A Dream Reflects Poem by jim hogg

'The only journey is the one within.' Rilke



Far down below us on the shore
amongst the stones and wash of waves
there's something wrong, but I don't know
the overturning boat is mine


we scramble down towards the tide
past waltzing dancers all in rows
and warning signs I barely saw
before they vanished on the breeze


and all around us not a trace
of anything that we can hold
before the sea I used to sail
receded silently away


down aisles of echoes, aisles of aisles
we're lifted, carried, soon we're there
a broken down familiar place


I didn't mean to bring you here
beside the ruins in the woods
to race against the worms and birds
I'm sure I had another plan
a stack of reasons bigger than
the little things that move this world


but no, our apple tree was felled
a chainsaw in some cretin's hands
and out towards the fields we sped


with Bobby Johnstone ducking low
beneath the reaching sycamores
and Brandy farting as he runs
on legs too short to be his own


we skirt the farm, but freak the foal
asleep beside a patch of gorse
I snag the new electric fence
it's live and thumps my arms and legs


the stumpy dog flies underneath
and cuts a channel through the muss
of damp and windblown grass, and barks
as if he knows what's going on
and has to tell our arch of sky
his truth before it vanishes


the scattered clouds are high and white
a younger sun comes breaking through
it feels like home; the breeze is light
and calmer now, I start to see


the pyloned power lines that sag
in rolling waves across the fields
connecting us and killing geese


the scribbles on the railway bridge
that seem to speak of something lost
some precious thing I can't recall


and up ahead I see again
the hanging tree, the finch we killed
and sheepish glances as we passed
its yellow body on the grass


my eyes are under siege it seems
as everything that was, invades
from memories or truths of scenes
inherent in the world or us
or maybe something in between
the data keeps on coming in


a single Heifer gulping down
the still and shadowed loch that waits
as leisurely it swatted flies
while watching us with deadpan eyes


a smoker in a Standard car
enclosed within his own cocoon
a universe inside his head
his rusting knife, his sliding life


a scuttling Coot in arcs of waves


remains of war that gradually
get euphemised and slip away
beneath the silent creep of weeds
beneath their coats of falling leaves
all bitter-sweetly whispering


this whirling world that drags us on


and futures sprinting after us
awash with options a la carte
a blur of crucial moments where
I'd have the chance to choose again
as all my senses scream 'I'm here'


for all of me to wonder where
imprisoned in this slivered blink
this neverlasting skate away
that had no end I used to think
this brink that seems to teem but lies
and thens all fled that lie in wait
a cunning swathe of lingering
beneath their Malacandran skies


and I'm the answer I suspect
I'm in myself and on the move
within a chain but out of step
a travelling of ghosts and dreams
a harbouring of fairy tales
a country without boundaries
incontinent and introvert
opaque as mud, and crude as stars


I must have hoped to be somewhere
at some appointed time and place
to cast a net, or set a snare
or offer up myself as prey


I ram my pockets full of stuff
and rush because I can't be late
but still, I'm late, I know I'm late


the house is made of ancient stone
a single storey, bleak and small
beside a narrow gravel track
and there's no answer at the door
I'm sure it's not Mulholland Drive
it doesn't seem quite real enough
but there's a stranger at the gate
he's in a suit and out of place
he stares as if he's looking through
the house, my eyes, my memories
and, listening to a far off song
forgets the world and drifts away
'til I'm alone and all is dark
and in the darkness I'm a spark
of tiny singularities


I've never felt so small before
I'm tightly wound and outward bound
and waiting for my life to start
when you appear with my school scarf
(it's shorter than it used to be)
and that's when I begin to run


I'm running from a question mark
towards a bunch of stupid moves
clichés within clichés I've been
beyond the tiny privet hedge
that faced the ponies, and the trains
that passed this place when I was six


but stupid moves are not enough
to stop my feet from stepping in
to stop my mouth from mouthing how
if we could take another swing
at all those thrills, at all those odds


if we were there like we once were
on all the paths we ran along
with slings and bows and catapults
through rhododendrons, chestnut trees
through rows and rows of sitka spruce
on crunching webs of needle beds
and into Murray's barley fields
beside the clogged and reedy ponds
beyond the Adders in the stones


or after hares too fast to catch
their leverets loose beneath the geese
all clamouring across the sky
in low and lengthy northbound skeins
once woven into all our lives


if we could be tuned in again
the harnessing and trammelling
all cast aside to revel in


those moments like eternity


on our old swing beneath the leaves
of thon big Beech that's disappeared
or fleeing ghosts in woodland wars
around the lochs that swim within
the geography of all we were


and if the ifs would ever end
I'd tell you how I'd change some stuff
and how the future I was in
was not the one I thought was mine


for somewhere down that road I saw
a stranger in a masquerade
who lived it like it all was real
who never had a poker face
who never learned to play the game


and now I think I'll never grasp
how small my understanding is
how vast the oceans of unknowns


but wait, a blast, vast shadows scud
to cymbal crash and lash of gale
like roar of armies brawling blind
or howl inside a broken mind


derangement of the whole shebang


the light is gone: it's wild, it's pitch
and I can't speak and you can't hear


this is no ordinary blitz
this sudden night is ash and ice
the moon is black, the future's past
the plates of understanding clash


and from the garble of the storm
a massive apparition forms
and stoops to seize the very Earth


without a plan it seems, and shrinks
down to an old friend passing by
whose face I can't quite recognise
yet know I know her glance and gait
so intimately I'm afraid


she's humming softly to herself
and you and I and all the birds
are listening rapt as if we grasp
a hidden beauty in her song
as something like suadade strikes
and slowly seizes all of me
until I don't care where I am
and listening's all I want to do
and as I listen I'm absorbed


her song becomes a symphony
a symphony of tenderness
of sweetest passion and of love
but fades so faintly as she drifts
across the border of some mind
as if her story has no end


I had to know what happened next
to buoy my happy ending hopes
but every page I turned was blank


I looked, I hunted everywhere
'til I was out of my own sight
and nothingness began again


now here am I, somewhere between
vague wheres and theres: but all's serene
'til hints of something grow and taunt
a great confession seems to loom
I didn't mean to trouble you
who kindly suffered, kindly gave
who loved a man whose love was lost


you lay asleep a thousand years
beneath convention's tender bolts
you had a life, a wealth of grooves
no martyring, though maybe doubts
until I banished both of us
to wasted time and distances
to many cups of bitter wine
and dismal haunts where loners hide
where wishful thinking shapes the world


but, all of it gets turned or burned
however loathed, however loved


and maybe that's exactly why
I'm planless here, on nameless routes
adrift in other people's dreams
more Rosamond's than dear Miss Brooke's
more often than I'd dare admit
condemned to misconstrue them all


to make the same duff moves again
and one last push to clinch some wish
where thrill will rule with just a touch
and every word means so much more


to stand on Logan's battered point
and ask, what kind of truth was that
that tried to stand against 'events'


I haven't got a clue but guess
it's innocence that's unaware
it's 'touching souls' I used to hope
it's intimacy without taint
it's how I wanted life to be
and meaning might still be the key


but what that means is less than clear
and these surroundings hold no clue
that I can see while rushing through
what felt like old familiar scenes
all tinged with something strange until


I stumble into shrinking space
in humid heat beneath tall trees
with bushes beating at my face
and buzzing swarms of brightly hued
but scruffy insects whizzing through
the stagnant whiff of gunge and leaves
an ugly festering I fear
will nourish clutching webs of roots
to snuff the starlight and the blush
that lit the past I rushed to quit


it's pretty mushy underfoot
and so I lunge for solid ground
in hopes of moving swiftly on
beyond the swamp that lies between
mere selfish thrill and nobler things
towards a place where I can rest
and dry these tired, shrivelled feet


but up ahead, just out of view
I hear the sounds of someone else
who's struggling to escape, like me
I want to shout but don't have time
there's too much chaos closing in
when suddenly he's in my head


'collective noun for skies' he asks
'complicity' I answer back
from deep within without a thought
like holy words I can't refute


I'm moved but feel it's slightly daft
imagining the multiverse
a fanning out of worlds and selves
an arc of options out of reach
in some vast interwoven scheme
and think 'it's time to wriggle out
my mind's a trap and I'm the catch'


the lure's some kind of suspect truth
or paranoia like a net
a web of branches branching on
to which I'm meant to yield it seems
to be a part of this old dance
this gorgeous, deadly farce we are
our constantly evolving this


and all the while, the strangest thing
I feel as if I'm breaking through
though into what's a bit obscure
delusion, myth or mystery
or something irresistible
fulfilment of some secret wish
or drive to serve a greater cause
like maybe breeding, or myself
some ego-messianic urge


but here, in want, I dream and drift
afraid the right might just be right
and sometimes fall to wondering
if war attracts us more than peace
until we've seen enough of blood
been sickened through and through by waste


'It's bound to end' I used to think


this fog where motivations hide
this trek towards some dream of sense
where silence has the upper-hand


and used to think that life was mine
and all I needed was the time
to catch the breeze, to gain the heights


a climbing kite in search of flight
except, my plans had other plans
and left me with this plummeting
somewhere beneath the fulmar's wing
with cross-winds buffeting my thoughts
in sentences that run and branch
and double-back upon themselves
to kneel me at the grave of love
in unexpected moments when
she breaks the surface of my mind
connects me just a little more
before I squander off again
with not a single lesson learned


it's always 'crunch time' someone said
though I was never quite convinced
but time is such a spilling thing
and soon the years get buried deep
beneath the endless deals we make
for some chimeric sense of gain


it never seemed so true before
the jungle's more than at my door
it's in my head and in my hands
I'm just a stone that's being rolled
or simple swimmer in a shoal
directed by conniving trolls


sly chimpanzees with pull and gall
who've conjured gods and woven myths
to stifle wit and principle
that might have brought their kingdoms down
and weaponised them all against
the civilised, the generous
and those of us who try to try
until we seem obliged to own
their goals, or just be swept aside


I saw their game, but all the same
'in all my dreams' I'd never thought
to question why, and so it goes


however much remains unknown
they've always found a way to rule


and I'm their soldier by default
and seemingly I can't resist
I wonder if I'm really me
I've never smoked, yet here I am
a French cigar between my lips
as normal as a bag of chips


with self important attitudes
that seem to fit me all too well


and at my side, as if I'm his
a mongrel mutt with Whippet genes
that jumped the house and ate the shed
I used to keep the future in


while in my lazy, laggard head
a question I've been puffing on
procrastinating far too long
un-Bogart-like on motorbike
to clarify and justify
this failing I've been guilty of
or just to let the poison flow
to see who stands and see who falls


but that was then and now there's this
this alwaysness that won't let go
in this strange jungle underneath
the shadowed canyons of the sky
a lightning strike might clear it up
but puzzlingly I tell myself
tomorrow doesn't need to know


perhaps because so much is veiled
so many lessons go unlearned
so much of life goes misconstrued
the evidence is everywhere
but yet, this bloody show goes on
the breeders don't know how to stop


it's puzzling, yes, but still, it's true,
no riddle needs to solve itself
except, compulsion is a thing
and tracks each moment like a hound
which has no choice except to hunt
down certain not quite finished trails
to catch tomorrow happening
if only we could really see
then maybe I could find a way
to buy the ultimate excuse
the choice was never mine to make


but, being here seems all we need
though I don't think we've got the tools
to tilt this thing away from woe
to extricate ourselves from us


our geniuses can't crack the past
but claim they've got the future down
though almost every forecast fails
from granular to grandiose


and we are such a tiny speck
to cast our curse upon the stars
but still, that seems to be the plan


though nature's blind imperatives
are maybe set on greater things
with humans just a stepping stone
a humbling thought that gratifies
if Ariadne won't come through


but who we are's not who I am
and yet it is, and so I stare
at little monsters, little saints
the push that kills, the push that saves
I'm all of them and more besides
so many wants but just one path
I'm bottlenecked and forced to force


I chop my way through undergrowth
machete skilled though not surprised
towards the toiling of a bell
or Raven's electronic honk
that only I can hear, alas


it leads me on towards a light
that seems to shine on Kelvin Grove
beyond the gate from Eldon Street
where all at once I work it out
this caper's being televised


self consciousness on full alert
I draw too deeply on the Quai
then realise there is no crew
I never had nor wrote a script
and landed here without a clue


I choke my coughing, stand my ground
and quickly sweep for witnesses
there's not a single soul in sight
nor sounds of traffic in the air
just creeping fields of silent stars
that perforate this anxious night
and all the baseless certainties
that catch me out repeatedly
and led me here, where darkness swarms


where I'm constrained to think at last
of many whens and many whys
of many faces, and goodbyes
we never get the time to say
because of endless mission creep


our moody world's become so fierce
that even thunder can't placate
events are tangled, kilter's gone
and Jude's been blowing blades of grass
to find a single note of worth


I thought that I was less naive


but now I'm stuffed; my ugly head
is out from underneath the hair
that kept my vanity in bloom
and I'm obliged to shock, or hide
desiderata thrown aside


or narrowed down to what is now
this hard reality we've wrought
where blame is just the way things are
it's on the action, not the cause
it rolls along without a past
the guilty purge themselves with blood
as forests burn and children run
in screaming fear, in monochrome


I'm sure Pandora's innocent
and this is our inheritance
our rapture and our wrathfulness
our endless neediness, and hope
the last of all she left, and yes
my fettered comrade slipped away
and took the hungry mongrel too
but might have left a little gift
a single square of Galaxy
and I'm in heaven on a trip


yet, were they ever really there
or merely echoes of myself
another me in dire straits
embattled in some other trap
so closely paralleled with this
this everlasting flowing front
where weaving meets and waltzes with
unweaving's instant, face to face
and facts get chewed or melt away


for though I'm here, ensnared by was
and just a little torn by if
the moment always slides away
as self awareness runs it down
while trying to impress itself
or anyone who'll listen in
to history just freshly made


the small ambition of a bud
beguiles, but maybe I'm as bound
as rooted as the simplest bloom
can even birds be truly free
enough to slip the laws they need
a question that defies all sense
when maybe all we want is just
to run, to fly, to say goodbye


to simply vanish without trace


or set up home in memories
of roasted spuds beneath the swing


or deep within a certain dream
of when her lips touch mine again


to find our way to taintless joy
the moment just before the last


or just forget ourselves at times
in moments so sublime they slay


or take just what we really want
for underneath it all may lie
beyond the reach of thought and word


a fear, or urge, that balks at ends
and yearns to break the grip of now


or quest for thrill that never quits
in creatures lashed to consciousness
that filter through the flowing world.


and part of it is flowing here
some specially selected scenes
that tempt me with surrender's snares
until I've worn their beauty out


or found that vital thing I seek
a frantic spaniel hunting wild
amongst the hedgerows of a dream
the ditched detritus of a life


it might be just a word or glimpse
that face across the railway track
in Singer station years ago
or blue-eyed girl in Tiffany's
a miracle in Shettleston
a turning missed with no way back
or name I've blanked but can't forget
that draws me like a precious stone
imagined in a childhood book
whose perfect page I couldn't turn


forgetting, 'til I can't deny
that vital thing will also fade


or maybe I'm just looking for
a clue that lights the road to grace
that state so close and yet so far
across the fields and lochs and hills
beyond the falls, the thrills and flaws


to soar beyond mere chemistry
beyond our worshipping and works
all built on eager self deceit


we speak, we write ourselves a life
but underneath the tongue and pen
whatever pulls the quarry down
the brutal truth, however dressed
without a trace of awe or grace


though I'm a dreamer in between
the moral burden of ideals
(but only when it suits, I fear)
and vultures lurking in the trees
to swoop and tear these memories


these words and all the shadowed gear
they spring from when at last they're called
or maybe pushed, into the cords
that hurl them out like soft harpoons


in pastel shaded dining rooms
through gentle arcs of cherry scones
at strangers on some distant pond
in anger or in love, becalmed


I really don't know where I stand
alone, right here, or in between
the maze we are, or point we've been
or how to trace the tail of choice
or grasp the strangeness of it all


without volition all is lost
the moral dies, the dream is done
and yet, somehow, the dream goes on


but there's a shadow and a beam
a harrowing but gorgeous fear
that's in my ear and on my tongue
a conversation that I faked
as truly as I could with her
in front of Derek Thompson's house


I bobbed beside her as we queued
a captive of the shapes of thoughts
I plunged below my plimsoll line
my old emotions cross-bow tight
we spoke across the Weddell Sea


I wonder if she understood
this holding on to all that's left
or if she never even knew


no, parties never were my scene
but, truth to tell, I wish they were
for this feels like an SOS
I never issued when I should
because I couldn't integrate
escape velocities of states
like romance, relevance and chance
with wind-chill stats for niceties
or self inflicted punishments
and don't know which of those I am
though no-one else is up in arms


we all became cartoons, it seems
diverted by a cartooned world


and while the world was scrolling past
who did our culture cut and paste
who leapt right in and bounced back out
who ploughed the stars and smoked the clouds
and sought the key of everything
as silent as an opened vein
with not one witness we can trust
on any side of Mantel's sieve


I can't be sure it wasn't me
imagining heroic stunts
imagined lovers rushed to see
through windows of a passing bus
when I was twelve and on my bike
my face well tanned and sleeves rolled up
prepared for adulating eyes


now my event horizon sweeps
for humble sparks to idolise
the tender gaze of loving eyes
and kind of love that still holds hands
deep into winter's withering
on city streets, or tv screens


it's not the wish, it's what we are
I sometimes let myself believe
but I'm anxiety on speed
my tongue, my face, my voice, my gait
combine to sift me from the field
to make adjustments here and there
to separate myself and not


to catch her eye one afternoon
across a narrow Glasgow street
where she stood rigid as a stone
and I was nonchalant with fear
compelled to shrug and walk away
a dozen other options snipped
and her convinced I didn't care
though that was never my intent
and never ever could be true


it felt as if we had no choice
just puppets in some tragic game
until the moment passed, and then
a horde of options mowed me down
the fruits of more than thirty years
of bridling truth, of distancing
and holding fast because we must
to tracks on which our lives are fixed


now every word, however meant
of all I've said and still must say
has been eclipsed by useless fate
at last, it really is too late


I shadow-box and think awhile


of silenced mouths and silenced hearts
of falling trees, of Flannan Isle
and shades of darkness, files of light
that swept around the bedroom walls
before we slept when we were kids


and quiet drag of other worlds
emotions, mirrors, thralls of notes
and wounding ways of little things


the shrapnel in a memory
just waiting for the killer song
that's vague enough to languish in
but sharp enough to break the skin


I even tried to write my own
with tunes to grip and lines to bind
in hopes of some vain cherishing
but now they're orphans on a flight
a hundred and a hundred more


I raised them in an empty home
and biffed them to an asteroid
without a kiss, without a voice
to detonate an epic zilch
exactly as I did before
my vanity a little pricked


I weave the pattern that I am
all threaded through my universe
a skiff on Mare Marginis
and giggle at the ironies
and contradictions I've become


the facts I ruled once, stand me up
or sneak away without a word
I wave goodbye and have to smile
I'm not in charge of anything


I'm counting sprats, I'm herding cats
to dance myself to where I was
and where I was, was closer to
an unknown something, somewhere else
nostalgic anonymity
too imprecise to nail it down


I kick a ball around, alone
until I spot a comfy bench
below a row of shedding Elms
that split the light from Kelvin Way


I sit a while; I might have slept
and dreamt of kickabouts up here
on wintry days with flatmates gone
all fused a while then flung apart
yet woven through these falling leaves
the earth's relentless memory


it feels as if it's later on
a new beginning, something's lost
the threads of life a little worn
the state of flux inside my head
seems somehow stuck in flux itself
but I'm exactly who I was
a somewhat crippled flourishing


beneath this rift I roll along
my jacket's ripped, the ball is burst
the city's sliding through the dawn
a maze of chem-trails fills the sky
I'm anxious but I don't know why
my head keeps turning to the trees
as if there's something I should see
beyond the hopes still waging war
and snow of knowing bound to fall
if some of us wait long enough


yes, there it is: an open path
an 'all the difference' kind of choice
with all its wonders unexplored
so many trades, so many tales
of diving in, of falling out
Napoleon might have had a cat
and Feynman might have had a cut


and something might have had a point


in branched cascades of might have beens
and groundhog worlds protected from
the sneaky tides of entropy
in which it's not too late to dream
of better things we might have been
of politicians speaking truth
and not just only when it suits
and youth whose pride meant less than love


but none of that's in focus now
as east and west a clash of mouths
unleashes old imperatives


Gethsemane's a flash of blue
and screens are full of sudden men
all serious adrenaline
a sick elation everywhere
at skeins of righteous aeroplanes
and skulk of dragons in the sea


reality now virtual
as Albright types line up to claim
on balance, yes, we got it right
'so long, and thanks for all' your lives


while I'm obsessed with squanderings
expired opportunities
on quite a different scale, but still


I keep remembering a day
in February long ago
the frost was hard and cloaked in snow
I stayed in bed while she was there
the two of us alone in space


she bustled through while I feigned sleep
to stop the mouth that might have told
the tongue that wouldn't hold if loosed
the love I'd hoped she'd never see
(the kind of flame that's hard to miss)
at least not then while she was his
when she was just a spark away
and real enough to be a dream
I'm fading out of, fading out
to bleed across old boundaries
and gain a level I've not earned
where life is slow enough to feel
the pain or thrill of every twitch


Rebecca's in a rowing boat
we're on a river through a town
her breaking heart is breaking mine
her lover exiled from the script
and all they've left her is her grief
for everything they never wrote
a severance so sad out here
I cannot see and cannot speak


so now, bereft, we're oaring on
and cursing certain tv scenes
for nothing ever seemed so real


yes, what a thing it is to dream
across a flood too wide to bridge
of fixing things that can't be fixed
or never had the chance to break
I panic at the thought and sprint
on grassy mounds and leap too high
to ever land, or ever fly
a scripted viewer looking for
mirage of love, Rebecca lost
until some angel chucks a stone
and I'm 'awake' in Kelvin Grove


the breeze is pushing unloved leaves
quite noisily along the track
all witnessing my vain attempts
to understand this tumbling trip
this vanity, these crumbling times


these hits and misses, nods and winks
a bell, a light, I'm lost, alas
within a broken mirror's shards


I've rocked my world to smithereens
now all the dancing walls creep in
and distance is a spinning wheel
the moon, the stars, in disarray
I'm finally my own eclipse


it's autumn and I didn't know
I missed the show: where have I been


how differently it's all turned out
beneath these stars, above the ground


it's looking like I'll never see
'the lights of Cincinnati' town
'The pyramids along the Nile'
or Congo seen by Mista Kurtz
or mystery of self unlocked
though that's a secret life should keep


now maybe I have feeds to read
addictions needing fix or scorn
or dream that's slipping from my grasp
but wonder where you are instead
and if I should have worn a hat
or swung a meaner baseball bat


until we meet by sandstone walls
reflected in some window pane
of tenements I'm sure still stood
where colder glass and marble squat
and I can't puzzle real from false


there's Alan Bradley from 'the street'
I thought he'd died below a tram
and Claude Monet across the hall
yon priceless Dali holding court
by Woodlands Road, by river's edge
the striking bells of Destiny
and random things all spilling in
until we hit the cobblestones


we're right behind The Doublet now
and certainty of sorts descends
the scenery falls into place
as if it's all been newly built
with scribbling on the wall ahead
of anagrams of 'seen' and 'dine'
in rows across and up and down


instructions for a treasure hunt
or key to fixing all I've wrecked
I start to laugh but can't say why
(I'm keeping secrets from myself)


and realise I hadn't heard
you telling me that dreams are weird
that time has no dominion here
according to some dream you've dreamt
although I'm quite surprised to learn
my dream would put such words in yours
but look around at all the bricks


like pages in so many books
all locked away, their stories lost
and think of secrets men have kept
the sentimental songs we've sung
the messianic killing sprees
his very birth was bound to spawn
and all the things that humans build
for reasons other than their own


the list is not exactly long
but hope is such a filling thing
against the ugliest of truths
against the barriers of pride


there's Kelvinbridge and Underground
a gun-shop higher, out of sight
with shelves and shelves of cartridges
so deftly made, so intricate
for men who crave machinery
(I've felt that pull, in metal's grip)
the heat of cold efficiency
for killers yet to see the light
a light that's always under siege
for still we kill by appetite
for thrill, from lust, from spite, for cause
we 'must not do it anymore'
some minstrel sang, in vain, in rhyme


our species speaks to us in tongues
professes heart to all the world
but acts as if it's paramount
and all our crimes are justified
and somehow never truly grasped
(and never will, I realise)
the honey bee, the humble hive


and aliens who sneaked a peek
would surely batter on to Mars
in search of better odds than these
where virtue and ideals offend


the will to live outweighs the dream
the need to breed shapes everything
and sermon-dreaming such as this
is just a torrent of the mind
a spiel below the line of sleep
where all my commenters compile
a tempting wreck of images
to mock my nightly rummaging
with not a whiff of righting wrongs


though all that's good is under threat
I'm under pressure to digress
and wonder if it's wet or dry
I don't know which, I don't know why


there must be something I can do
to save my socks, to save my shoes
instructions somewhere in those rocks
a route through all these tattie shaws
to news that might just save us all


a barking I can barely hear
a scuffling that's becoming clear
a dog on horseback riding through
it's confidential banners say
it's broccoli for tea again


but all my anxious cravings fade
and leave me scribbling on a plate
'perfectionists would thrust and cut
perfectionists would prune the world
would rail at lack of clarity
and simplify the maze that's life'
it's not exactly freighted stuff
though I'm not fussed, just underwhelmed
I gave their losing urge a whirl
and tried a cook by numbers pie
though every dream of someone else
is still, at heart, a dream of self


for now, simplicity is dead
and all of meaning's in our heads
or so my pessimism claims
and now there's lots of work to do
to formulate a sound excuse
I'm Santa and I'm here to slay
a self appointed shield, I'll strafe
strange ravings pumped in sundry halls
where I can burst each wayward ball
with vast and deadly impotence
as disillusion creeps right through


I'm beaten by myself again
I'm all the idiots I scorn
whenever I survey the world
through these distorting scrolling screens


for every winter's day I see
old folks in coats with purposes
who've passed the church's open door
their chores and obligations clear
some kind of honour still intact
though rarely rationalised as such


who builds the maze that brings them here
or me to them, I have to ask
from scaffolding I cannot feel
like gravity, that holds us through
the blind but winning crudities
of history that drives itself
this raft of passing mysteries


we are a trillion different things
all washing up on endless shores
so many unmatched pieces thrown
together into nature's mix


and inside each and every head
a little spark, a little dot
the self I am, that looks within
and watches how I eye myself


too easily impressed for sure
I'm not convinced I really try
to tell it how it was or is
or maybe I don't really know


there is another world in there
composed of endless other worlds
of shifting venn-like diagrams
in all directions all at once
of urgings and of balancings
of biases and secret truths
all massed behind the fronts we are
all oozing through the things we do


a million years of fears and needs
uneasily at peace beneath
the sheen of narcissistic urge
and righteous angels fighting through


a convocation of the pure
within our vatican of schemes
to justify their need to win
because they can't help what we are


maturity's an endless haul
I'm waiting to disintegrate
to crumble into usefulness
a sense of mission hanging on
a feeble zeal that's laced with guilt
or maybe guilt is all it is


I took a side road out of town
and parked beside the waiting loch
to wonder what was underneath
all utterly forgotten now
and if I might be ready yet
then threw a stone that slipped beneath
a version of my self I thought
recalling stories gossips told
of gas in stoves and ropes on trees
of floating bodies by the edge
and knew my guilt was not that deep
not ready for the fulmar's wing


now once again I dare to think
while barely brighter than a crow
that every single thing is real
and there are many things to lose


this is no stage, no 'holo' deck
there's substance, depth, extension too
I hear the world, it all rings true
so maybe you are really here
and this is not a fucking dream


of course it is, of course it's not
it doesn't matter to a dog
I kick a stone; it bounces on
my limitations all too clear
with all my flaws still hard at work


my never-ending Dardanelles
a cliff that will not disappear
where my divisions fight themselves


disown the Maslow dream and fold
or grasp the nettle, drop the clutch
to tensely crash the worlds beyond
and while there's time, attend to life


the many selfish things that press
the many broken things to mend
the useful words I should have said
to move the dial just an inch


to cherish or to cast aside
forever, into stuffed, all stuffed


a failing state, I see myself
bamboozled through this patchwork quilt
of pummelled plans and lulling fads
and snoozed up escapades that flee
in fits and starts, and fall towards
the war of chaos versus shape
where I'm a haunted sea of thoughts
in every board game all at once
and might be trapped within this dream
unfocussed and fissiparous
yet glad enough to wait and see
to wonder what I thought I was
or where I might be headed now


but who amongst us gives a toss
enough to act beyond a nod
a very few, and I salute
their every step I hope they'd choose
but all the rest of us in this
seem only to be making do


no robin hood, no william tell
no prelude to excursion through
a lyric dream or higher realm
instead there's this great switching off
forgetting almost everything
for pizza lives of song and dance


I think I understand at last
this where and when, this what and why
enough, it seems, to settle for
the easy road that leads away
it's all we've ever really been


cacophony of pointlessness
a pulse within a pulsing web
from witless quark to universe
encircling sky our gorgeous cell


confusion spooked we start again
we're in our shoes and moving on
my legs like linen in the wind
we stride towards the river's bank
our steps too light, our heads on sticks
we're drawn towards its flowing mass
and stand like watchers round a blaze
our minds on automatic mode
(for these are truly ancient things)
communing for a moment with
some wordless truth, some great unknown


emotion spun from everything
that wonder's sucked inside our heads
all compartmentalised, of course


a broken wing, a drift of snow
an overbite I used to know


but don't quite know why she's so here
her fringe a fixture, and her voice
her every sway, her tenderness
as if she's woven through this flesh
though she's not with me here and now
it seems this dream is dropping hints
or maybe I've just lost my grip


my fair companion from the farm
stands close beside me as herself
we're hand in hand, adrift until
the stillness and the silence crowd
and I can't help but blurt out loud:


'that teacher might have stepped in here'
when she was eighty six years old
a favourite spot perhaps, at night
where bitter-sweetly stride by stride
she walked away from everything


or maybe there was nothing left
to hold her to the life she'd lived
I picture how she might have looked
her make-up done and hair brushed back
her fifties coat and winter boots
abyss of aging in her heart
her face a mix of grit and fear
lest passing strangers overhear
and from compassion intervene


and wonder too just how she felt
when she last bent to wield her pen
connecting all she was and willed
in all the lives of all those kids
with only two or three more souls
or none at all, for all she'd know
in this great teeming web of need
when she decided to cut free
still wondering, but desolate


and did she wonder too, that night
when fighting that last fight alone
if Woolf was with her as she strode
into the wintry Kelvin's flood
into that graceful tying off
her modest words protected from
the waters of her icy end
by humble shield of polythene


I read them through but couldn't claim
I'd drained them of the kind of truths
her navy ink would never yield


inscrutable as Dali's hand
we strive for pearls, we wring the stones
'til by and by we jig alone


she must have wanted to be read
was how I understood it then
to leave some sense of who she was
some kind of trace when she was gone
beyond her name and empty house
beyond the strength that snuffed her out
that says 'I'm done' with kindly grace


is that the kind of truth that bleeds
their massive dreams, her little hopes
or fondness felt in some rare mind


I doubt there's any way to know
the Kelvin flows on just the same
her noble cause a grain of sand
mere moments on the careless wind


while here and now the traction's gone
this night has caught me on my own
deft architect of vanishings


the cobblestones tilt steep and fast
I'm loose and sliding out of sight
to scraps of songs; I sing along
a distant yelling in the night
to thoughts that skirt oblivion
in mood and fact yet shorn of will


for once I feel I'm coping with
this gentle plunge or swallowing
but halt and settle suddenly
on ledges of a crumbling cliff


I'm stealing eggs from herring gulls
my Liptons' bag is quarter full
a rash of stars on all their shells
they're gorgeous and they're glittering
they're scuttled gods, galactic lords


I'm so enthralled I'm wavering
the cliff's a ship and starts to pitch
in rising wind and flying spray
I'm blinded and I'm teetering
I lose my grip; the gods all fall


I'm falling too, I'm falling through
an emptiness except for her
she's falling with me: flakes of snow
in Acapulco, down we go
a moment's flight from flesh and bone
the surf's at least a mile below
and, gratefully, we're falling slow
and sweetly, 'til she melts away
before I had the chance to say


I loved those moments most of all
when we were lost inside the hurl
beyond the solemn things of love
along the midnight edge of us
where darkness teems and light erupts


I always overdid that stuff
but every word of it was true
though nothing else is certain now
it makes no difference either way
she just dissolved away, ungone
unhooded in the in-between
amongst the vast uncountables
of silence in our words and deeds


I've never dreamt my death before
and handily I land within
a darkened room I seem to know


but there's a catch; there often is
the handle's missing from the door
and chinks of light that slide and blind
in coded patterns roam the walls
as shadows twist and tumble wild
and I can't tell what's up or down


there is no roof, there is no floor
no solid ground, no north, no south
I call all ships but hear no sound
and there's a wall that never was
from Grennan's rocks towards Kilstay
I must have left my boat to cross


I'm panic struck and lost in space
an astronaut amongst the trees
between the satellites and seas
a naked body robed in guilt
my inhibitions breaking wings


yet as before, conveniently
and not without much real relief
in sudden sunlight in some street
I've dreamt my way to better times


I land quite smoothly on my feet
in casual gear, my hair slicked back
in supersoftened waves of black
and find your arm, your sporty car
your nonchalance, compliant airs


and photographs I'll bin too soon
of Highland Games and you half clad
on winding paths, in crowded bars


the brave stravaiging that was our's
a breathless climb up through the leaves
against the guns, across the bones
a choice of ice cream on the slopes
a cold and winding river's course
a hawk ascending, castle walls


the summer haze, our sinning hearts
the pastel present, vivid past
the embers on the road to Ash
redemption always through the trees
'a weaving thing I'll bullet down'
and instantly I've buried hope
who said those words inside my head
my little quisling, I suspect
a wayward dog I fed too well


I see it all from Ochil heights
and must have told you once or twice
while running down another life
of shiny boots and pounding miles
semantic games and fruit and nut
of that strange pattern breaking spell
that taught: surprises never end
but though there's nothing new in life
that's not the way it looked back then


the sun stayed out all through the night
with broom in bloom and bees in flight
and laws all bustling in my head
and noisy lover at weekends
when passion was a wilder thing
which gives me cause to glance away
embarrassed by the memory
of all that rampant selfishness
those pools of feeling bubble on
some blisters don't know how to heal


we walked alone along a lane
that girl with auburn hair and I
towards the hill, towards the sea
behind the millions gone to dust
as every finger, every hand
was auto-scribbling out a past
we couldn't wait to usher in
as ancient sunshine fueled and lit
vague sprints of rabbits under trees
and sombre sounds of Jackson Browne


behind us towers, flags and months
and threats of Ochil's heights again
or athlete's foot, a gift for life
a javelin flashing in the sun
old rituals and Abba songs
some vain attempts at glory gained
the loss of Faith was pre-ordained
(a single turn across the tiles)
so like the loss of clouds and rain
and scorching of the countryside
in helicoptered photographs


where was I going? I don't know
I never even thought to ask
so many histories in play
and possibilities undone
it seems as if I didn't care
or wasn't ever really there
amongst those creatures blazing trails
their gods and goals all glorious


I swallowed some, but not enough
at times it seems the only dream
that truly drove me through those years
was breaking free of fear and shame


but there we all were, rivered in


once particles commingling wild
we held formation for a while
as row on row we stepped in time
and fled to little clots at night
defences broken by fatigue


while overhead, insistent blue
the portakabins sauna hot
the lecturers all drenched in sweat
until September proved itself
and all of us have spoken up
some from the heart, some from the page


those swaggerings of innocence
still cinematic in my head
before the scattering to come
and constant wearing of ideals


the rocks of Damocles hold fast
but we at last are off the leash
I'm maybe sad, I'm maybe not
I'm twenty one and full of me
I'm good intentions on a roll
a brave soliloquist alone
a questing thing with reams of time
and so I set off on a life


I buy up all the thickest books
I cram my head and dull my mind
and write a letter to my love
so superficial I'm ashamed


but all in vain; I chose too late
to right the wrong to both of us
when impetus was everything
and she was fully who she was
while I had hardly made a start
in some respects I never did


adrenaline for therapy
(the chase my next escape of choice
from any kind of hemming in)
was easier than opening
the shifting shades that might reveal
while in the world that others see
she wasn't there and never was


for all the difference knowledge makes
we judge according to our tastes
and live so much behind our eyes
that little capsule where we're free
and everything we see and feel
seems absolutely real, and yet
we know what's real no better than
a fish might know the life of flies


and so, no Solomon, I thought
I'm blind man's buff and bumbling for
the watching world with darts in hand
too slow to catch, too fast to learn
a bolter from the unknown things
that lodge themselves before we're launched
into the sea of memory


and when the stress became too much
the easy sanctuary of you
your calm blue sea and sandy shore
I didn't see it then of course
a bunch of lives I wouldn't choose
were not enough and so I lunged
at your reflection for a while
with mine, and stole your precious time
the chrysalis of us deceived
by big ideas, righteousness


naifs at large we never knew
how sly and dour the future was
or games our inner blueprints play
(no, no excuse will ever do
but still they're queued up just in case)
or if we could have pulled it off
with our peculiar mess of flaws


but at this moment all is still
the past and future meet and merge
the instant flows but feels too full
I sense an insight coming on
momentous words are on my tongue
when whoosh, you're off: you arc away
a sudden flight, a breach in time


cascading images unleashed
of other lives we never lived
and conversations never voiced
a million marks we never made
amid the mounds of nothingness


no explanation, no goodbye
or was that me, it isn't clear


but, sometime later, sometime now
though centuries have passed it seems
or just an instant, who can tell
your back towards the midnight wall
your nakedness revealing all
the inner landscape I'd disguised
to hordes of gawping passersby
you stride my way, and side by side
we step into the stream that winds
down where it always used to flow
and drift until we find ourselves
within that quiet time we spent
below the cottage in the bay


detached from conscience for a day
we turned our backs and dredged the past
as fishing boats trawled north and south
and lay alone on hallowed ground
regaled by whispers of the sea
and distant voices on the breeze


those comforts carry us until
a tide within me rises up
like doubt, or is it questioning
nomadic urge or yen for risk
by tidal point or some high cliff
where I'll be thankful, I expect
a little rueful too I'm sure
for there's a shadow on your face
as if the past's too strange at last
or every memory has fled


what kind of truth I ask again
as if a dream would know itself
or if I'm being dreamed or not
or tolerate this wondering
or know about the world beyond
or bridge between, or bonds that break
to whom the sinking boat belongs
or solitary tree betrayed
or slip, beyond redemption's reach


but penance has its upsides too
the costs that spiral on but teach
some masochistic empathy
from which may sprout a purer strain


I'm looking for a better view
for every man? I don't presume
with smarter minds all boggled by
the sugar cube of human life


I've seen the struggling of the poor
and been the best intentions too
with better heroes, bigger dreams
all broken up on bitter rocks


between the meek and wild there's room
for standing tall and reaching out
but, how to keep ourselves above
the urge to bend the weak and sweet
to purposes which are not theirs
though some will flourish in their chains
before they've earned their rifled clay


and no, there won't be time or scope
for all my inner visions now
the socially inadequate
who must have rank and privilege
are almost where they need to be
to feel secure against the pawns


autonomy's a step too far


as dangerous as wind and wave
that pound the ragged rocks below
this slippy heugh where I can't find
your letters and the keep-sakes which
spun out of sight on some strange breeze
as sweet as mustard gas I guessed
escaped from Beaufort's lonely deeps


I read them years and years ago
upon the very hill we're on
amid these tiny, tender blooms
that reappear here like a pulse
above the tide, below the light
where everything comes into sight


a red and yellow patterned sky


a single gannet circling high


my brother with me at the creels
one early evening in our teens


a watchful fox, two startled deer
above us on the weathered cliff


her attitude, her rolled up sleeves
when she was with us out at sea


the downhill chute of passing years


the uphill struggle to connect
the granular, the infinite


a white light dream, a hasty snack


her perfect mouth, a trillion stars


the sensual, the harmony
that might have been attainable


the self awareness in her lips


each fond remembering of her


a sunlit wave that once washed up
this vain peninsula of life


so many petty dreams of men


their haunting hints and flitting shapes
on restless waters, singing winds
and all our little wars and spills


the urgent call of risen blood


the stoic stones upon the hill
their witnessing of everything


the monstrous sea awaits it all


a raven glides high overhead
a graceful swallowing of light
devoid of gods and cluttering
beneath the rush and clash of clouds
and spinning things that spin within
still larger spinning things within
the endless sprawl of blackest wings


there is no wall, and no first cause
no start nor end, except of us


my intuition seems too sure
I think I'm large, I think I'm small
I'm in a hat, within a hall
it doesn't matter where I stand
I'm not about to fall for that
that waterfall of wondrous words
that tumbling rush which swept and flushed
so crystalline and flowing free
it seemed irrevocably real
becoming drivel with the dawn


a puzzling wonder in itself
that I so deftly fooled myself
yet can't begin to grasp the thing
that buzzed so close to purity
when I'd escaped from consciousness
and puzzling too that I should feel
that at this moment nothing's real
that life's a myth and love's its dream
my brow is tense, I raise my eyes
and realise I'm much too calm
I'm wet, I'm held, I'm underneath


I see the light and burst straight up
to surface in the old school pool
to background strains of Billy Joel
and heavily I clamber out
and wend my way through washing lines
of unpaid bills on little hills
to Johnstone's room, but he's not there
he's in a plane that's dropping bombs
on geometric slips of hand


I recognise this dreaming scene
I'm tracing out on vast white sheets
some enigmatic diagrams
I must have thought were clever plans
like meteors they come and go
like Charon on the Acheron
I ferry and I'm ferried too
between became and what's to be
'somewhere becoming' tragedy


we'll build the future now I thought
as if free will is not a myth
as if it's not already built
by everything we've ever done
and waiting for us patiently
the destiny of all our dreams
that vast black hole that teems and creeps
and dumbly sucks the future in


a ruin here, a ruin there
was how it went, and how it will,
you live enough, you try enough
you get to break a lot of stuff
but that's no help in tracking down
the plan behind the plans I had


I pull at threads of veils of veils
until I almost understand
the kind of truth I'm lost without
can not be understood enough


what does it mean to really know
before we know the nature of
the thing that's deep beneath the word


what did it mean when she was born
and fell within this swirl of lines
that cross or never meet at all
that weave us into what must be
amid the coulds that never can
through hells and heavens we contrive
from fine-spun myths we fight to save
or modify to make them match
the world that expectation shapes
that's finally sliding away


from all my memories of dreams
from all my dreams of memories
and crumbling quartz of fiery hopes


ideals that drove those surging years
towards their unspecific goals
'til forward focus lost its hold
and, faltering, began to see
exactly what I had to see
all obvious but out of reach


what am I for if not myself
a self to dare, a self to give
a self to share, a self to live
a set of modulating selves
so well equipped, so badly prepped
I'm hubris sprung from errant seed
we're evolution's dead end street


accepting of my ignorance
I dread to think that loss prevails
but still, I tend to linger there
where everywhere is near, because
the prettiest pain still holds appeal
and sometimes accidents endear
or errant rhythms break the spell
and rules devour us in our prime


perfection is a mindless quest
and truth, a snowflake kind of thing
is much too fragile to confine


so many hills lie in between
the Thornbird's agony and bliss
the inhibition and the kiss
the stroke of luck and ecstacy
what never was but always is


I'm busy making sense of that
when uncle Paddy waltzes up
in heavy duty dungarees
he's just flown in from Donegal
although I'm sure that's not his home


he's here to sing his latest song
it's all about an afternoon
I never heard him talk about
when uncle Rab went through the ice
and vanished in the waiting loch
until they pulled him out in time
beneath an overwhelming sky


but Paddy always shunned the light
and suddenly refused to sing
accordion and violin
heart-breaking by the fireside


outside it's wild and Paddy's off
my mother's sister by his side
his forehead angled to the sheets
of lightning and the rolling road
towards the cottage by the bridge
a scene so lost it might have been
the Cottages at Cordeville
on some strange planet far from here


I stood and watched them walk away
remembering the shapes and sparks
reflected in the well one night
our faces blank and rippling slow


what was it that we really saw
beneath that spread of silver specks
how real the thing we gazed upon


I didn't know a single star
in all the blackness, not a one
but oh, their light was in me then
and dark, how dark the darkness was
the depth that I was springing from
in that wild symphony of stars


the terror somewhere at my back
a little house that's disappeared
beneath their ruined memories
my mother's ashes, trees and weeds
and meagre stories that persist
in mumblings through these porous walls
I am my mouth and little else
as undiscerning as a skip


but Paddy, like a giant, walks
and leaps and sings along the track
with Toy and all their dancing ghosts
a host of shadows holding on
to all the starlight fading here
on stooks: the sheaves I saw them stack
in laughter under august skies
before they swapped the fifties for
a less convincing innocence
the broken kind that breaks too well


with oxygen in short supply
below the ladder on the ice
they rose and shook it off like dogs
in harder times, but soon enough
I saw the tightness in the men
who struggled night and day to thrive
and in the poor who truly cared
who leapt and sang to save themselves
from all their hopes, the bitter stones
that crowd the edge of dreams that mock


and in the houses, all the wives
who slaved their narrow lives away
but not in nineteen fifty eight
the sky was at its widest then
my mother's eyes still full of stars
when she was only twenty one
the glist'ning night a flawless kiss
above the faces in the well
above the water on our lips
above the ruins in the wings


a mountain village springs to mind
chiaroscuro black and white
where ice was just the greatest thing
when dreaming snared, against the odds
and down we fall like dominoes


a sense of isolation strikes
there's no-one listening, no-one near
just endless empty rooms again
and that old fear of fading out
of three to two dimensional
until I see you on the bed
your ray-bans resting on your hair
I catch your peaceful gaze once more
and unforgivably I drift


away from warmth towards a storm
without the wit to wonder why


towards a memory that sings
a certain lounge and secret things
the car park overgrown, bereft
where I surrendered to regret
without a clue of what that meant


I locked the cage, turned swiftly round
and made a clean-ish getaway
or so I told myself at length


another history denied
between her perfect lips and thighs
and character I had to love


essentially I never left
so firmly were we locked away
so crucially so fixed in place
because I lacked the strength to dare
when somehow love was not enough
clichés, it seems, are hard to shake
these hearts of ours conceal so much
especially from ourselves of course


it's strange that this should happen now
how could I not have realised


I've hardly thought of her for years
and fight the urge to never stop
but yield to aching images


a tumbling avalanche of thought


the chimney smoke that curved away


a snowball's parabolic flight


the shadows of a pub's porch light
on lavish youth and surging tide
we barely sipped as on we tripped


the undulations of her sighs


the galloping of urgent waves
towards a comely moonlit beach


the strains of Bonnie Galloway
and her sweet words against the wall


an unexpected face to face
the Tigh Na Mara, end of May
a single life, a single chance
the compass needle pointing true
the evening warm, the shadows long
the dazzling scent of bluebell blooms
amongst the trees just up the bank
below the skirl of mocking crows
and puzzlement that stuns me still


her presence crashes through it all
and I'm in disbelief so deep
an instant skirmish in my heart
knocks all my old defences down
for long before we even spoke
my heart was hers to have and hold


the sea beside us and the hill
arrayed themselves around us then
as if they had a part to play


it wasn't easy to 'forget'
a vast release of years impends
it's harvest time and I'm the crop
I'm hanging by the same old thread


both here and then, it's all the same
although I'm not alone enough
nor old enough at any age
to face the fact we'll never speak
or touch again within this realm


except by conjuring in dreams
though this is not her dream at all
at least it didn't seem to be
yet all of it's a jive round her
just as it was before we clinched


who shapes the show then, if not me
how secret must our secrets be


my heart has been in quarantine
the anchor drags, the pegs burst free
I'm pleading with her not to leave
not fade away from memory


I'm hunting hours in floods of years
to stretch them out forever in
some uncorrupted space I've saved
for some day's perfect song in which
I won't run out, no, not this time
and she emerges real as life
from all these details in my head


but still it doesn't seem enough


the cage I trapped us both within
looks set to break; I blunder through
before a single word takes shape
and silently I'm launched again
I'm in the glen and hungering
in ways that only she could whet


it's Tuesday night and I'm alone
and loaded down with heavy posts
I'm rushed, it's hot, and I can't make
the date, the place, 'I won't be long'
I've hills to climb and gates to crash
a father's disapproval too
he thinks I'm playing fast and loose
I never kept him in the loop
(again, because I couldn't speak)


then suddenly a humbling thing
and inexplicably I run
from wanting that will not be quelled


I maybe should have mentioned that
and more besides she never heard
about how much, how deep, how long
it was no ordinary storm


she had the right to know the truth
and part of it amounts to this
that leaving her was my attempt
to stiff the world that spawned my shame
(there's always someone else to blame)


her loss was perfect punishment
a victory against myself
against a love that overwhelmed
and though at last the running's done
and we're so far from where we were
by all the normal measurements
this desperation's on the flood


a time of reckoning's arrived
and all because I couldn't see
an old man crying as he reads
the story of a country boy
who whipped the zing from underneath
the riptide of his life, and now
it seems too late to flee this dream
that feels as if it must explode
when suddenly I'm safe again


your gaze again, where this life led
the line of least resistance round
a mocking truth I didn't see


it's you and I on Holland Street
a student and a lumberjack
in shades of green and you in jeans
a cold and smurry afternoon
it's early days, it's early March
a Corporation bus growls past
the tenements all blasted clean
the seventies about to end


but time was not an issue then
the Griffin's not too far away
and not too soon I know the words
concerning blame I can't quite own


omissions mainly, I suspect
so many worlds that never were
yet silence overcomes my tongue
as much from habit as from dread
until I clear my throat and croak
'I pulled the house down by myself'


which wasn't what I meant at all
exactly as you walk away
you walk away, you slip away
beyond the door I should have closed
beyond the words, beyond the heart
towards a not so distant age


seductively you're standing where
beneath a sultry August sky
the bales of hay were seven high
and you were only seventeen
with mysteries and rosy cheeks
and steered the tractor standing up
towards the valley in our thoughts


the gorse and broom were dry as dust
the field was lined with hawthorn trees
that stretched away to English scenes
by way of trains and swimming pools
a quick hello to Livingstone
The Moody Blues and Wishbone Ash
and subtle things we knew too well
with roots in us and circumstance
your parents on the castle walls
their expectations and their hopes


yes, you and I were bound to fall
between the islands and the hill
the railway tracks and history
the harbours left and harbours missed


and whistling through those sheets and masts
a signalling of loneliness


some days it's just the wind and me
and fate of course, a place to think
to ponder on the mystery
the flight recorder of the heart


to make one jigsaw out of two
is tough for sure, but all the same
I wish you could have been my dream


I gathered in but never gave
enough to break the dam of fear
that kept my questions to myself


so many choices compromised
and distances that only grew
because I couldn't raise my hand
because I couldn't kiss the girl
and so the wanting overran
and damage spilled beyond this life


beginnings are such precious things
come with me and I'll take us back
(how many times to get it right)
to justify my selfish self


exactly where I can't be sure
but somewhere soaked in scents of truth
a threadbare magic carpet base
it's nineteen sixty one or two
I'm kneeling down by Africa
with all the awe of innocence


the Commonwealth was something then
those spreads of red where blood was shed
when atlases were vivid things
that held the worlds that used to be


my father's father on his knees
we traveled down the trails and streams
across the seas and into dreams
and glory drenched in older wrongs


while here at home, well, life went on
as kids still danced the nights away
where only ghosts and highways meet
and of the songs they used to play
that spoke of love round Damnaglaur
there's not a trace nor single tear
not even echoes, save for here
nor any kind of foothold there
no fist sized cloud to warn or guide
nor switch to throw that I could find


I used to crave those brimming times
that simple child a fugitive
though trapped for sure within this life
a sucker for compelling lies
the webs of other people's hopes
and mythic lives they wished they'd led
to rhythms of an older song
an older song that jolts me back


I'm telling me, I'm telling you
the plan I drew in retrospect
needs only minor changes now
to win the willing hand I spurned
to save the tree, to right the boat
to leave you high and dry, unmet
to leave you with your dreams unscathed


to catch yon lofty Raven's eye
that sees no more than keeps it safe
from Carrickee to Creechan's shore


and right on cue we're in the bay
yon neat lagoon between the isles
amongst the gravel and the rocks
awash with smells of wrack and salt
and gruelling hardship fondly missed


while in a window looking down
across The Creechan's tilted fields
at pickers bent amongst the stones
a stranger, where you might have stood
to watch the distant gannets wheel
or those two brothers working creels


I'm wading in the water with
the ghosts of many winters past
the glassy ocean fully ebbed
when without warning I'm alone
with just a sense of severing
and all my fraught imaginings
I didn't mean to trouble you


the mist wreathed headland stands too close
a stunt the Mull had pulled before
while all along the water's edge
the rocks rear up like aliens
reflections crowd around my feet
as if afraid of vanishing
like briefest lives that won't let go
all jostling for a saving heart
or secrets needing to be told
apologies I should have made


there's so much sorrow in the air
the sky has never been so close
so laden down with loneliness
I look straight down and see myself
my face looks fifty years too young
I'm scrambled by the urge to swap
to delve beneath the rippling blue
and find myself unspoiled and free


imagining I've made the deal
I glance back up and grok my fate
deserved or luck, I'm not quite sure
so much of it slipped swiftly past
as mystery, or worse, unseen
although I thought I'd seen it all


a minute here, a minute there,
a lack of focus, daydream quests
it's how a lifetime leaks away
and while I'm lost the sky fills up


the merest breeze and sudden chill
bring flakes of snow of startling blue
like fragile eyes that seem to see
the world that ends their precious flight
like all our little tragedies
and all our great affairs foretold
that founder on the salty shore


impatiently the rising tide
starts rushing round the rocky mounds
the southern islet has no name
and so I name it after you
except it's hers, instead of yours


I yell it fondly just in time
as if that drowning isle could hear
and take it under, out of reach
and felt myself cut almost loose
enough for reconnecting to
whatever might have been my world
but out of sync and fluster struck


the sea is rising much too fast
the rocks and ridges disappear
it rises 'til I realise
the past is here, the future too
and all the truth we'll ever know
all woven through this snowing now
this standing wave we ride awhile


and this is where I must belong
within an ordinary life
a fisherman just like before
but not of men with book in hand
the tides that flow within us all
will rise and fall just as they please
and all at once there's clarity
the sky is clear and I can see
familiar cliffs more clearly now


the leash is all there is at last
whichever way I line it up
it's all that freedom always was
the journey, nothing more or less
all set in motion by the code
the algorithmic idiot
the whittling sieve that sieves itself


and straining too, I struggle with
this urge to salvage something from
a thousand tomes and endless words
and host of insights come to naught


no, not enough to drive a dream
or hoist a flag to rally round
or found a useful argument


for all that's left of all of it
perhaps the peak of pointlessness
is maybe just the telling glimpse
that sees the lives we try to live
(that truly hints at what we are)
enmeshed within vast metaphors
extruded by that vague domain
that stalks the world within, without
the heads of homo sapiens
since long before the first words came
which loops us deep within the loops
of ravishing complexity
all spawned by thrawn simplicity


some truths will always go astray
the hunting never seems to end
the primitive, the civilised
those battling factions in our heads
at war from here to everywhere


for might it be that we've misread
the ranking of the rational
in lives that thrive submerged in myth
and symbolism that connects
the real, the dream, the threat, the thrill
the precious birth, the dreadful kill


the fleet of images that show
the essences that meaning fails
all overlaid with alphabets


for when would dreaming ever burn
for anything but hopes and fears
however dressed in this charade
where prejudices rule the roost
and shape our futures and our pasts


yes, all that seethes within these hearts
and seems impossible to say
was surely never meant for words
and yet they're all we've got for now
to tie the shadows to the glare
to bind the chaos to the song
amid the inexpressible
in all our little story lives


this journey seems so very vast
and yet we've hardly moved at all
from tree to tree, to Kant and Rawls


the mother must protect her young
with not a thought for right or wrong
for peril doesn't stop the clock
the moral feels like afterthought
that tags along with all that was
with language just a cushioning
sophistication's pose de jour
that serves to hide us from ourselves
and all that magpies see and feel
the wordless work that somehow steers
the alligator through the fence


is naming just a distancing
was all my reasoning just froth
a bunch of words that stood for fear
that night I ran in Creachmore lane
from yon intimidating love
when we were ripe in swarming June


what kind of truth joins all those dots
fells all the walls we're locked within
the heart of dreaming, maybe, or
a more explosive route to grace


eight billion dreamers twitch away
their solitary silences
until the moment summons up
the thund'rous beat of booted youth
machined in massive ranks of will
from strangers baked inside us all
we herd, or shoal, or flow, or flock
to serve the state or demagogue


or gently, as the scene demands
the urgings of a tinder heart
or kindness like a soothing breeze
whose passing kindles pleasing dreams
that can't withstand the siren drums


that Christ I mentioned earlier
is many things, but most of all
he's promises that energise
and human hearts that feel too much
may crush or kill as quick as love


it's all for love; it's all for blood
we all fall down; we all fall up
it's ring a ring o' roses round
the nets we're in, the nets we throw
the old swing tree, the Old Mill House


my questions might be wrong of course
and every answer mere mirage
a moment real then gone for good
like snowflakes on our gulf stream shores
or all my scribbles fading out
on some old crumbling railway bridge
that sought to link too much and left
so many endings incomplete


I barely feel a sense of self
in this great swell of wondering
this tiny arc of what I am
and does it really matter now


the stars all seem oblivious
Sinatra, Sartre spring to mind
their offerings devoid of light
and not exactly nourishing
though good enough for passing time


but maybe that's all this life is
a hot and sweaty passing through
spent chipping at the ice of self
or shoring up the flooding walls


or recollecting moments fled
while watching the shapes of the world
resolving themselves into sense
through misted, out of focus spex
though even vision is a veil
and truth is such a flitting thing


and so we act as if we know
exactly what is happening
and that's enough to get us through
with hardly any guile at all


which might suffice when hunger strikes
but takes us where when hunger fades
if noble purpose has no place


a closing act where types like Trump
assert their myths and try to steal
whatever kind of show we'll wear
or billionaires come swooping in
to help as few as greed permits
though mostly we're content enough


we look for rainbows everywhere


yes, here we are, a step away
from intellectual disgrace
it's empathectomies all round
as elbows, teeth and graft and gain
win almost every argument
with more than just a little pride


while all too few still deign to sift
the ashes of our fragile dream
for that one telling principle


and though I care about that now
I think I must have tripped amongst
the headstones by the cold White Loch
and landed in a bluebell bed


I'm reading scripture with intent
the promises of Ruth bereft
elicit awe and tell-tale tears
the simple beauty of the words
connect, it seems, with what they mean
or something I'm still longing for
exquisite love just out of reach
or sunlit, crystal, splashing pools
of childhood moments free of fear
while life is passing left to right
in waves of prizes picked to blind
and webs of myths devised to bind


all schemed to conquer restlessness
to kindle wants and tame dissent


it's noughts and crosses played in blood
in four dimensions on the move
though I'm not keen, the game goes on
it builds and breaks before my eyes
it binds and severs all at once
and fleetingly my life became
a very unfamiliar place
a metaphor for my mistakes


for my abiding witlessness
not just the errors that I am


the lines of wrong web all of us
through all our claims to facts and truth
as contexts widen out of reach
and angels, demons, ghosts and gods
are called upon to fill our voids


or maybe I've just missed the point
and scramble for another tack
to bring these flailing threads to heel
a line I'm sure I've used before
'sensation's where they all converge'
when my beginnings break the spell


the cast that launched this thing arrive
united in this breaking down
to help me choose a better gear
for even introverts forget
from time to time, to watch the road
there's beauty there and duty too
amongst the cherished scenes and times
I lean towards, I've tried to save


they march right up to make their case
as if they're overfilled with fate
and seize my eyes to make me see
a father's and a mother's love
that perseveres where both still live
(though now there's no place left to go)
to make me search amongst the stones
for scraps of silver, scraps of gold
an open heart, a kindness done,
the work we are, a clearing sky


and all the little things that count
and why they truly matter now


for now's the moment of my life
this everlasting now of mine
this swaying on our surfing crest
where action gets it on with time


aye, time, that little ploy we've hatched
to organise the universe
a brutal mess we've tamed with names
a game of cards we're bound to lose
wild actions in the widest queue
the stuff that's done or still to do


the laws of causes and effects
are very hard to disregard
the past is future gone for good
yet, also where it's first produced
or, from a cooking point of view
it's stew that keeps on making stew
tomorrows teeming with the past


though some, of course, gets filtered through
that unlit place between our ears
which stirs in our peculiar stuff
behind the veil of arrogance


I realise I'm rabbiting
a needle planted in a groove
a mob of echoes passing through
when all at once I'm struck alert
within some other zone or state
that isn't now or even close
but all of it's as real as real


I'm at a lecture by the sea
a score of students on a dune
and when the speaker utters 'but'
we all take turns at single words
as if to make collective sense
which struck me then as quite a plan
and when I'm up I cry out 'spies'
and no-one's more surprised than me
but every face turns slowly round
and all that focus shrivels me
I might be Thursday, I don't know
I might have pulled the whole thing down
or might have broken something real
a deal perhaps, or older vow
I lost all sight of long ago


I try to turn the thing around
with noises I can't understand
then sprint away to smell the sea
and sense some epic dream of youth
abandoned oh so casually


but pressing matters press right in
my hair's a mess and growing thin
a fence we built is falling down
and thirsty cows are breaking out


yet all my thoughts are on a fox
I shot across a lush green field
when both of us were very young
it caught my eye before it fell
and held its gaze there fifty years


I didn't think of fairness then
I never fought and never bled
on those same fundamental terms
and every way I turn I'm caught
in all I've said and never said
in all I've done and all I've not
for all I've lost and all I've sought


what kind of truth is lost in this
I wonder as I jog along
the kind that costs, the kind that calls
that's incomplete, that's laced with myth
that's maybe more than we can stand
or lurks amongst this slumbering


these sounds of someone murmuring
and instantly I scramble up
distracted by an unformed thought
forgotten word or distant knock
and sense of something left undone
some fragile, distant, whispering thing


there's no-one there, but now I know
I'm galvanised and have to go
the lobster pots have gone unhauled
for months it seems, or all this life
and so I launch without a thought
an unknown boat and fail to check
the fuel, the bait, the tide, the time


the sea itself's a misty mess
it's windless with a rolling swell
the creels are miles from where they were
and chunks of land are closing in
like mocked up versions of the cliffs
as Birnam Wood and ticking clocks
a wedding guest, an Alba cross
converge, confuse and crowd me with
the bootstrap fucking paradox


it's time for jumping up and down
on violins and floating hats
for whistleblowers on the block
for bully-bangers in the wind
for walks I talked but never walked
injustices I didn't fight
but soon I'm too fatigued to stand
and words that can't be words begin
to sentence me, to sunder me


I'm struggling with the simplest things
the gaps between my thoughts extend
attenuated meanings fail
and all my flats and sharps cascade
towards a single pointless tone
I'm fogged and fighting for control
but feel myself unravelling


I'm overboard beneath the sea
I'm on a clipper full of tea
I'm upside down, or inside out
and somehow dry, inside the sky
my preconceptions all astray
I'm on the trail of Joseph K
unmoored, unsure, with virgin eyes
I'm outside love's enclosing arch
in all the scenes I've ever cut
a little tumbled, and perplexed


I might be in a leaky shed
or in another universe
of places that we've never been
and time we surely never spent
a set of keys that can't be mine
a stranger's pad, a stranger's pen
but not a stranger's history
for somehow there are memories
that feel too real for wish or dream
as if the dream has built a past
to lend it credibility
against the crumbling of the real


or was it false, from end to end
all through a life that never was
the architect so devious
I feared I might be someone else
a total stranger to myself


a simulation of a trial
a nameless creature fading out
or Yashin on the halfway line
when all the game has passed me by


messiah sent to save us all
with just a letter and a smile
or idiot besieged by thorns
in that old wood around the Cults
to keep some weird guy's kids amused
by shrieks of pain and clumsiness
and far too many streaks of blood


or actor on a haunted stage
pursued by truths that can't be faced
but neither can they be erased
the future cannot be undone


she's nowhere to be seen in mine
except the ones I left behind
except as sung by Patsy Cline
down endless trails between the lines
in other places, other times
unseparated in the flow
of gorgeous options I declined


and in this plangent place that's now
I'm on a peak within a pit
and standing still, but feel as if
I'm searching for the kind of life
I aimed to live but didn't quite
but didn't quite? A miss, a mile
and crazy moments born of what


a step away, a rush towards


a giant flake of falling snow


a splodge of mud, a broken chord
that haunts the nations of a mind


I am my own vain multitude


a crush of lemmings making plans


a feather on a private storm
that yearns to edge the side of good
but wouldn't fight? No, that's quite right


it's in the ledger on the shelf
it's in that narrow love we shared
though hidden then on Holland Street


no compromise that's free of wrong
can square the balance, clear the debt


there's tragedy in everything
I'm stricken by the sadness in
the sunlight on my arms and face
the birdsong drifting from the trees
more deeply than I've ever been


I see you then in Spanish heat
too distant in your husband's snap,
you're tanned as always, wearing shorts
a siren song; I now know why
we never danced in all those years
like lovers in a movie where
the ending never was in doubt


as vividly you start to fade
a rainbow bound for monochrome
amongst the names I've scribbled down
on windows, walls, and long felled trees
to free myself I used to think
but doubt that trick'll work this time


aloud, I read them all bar one
to stem the rising tide of sight
that's focusing on her's alone
that sacred thing, my ocean wide
and I, a drop; her breath, her sigh
escape into the atmosphere
and capture every molecule
of nearliness and cowardice
of wildest night and wilderness
where she can't read but might be read
though few will ever truly know
and why that matters I don't know


atonement's not an option now
and there's no choice, no easy out
I'm on a cliff edge looking down
I should be scared to slacken, shrug
but I don't care, and this time: her
who placidly declined the crowd
and stood alone against the wall
beside the female prefects' room


a gorgeous apparition now
connected by these earthly things
the gravity and grace of love
to someone she might never know
for moments or a thousand years
of passing nods and nothing more
when longer days and longer nights
were full of trembling destiny


along the lush and fertile shore
the tide was out and she was there
beyond the moon, beneath the blue
that shades into forgetlessness
and filled the space that filled this life
more fully then than I could hold
when I knew even less, but now
I'm lifted by the lift of her
and cries of Sugar Baby Love
that echo from these stubborn scraps
a gravel track, a sixties car
a riding through, a turning back
a wooden shack, an empty floor


and just for once I'm brave enough
it's really her and when we touch
that secret truth comes chiming in
the word, the thought I daren't think
that single name amongst them all
that I refused to recognise


so many years oblivious
to echoes, deaf, until somehow
I'm dancing with her at The Port
we're dancing always, everywhere
as if our lives were nothing else


and yet it seems too hard to shed
this sense of leaving without end
and fevered longing I've unlaired
the whole that swallowed all its dreams
the part consumed by all its needs
who didn't say that I am this
so strong in this, so weak in that
while chopping down the tallest trees
and weaving through a mess of waves
a world away from all they knew
those strange acquaintances of mine


so much of us that goes unknown
so much of me that went unshared
the longest, slowest, burning fuse
the eager words that fell so short
or mostly never fell at all
the falling walls, the roof that's gone
this overturning life of mine
this falling grain, those tumbling waves
in city streets, on jungle trails


those little mirrors life has shaped
to show this self reflected in
the whole dishevelled edifice
of all my searching just to find
a place to draw the final line
a sliding moment, sliding on
until I can remember why


I didn't mean to trouble you


my dog's been digging up your lawn
for something never buried there


a geographical misstep
without a care, without regret
and here am I, across the hedge
a withering of promises
some overdue apologies


but I don't own a Labrador
and can't believe you live next door
so far from yon old Raven's beat
so far from your high sweeping fields


I'll check my files though, just in case
and catch you later by the sea
for maybe coffee, maybe tea
and if the stars come stealing out
we needn't gaze or call them down
they all belong to someone else


but no, there's only reams of guilt
in tee line shapes, and pages torn
a gale of quotes, some scribbled notes
attempts at sense that flared to mud
the bow-wow-wow of roaring blood
and crossword puzzle pointing out


I'm playing scrabble by myself
inside a mind that's not my own
and can't afford to win or ask
just who I am by anagram


my only weapons are the rules
restrictive form the guiding force
the snare of life my bungee rope
and if I'm broken out of this
I'll miss that life I never knew
though that's exactly how it was
and wonder if I'd ever swap


the juggernaut keeps driving on
the choosing moment never stops
until we're done, and now from there
it's not the view I had in mind


the wildness of the ocean's edge
not chained, not tamed, not framed within
this dance that's me, this dance that's her
in some vast snoring parallel


not anymore, not anymore
'that's what I'll write', I shout too loud
'and hurl it back, if time allows'
and maybe in some other past
the finch won't fall until it must
and I won't be afraid to ask
to raise my hand a thousand times
to master ways, to enter worlds
to not betray thon fearsome love
to shape an ending of my own
to love her as I should have done


or never leave this dance I'm in
where I can kiss the girl at will


until this dream runs out of steam
though this would be the queerest dream
if I had any choice at all
where mind outruns the stubborn truth
of all that wears our wishing out
and all that's left of dreaming is
addiction to catharsis now
or just a clearing of the decks
or some exotic other-world
where real's as real as what we feel


the monologue goes on and on
as ordered by the universe
for all that happens must, of course
but gratefully, it also stops
I'm either sleeping or I'm not


the dog needs walking I've been told
he's looking at me from the door
it's tiny legs are keen to go


I think we might go strolling past
a certain house on London Road
where I sold lobsters long ago
when nonchalance was radical
and fear was in my skin and hair
at certain sounds, a certain look


while in another strand of life
we skipped across asbestos roofs
until the darkness caught the sun
and clumped us underneath the stars
the stars that aren't where they were


it's been a while since we were teens
and day by day on distant screens
some cautious words were all we swapped
when she was barely holding on
now only Gemini shines on


outside the light is blinding bright
I have to feel for every step
more sightless than on any night
and every sinner, every saint
like clumsy puppets make their way
quotidian and meaningless
or less, so far as I can tell
except to loved ones and themselves


and here and now on planet Earth
I think this must be aftermath
the realm of when, where action rules
though fiction vies and underpins
and where, however hard I tried
I couldn't choose the scents and hues
I've cherished all this stumbling life
this strange array of blended faults
of reaching mind and scanty chops
and old obsessions that persist


the rats are in the walls on stilts
our precious water's boiled away
to leave us nothing but these husks
the final ambush edging near
where endless context can't quite hold
the multitude is in retreat
to something less than whimpering


there's fragmentation in the sea
the amniotic ocean's lost
with all its gods, its wonders too
we can't remember, or forget
and all that seems just vanishes
although it never really leaves


but finite in this narrow place
I miss the skies and hear myself
I'm whistling and I'm whistled on
the train I'm on's the train that's gone
I walk the dog, the dog walks me
within this finely jazzed up fog


I faded out of gradually
into some kind of calling from
the crumbling edges of a song
wild apples in old unwalked woods
the wheel that used to mill the grain
the flooding tide in shapely bays
or something on the bridge that links
the many shifting things we missed


between the brinks and sheltered lanes
that bend through arteries and veins
the dream that slumbered in our hints
or unsaid word that's haunted since
a telling smile, a tempting fence
the merest touch, her certain glance
a moment's thrill, a thirst unquenched


or urge to crash the dusty past
or fabricate the perfect hat
to catch and sail the ardent winds
that squall across the oceans of
a vast expanding consciousness
that's waited fourteen billion years
to dream this thing we seem to be


this tyranny of quark and mesh
this battering by egg and urge
of all these figments we've become
vain fetches of our inner gods
all hollowed, numbed, yet not quite gone
so long as memory still haunts
the winning hand we might have played
exquisite love so thrown away


yet, now and then, the homely smell
of burning branches on the breeze
that blows from careless yesterdays
can fill my head and ragged sails
and frame the mysteries of us


I said I loved her, fervently
in this bed here just hours ago
while she was in yon longish coat
and we were in each others' arms
a stark, nostalgic work of art
in some strange clearing far from here
in woodland thick with yearning years


a weaving freeing us at last
across so many with'ring pasts
and wanting spun from traces blown
through far too many summers flown


to burn or not to burn, I asked
and crave the ashes that we are
too much could never be enough
yes, what a thing it is to love


02 05 2023


jim hogg