The passions
that divided us
when we were young
Bring us back
together
when old
The bias
the malice
the pain and the hurt
The years
in their wisdom
remold
What once
seemed important
and drove us apart
Transformed
like a westerly
wind
To finish
our days
attached at the hip
Umbilically
joined
— from within
(Dreamsleep: July, 2026)
I am madly alive today,
one has to get mad not to be dead.
I wander out,
wending through myself
allowing the warm west wind
kiss the thin ice of a low mood.
Smiles light up my gladding blood,
clouds scud.
I take the bright light
in the field rabbits' eyes,
to set fire to my own sight.
I must give praise to whatever,
I see it threading my reality
through this warm breath of infinity,
both I and it are madly in love
with every crazy-hearted lover.
This boisterous day
the Westerlies do blow,
and the Spring air leaps
as sprightly as a young girl
running over
a sweetly waving meadow -
and by god -
I am mad to be that green grass
beneath her!
A south westerly buffeted the house
all night, howling at the windows,
trying to find something loose
to lift up and rip away.
Then the rain hardened to hail
bruising early summer growth
with icy shot.
I like laying in bed
listening to rain but this was
no soft patter, no gentle sedative
to send one to sleep.
This was rage, broken free
of limits. Senses tightened,
stretched across sleepless hours
waiting for the breach,
the moment when wind
would find the weakest point.
No mind was in this fury
but a pure play of power,
vectored here on some fall
of numbers hidden
in the howl. Unencumbered
by thought or feeling
there was a raw beauty
to its might.
By morning it was all blown out.
Children jumped puddles
of blue sky on their way
to school. Workers were busy
clearing away a tree
that had fallen on a house
killing a couple as they
laid listening or slept.
A North Westerly town
It was an okay town when you got to know the place
a well-lit main road a hospital in one end and the docks
at the other end.
it was equality sat in system everyone had the right to a small
house made of bricks, this led to a maze of housing with roads
so narrow it only had place for bikes, the fire department
used bikes with a motor and a hanger for hoses.
The police used roller skates which the citizens were forbidden
to use.
In between the narrow housing, the were small cafes, shops and a place for,
mostly men could get a massage.
If you got lost, all you had to ask for the main road everyone knew where it was.
The language sounded like the sea slapping at the molos built
to keep the town from flooding.
I nearly got lost once I had asked for direction to the boulevard
as it was called, but I turned south instead of north and ended
up near the hospital and since I was in a hurry
hired a bike rickshaw and got down to the docks just in time
before my ship, that was slipping its mooring I had to jump
to get on board.
Let us take you up then
Where litanies of darkness mount the sun
Rest us on the magic night, bleakest evil oars
Arid pair of sleepy rebels float, limbs and root
Pretending what we are, reversed dreams of fields
Open as the window that is life, or so it seems
Hear the whish of mindful trees and zombie bark
Let us take you down, in dionysian diction
Where reality fluffs it’s cranberry tendrils
Where “real” is just a latin undulation of noise
Oh! for the wet warm South Westerly
after the cold white North Easterly leaving
sparkling rain on each window pane South Westerly.
At night this rain paints all inanimate things a vivid
hue, while humans look care worn, some even sickly,
no longer New Year spick and span but of a drearier hue.
New snow in the Wolds as yeast in England's east, another
feast for children and adults unable to bring home the bacon.
Drains turn into ice topped streams that underneath show
water swimming like eels in a race to breed. Across the North Sea
diagonally from The Wash, heavy snow is falling in the Norge
fjords like so many Vikings on a raid for plunder, trade or conquest.
The saddest thing about poetry
is that it can say nothing more beautiful
of the real than the real says naturally of itself.
The grandest thing about poetry, on the other hand,
is that it can portray in such splendor the unreal
as to awaken in us the notion that
the delusion is brutally real.
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