THIS IS PROGRESS…

You mean so much to me;
The past is a guest
With cranky manners

TWO TYPES OF LOVING

The brighter the dark
The deeper the pain of wanting;
I reach out and remember
How once I yearned,
Even though burnt
From her bright shadowy face

She withdrew of course.

Now I am a moth
Take it easy in the clover
And remember that loving
Is for the daytime

For cinema, dancing, and
A hill top view for miles
With light everywhere

MOMENTS

However world weary
There are moments in forests
Or by the sea-shore
When everyone touches heart

However tough or jaded you are
There are moments in sex
Or the death of a friend
When everyone touches
Deeply into their heart

WITHOUT YOU

Without you
Everything is right,
....So wrong

horses unshod
Without an owner
Win their first race
At two 'o' clock -
They trot to the medals
And always get shot

Friends and lovers
From the last century
Roll back their lips
Their semi-detached jaws
And gossip. I wiggle my hips
Like Elvis, try to smile

Some angel big shot
Beats his wings
And I listen
To a sermon on an
'Everlasting true love'

Without you
Everything makes sense
And nothing does. Without you
The Last
Judgement is incomplete -

I remember
Reclining ontop of beachy head
Look up at the clouds
Rolling with thunder

I opened my brolly for a
Second. What a way to go

Silly this place -
Hell is....deeply black

And yet
Without you, I notice the
Tides turning from green to black,
Jet coloured
For all eternity,
Are glimmering with
Secret heartbreaking rainbows.

PLINKETY PLINKY PLONK

What ya got goin on….

A chateau in france
A multi-national business
In seven countries
(With Alka-Seltzer)

Or a child’s hand held
At the circus for tragic
Clowns with large underpants
Or the thrill of the trapeze

This life is a tune you pick;
Chopsticks,
Gershwin's rhapsody
Or Claire-da-Lune

BRITISH (RAIL) WINTER

Not so long
Since the winter snow
Fell and fell; Not so long
Since the train galloped
Home to its train shed
By a welsh hill one last time
To let steel go blue

And yet the turntable froze
And the timetable disappeared
From the lonely country
station cut off

Despite the public good,
While a guards van
(used by ancient sheep)
Pulled the fields around it
And snuggled down
For forty years and nights

TO KATE MOSS

I've got a heroin habit
You've got a vampire rabbit
This is just heroin chic, so see
You darlin', at the clinic next week

DO AND MAKE

Using books,
I see so many things
That Human beings have
Done and made - relationships
Said with flowers
Shoes, antiques, or men
Manning the Ship of State

I am rather shy
Hidden behind my non-de-plume,
As my chorus of characters
So busily stalk the moon

But I feel this is honest work
With paper and pen
Exploring this need to write as
I catch a beam and say
"Hello darling, goodnight".

HISTORY

Wind blesses your hair
The weevil blights the corn
A prairie of flowers hides
A 1920’s bankrupt farm

The factory is cruel
The weaving shed made
Artistic tapestries, that
The moneyed enjoy

The giggle of a child, eyes bright
Records the bloodshed of
The strike - While the teacher
Swings his birch too freely.
Such lessons only hurt.

The model T came - the fabric
Of society preserved by
A letter sent from
A post office counter -
As an army sent abroad
Starts suckling on graves
Full of the young

TWO HALVES

Woman so comely,
Would make the Earth
A bower and live there
(Rearranging the furniture.)

Man, with his lack of moorings
Would push into the stars
Find the dark side

Ridiculous idea!
Pride of two halves...

A man should be a tree
Whose arms reach Heaven

In exact proportion
To his love below

CRYING

Watching Schindler's list
On a borrowed black and white
...got all cut up inside.

Couldn't take it -
Flattened as he
Faltered, dropping the ring
Of bloody fillings.

I cried like a baby
Just bawled

Later that night, I cried too
For every Jew and German
On or off screen,
For every fighter
For every Arab -

Those dark places of racism
Along Riddings Rd -
But most of all
For me and you.

THE DRAMATIC ART
OF FALLING APART

The walls are falling down
There aren’t enough bricks to go around
My body is falling down

My sides lack handles
My windows lack glass
My head lacks thatch

I hear all the worms
Go rat-a-tat-tat

My head lacks whimsy
My chest lacks straw
My heart lacks fire

It was
Your kiss
That held me together, Oh boy
That kiss was my glue

THE PALACE

The road of excess
Leads to the palace of wisdom
Well not if your Saddam Hussein
Fox-holes are for real

This blog externalises
My fantasies - do you realise
Mud stuck in Ghana
Builds a cathedral
Quick before it rains…

I use the saliva
Of my mouth
To hold this wall
Say it and its true

DO YOU REALISE IM
(DODGING THE BULLET OF LOVE)

Do u realise I love you
Not in a cloying way
But as the clouds that are grey
Hide a majestic sun

Do u realise that
After thirty-eight years
My sentiments are a dart
That races from my heart

To yours

We can‘t be all we are
Unless we surrender.
We can't be all we are
Unless we find love outside
The dark comfort zone
Of living alone

DIZZY

Oh possum
Baby possum
Knit me a cloud
Knit me a shroud

Your Farmer says that
Kansas blew away
With your kiss

Im so dizzy
That the crop of your smile
Makes me so
Clap clap happy

DING DONG

Nothing religious -
Your a bright bell

I want to swing you ring you
Polish you up with oil

Hear your curves
Sing like a dream

And ignore the bad music
From your mobile phone

DOMESTIC

The spaceship revolves -
Your on one arm of it
Its taking a week to get to you by
Gantries and communication shafts
Im dizzy.

I unscrew the door.Your mighty pissed off.
I have forgoten my shopping list
And the dog needs washing
And taking for a walk

BELLY UP

They watch you eating cake
Drooling as you eat slabs;
You can eat by the hour
Until you almost feel satiated,
Belly absorbs all the
Fondue and sugar.

We’ve no relations
With the foreign poor.
They don’t understand the
Inventions we made - baking tray
Tupperware, sellaphane

There’s always a famine on
A Tuesday or Wednesday
Best keep the poor at arms length
Well out of your kitchen.
(Let them watch TV
Let them watch you eat cake).

POP ART!

Im just a solitary walker
Havn’t got 60,000
Components around me.
Im in a country lane:
I hit my stride
Under leaves bright as light bulbs

Everything glides here
Like on metal rails.
Ive been here once before
In shadows

With no direction - smooth metal
Maps, the 9-5 frayed zones.

Now I fill
My time
With balloons
Floating
To the grave;

I think ridiculous thoughts
Laugh when they explode
Soak me - big joke on me.
Pop! Pop Pop pop pop -
Not got long before I pop

HANDLING BIG EMOTIONS

Reading big emotions
Like an adult - you give
Me space to express
Whats within, tears are
Positioned carefully -
You’re lost in
A sprawling carpark.

You ring me
I avoid the void I feel inside
I shoot from the lips
You tell me that you‘ll die
.
It must be love of course.

Everything painful
Is like some grounded star,
Pressed into a can
Of Heinz soup
We sup lies,bucks fizz
Because it feels good -

Emotions are tied up in bags
Broken households
Buried deeply with things
That are not
Too important - a stinking spoil heap
Over the detritus of love and heart.
For some people that’s all their heart

THE MYTH

I went for a walk
Up the five-fingered mountain
With its escarpment where
You shuffle twice

Remembered the Celtic name
For luck perhaps, or to honour
The peaty breath of ancestors -
All watching. But it was a superficial
Approach -

I soon ran out of jaffa cakes
Not carrying Kendal’s famous
Memorial slab
And it was hard work,
My mind full of rock hammers
My slim fourteen year old shoulders
Slipping out of Army Navy,

But Nature appeared more relaxed
Placing under my tired feet an
Assemblage, a conveyor belt
Of stones, animal droppings, troll
Spines, crisp packets,
Until I knew that A. Wainwright had lied

This is a bugger of a mountain.

SMOKING IS BAD FOR YOUR GRACE

I tell you child, smoking
Is bad for your Grace,
You will slip down to hell
Fire licking your face.

If your Father could
See you...such a disgrace!
Don't you Realise smoking
Is bad for your Grace?

VENUS DE ASHTRAY

I met a girl
In our club
Blessed by Venus
Five pints
In each breast
And slung hips
But what’s more the joy
She tipped
Forward towards me
Reaching for an ashtray
(Displaying Eldorado’s
Smooth cliffs)

I offered her
A monograph in gold
'The amazing goals of Georgie Best'
But she crinkled her nose
Saying Benson and Hedges
Was the best.

WRAPPIN’ PEAS

I’m shrink-wrappin peas,
Freezing beans,
Thinking of the future
Living within my means.

Cutting up four store,
Credit, discount cards
Binning those shards

I bag my beans up
In healthy packets
Freeze them
For future lives,
Riots, what not,
Apocalyptic scenes

I draw the curtain back
Watch the red sun spill
Over fuel barracades
Then go back to boil up more
Pulses and wrap up more beans

THE PROBLEM WITH SEX

The trouble with sex
Is, it comes...
To a very sticky end.

THE MAGICIAN

I look into the wierdness of your eyes
Sometimes I think you hypnotise -

when you smile a dozen colourful finches
Enter my head - you say Im a hen

So I scratch around, you smile as
I make a clucking sound

But your laugh is of course, unkind
You're my all, yet rob me blind

Which is a sign of my
Gullibility you say

So I call you a mongrel dog, an ugly fink
And yet I miss our fire eating tricks.

BESIDE MYSELF

As a child I was a pool,
As a man a running river,
As a teenager a garrulous
Talker, as an elder a
More measured giver

Bur at times
I reverse roles,
Live again as a child,
Link sky with the roots
Of Cathedrals, towns and
Secret places underground

My first blog below. Most of this long biblical style 'scroll' consists of Poetry I've written over 10+ years. I've only just started to group them together like this, hope it all works. Please feel free to comment!

Also as an 'intro' and my way way of touching base, you'll find further down some favourite quotes I like - something for when I need a pick me up or re-orientating after a heavy day at the mill etc..... Enjoy!

PS -I only figured this recently, if you click on the 'Tags' on the left it serves as an index/navigation tool.

Chris

PRECIOUS

Gone. Where?

Watching Lord of the Rings,
The bit about Gollum
He intuitively felt something
Was missing;
Pure as sin, dirty as an angel’s wing
It had reflected his life
For forty years,
Family, crossword, aerosols at work

Recently it had irritated
His broken skin, so he’d slipped
It off, onto his little finger,
Forgot its power, its innate symbolism

Gone - where to?

After a night of broken searching
Broken footsteps
Retracing forty years
He found it
Next day in the coal bunker
So pure
So near to returning to the fire
It had come from -
The blood in his veins
Running into its mould.

TO GRAINY BRIDGE

The handshake of ferns
Reaches above a postage stamp
Of a cricket club
Garlic soaks boots,
Roots are gnarled steps.

They’re trying to eradicate
Indian Balsam from the river
I read the protocol…
They want me to participate

Sometimes as I climb
I almost grin
At amazing vistas

But then a man says
I’m on the wrong path

Going through Hardcastle Crags
Ankles relatively intact, I get
A second wind above the treeline,
The sky is distant
Like a friendly dog in a fairy tale.

***

I wriggle my boots off.
Lichen has now turned
Stone walls to gunmetal.
Peat too, over millennia,
Has slowly turned streams
To the colour of Real Ale.
The wind is capricious
Bullies my ears
I’d like to skinny dip right here
But my balls wouldn’t like it -
Too acidic.

THE WORD

Love has a silver trumpet
Intelligence a golden sword
Mr Blair? truly great prospects
...But Love is a faithful word

Blair directs Harrier jump jets
Thought is a ninja sword
Intelligence an aircraft carrier
But Love is a faithful word

PALOZZI'S STUDIO

The tiny sign said he
Always lived like this
They'd recreated it

Faithfully, tier upon tier
Of sliced heads
Da Vinci thought
An unmade bed.

So much to look at
Bodies with geometric
Bumps, the rump of
Some important works -
'This way up', circuit boards
Intermingle with flesh -
The theme of tin man machine
Heaven and hell, artistic
Decisions

So many.... When to eat -
His position in the market -
And where to position,
In such a crowded
Cornucopia of form
His big stone saw.

THE VISIT

Going from Hebden to Heptonstall
One in four, no place to rest.
(Unless one leg is longer
Than the other)
My Dad sets the pace.
I get a second wind
When the going gets rough.

We arrive - a hard
Place to live up to,
No-one could be as ancient
And granite faced as this.
Hepstonstall. Grubby street.
I'm accosted by a friendly tabby,
All pur and rub of stripes. I pull away,
Allergic to its calculated hello.
The mist is thick,
Christ is shouldering a dripping cross
Dad won't walk over graves.

So I ponder a football (mitre)
Wedged up in the crevasse of a tower.
The cat follows in

The surviving windows are squat,
No laughing chancels.
Its solid - enduring
A slight alteration made from Yeoman
To Ecclesiastical
By the stonemason.
Lintels made to the usual proportions
As if they were weaving cloth inside.

We walk round the other side,
Leave the rain entirely and enter -
Its relatively modern.

My Dad comments quietly,
'They've took out some pews'.
I feel stone-carved angels look down,
As if they're steely-eyed mill owners
Assessing our worth, as wind
Move fittings in the bell tower.

BOTTLE BANK

My bag crashes, rattles, clanks,
Two Tesco carriers clink
Against the brittle metal.
I help to save the world
(No doubt including the
Bottle-nosed whale).

I aim each colour carefully
Into the hole, green brown,
The amber of Newcastle
Exhibition - the clarity
Of Beajolais nouveax

This iron lung
Fills with millions of shards
A genocide of glass
An apocalypse.

I let go of drunken nights
Things I shouldn't of said -
My vanity, bad judgement, stupidity
Those trite words, "Never again".

NOT SO BAD

The polished floor
Is ideal for a dance
But no-one here wants
To raise a leg
Let alone pirouette.

Im in the coronary ward.
Strange choice, when my complaint
Was actually skin. This must have been
The only bed they could find.

A quick changing of the guard ensues.
At 6.02pm someone (presumably well) has left.
At 6.05pm, my slippers are under the bed.

I settle in.
Each island of illness
Seems fringed with tropical curtains
Actually, I'm mistaken -
It seems the dying have
A rather Orwellian future here,
A set liturgy
Of cleaning, pills.

Everything,
Medicines, food, linen... love
Trundles in regularly.

Later, after a soothing bath and
Extravagant use of creams
I find the cold TV room.
I'm the only one there. I watch
A short 'docu' about the Paddington Train Crash.
I wince at the scars of the survivors,
The sheer bravery on show

'There was no way of breaking
Through the glass, says a man.

SCUNTHORPE KEBAB MYTHOLOGY

Hera was mine.
A brunette who was too careful with the pennies.
But i wanted Aphrodite
The ace blonde bombshell.

Zeus was her brother -
The jealous type whose
Eyebrows met in the middle - permanently frowning.

Aphrodite (bless her) squeesed into a boob-tube
Every Saturday night, wiggled past my door,
Got pissed in happy hour, had curry with chips.

And I slept on her sofa once -
I suppose she took pity on me.

But I never saw her wave-born form
For fear of meeting her father Cronos
Imprisoned above the shop.

LINES TO GOD

Your through to the Vatican help-line
If you would like soul-guidance, press 1)
If you would like to talk to the Franciscan press 2)
If you want to speak direct to God
...Please Hold...

AT LEAST

Piss head

So easy to become
One when

Every bone in your
Body
Got broken

By a
Fluttering
eyelid

ABUSE OF POWER

She stands in her cells
A tower of strength.
Jelly moulded determination.

Egg and ham,
Cute Wordsworth-cum-blonde
She works deep in the Rumanian
Secretariat. She surprises me

Leaning over the mahogany desk
I’m hidden by khaki ration books.
I drop my Pink Floyd CD
That’s really my bosses
My eyes water.

I roam all over her cotton dress
Her diplomatic immunity getting thin
She smiles indicating the clock

10,000 to file by lunchtime.
10,000 to live or die according
To the system we created.

For lunch we decide we'll go out to the
Czech bar with the live jazz act.

CLEANSING THE MIND

It's almost a meditation, sat in an office chair,
Ignoring you wearing a towel badly tied as I
Watch WINDOWS 98 defragment the drive

A wall of bitty logic steadily advances
Like a mud slide or avalanche. Somehow
I know its doing only good,
The computer's great brain
Swaying at the yoke, ploughing in logic

And clarity, to hopefully bear the 'fruit'
More lifelike responses to my hip or wrist,
Resulting in a higher ratio of succesful PS2 kills,
More accurate turns, fanciful split second
Corrections ...until your towel slips

THE WATCHER

They're advertising in the night
And all through the morning
Pouring ideas into my head -
This is a public warning.

Cat and dog and child and lover
easter bunny, bulemic mother
They all go round like a roulette wheel
Observing so much I cease to feel.

Going online to escape, I make the
Highest bid - a session on e-bay
Costs two hundred quid
Car and jacuzzi, internet and home
Cooker, Playstation, fridge and gnome.

I figure Im a modern guy
A cog in the wheel of demand and supply
Many benefit here its true - but tonight
I spin backwards, a roulette wheel
Observing so much I cease to feel.

JAZZY BEAR

Today has got my number
And I've got yours
Love has come
A knockin' on my door -
The Sun's a screamer
With natural auburn hair
I feel like Julie Andrews
Gettiing close to Fozzy Bear.

OCCASSIONS

Horses don't have 'special days'
They just have times
Where the sunshine comes
And rain stops.

They don't have xmas eve
Independence Day,
Father's Day

They just have days
Where the sunshine comes
Clouds clear - rain stops.

JOURNEY

I'm lost in texture
No turning back
Sun comes above
Me - Im lost -

I'm lost in rivers
Fanning glacially,
Terrain of moon,
I come in, Im found

But lost in the interior;
A Journey lit by joy
The silent rhythm
Of silver clouds

And I sense it here
In walking around,
Yes sense it here
In walking around.

ON THE NEED FOR
MEDICATION AT RUSH HOUR

Sharks -
I hate the great white ones
Swimming just below the road

Im afraid today
They’ll one day whoosh…..come up
Hit my on my mountain bike
Tear off a wheel

Then, as I peddle on the spot
Ringing my bell
Asking for the coastguard or RAC,
Id hear the cracking below

From a twenty foot long beauty,
Easily picking up speed
Disturbing trees, jolting sprinklers
Over the lawn, the dogs barking
So loud

Id see the dorsal fin for a second....then

Cry out as
Its teeth almost meet my pride my joy;
But Id live - it gets blinded you see
From all the lumpy soil on its face

THE GENT

The Gent senses it is time to go
When hawk chases fowl out of the sky -
Then the untamed of creation know.

Dog scents death in the fall of snow.
No pulling on its lead, it stops at the sty -
A Gent senses it is time to go.

When skin is pinched blue by a wind's mild blow;
And the field is quiet, despite caustic magpie,
Then the untamed of creation know.

Seeing the Squire's outfit as form and show,
The gilt letters J.P. as a front, a lie -
A Gent senses it is time to go.

When fox seeks shelter in the intricate burrow
And this English sun is diluted up on high,
A Gent senses it is time to go -
Then the untamed of creation know.

Forugh Farrokhzad, and also Marina Tsvetaeva, (with whom she is often compared), believed one could be a poet without writing a single line of poetry. For these women, Poetry was a vocation, a way of life: a unique way of perceiving the world (and ourselves with it) as a seamless unity of being. Just as the written poem uncovers hidden connections between apparently disparate elements and unites them into a meaningful work of art; so the poet gathers up the scattered elements of his own life and makes from them a new living entity, open to infinity...

by mrudzio (blog)

I will come, I will come
I will come again
and this time my hair will smell of the soil;
and my eyes will be black
with the knowledge of the darkness;
I will come again
carrying the branches I have gathered
in the woodlands behind the wall.

I will come, I will return,
I will come again,
and the entrance will be filled once more with love;
And I will greet once more at the gate
All those who are in love
And the girl who is waiting at the gate;
I'll greet them all once more.

by Forugh Farrokhzad (Iranian poet d.1967)

from 'hidden poetry'
http://mrudzio.blog.co.uk/

Sophie Hannah
from ‘You won't find a bath in Leeds’

From the River Cam and the A14
To the Aire and the tall Ml,
We left the place where home had been,
Still wondering what we'd done,
And we went to Yorkshire, undeterred
By the hearts we'd left down South
And we couldn't believe the words we heard
From the lettings agent's mouth.
He showed us a flat near an abbatoir
Then one where a man had died
Then one with nowhere to park our car
Then one with no bath inside.
With the undertone of cheering
Of a person who impedes,
He looked straight at us, sneering,
'You won't find a bath in Leeds'.

TOUCHING

This is a song
about touch and touching.
You touch me - a way of feeling.
I touch you - a way of understanding.
We are touched
by a film or a book.
We are touched
When a stranger is kind.
How can we live
Without touching and being touched?

There is a healing touch,
it makes the sick whole again.
Let's keep in touch
We say to a friend who's going away.
To have the right touch
means to know how it's done.
Touching is an art,
it's the movement
to and from the heart.

Some are easily touched.
Some are hard to touch.
You are often touched.
I am often touched.

by Nissim Ezekiel

SONG

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and seep up the wood:
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

by W H Auden

Part One: Life

XXVII

I ’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

by Emily Dickinson

Part One: Life

XI

MUCH madness is divinest sense
To a discerning eye;
Much sense the starkest madness.
’T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assent, and you are sane;
Demur,—you ’re straightway dangerous,
And handled with a chain.

by Emily Dickinson

Part One: Life

CXXXVI

I STEPPED from plank to plank
So slow and cautiously;
The stars about my head I felt,
About my feet the sea.

I knew not but the next
Would be my final inch,—
This gave me that precarious gait
Some call experience.

A PUPPY CALLED PUBERTY

It was like keeping a puppy in your underpants
A secret puppy you weren't allowed to show to anyone
Not even your best friend or your worst enemy

You wanted to pat him stroke him cuddle him
All the time but you weren't supposed to touch him

He only slept for five minutes at a time
Then he'd suddenly perk up his head
In the middle of school medical inspection
And always on bus rides

So you had to climb down from the upper deck
All bent double to smuggle the puppy off the bus
Without the buxom conductress spotting
Your wicked and ticketless stowaway.

Jumping up, wet-nosed, eagerly wagging -
He only stopped being a nuisance
When you were alone together
Pretending to be doing your homework
But really gazing at each other
Through hot and hazy dayreams

Of those beautiful schoolgirls on the bus
With kittens bouncing in their sweaters.

by Adrian Mitchell

BALLS

Actually: it's the balls I look for, always.
Men in the street, offices, cars, restaurants.
it's the nuts I imagine -
firm, soft, in hairy sacks
the way they are
down there rigged between the thighs,
the funny way they are.
One in front, a little in front of the other,
slightly higher. The way they slip
between your fingers, the way they
slip around in their soft sack.
The way they swing wjhen he walks,
hang down when he bends
over. You see them sometimes bright pibnk
out of a pair of shorts
when he sits wide and unaware,
the hair sparse and wiry
like that on a poland china pig.
You can see the skin right through - speckled,
with wrinkles like a prune, but loose,
slipping over those kernels
rocking the smooth, small huevos.
So delicate, the coock becomes a diversion,
a masthead overlarge, its flag distracting
from beautiful pebbles beneath.

by Anne McNaughton

THE END OF LOVE

The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall.
Why the hell not? It happens to us all.
Why should it pass without acknowledgement?

Suits should be dry-cleaned, invitations sent.
Whatever form it takes - a tiff, a brawl -
The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall.

Better than the unquestioning descent
Into the trap of silence, than the crawl
From visible to hidden, door to wall.

Get the announcement made, the money spent.
The end of love should be a big event.
It should involve the hiring of a hall.

by Sophie Hasnnah

LOSS

The day he moved out was terrible -
That evening she went through hell.
His abscence wasn't a problem
But the corkscrew had gone as well.

by Wendy Cope

24th SEPTEMBER 1945

The best sea: has yet to be crossed.
The best child: has yet to be born.
The best days: have yet to be lived:
and the best word that I wanted to say to you
is the word that I have not yet said.

Nasim Hikmet from 'Poems to Piraye
(his wife) from Prison'
trans. Richard McKane

EMAIL MUM

Everyday I tap the keys
Manchester comes in on the breeze -
A clutch of e-mails download

As mum gives news and advice
How to cook eggs in the microwave
Or look for head-lice -

She kisses me with a click
Telling me about things wick
And her attachment is digitally
Cross-stitched in purple
And primrose - "love you Chris".

BURSTING

Holy black night
Drop your stars
Let ancient fire
Infect my eyes

I will sleep
Like death -
Dark is a friend

But these eight hours
My thoughts
Are swept along

Head hits the dead spots
On jagged rocks -
Roar roar
It never stops

roar roar
It can never stop.

EASTER BREAK

This day started with rain
Little jewels shook out
From clouds ; birds scuttling
In rhodedendroms. A blackbird song.

Then I wrote a poem, washed the pots
Got the house real neat,
Took out the giant bin,
Relaxed at my Dell PC.

Tomorrow, laborious
Work will again claim my mind;
Right now I enjoy the rain,
As I calculate the minutes
It takes for a cloud to dry.

THE FRIDGE

I have a semi-organised fridge
But I have a problem.
I never look at the back
Just below the light

I have discovered
Tomatoes change shape after
A month, but eggs
hmmm
Lets not go there

FLOWER OF HOPE

The poppy
Is the flower
Of mass delusion,
But also eternal human hope...

I love its flouncing skirt
Blood spattered

Always springing up
On wasteland
Where others fear to go

IN SPACE THEY CAN‘T HEAR
YOU RECITE POETRY

Not everyday that
Your lost in space
Clutching
'The best
of Wordsworth'

This tourist scans
Alien holes and rocks
For wealth.

I never left the ground
Holding this book

I DEMON

I set my sights on a
Woman one hundred
And three. She's ghostly
Walking inside a suit
Which no longer fits.
She'll soon be gone.

Later I visit my friend
Holy one Gabriel(and fink)
Who talks on theology -
We move strategic salt and
Pepper cellars

I peer through to
Next door see a
'Writer' called Chris
Scribbling 'perdition'?

His bearded human face
The only life
In a cellar he calls home
Is this all he has?...

We play cards
Throughout the night
I lose gracefully as I can.
There can be perestroika
Between demons Im told -
But tommorrow I'll do what I do best
Turn this writers thoughts down
Towards hell

v.2
TWEEDLE(Divine)
AND TWEEDLE(Deviant)

I am almost one hundred
And three. Theres a ghost
Walking inside - This body
A suit that no longer fits

I see my friend
Holy one (and fink) who
Places theology
Within my sights
We move salt and
Pepper cellars
Planning soul traffic

I see one
Called Chris - he’s
Riding to perdition
Angelic human face
The only vegetation
In a cellar he calls home

Stick or twist?
We play cards
Throughout the night
I lose my souls.
You lose some you gain.
There is perestroika
Between us, but never
Forgiveness

REVIEW

This selection was written when Bukowski was an old man (He died in 1994, perhaps these are uncollected...?). I love the way he uses sentence breaks to dislodge expectations and keep the readers attention - yet how natural all this 'jawin' sounds - his ballsy stance usually works for me (even when he sounds plain grumpy). I like his humour.

...However theres a bitterness/cynicism here in many of the poems, whether affected or not (particularly their endings), which on a second reading I can't rest easily with. What do you think?
Your comments are welcome.

Anyway these are a few that stuck out for me.

-CA

B AS IN BULLSHIT

B kind
B a good listener
B able to engage in physical combat
B a lover of classical music
B a tolerator of children
B a good horseplayer
B an agnostic
B generous on the freeways of the world
B a good sleeper
B not fearful of death
B unable to beg
B able to love
B able to feel superior
B able to understand that too much education is a fart in
in the dark
B able to dislike poets and poetry
B able to understand that shit is necessary
B aware that in everty life a little bit of shit must fall
B aware that a hell of a lot more shit falls on some more
than on
others
B aware that many dumb bastards crawl the earth
B aware that the human heart cannot be broken
B able to stay away from movies
B able to sit alone in a room and feel good
B able to watch your cat cross the floor like a miracle
B able to recognize bullshit even when you hear it from
B ukowski

WHAT?

I was already old and hadn't made it
as a writer
when a young man sitting on my couch
asked me,
"what do you think of Huxley living up
in the Hollywood hills while you live down
here?"
"I don't think anything about it,"
I told him.
"what do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean, I don't think it has anything
to do with anything."

now the young man who asked me
that question lives up in the hills
and I still live down here
and I still don't think it has anything
to do with
anything.
especially with writing.
but people keep asking foolish
questions,
don't
they?

BARFLY

Jane, who has been dead for 31 years,
never could have
imagined that I would write a sreenplay of our drinking
days together
and
that it would be made into a movie
and
that a beautiful movie star would play her
part.

I can hear Jane now: "A beautiful movie star? oh,
For Christ's sake!"

Jane, that's show biz, so go back to sleep, dear, because
no matter how hard they tried they
just couldn't (italic) find anybody exactly like
you.

And neither can
I.

NOTHINGS FREE

got this letter
where she wrote:
I'm not going to do the obvious and
throw in a photo
but don't worry
I've got a BODY
and the face
is not bad
either.
anyhow, I really admire
your books although
I just discovered them
recently.
you see I am
only 18 years old but
I'd like to be your
secretary
kind of keep house for you
answer the phone
all that
and just room and board
would do -
no salary
and
I wouldn't ask you
for sex
unless you asked me
first...

you can be sure
I tossed that letter
into the
trash can
right away.

WRITING

you begin to smile
all up and down
inside
as the words jump
from your fingers
and onto the keys
and it's like a
circus dream:
you're the clown, the lion tamer,
you're the tiger,
you're yourself
as
the words leap
through hoops of fire,
do triple somersaults
ffrom trapeze to
trapeze, then
embrace the
Elephant Man
as
the poems keep coming,
one by one
they slip to
the floor,
it's going hot and good:
the hours rush past
and then
you're finished,
move towards the bedroom,
throw yourself upon the bed
and sleep your righteous sleep
here on earth,
life perfect at last.

poetry is what happens
when nothing else
can.

As soon as you think your ’at’ (a place) your in trouble.
An artist should constantly be in a state of becoming.
- Bob Dylan (in a Sorcese docu)

…Luckily for all of us, artists are stubborn. The best-selling author advised by her psychiatrist that she should aim for a secretarial career kept writing (me). The famous filmmaker fired from a documentary Project kept making movies (Martin Scorcese)… the lawyer who “should have” spent his time “on his cases” won the argument that he should write as well (John Grisham). Something inside spoke clearly enough that these artists listened, and a few outer “someones” whispered, or shouted, that they, too, knew who we were. These discerning outer voices affirm our identities and alter our destinies.
- pp.57-6 ’Walking in the World’

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry: that is, prose words in their best order; poetry the best words in the best order.
-------------

I think nothing can be added to Milton's definition or rule of poetry, - that it ought to be simple, sensuous and impassioned...

- Coleridge (from 'Table Talk')

Poetry is not a translation of life. To speak of descriptive or narrative poetry would be a contradiction in terms. The essence of poetry is the creation of images.
- Bachelard

Books are the best of things if well used: if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire.
- Emerson

Rejection from the outside is always better than inwardly rejecting your writer-self. Your writer-self is all you have to heal with. If you deprive yourself of that, you will never come to know how ultimately unimportant outer rejection is.
- from 'Fear of Fifty' by Etrica Jong

Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art
- W R Inge

The ablest writer is a gardener first, then a cook. His tasks are carefully to select and cultivate his strongest and most nutritive thoughts, and, when they are ripe, to dress them wholesomely...
- By?

A mature artist takes the material closest to hand
- George Moore

A man will sometimes devote all his life
to the development of one part of his body -
the wishbone
- Robert Frost

"Always try to see Life around you
As if you’ve just got out of a tunnel”

James Stewart in
‘Mr Smith Goes To Washington”

The way to motivate yourself is to constantly see the utter beauty in all things. There’s beauty in all things. There’s beauty even in ugliness. Anyone can look at a rose and call it beautiful but try seeing beauty in a friend who’s deliberately ripping you off - that’s harder.
- Stuart Wilde, ‘The Secrets of Life’

It is time for us to rise from sleep
- St Benedict

Were in this world to have experiences -
Chief among them is wonder.
- CA

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly…
From ‘Desiderata’

The bird a nest, the spider
A web, man friendship
- W. Blake

The most important point is to
accept yourself and stand on your
own two feet.
- S. Suzuki

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek Happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
- Samuel Johnson

If you focus on people’s foibles and not their qualities,
you will find it difficult to find a single good person in
The whole world. There is no-one who does not have
shortcomings. It is the human condition.
- Lao Tzu

Many people are wimps. Lovely, but wimpy. You can
love them, hug them, give them a donut. But, they’re
no bloody use. That’s encouraging. You don’t have to
elevate yourself very far in order to make it in life.
I like that. It spurs me on.
- S. Wilde

Nurture your true nature.
Only talk the truth.
Make love your gift to others.
- Lao Tzu

Via est Vita
(‘the road is life‘)

When I see a man on a bicycle, I feel there is a future
For the human race.
- H.G.Wells

Everything in nature serves
…and that which you call
Your creator is the greatest
Servant of all
- W.Eagle

When I see other people doing anything, I want to know, why don’t you do it well? What are you doing? If you are drinking something, this glass of water, then you enjoy the glass while it’s here. You know, the little things are more important, often, than the big things - for me. You live by the little things. Life gives you something good, something bad - take it as life gives it to you and then make it more so.
- Luba Gurdjieff - p.37 A Memoir with Recipes

Our culture worships youth, I don’t buy into it.
The fear of aging reflects lives that haven’t found
meaning.
- Jack Lennom (in a film)

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I
seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth
lay before me.
- Isaac Newton

The world’s affair and the floating clouds -
Why question them?
You had best take life easily -
And have a good dinner
- Wang Wei

Everyone speaks about love. How do you know that a person has love?
Where there is love, there is always giving…. Give as long as you
have Love within you. Giving is an inner process which unites
people with God.
- Peter Deunov

Being ‘needy’ is the best way to attract an unsuccessful relationship. As author Dr Wayne Dyer says:‘In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people. ‘If you expect the other person to ‘fix’ your life, or be your ‘better half’, you are setting yourself up for failure. You want to be really happy with who you are before you enter a relationship. You want to be happy enough so that you don’t even need a relationship to be happy.
- Louise L. Hay - p.66 ’Life! Reflections on your Journey.’

“Love means zero in tennis
But everything in Life
It’s what life’s all about”

- ‘The man with the 7 second memory’
(ITV documentary Sept 05)

You become a hero in your own life the moment you commit to knowing
Your feelings and speaking about them honestly. In your relationships you become the trailblazer rather than the trailer. You become the place where the truth is born, not the place where it goes to die.
- p.62 ’Lasting Love’

One of the main problems with sexuality is that it makes
a lot of people nervous. Possibly because most haven’t
been laid since the ol’ king died.
- Stuart Wilde

Love is the only rational act
- Jack Lennom (in a film)

Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the ‘love’ of ego. However, the intensity with which true love is felt can vary. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a Love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that
connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.
- Eckhart Tolle p.129 ‘The Power of Now’

Love is the pursuit of the whole
- Plato

The capital of a marriage is affection. Handle this basic ingredient
As carefully and intelligently as you handle money in your company.
In the same way…in your marriage you should put time into
affection…Have the courage to be romantic.
- How to Simplify Your Life’ p.198

In the future, everybody will be so sexually satisfied, there’ll
be an end to violence, rape and war. We will establish contact
with extra-terrestrials and they will be very sexy.
- Annie Sprinkle

Monogamy is a doorway to intimacy
- Andrew Rayner

SLEEPING NAUTILLUS

I spiral into my life
One step back, two forward
Down into the central chamber
Where my love lies

Wake up!
Wake up! Ignore the teeth
That swim in the sea….

Leave your perfect geometry
Go naked, unprotected
Into the spiral of another life

EATING THE SUN MID-WINTER

The corn cob
Quickly boiled in a pan
Now lies on a plate a
Yellow log smoking.

My joy begins...
I insert a fork
Curved by metal-workers
Wearing asbestos gloves,
I rotate it bit
By bit, examine a music cylinder
For flaws, for missing notes;

I put it in place and
Work systematically like a typist
Left to Right, get down to the roots
Of the problem, use all the keys of my teeth
I rip out clusters of flavour
Assess the locked taste - a good crop

Butter runs down my face
I am completely oral
An alien preying, an inhuman turning
Limbs, stripping away the beauty
Down to bone -

Like space invaders
I reach the last row, it comes too soon.
I feel the weight of the pithy baton
Drop in my hand and satisfied
I throw away the remains of Summer

POEM CONSTRUCTED
FROM FRAGMENTS OF A DIARY
(buried in Nova Scotia, 1938)

SPRING

Oh Lord, the ticking. To escape it
I would live in a low-impact dwelling
With straw bales and cardboard sides,
Frost-bound
With awry tin chimney
Where kettles defiantly
for an age
Singing above the mud.
And our faces grow old slowly there
Drinking in the glade,
Adding the 'x factor' to our patina.

…But the dream could not last.
The awning always goes
Plop, plop, plop, and
Scwish, scwish, scwish our ulcered feet,
The clearing pricked with rain…
Little things unsettle us -
I noticed a chaffinch huddling
Dismal, fluffed, getting colder,
Under our chestnut's wing.
Though all the candles were lit in its branches
I found it by the bole, its eyes pecked away.

WINTER

The screws, the screws
Once on the margin of the archipelago
Now scratch with outboard motor
The bare plate of the forest we hide within.
Hard fruit.
Unable to sit around we hoe in earnest.
Only two of us left, Tommy and Simeon
(With Clancy and John we killed
As one person
Until the rules came back)
I note, no room to weave here.
Food low.
…So I pluck up courage, dive down
To the wreck where it happened
Where we burst to freedom,

Where brave men
Lost their fight…
Five metres down I find it,
The funnel explored by eels
Two lifeboats
Loose. Bobbing.
Later I eat
From tins, stabbing,
Boring, until the juice runs out;

But it was a prison ship we holed that day
And all I can think of
Are my motley collection of mates, ribboned by fish.
Handcuffed to guards
They still congregate to escape
By the hatch at the top of the steps.

We will eat this fruit until the warders come.

We will eat all this food until the warders come again.