Poems
Asphalt [poem]
It seemed just like a scar
but it was just another
bump in the road.
Asphalt is like that —
(so my road has said
with deadly accuracy)
— inconveniently
melting through the
dissipated heat of
wasted passion into
dangerously delightful
suddenness of flight.
Blindsided by my
worthless dreams
and schemelessness
(despite the wounds)
I’m getting used to
trembledom of night.
The Rocket & The Simulated Door [poem]
As I made my weary way across the cosmos
[may the reader glean the mystery here],
my rocket engines getting past their prime
(for I had travelled far and wide and rocketed
through many gruelling rides, though here
I don’t think I’ll confide in you them all),
I’d contemplated putting into scrap (and thus
I’d forfeit too my journey back) my old
fatigued titanic frame and would no longer
be linked up with other craft and astr{a}nauts
(or so I, at that wretched time, had thought).
The Girl on the Quayside [poem]
She was naught but a girl of fifteen;
her skin was like porcelain unstained.
Her heart filled with delicate dreams;
her fantasies bred unrestrained.
As she lay on her mattress at night
(the moon and the stars in her bed),
no inkling she had of the plight
which would one day engulf her ahead.
A Stain upon the Sun [poem]
One siren sunrise, when all was seeming well,
a shiverness within my limbered hull
was sounding off with bells — a death knell
tocsin making every atom of my heart
stand to attention while their goosebump
broken hairs stood on their ends in sympathy.
Grace in the Dirt [poem]
Looking at an onion with the utmost wonder
in my curiositical heart is a ritual I practise
at the start of every sunrise day for it speaks to me
of many layers — most of which are hidden —
and reminds me of the way that circumstances
oftentimes unfold in ways by which we only see
the outer coating of the skin when there is
so much more within which we ignore.
Threesome [poem]
As I was sitting quietly on my usual comfy chair
reading the morning paper
with a detached and distinctly nonchalant air
a movement in the corner of my eye
took me completely by surprise
and made me glance toward the door.
I then heard footsteps in the hall
and leaping to my feet I headed for the light
but on my way I cracked my shoulder on the wall.
Through Muslin [poem]
There is something getting in the way;
some lensish focus lacking blocking out
the broken rays which make the twisted light
that bluntly strikes my haunted hazy eyes.
It’s just like looking through a muslin cloth;
a fuzzy camera lens; a window by the sea;
a false reality; a message in a bottle which
some old myopic (having lost his glasses)
sends to an address and feigns banality.
What is a sigh ? if not a wasted dream
or huge suppressed and stillness scream
as crudely unseen dessicated gateways
soaked in spicy diesel-oil smoulder warm
between this form I’m in and all that lives
outside (if there is such a thing as that
for I can never work it out what’s up
or down or inside-out or underneath)
the frugal furrowed frowns of silence.
Scarves of muslin drape themselves like
willing bondage ropes around such flesh
as yields beneath my hands. That flesh
which I have yearned to stroke, caress,
possess (and be possessed by) speaks
in fear: “Don’t touch. I’m out of reach!”
The engrammatic hint that I forever seek
now perches delicately on the apex of my
tongue. No parachute or other method of
propulsion seems to come and make the
reason clear why this “I-ness” should be here
and why I should be me and no one else
forever on the open shelf of mystery and
empathy and reverie — an always moonful
dwelling schemer-dreamer who, with wings
of wax tries all he can to fly into the sun
and tattered threadbare muslin rags obscure
my vision’s wishful thinking… while I strum.
© Alan Morrison, 2015
Featherbed [poem]
Climbing yet another hill {although in truth
it was a mountain; but I crossed so many
on my sojourn that a berg becomes a colline
and a hill a little mound, as I have found
on my extensive travels overground
and in the frozen-over earth} to nowhere,
I confess that I was wappend by the road
and ready just to fold up in a crumpled
heap — recline without reprieve or sleep.
Why can’t it just be Simple? [poem]
Why can’t it just be simple?
We laugh. We love. We let.
So just forget the ersatz needs
or any other bogus thought
which feeds or strokes our
ego’s ghostly cheek. No need
for expectations of what
others shouldly do or bring
or sing for love can harness
nothing ever but the wind.
Ruffled Feathers [poem]
Sat here in my cloistered
calm but reckless room
I wonder what you fear?
Are you afraid that passion’s bloom will somehow
warmly wildful interfere with your old controlled and
perfect ordered mind in such a way that you will lose
that cool composure you have taken years to find?
The Naked Troubadour 