Year: 2011
The Turning Coat [poem]
I never knew what turncoat meant until I met you r alterego other half posing proudly like a stained old scarf draped around my stranded neckline bent out of shape by treacherous plotlines your face (like your coat) a looming warcrime That ability to turn yourself with gusto into someone else that others want to see even at the expense of trust between you and me is bowdlerisingly bruised and blessingfree The way you become someone altogether other when you feel under threat or imagine that you're vertically smothered is kissofdeathingly drownful for lovers The reversibleelbisrever lining on your coat has, I see, shiny-textured brittle buttons beautifully turnéd out wardly in order to mask so cloakingly the seams which should have gone in wardly Some years were spent in deskbound dread in case that lining would be spread through such indelicate weaveless ease with freezeful woes through polyester's painful loveless undertows across my sizely shoulders broad and burdened ever-ready to receive but all I saw were Autumn leaves and limestone boulders not a stitch to which a searchful man could rightly cleave in time to save a lonesome one nevermind a nonesome nine O how I longed to see that garment lining-free as it should be with you and me just running free bedecked in sequins nothing hidden undersea it's train behind us flowingly while growingly we learn to venture nakedly our skin for coats and all the while ensconced by love without debris © 2011, Alan Morrison
Only a Sparrow [sonnet]
Does familiarity breed contempt?
Comparatively so, I have to fear.
Comme d’habitude will crumble dream cement
and with a film of blindness it will smear
fool’s eyes. How easily we lose our joy
at seeing something close before our face;
our sense of wonder it will soon destroy
and sink surprise’s seedlings without trace.
Look in the tree! “It’s only a sparrow”,
intoned a weary voice who’d seen it all
a thousand times — his reverence so narrow
(although before that splendour I must fall).
Too readily we close up beauty’s door
when frequency negates our sense of awe.
© 2011, Alan Morrison
Fragments [song lyric]
there’s a fire in the attic
there’s a furnace in the hall
and the restless heart within you
is a stone’s throw from the wall
there’s a hailstorm in the window,
there’s a torrent in your soul
and the fat cats in the corridor
are looking for the hole
there’s thunder in the chimney
there’s a desert in the bed
and all the strength has drained from you
through something that you said
there’s a typhoon in the windmill
and an iceflow in the bay
with a plot to tie your laces up
and take your toys away
Played and Lost [song lyric]
I played the game of love and then I lost
I knew not that it was a game at first
But now I paid the price at such a cost
All future close liaisons will be cursed
I loved a girl; she said that she loved me
She told me that she thought I was The One
But nothing in this game of love comes free
Especially living near the midnight sun
Orgasm [sonnet]
When within you my inner landscape bursts
I am both giving all of me to you
and lavishly loving the way you birth
me in reverse (your cardinal virtue).
All of you. All of me. Floating and free
as through your labyrinthine temple doors
a fleshly part of me pampers your needs
while all my hearting hugeness heaves and soars.
And yet I hardly have your full depths plumbed:
Even the ecstasy deeper things masks.
Something vast and largely untouched then comes
to pass, eclipsing my post-coital gasps.
If only I could keep this fleeting bliss
in heaven wrapped up with an angel’s kiss.
© 2011, Alan Morrison
Attitude [poem]
The other day you asked me what I meant
when (distinctly feeling somewhat spent)
I said that we could never be as one
because — to put it bluntly —
you have some thing running through your soul
right across the longtitude and latitude
(the breadth of our derisory domain)
which flies into the fleeting fading face of me:
your Attitude, to coin its proper name
The Cuckoo’s Strut [poem]
Loneliness increases exponentially
according to the vastness of the crowd
which is surrounding me.
A cast of thousands
sends me underground
while being with a carefully chosen few
still means that I just graciously withdrew
to lick my wounds
(which were extensive
notwithstanding
it may seem like nought to you
but my threshold for withstanding
seepage not appropriate to
[as it may well be judged by you]
the social situation’s light demands
is lower than my friends can understand).
Seldom what they Seem [sonnet]
Why does a Red-Backed Shrike have no red back
or Rush Hour move as slowly as a snail?
There is no tin in any tin can pack;
Danish Pastries do from Austria hail.
Peanuts are not nuts and blackboards can be
green or blue. Tear Gas is not gas in truth;
Guinea Pigs do not derive from Guinea;
Jellyfish are not really fish forsooth.
Descriptive terms can be so deceptive,
taking us off on a fantasy ride.
Always try to maintain the perspective
or fodder we’ll be for villainous guys.
In case you’re wond’ring what this sonnet means,
It says that things are seldom what they seem.
© 2011, Alan Morrison
Escape Artist [poem]
squeeeeeeezing my way
down this slimy tube no
doubt about it it needs
no lube happening so
fast voices I hear two
of them I’ve heard
before the rest I
do not know I
figured that
the way to
be was
just go
with
the
Snow in May [poem]
Snow
in May!
In the fullness of the day!
I could forgive
a violent vigorous squall
or a wind which bent all
the slowly budding trees;
but a frostful freeze
in May?
The Naked Troubadour 