Poems
Ruddy Sticky Sanguine Mess [poem]
As I slithered through the wormhole
which, as things turned out, was just a womb
a canal and place of vulvic charm
a voice said in my head unsoftly:
“Now your life’s an open book
so write whatever thing you want
and it will be as you will soonly see”
though somewhere in the darkness
of my unformed mind
I heard a grim alarm.
A Chisel’s not Enough [poem]
When fear hides behind a smile
then truth pretends it’s on the stage
held hostage to some understated
subterranean fairground barker’s
ageing clothes or costume of an
underrated acrobatic clown
A happy-fronted person might as well
affect a frown or leak some tears
For covering our fears takes no one in
but fools — whether with a grin
or other phoney face or gruelling
sojourn through the local loony bin
The Panoply of Time [poem]
A little speck of cosmic curiosity
buzzed wilfully across a page of tyme.
First one and then another leaf
was flipped with serial intrigue
against the passing clues and signs
secluded ersatz finish-lines
Tantric Surfers of the Skies [poem]
bro
ken
peo
ple
everywhere
(broken = dead)
I see their look
I fall apart
Don’t know which is more in pieces
broken people or my heart
shattered by
the desperation
of their souls
the resignation
in their eyes
the thousand hearting whys
they never say —
I see it all
and even if they hide it well
I see it still
then tremble weep
and call out to my angel friends
to lend these souls their clothes
until their hearts unfroze
but drudgery goes on
as
bro
ken
peo
ple
everywhere
behind their walls
and comfortable
chainmail palls
avoid repair
Up in Smoke [poem]
All we have on which to base our ego view of who we are
is memories, thoughts and notions from the past.
The present doesn’t figure in our minds in terms of
shaping our identity. For every moment lived up
to the full is secretly a false-self-slaughtering iconoclast!
This is no joke.
Homeless Mothers [poem]
She said she’d lost her home.
“I lost my home”, she said
so matteroffactly self-effacely
not a trace of horror or of irony
(though fire in me was kindled
by those cold one-bullet words).
I swear my eyes have never
been so moist as when
I watched those letters falling
from her crest onto my screen.
I nearly died of shame that
motherhood could spill out
on the street without a covering.
What kind of world is this
where nurture-souls can find
themselves unhomed?
Then, sensing my distress
she said that it’s just life
and… yes… she’s right…
for life has cruelty watermarked
across its page like tigers’ teeth
sunk in a bambi’s throat;
a bite wrought by a spider
with no antidote;
a trawler’s crew washed overboard
with all hands lost at sea;
an eighty-something lady raped
— the victim of brutality;
a woman stalked and hounded
by some twisted little creep
till desperately from some deserted
clifftop she did screamly leap.
So damnable unfairness
oozes out of every pore of life
which makes me wince
and not infrequently it makes me weep.
But when someone as lovely, lively
soft and inly fragile as she is
(I say that even though she often has
an outward toughness act built up
through countless undeserving scars)
becomes a roofless mother
making ends which never meet
I then discover empathetic strands
and want to kick my feet against
the rope which binds us
to the earth and think of roofs
in other ways of infinite more worth
than slate or felt or red and curly tile
or any other style — and so then
in my mind I join her on the sand;
we make a roof of sky and stars
and… Oh look, there is Mars!
and celebrate the loss of
solid-stated canopies and turn
our inner head around
to have an upward face to panoplies
of suns and myriads of galaxies
and in this way we found another view
of seeing home as more than
just a patch of ground
or four-walled place.
Instead home is a state of grace
wherein we find our core
and so much m o r e
and though we still need
shelter from incoming storms
the element which stealthly keeps
all solid homeless people warm
is seeing past intrinsic human norms
— discovering a sacred place —
where we don’t change ourselves
to gauntlet-run in someone else’s race
but (if only!) change the world around us
till its threshold makes us welcome
(says that loudly on the grassy mat!)
in such a way that even rocks
could be our pillows
and our home in any universe
would just be
where we hang our hat.
.
.
© Alan Morrison, 2014
Tick-Tock [poem]
A clock chimes — and lifestyles are defined
by time’s relentless cowardly march as
tock after tock kills tick with serial precision
in unforgiving jackboot waves of rhyme.
This orbly sphere spins crazily both on its axis
and around our burning solar centrum heart
which thus enables us to measure what we
think of in our heads as something starting
going forwards shunting shifting from a former
backwards place (but nothing really moves).
Who Stole your Soul? [poem]
Who stole your lovely soul?
That’s what I truthsome want to know.
I listen leafly to that hollow hole
you claim is you but, as I listened in,
my mounting sense of darkness grew.
Who tiptoed softly stealthly steally
through your pristine rooms and
stripped them nudely bare? And now
a sombre stillness looms with icicles
and half-untarnished cutlery abounds.
Rubble-Rousing [poem]
The sound of rubble falling down a cliff face
[never seen a face so high and deeply scarred]
fills the updown arc of my waking dreamscape
with a thimbleful of treasure — tocsinlike.
Record all signs and omens, said the hag whose
apples had been left inside my car (without
a single word of explanation, as it seemed so far)
and so I put my pen to work — a catalogue.
Rumour [poem]
Wandering wiseless on some smooth
indecent steep and sandy dune
he wondered if those grainly rumours
could be true that he should stand
astonished, still, in front of only unly you
who’s not (viz. yet) been met on this unset
trajectory of pain and pleasure ride.
He waits just as he’s done for thousands
more besides this molten lava year
(if time indeed exists outside this sphere)
as fragments of ideas hurtled down
through treacle air around his cadence.
The Naked Troubadour 