Caught Out In The Open

Risky
It really does
Feel
Warm,
Then cold
Coming from within.
Anxiety beyond words.
The body knows
Before you.

Life or death.

Clouds cover the Sun
Conversation fades,
Smiles falter.

In this place,
Exposure is deadly.

No time to think
Time is draining away.

Certainties break down
In the open
Where you strayed.

Climate Change

Green
Full
Lime
Longing

Joy
To be in love.

Commuters all
Bowed down
Burdened
Blind.

Birdsong
Jubilation

Green to Rape (seed)
Burnt down
Thin air
Hope
Falling away
Fear on display
But driven away

By games
By denial

No stopping now
We aren’t listening
To anything

Waiting to die

Cometh The Hour...

Is there something missing?
What have I left behind?
Who is in charge today?

I am here
On line
On the train.
The slipping landscape still looks
Familiar.
My fellow travellers
On this grey day
Look suitably numb.
But it’s not all right,
It’s all out of sync
As if
The rubic cube got stuck between turns
And
Any second now
The fabric of this film will tear.

Am I ready for this?

Oh lord, but I have sinned!
Quick, quick
Put me back under
For fear I wake the dead.

Desperate Times  

What comes out
At the dark end
Of worn down days?

Honesty?
Vulnerability?
Or
Bluster and booze?

Change the station,
Change the beat!
In desperate times
We can’t stop, just repeat.

Friday 

Just you and me
Kicking around,
Kicking off.
fuck it, it’s Friday.

Empty bottles
Loose tongues.
Nothing to gain
Only ours to lose.

The Sea moves mountains,
Dreams fall in waves,
We clog up the estuary
With the silt of our lies.

As the flow of life slows
We flail in slow motion
Talking incessantly
As if
By words alone
We will be free.

Hastings

I wake in the dawn; light incense.
They haven’t slept; light skunk.
I walk to the station,
White cherry blossom falling;
A Bollywood film.
They stay in rotting rooms
Full of rage and despair.
Daytime scheduled hell.
I pass signs of life,
Spring hope and promise.
Theirs is Winter,
Lost and loaded,
Growling booze-fuelled lines
Of trap and hip hop crap.
No way out for them.

The others?
The DFL’s (Londoners)
Settled here,
Not there (so much better than Brighton)
It’s all so real and fabulous.
With rose-coloured sea-views,
Sighing, isn’t it all,
So beautiful.

Instructions For Living 

Try not to lose your soul.
Try to breathe deeply.
Look up into the vast sky,
Love the emptiness,
Don’t seek to fill it.
Feel your body
Connected
To your heartbeat
That is connected
To every other heartbeat
On this earth
In this moment.

Feel the smallest sign
As a miracle,
Light as your goddess,
The land as your best friend.
Love everything and listen more.
Praise others,
See the little things as magnificent.
Value each day
As if it is your last.
I love you.

Goodnight

Mist

Early morning soft wet air
Breathed out over first light feelings
Condensing into silhouette trees,
Shapes of memories
Half believed between two states of being.

The story tucked inside that fading dream
The one not told
Of love on hold
Of life not lived
Of a World all sold.

Wet first burst flowers in Spring
Flourish in between the shadows and the dream,
Growing irresistibly
Towards what can’t be seen.

Sunrise 3 

The soft light sings birdsong,
Half heard from night echoes.
Ache of not doing
The endless list of longings,
Because it hurts
And hurts
Remembering you when young.

We stood tall in storytelling woods
When the light was golden in our play,
But I didn’t see your darkness rising.
If only
If only our words could fix our souls.

So I circle you
In the woods of our certain words
Not straying beyond
Because we can’t go on
We can’t go on
Through the night time ways.
That story ends
With only one dark dream out.
We can’t go on
We can’t go on.

Sunrise In Spring

The Sun rises
in clouds of pink and blue applause.

Rapeseed bursts into birth
Already yellow
With the new idea of green
Catching on with the visiting fields. 

Bare trees
Just beginning to bud soft stories
Of where they have been
And why
Their light
Is god.

Sweet Little Lies 

The life we dreamt has past.
The songs we were taught
Were not our words
Not our fight.
Our light Fell down to shadows
Slipping over cliffs we walked,
Tightrope-tight, when innocent.
The gulls scream.
The child screams,
Nobody held us tight.

We are torn to ribbons
Fluttering
Fluttering.
Those terrible lies.

The Goddess 

The pen of the night
Traces dream sequences beyond words.
Primal forests full of sleeping aspirations
Slow wave round glowing clearings
Woven with ethereal music.

You were there of course,
Waiting silent and full of the Moon
With beautiful strange beasts
Seated around you.

I speak in troubled tongues,
Telling of my dark city haunting;
The broken journey to the mountains,
Looped in traps of my own making.
The chameleon landscapes,
The burden of time and regrets.

Let go you whisper so alluringly,
Let go of all those
thousands of things
that tangle and torment.

Just be silent.
Just be still.

The Wild Edge - For David Whyte 

‘’We are designed to be chronically craving... ’’  

Trying to get to something
Deeply desired,
Deeply needed,
But strands of distractions
Tug me like the turning tide
Round,
Down,
Drowning.

Then later
Washed up,
Gasping,
Grasping
First birth breath
Out of sleep,
Into the wild edges of sorrow;
Grief and solitude.

Here,
The daily litany of loss
Falls
Like hail
On fields of dreams.

Here is the way beyond,
Where still water
Reflects blue heaven,
After the storm,
After the knife.

Vinyl Of Life

Sacred circles,
Serpent energy
Ecstatic dance of life with death.

Symphony of searching
Spiralling round the meaning
Bursts of creation
Beats of delusion

Vinyl of life
With the clicks and hiss of fusion.
Profound illusion
Spinning round and round
Forever coming up
Falling down.

To Begin

To begin is hard,
When your heads in a swirl.
A furtive dream drains away,
Troubling the modicum of me
That needs order.

Hard,
My words irregular, constipated.
Awkward mutterings
Half whispered to memories of the night.

To begin
Off balance.
Not joining in on social cues
Or moving to that unspoken beat.
Missing the social clues
To where all this
Is going.

Hard,
When in that other place,
Far bigger and brighter,
The better of me
Swims with Sharks,
Sings with dolphins.

Breath

Just one Breath
With the wind in my mind,
Blown out over candles
I lit long ago. 

You Remember,
In that quiet room
of soft memories & wild promises
where we fell in love
with all that was to be;
with each other.

Just one breath
with the wild wind
sucked in between cold rocks
in far away places,
I breath in,
Feel life burn inside.
Where a moment before
there was a green stillness
and love
still waiting
for redemption
from all the loss
that drowned us
all those years ago.

Disconnected

How can I reach you now that you are gone?
Where can we meet up to fetch up?

The zoo.
We always loved that.

Almost getting lost,
Almost saying what was really heavy on our minds.

I know you told me life kept on letting you down.
That failure woke you,
from your difficult sleep,
almost every day.

I know that you would say
almost nonchalantly,
That you knew that we loved you
and were there for you.
But really,
we had no way
of reaching you then.

And now,
I just want to tell you
again,
again.

Illumination

There is only a glimpse,
then it’s finished.
Only a moment between moments
when the light strikes everything just so.

The sea curls against touch,
the land illuminates in love.
I could keep walking into that embrace,
that deep relief.
I could leave the land.
The trees of my truth would hold strong my story
and the sea-bird would only tell those
who really wanted to love
this edge of life impossibly.

Portals

There must be secret places,
in the woods,
in the last wilderness perhaps.
Also in towns,
in old buildings
or libraries.
Definitely in libraries.
Where there are doors,
portals to other worlds,
where life is very different. 

There must be.
We just haven’t found them yet.  

September

Restless early autumn twilight opens
Full of blue-cold shadows and small memories of regret.

Scattered dark silhouettes of birds on thin lines,
Stretched to breaking point,
Waiting, with migrating agitation.

We arrived here in slipping rain,
Sliding down the time left
With less and less grip on cold reality,
Holding hard to this delicate line
Carved into an ageing story.

In the face of desperate odds and accidents
waiting to happen
There is nothing to do but live fiercely
and dance to the one,
Persistent pulse.
Heartbeat,
Hard broken
in this gap between the worlds.

It Is Not

It is not about getting the perfect sunrise
In the best frame of reference
So your day becomes the best of all days.

It is not about another place where you want to be.
It is not about the light falling between the turning leaves,
The far away call of the sea,
The blue sky, honey warm song of it all.

Every moment will happen anyway
Without a single movement from you or me.

We just need to be awake to the possibilities of anything.

This will happen
In each deep breath,
Swelling each moment to burst
With whatever surge of Life there is in you,

Without doing anything at all.

Beginning

The most important thing
Is not to get tangled
In the rising tide of everything.
The vital element
Is that pause,
That opening,
Where all the silence
And dangerous unknowns
Lie waiting patiently,
for your revelation
To unfold.

The Wave

Just before the next wave
A dawn tide of commuters
Flotsam drift onto the wet platform.

The wave falls.

Drags every last, lost one of them
Into the grey deep.

They don’t make a sound
As the water curls over every attempt to escape,
Drowning every dream,
drowning every hope.

To You

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” (Mary Oliver)

This is a moment of hope
That may form into a vision of certainty
This time, this moment acknowledges
With sad, knowing smiles
How hard you hold those silent moments
When the noise of our lives
Drops away like gifted sleep
Acknowledges how lonely is our urge to live and how utterly necessary 

These words fly over
All the troubled landscape of your heart
To settle with blessings into the stillness
And glow with dawn urgency
Warming, forming new worlds
Trusting a life not yet imagined
That is secret and beautiful to you
And you alone. 

These words carry love
And fly with the haste of beginnings
Starting with our heart
With vivid, impossible meanings

Meeting Edward

We met to talk about work
but digressed to what matters
at the heart of life.
He said how important it is
to just let
things
flow,
not to hold onto Life
in fear and agitation.
I said, I am slowly, slowly
getting this.
Outside,
I step into fast-flowing waters
that if I don’t mind my step
will pick me up, spin me round,
deliver me to unchartered places.
Before I know it
my life will be full of wild imaginings
and furious uncertainties.

Leaving

This house is alive
It moves
every so often.
I hear it creak,
as joints crack or groan a little.
Once the cats go
All the rooms will be empty
and full of what will happen next.
If I stand perfectly still
I can hear your breath,
smell you
In the fabric of this place
and almost catch
your determined loneliness
your tenderness,
curled up tight as your will.
Memories creak and crack painfully
every now and then
and the house moves in sympathy.
This is where we were,
and this is where we are not,
anymore,
and only the bones remain.

Homeward

Last time, I lost my way
the wind was winter,
Light lost time and my heart
lost faith in the direction of the day.
I became unstuck
Trees became fear
Dusk unfolded unfaithful whispers
Paths lost meaning
My song sunk into shadows. 

What is it about feeling lost?
What lurks under the nursery rhymes
of childhood fears.
What is this dripping well seeping darkness?

I hear a blackbird twilight song
See a solitary deer tiptoe across a furrowed field
I am walking in between the worlds
Keeping my faltering steps faithful
Till homeward bound I am the way.

Why?

Don’t tell me
You know what you are doing
With your head full of unreasonable behaviour
And never endings.

It's all sound and fury around the craggy rocks,
It's all in the wind and whispering,
Your winter-worn out stories,
Your articulate arrangements.

Time is diminishing us.

Cut loose the tangled cords,
Burn the consequences. 

But tell me now
Before you leave again,

Why have we overlapped and stumbled
Across the same lines
and lives,
Over and over?

Just Now

I lose words now.

They slip between pauses,
Hide between shadows and doubt.

I realise,
I have never quite landed home with myself.

Never quite found the sound that says the word
Without speaking
Without thinking.

Why is there this restless ache
Inside this frame I have shaped so longingly?

Why is there no home-coming of acceptance,
No single shape of sound
That sings our broken hearts
to heal and love again?

View

Splashes of yellow shades
Litter the landscape.
A bright blue swipe of bench
Sits proud as you like
Against the fall of autumn light.

I have sat here before,
Searching for meaning;
in the shape of the smallest of sounds,
In the flicker of patterns
across well-worn behaviours.

And you have sat with me,

Sharing your failed relationships with life.

Sharing your desperate need
to keep fighting the odds,
to keep demanding your place
in the impossible scheme of all dreams.