Showing posts with label Poem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poem. Show all posts

Sunday 8 July 2018

Heat

The scent of heat soaked masonry
Envelops you. Forming out of hot clay a
sense of time.
Kiln-like, the golden rocks stand against the blue sky
As permanent as Mary
As the resurrected cathedral
With the gold and blue finding a different kind of worship

The scent of heat soaked masculinity
Suffocates you. Forming out of muscle a
sense of beauty.
Godlike, the man stretches his lithe body upwards
As hard as rock
As the stone in the ancient buried city
With the flesh and blood creating a
Different kind of worship

Let me embrace the rock and the gold:
Sighing inwardly, wishing to be your mould.
To take you into the heat of the sun’s desire
Wanton I lie here and simply admire.

Friday 3 November 2017

Gently

The dark muted autumn peeps through mist
Dark and earth and wet and cold
Scientific method strives to rise
As golden sun appears
All is magically uplifted
Quietly, roaringly, gaseously
The vibrant autumn calls us clearly home.
Gently.

We are but shadows against an illusory life
Fleeting and swift and temporary
We strive to love and rise above our failings
As people come and go
All is supposedly revealed
Closing, dying, ending
The unknown winter beckons us clearly home.
Gently.



For a friend of Victoria Stamps. I only met him once, but he passed away 21/10/2017.


Monday 13 February 2017

Lost found lost

Lost found lost

In earth orange they lost their treasures
Small somethings across the stage
Socks, umbrellas,
slike, stuffed dogs
As they lost their minds they found their breath.
To catch a body to hold aloft...

In muted reds they found their voices
Large nothings beat deep inside
Fathers, emotions, limbs, virginity taken
And as they found their breath, they lost nothing.
To land a body with perfect poise...

In fierce pinks they lost their breath
Many and all fighting hard
Metronomic, arrhythmic, moving lines
And one by one they noisily collapsed away
Fall falling body fallen lost.

Lost found lost


Inspired by the Janis Brenner & Dancers Concert of Dance, Voice and Music presented by the Sarajevo Winter Festival 2017 'Silk Road Art' National Theatre, Sarajevo, Friday 10th February 2017.

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Constellation London


Even the methodically moving moon takes on a deceptive speed
As seen from the small windows of this metal and plastic conveyance. 

As its crisp flashing harasses the dark lakes below, the benevolent moonlight
Competes with earthy sodium glow and wins in its startling blinding whiteness. 

Moonlit clouds quickly obscure the city and in cruel stargazing reversal
Eyes search the ground below for familiar constellations of motorway. 

In this topsy-turvey corruption of the heavens, glowing grey gaps appear 
Forming a jigsaw of the universe below, Becoming more complete as we climb. 

Normality returns. Moon recovers its extreme speed, needing no illusion
To impress our flight's feeble flash. Indiscernible against the street stars. 

But for that split second between land and cloud, our disinterested 
Satellight overshadowed our city's artificial Big Bang of travelling light. 

Monday 18 April 2016

Walking on Vis

Night has fallen over this scene of convivial voices;
Brotherhoods bonded over the thrum of tones.

Sounds revolving around the thickness,
Atmosphere of fire smoke inviting wisps of mountain down.
But the notes rise up to send love skyward


Day has filled us with sounds of light and conversations;
Friendships walking together winding up through the green.
Crunching over stones sibilant voices harmonise.
Atmosphere of pine scent catching all with amber glow.
And our loads lightened by love falling skyward...

Swifts

A piercing of the air
With cries of summer
A graceful winging arc
Against the pastel blue


A stirring of the sky
With an urgency of spring
A vortex of black specks like
Tea leaves in Wedgwood.

Saturday 6 February 2016

Travelling

The beauty sparkles from deep inside;
To catch the city pulse to see the light.
The unexpected shoots sideways,
To glow, to shine, diffuse across my mind

The lights have been my safe harbour;
The bustle of noise has been my home.
The planned voyage takes me further east,
To travel, to explore, my mind takes shape

The old and the new collide
In glass and metal and skin reflected.
Reflecting on both leave me in colour,
To imagine, I am free, your spirit is free

Friday 9 January 2015

On Burrell at Bonhams

Thoughts tumbling, confused memories
When connected curiosities crisscross
Like curlicued brambles which
Frolic over a falconer's purse

To breathlessly chase appropriate words
Like the tiny embroidered dog
Perpetually swimming after but
Never grasping the knowing duck

Stringing ideas like pearls
On Salome's neck, real, lustrous, pure
Incongruous they sit, her infamous deed
Leaving screaming St John with no head.

Concentrating on making mental echoes
Patterns in the dappled green oil reflecting
The Provençale light; golden, warmly
Remembered, longed for sun

Standing considering the diminutive Emperor
His empty visor unsees the crowd
Shiny still, yet battlefield battered
His corrugated strength lives on, upright.

Taken as a whole, this precious
Time capsule collects and connects;
Full of threads to knit, and wire to link
Living cabinets with those now lost.


In appreciation of the Cabinet of Curiosity which is the Burrell Collection.

Sunday 2 March 2014

Ghost Ship

A ghost ship of rivet dots
Pattern of metal unjointed
A warrior's ferocious footprint

Orderly curves follow the lines
Orderly place as flesh turns
To chaos rot and soil red

Metal rusted into orange
Metal blooded but still here
To carve a shape in time

The host ship carried its crew
Pattern of body disappears
A warrior's honorable departing


On the non existent burial boat of a warrior 
Viking Exhibition, British Museum, 2 March 2014


Wednesday 13 November 2013

Migraine


The pain sizzles and spins,
Unreal rainbows rise and rotate
As the escalator in my head
Spews forth movement.

The earth doesn't turn as it should.
The disorientation in my mind
Unmaps, unravels, undermines,
Lost stumbling forward.

The stomach queases sickly and
The battering ram of pain unstills
And unceasing assaults my eye.
Unseeing arms outstretched.










Tuesday 3 September 2013

Elector and Engineer

A kindly pink face peers down at the bookish historians,
Handling mysterious metal pieces and glowing wood.
They give him an occasional glance, a flirtatious smile,
Comments made quietly as wunderkammer shimmers,
A nod to Papi, an acknowledgment of mastery.

A Saxon prince argues with his smouldering engineer.
Roles reversed as he belabours the capstan;
Pincers attack and pull at the gleaming wires,
'Nein, ziehen, sanft ziehen', croons the gentleman.
As in fairy tales, so magically the gold is woven.

The gruff engineer deftly adjusts the die, just so
And carefully wipes the hot wax from the cold steel
His hands see the bench, but his noble unskilled
Apprentice clumsily works, looking, checking, sweating.
An orderly world overturned by a mechanical universe.

An efficiency of tools and the process changes;
Sheets of fresh traded wood from the east, fragrant lie
To be tortured gently to make furniture pieces.
The engineer stands to the side and the Elector presses;
People, nobles, Emperors, timber bending to his will.

These Promethean princes each praying for knowledge;
Reforming Kingdoms under a new God of reading,
Remanufacturing their states and forcing their will with
Steely determination and ballistic intelligence.
Stamping paternal authority over the natural unnatural land.

Sunday 28 July 2013

Blue

I close my eyes and yet still see
The shimmer of blue horizon
And gentle furl of quiet water
The endless shifting of light-shapes
Imprinted on the camera of my mind

Now light pierces from a closer sun
Looking up at endless blue void
Shapes of tiny island disappearing 
Whilst clouds loom to merge sea-sky 
Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Imagine embracing that watery state
Recurring dreams of blue depths
Ghostly fingers glowing quietly
Skin melting in sea, silk-light on skin
Imprinted on the camera of my mind

I now see both the above and the deep
Impossible blue beauty suspended
Words float away evading my grasp
Always chasing illumination: eyes close
Light imprinted on the camera of my mind

Monday 22 July 2013

Moon Colours

We didn't watch the sunset tonight
We ignored the lurid display of light
Instead we sat entranced by the moon
Casting shadows on the igneous rock

Silver dancing on the shifting blacks;
Fish ripples adding the diamonds
Quiet copper mirrored boats hover,
Shifting; lightly kissing the gentle swell 

Count the varied subtle moon colours, 
Each one richly echoes its brighter light
Turquoise is hematite; vegetation jet.
Reflecting back I gleam black and white. 


Friday 12 July 2013

Agustín Dreams

Agustín dreams of flying machines
He finds lightness in detritus and
Potential for flight in flightless junk;
Each cog and chain and tube is imbued
With devised purpose and patient hands

Agustín dreams impossible dreams
He knows the community's failings,
The people who adore him, the
Brother who for no reason departed,
Dismissive official but, still, he works

Agustí dreams incredible dreams
From here to there took twenty years;
Complications resolved in time,
A gnarled hand and broken body
But in his head he's been in the air

Agustín dreams of compassion for all
Once he gave barefooted kids shoes,
To visit him makes another child sad.
The respect he deserves, he returns;
Kindness, simplicity, wonder, care

Agustín dreams of his time machine
This automaton subsumes his life
Halting, juddering, yet still it moves;
A new wheelchair sent to help his body
Dismantled to build his mind machine

Agustín dreams of universal machines
They mock him, this determined man;
He is not crazy, but has a keen mind
Educated by marvellous patience
Piece by piece; repeat and perfect

Agustín dreams of computing machines
Telescopes in space looking into the void
Up to highest and rarest atmosphere; but
He's incapable, only a lame shoemaker.
Uncaring imagination, ignores, carries him up

Agustín does not dream of heaven
When he is dead he will not care
Where his earth bound body lies
The machine he makes will stand
A reminder to live, to dream, to fly




Written in response to the story of Agustín and his helicopter and inspired in part by Eric Whitacre's  Leonardo Dreams of his Flying Machine









Wednesday 26 June 2013

Bubbles

Bubbles of time carry us through
Temporary states, atoms in flux
Weightlessly lifted mutating forms
Fleeting and turning with wind
Like notes of the band drifting out
Down over the water, down to the sea
Bubbles in swell both beneath and above

Bubbles of air are carried aloft
Endlessly recreated, suddenly stop
Nothing but puddles, like our footsteps,
Remain to show silent whispers of soap
As music ebbs, time shouts out
Bells of the churches, chug of the boat
Bubbles in swell both beneath and above


Tuesday 28 May 2013

A Knitted Landscape

A knitted landscape
Rows upon rows
Textures in twine
Stitched by wheat
Embroidered by barley
Endless colours
Boats casting off




Whimsy from the Isle of Sheppey

Sunday 26 May 2013

The Lime Street Naturalists

It's true what they say
About poems, nature, death and life. 
Pausing for thought whilst looking for 
Scientific heroes amongst rhythm of stones
The musical notes of poetic meter 

The names of my City churches muttered:
Some gone and half forgotten:
Saint Antholin, Benet, Dionis, All Hallows.
The people moved in death by 
A vigorous space needing City

The magpie approaches 
Drawn by my stillness
Looking for life under leaves
His glisten of blue-black-white
Like marble enlivened, shrieks.

The oblivious bee pauses 
Hovers and vanishes
A fleeting meeting of buzz and Ethel
Sweetness over Geranium robertianum
And earthly detritus

The squirrel scratches up the tree
Flickingly shy, peering at me 
Whilst other sounds bring the stones alive
The irony is I'm looking for naturalists 
And they're here, still, looking at nature

Written for the 16th Century Lime Street Naturalists who were moved to the City of London Cemetery in the 1900s.



Saturday 4 May 2013

Cages

Take this pain of loss away
How can such a solid heart thudding
Maintain such a pounding, seemingly
Beating faster and intense to make
Blood whir and head ache, fit to burst

Take this empty hollowness away
And fill the space of phantom heart
With quiet. Not disquiet of red dark
But the tranquility of blue and green
Blurring eyes dart, panic, too much

Take this ceaseless sickness away
And ease the sealike turmoil to lend
Calmness. Allow distressed breath
To fade, send conscious signals
Making sleep come and pain recede

Nothing will take this loss away
To lose it now would seem loss of me
But familiar discomfort of missing limb
Still tortures as fresh now as then
Still caged within, empty, pounding pain.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Poetry of Line

Poetry of line.
A house stands on a morning hillside,
Quivering through the dewy haze.
An Italian scent rising with the sun,
An intense suggestion of shapes.
He looks at the landscape
As if at his palms, seeming
Random collection of sharp marks
To craft soft foliage or
A living hand

Line of poetry.
A collection of domestic vessels
Cluster smartly,looking out oddly.
An Italian scent rising from the cloth
An intense order of natura morta.
He looks at the homely
With a half closed stare, seeming
Creating rounds, fluted and handled
To create solid with light
A living gaze

Giorgio Morandi at the Estorick.

Monday 4 March 2013

On the Paris Version of Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks

Science of painting reflects the mind’s divinity

Monoliths marshal and stand sentient
Silhouetted against the timeless sky
Nature’s harsh light unworthy to pierce
Mary’s loving liquid tranquility:
Divinity needs no external light.

Only a glow from within illuminating,
Awakening the soul, the mind, the spirit.
A perfect circle of composed gesture
Human intellect a divine conduit
Science/art interpreting art/science


From Dec 2011 when the two Da Vinci 'Virgin of the Rocks' were in the National Gallery