Andy Brookes Poems

Part One: Prophets, Scholars and Kings Erased


Deep gauged stones lie fallen, jigsaws riddles on ancient walls
...

Going to the lakes I should write of majestic hills,
fast flowing streams, mist rising with the sunrise
over Windermere and Ullswater.
cold rushing becks and mighty cascades
...

Swinging through the family tree
well there's you and me and Bobo makes three
watching through zoo bars, wide faced and hairy
innocentyet related to me contrary
...

Groups of abstracted words stitched randomly engaged to spaced marked ticks, attached by impaled crosses, lines ruled by unruly nexus, a singular plural, filling empty spaces,
it that poetry or just the randomness of numbers?

spontaneity travels not too well, souring like wine corked and bitter
...

It had so happened when that my mother had married
with Zbigniew B. from Dunska Wola.
And if they had a daughter, I wouldn't be her.
Maybe one with better memory for faces and names,
...

the stream of consciousness coils sinuous like a snake,
to wrap meaningless words, dis-articulated bones, slithering across the polar page,
a jumble of sound discordant thumping tom tom rhythms and strident glissandi
shaking thetectonic plates of convention a jarring earthquake of sounds.
...

'I write, 'he said. 'poetry of the mind.'
me wondering aren't all poems of the mind but say nothing.
seeing my confusion he smiled.
...

birds line washing lines to watch, listen and gossip
or walk across the lawn leaving imprints poetic,
they tug at scarce worms
a meagre return but seeing better
...

mouth was full of razor edges,face was full of hurts,
madness a voice calling through the hole in my head.
a terrifying seat of confoundation, throne of disbelief
there is more of the dark in me than light
...