Poems
Bemused (Meditations on a New Year) [poem]
The New Year looked me gravely (frankly) in the face and said:
“What resolutions have you made as that old year began to fade?”
I took her hand in mine and thought I saw some future light
begin to shine. Perhaps I was mistaken for as I looked into her eyes
she took me on a journey far beyond my skies had ever been before
and if I was to tell you what I saw you would (like me) begin to shake
and thoughts then flickered through my mind that I would never
make it through her year unless some superhuman strength
I’d soonly find. She squeezed my hand and smiled that soft and
drenchful face reserved for those who will wholeheartedly embrace:
Limited Edition [poem]
A myriad vermillion stripey smears
smash into skyly overdriven bluefulness
while the drooping setting sun apologises
quietly on a bleak horizon narrowed by
the rueful season’s finely bitter triumph
Ignoramus Protocol [poem]
We think we know so very much
but truly we know next to nothing.
For every new discovery made
will at some later [higher] stage
be overturned or altered by another.
The smallest particle in this wondrous world
is only that which so far has been seen;
(microscopic limitations standing in-between).
There must be even smaller ones to know
within this effervescent sparkle show.
Perhaps the universe in which we dwell
is oh-so-delicately held within a tiny droplet
of some alien rain which dribbles in another
huger universe which dangles in a particle
in yet another even vaster world
and on and on and on the cadence swirls…
Now think of it the other way…
Thus, in a quark within an atom in a microbe
in a particle of dirt stuck to a flea upon a dog
outside your house there is a vast array
of smaller worlds within yet other worlds
and maybe even worlds beyond those too:
A hyper-cosmic reproducted Russian Doll
with each one thinking it’s the only one;
enveloped in an ignoramus protocol.
I bow before the magic of the interface I see;
this hologrammic white-lie surface world
where light and darkness emanating from beyond
have been for longsome battling for supremacy
(though all the spoilers clearly demonstrate just how
the ending [next beginning] here will culminate).
For only when we climb upon the back
of each new learned digested fact
can we then see the next and then
the next one after that. For it is only
in this way we grow; and thus we must
not think that what we nowly know
is wholly or completely where it’s at.
Everything we witness with
our eyes is kind of bluffing.
We think we know so much
but truly
We.
Know.
Nothing!
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
We have no Home [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 with graciousness 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).
The Folded Napkin [poem]
There’s a man in the moon
who lives in my mirror like
a folded napkin in a drawer
(or tightly rolled up in a ring
of hallmarked tarnished silver)
and I’ve seen him there at least
ten thousand times before —
his mouth like a startled lunar
landscape cratered in the shape
of a breath-holding diver
impending
dangling
lurking
waitly
breaking open every gately
Continue reading…
Dirt in the Wrinkles [new poem for Armistice Day]
“It’s time to roll the barbed wire out, boys!”
said the sergeant’s raspy singsong voice —
his Aberystwyth accent sending chuckles
down the line of threadbare, rain-soaked soldiers
(all around them potholes hissly smoulder)
scrambling in the mud with clouding breath.
[That day 3000 lads or more had met their death].
Prose Poem #237
One Autumn day when sticky black molasses
trapped my feet inside its smoothsome snare
a dream streamed loud in my synapses
with an icicle of glee and wintry glare
about a man who thought his course was run
who felt that he had nothing more to share
and that the pattern of his life was done.
So here’s the dream in full. I left out nothing;
neither have I changed the makely sense or
anything which would disguise its providence.
The Bitter Pill of Here [poem]
Exhilarated by the earthy essence
of signpost tendril dreams,
along the seamless presence of
architecturally potent desert seas,
I ride the storm I manufactured
from the ragged engrams of my former lives
and formatively secret whys of early years
(which made the y into an f —
a reference to a phallic amputation)
where, with no real genealogy, I never grew
until excalibur at my own prompting
slew the monstrous form called me,
bringing into question my supposed insanity.
Exhibit [poem]
When a man who wants to wade into the sea
to rest his weary bones across eternity
discovers he’s where only concrete reigns,
he fashions for himself a mortar coat
and binds himself with lashings to a tree
where, later on, he drowns in bloody stains.
What do you know for Sure? [poem]
The big bang [so-called]
(which I doubt has been the start
of anything or even everything)
exploded inside outwards
neverendingly
and we
(in all our ignorance and savag’ry)
are shards of fleshly meteorite
being flung like dung across a galaxy —
imagining we’re more than what we are.
The Naked Troubadour 