. I touched
the warm white rougness of the
papered walls and pressed my
cheek to the soft towel hanging
on my heater.
But most exhilerating was the
cool cold electric shock of
the clean white sheets on my
bed when I climb in to that blissful
sheer oblivion. My head and
body sinks back a hundred miles
of white foam and blue ecstatic sea
to rest gently at the bottom
of the ocean bed, rocked gently
by the tides of sleep
as the blue and silver effervescence
flickers above and wave
breaks silently upon wave.
Feeling is now very much
a total and absolute thing,
and inexplicable fullness.
LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR.
Now it's quiet, only the traffic thrumming
by in the road.
The air is still and so are the trees.
The blackbird sits on the telegraph wire.
The sun reflects golden off the twinkling
beech trees.
Indoors Irmgaard leaves her office talking
to a friend in German, then softly walks down
the old wooden stairs.
Then all is quiet again.
A dragging train roars like iron on its angry way
across the valley at the foot of the mountain on
the other side of the lake
I stretch and yawn wondering what to do with half
an hour.
Footsteps come and go.
Quietness creeps about through the open windows
down the walls and across the grass to slip into
the trees.
Quietness in the soft wind stirs the curtain,
just a faint hint to let me know it's still there
holding up the air, holding up something,
very powerful and all embracing.
Something very important.
Vital.
But quite prepared to wait out its
time.
Now the quietness and the activity have merged
into one. I can sense both at once;
The hollow soft quiet
and the long low rumbling of a jet far away in
the sky.
The quietness feels very powerful now
it throbs and echoes throughout the air.
Now my words lose their power of meaning
and fail to convey what I feel.
Words are left at the doorway while
pure experience takes over and
rejoices in a deep and glorious
joy.
JAZZ.
Jazz is kinda nice in the afternoon
it lays cool notes upon your hot
forehead and plays like river
water about your feet.
Jazz is lazy when you are too,
it soothe out your weary bones
and runs all down your waiting
skin. Yeah, jazz is kinda nice
at a time like this.
Jazz is sorta good on yer fuddled
head, if things aint going too well
and you feel yer in a rut
it’s kinda welcome to lay right
back and hear jazz.
Ah, jazz yer so cool and sweet
to taste, yer slow and soft and mellow
when my tongue is dry
and when my eyes are strained
yer smooth and subtle.
Ah yeah
That's jazz!
FINISHED POEM.
An inner freedom blossoming,
expanded clarity
through the mind
and joyful purpose.
The full page beams up at
me and it is done. Carved,
finely chiselled and roundly
polished.
Sharp flat whiteness echoing
with scrawling sepia script,decisive.
Flowing in full leaden torrent.
Swirling. Heady.
Stirring the mud soft
river bed as emotion after
emotion is drawn forth.
TREES IN SPLENDOUR.
The heavy calloused trees
stretch their bristling
trunks up to the sky,
up to the sun.
They splay out their airy
branches.
Out to the light
and pattern the ground
below,
as the leaves yawn
outrageously,
greenly.
Pushed and stretched up
by the trunk
up to the spindling
sky.
The bole creaks and sighs
its deep
wooden
pleasure
as it thinks
of the clouds
and the soft
blue sky.
THROUGH THE OPEN WINDOW.
Through the open window
where the flowered incense stick
stands burning,
I hear a young girls thin sweet voice
singing, alone and content.
Singing to her heart so
content.
A thin high piping. A story in
a song.
Her singing is to me a sign of
her absolute contentment,
her peace in the room and
world of her thoughts,
deep deep down in her
silent settled heart.
Yet in its unmelodious
unaccomplished way it still
sounds sweet and soothing as
a running stream or a wild
bird in song.
A freedom and a purity
that pleases and
engulfs like the thin sharp
curls of wisping smoke
billowing headily in the
crisp morning air,
Through the open window.
TWO PLANES AND A HOLE.
Two planes and a hole
come together on white grey flatness
across the desolate waste of timeless tarmac
soiled eternity.
The little amount of vegetation that was there
had now been chewed up by the endless wheels.
Wheels of all kinds and size, mostly rubber,
scorching their great thick black smears along the land.
Wheels of every kind of machine
hanging down out of the clear blue sky
All varieties of naked undercarriage
whizzing through the air
rending the quiet.
But the holes remain intact between the planes
stretching as far as the eye,
shining up to the clear white space of the stillness above.
And still to this very day the tyres are screaming
and still
the holes are intact
and still the naked blueness
of the sky is
shot at by
the incredible birds
THE DIVINE NECTAR OF THE FULLNESS
OF LIFE MANIFESTS ITSELF.
Every filament within
glows an effervescent gold,
the excited eyes gleam and radiate
a shooting silver sparkle,
as Being creates within
itself its very own
Being.
Under sea nerve end
flowers wave to and fro
delicately, tenderly,
tentatively
touching.
Warm roots dive down
into the soft brown earth of
clay bed reality
rejoicing in
a sweet
enriching
glory.
DAWN.
At its darkest in the early morning
the mountain cannot even be seen
from across the valley. When slowly,
you feel confused. You feel a change
as you strain your eyes to discern
what is happening.
A timeless moment has crept up
upon you and you are caught
within a web of comprehension.
you feel it in your bodyA change
in the moment, from something that
was to something that is.
The whole world is changing !
Yes that's it.
A change is definitely taking place,
you feel a warmth as the once
hard cold night turns a softer blackness
which is diffused at the edges,
an aura pervades each blackness
as time slowly gives shape to the
world.
The mountain merges into the darkness
from nowhere like a rising monster coming
out of a underground pool.
There is a slow shake of light in the
horizon of creation as you feel
warmth change to beauty and each
flower of darkness blips unfolded into
a grey gold valley scene.
The trees, the hedges, the gleaming silver
lake and then the black etched houses.
The shimmering continues to unpeel
the darkness from the outlayed vista
until the panorama takes a colour,
firstly greens and browns and then
the red tiled roofs.
The thin silver line on the horizon
bursts forth in an explosion of
pink then lurid red as
the whole sky catches fire
and gets redder and redder
until an absolute purity of
gold whiteness blinds your
eyes and the world heaves and
breathes again after a long long
sleep.
BIRTHDAY PARTY.
Happy faces in the afternoon sun.
Ice cream.
Laughing chatter, tea cups clatter.
Hot tea.
Large red umbrella castes a gentle shade.
Children chuckle.
Mother cuts the candied cake.
Young eyes gleam.
Rosy cheeks, daring fingers touch the cream.
Happy birthday.
The pretty girl in the yellow frock is a queen.
WHEN THE LOVE OF GOD SHINES DOWN.
When the love of God shines down
upon my upturned face to glaze
my battered and scene of torrid
dreams ill-swept desert-ward
to fleeting pasture lands.
When the love of God shines down
onto my ringing silver soul
to shine my surface bright and
flash out the crooked knots
unspiralled in the sky.
When the love of God shines down
to warm my fluttering impish hands
to slowly fill this hollow-stemmed body
with a gay power of bliss vibration
giving strength from head to toe.
TEN PAST ELEVEN.
Ten past eleven and the shutters are
drawn.
There’s the rumble and bump of
people getting into bed,
slowly,
one by one.
The soft silk black night creeps
round the house and furs up
the edges of the trees outside.
END.
These poems are copyright and the sole property of Julian Lees. julian.lees @googlemail.com