moment us pomes

             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.

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.

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.