Poetry is like sunshine it's free
'It is human to look down
on things that have fallen'
Alden Nowlan
FLAW
While they raided a house down
The street for guns, I searched my
Mind for these words of light. Seems
Conflict is passed through gen-
Orations like the error of memory.
‘Do you know we haven’t had one?
Day’s peace on this earth ever: A fact.
It dawned on me, the strong spring sun
Shot through the flaw of glass reflecting
Colour of the door handle like the words
Of Lou Reed came alive, ‘Different colours
Made of tears’. A
hologram of light,
A mixture of memory in a rainbow of pomes.
The colours of everything I’d ever seen reflected
Of a door handle.
Shot through like a glance
Of every pome I ever wrote shining for me
And for you, if you look?
Grief will always
Catch up with you so let humanity flow.
o.c.
I don’t dream much these days
But writing my memories keeps
Me sane. My Fathers plot of weeds
And wild grass cries out for order.
The fallen wooden cross bears no name
Just like the seed markers he planted
To say which is which, the plot he turned
In an acre and a half of land to plant
Lettuce, cabbage and carrots from
A packet of seeds.
I was left in charge to see them grow.
Forgotten little shoots that nurtured
Into grief, un-weeded neglected was
Your theory of living of the land. City
Dwellers trying to be country-folk.
Now you lay beneath the land you fought for
without a flag to wrap around your bones.
We don’t even know where your plot is?
So how can we weed a plot we do not know
from what is what.
UN-POLLUTED JOY
‘Loving them all the way back to the source,
Loving everything that increases me’.
Raymond Carver
The mind creates a form like
Shadow goes into light.
The form becomes a memory
Of what I done yesterday.
A childhood I thought was erased
Almost like an anagram my mind
Is raised to remember yesterday
Today. Words have a healing prop-
Erty if you let them form, only like
They know to flow. Words find
A way to journey through the mind
To feel the tremble of light in un-
Polluted joy, to wake up on another
Shore with Raymond Carvers sight, might.
‘Loving them all the way back to the source,
Loving everything that increases me’.
Raymond Carver
The mind creates a form like
Shadow goes into light.
The form becomes a memory
Of what I done yesterday.
A childhood I thought was erased
Almost like an anagram my mind
Is raised to remember yesterday
Today. Words have a healing prop-
Erty if you let them form, only like
They know to flow. Words find
A way to journey through the mind
To feel the tremble of light in un-
Polluted joy, to wake up on another
Shore with Raymond Carvers sight, might.
i was talking to a housing inspector about a dis-
abled door and this came like that.
THE GLAD STREAM
The spittle from my pen leaves
Its mark upon the page, a heart
Pierced by a sword. My
Father used
a gun to find peace, I used a pen.
‘ The glad stream’,
metal and plastic power’.
I’m reading Coleridge while the young couple
on the far bank are moving. I’ll miss them
at the backdoor coming out for a smoke even
If they never say hello, it felt like some-
one was there. The
cot and toys are being
shifted into a van, the white door through
the fence has closed a chapter. The sky
is blue and the river of cars flow by.
BLOOM
The world goes on and on and on
But I’m here and here and here.
A plastic urinal looks up and blooms
Between the wheelchair and the dis-
Abled toilet. I’ve
been reading poets
And poems and poetry but can’t find
A link to my home. Poetry is out there
in the meadows and trees but I’m
Locked-in alone. I put
a search into
Google for poets who took a stroke
Nothing came up. I
turned away
In my wheelchair to see my leg-
Lifter and my grabber catching rays
Of sun on my profile bed so I suppose
The only link is the sun coming in
And this pome going out.
A pome
From a un-romantic, un-academic
Spineless confessional poet, there
I said it that word poet but I’m just
A shadow of my former self living
A stanza in me.
SPRING SHADOWS
Spring shadows, thick and black
They make a tree look like a tree
Within a tree. A lazy lonely mid-
Day as if the shadow was painted
By Edward Hopper. The shadows
Fall in this sun against the cloud-
Less blue like it didn’t need any
More to be today. The shades
Of yesterday are with us, cele-
Brating this glorious sunshine
Falling upon contrasting light,
Being.
They make a tree look like a tree
Within a tree. A lazy lonely mid-
Day as if the shadow was painted
By Edward Hopper. The shadows
Fall in this sun against the cloud-
Less blue like it didn’t need any
More to be today. The shades
Of yesterday are with us, cele-
Brating this glorious sunshine
Falling upon contrasting light,
Being.
A COLD FRONT
I have to dig in deep
to find a purpose
to find a stanza that
translates my soul.
My purpose is to be-
come a silent poet
a screaming din with-
in a noiseless state.
A person that is way be-
yond a person a human that
seeks to find humanity
a searcher of the truth within
the search, a man that has
touched his own black hole.
A POEM INSIDE A POEM
A poem inside a poem
revealed it-self to me
showing a slant of ages
like an image within
an image.
Coming out of dark
a bi focal trick in the eye
of concentration to go
deeper and deeper into
grey matter.
GREY MATTER
I look around this room and realise my muse
has exhausted the theme of light and dark
but the shadows still fornicate.
I’ve used the bed-rail, the wheelchair
And the stand-by beacons to keep me
from drowning in dark.
My piss-pot is angled like a shooting star
Blazing my trail of hope.
My positivity comes from the well
Of treasure, the source that we call god.
Whether it is or isn’t I think the well
Of human spirit is a vessel of magic
That keeps us whole and I always
Make
love with my light in the dark.
