Waking up at midnight
in a room without a view,
taking up a book, you find
no pages to look through.
...
Again and again, the ghosts of aeons past
walk the narrow corridors of your life.
Again and again, they call to you
...
I wish I could have eased your pain
as once we walked along the path
that led along a grassy ridge
and round the hill, and back again.
...
Suddenly in summer on a dusty path
a fever takes me, and I see your face
again in the sweltering heat of blue-draped mountains;
or under smoky skies that clutch my throat
...
Vulgarly, among the irises of love,
there sprouts an ugly weed.
On humid, stinking summer nights
...
I thought I might have seen you again
in spring, in places where we lay among the flowers,
young and careless of the passing hours
that left us sighing and to yearn in vain.
...
It’s a lover’s question
that’s asked by the first breeze of spring,
freshborn, still new and shyly venturing
among the buds of green beneath a blue sky.
...
They blend as one,
the ocean
and the man who stands
fishing by night.
...
Time, you’re a thief
that comes by night
as we sleep heedless.
...
Come with me to Castlemaine
when summer’s in the air
and laughing girls dance through the parks
loosening their hair.
...
These initials, L.O.L. -
at first I thought
they stood for “Lots Of Love”,
but now I learn
...
Forgive me, but I shall leave
by a discreet side door
at the end of this night of goodbyes
which we have whispered to each other
...
(A haiku)
Always in the night
it wells up from depths unplumbed -
...
Through distances of arid time
a voice, half-remembered, half-dreamed,
cuts through the painful skin
that I wear as my disguise
...
When I first popped out of my mum, I saw what the world was like and yelled out, 'Put me back! '. But the doctor just said, 'Shut up, you little brat! ' and gave me a slap on the bum. Hence I yelled even louder and threatened to sue him for child abuse. (As you see, I was precocious as a child, but don't worry, the precociousness left me some time ago.) Then I kicked him in the wotsits. This was a mistake, because he let out an almighty squawk and dropped me head first on the floor. I've been a bit of a misfit ever since. I wrote poetry as a teenager, then the urge left me for many years. In late 2008 I had a brain seizure which was nearly fatal (although at least it did prove to the sceptics that I do still have a brain) , followed by a period of hospitalization. After I recovered I found poetry flowing out of me irresistibly. I guess you might say that coming close to death has a way of focussing the attention.)
A Room Without A View
Waking up at midnight
in a room without a view,
taking up a book, you find
no pages to look through.
You bang upon the bleak grey walls
that bound your tiny room,
but Echo is the only friend
that answers through the gloom.
“How did it ever come to this? ”
you ask yourself in pain -
but cannot even hear your voice
for endless driving rain.
You yourself built this heartless space
from mortar and hard bricks
to guard against a cruel world,
to kick against the pricks.
Now, in this bed you’ve made, you lie
as evermore you must,
until your life shall pass away
and crumble into dust.
Too late you find that this our world
can never be shut out
except by sentencing your soul
to dark eternal drought.