Poems
Bitter Pill [poem]
It is cruel that I must burn for you and you for me
to no avail, despite the crownly metaphors of love
which freed me up from chains around my inward
parts, body’s limitations which I falsely had remarked.
Naked Knees (A Prayer) [poem]
May I never have my knees securely underneath
the fleeting table of this present world
(imagining it to be the only thing there is).
May I never live without a dream adventure
taking me to distant reaches way beyond
where I have ever been before
May I never follow spineless grey neutrality
but always with the utmost clarity
may I refuse to take the level easy way,
instead to walk on stony tree-lined unworn
bridalpaths where mediocrity and other
strange hypocrisies can have no sway
May I never blindly chase deluded dreams
become involved in others’ pointless schemes
but always act on what my heart finds fit and
never blind conform to peer group force or
follow only social norms or governments,
small perspectives, socially engineered directives
May I never compromise my choice of sacred art
but always wilfully refuse to waver or depart
from what I hold as precious to my soul
and never be manipulated through some guilt
and always have a broad-lipped inner smile —
refuse to do things just because of style
May I, when dead, be coolly found upon some
crazy dangerous ledge, the farthest hardest edge
or mountain-top or bubble-boiling molten rock.
But most of all may I refuse to be a clone —
integrity intact, uncompromised in fact
regretful only of the countless woely times
this man has been so foolishly sidetracked
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Tomorrow’s Tale [new poem]
I’ve taken off my useless coat and placed it on the frozen earth
in readiness for duelling with my stuttering future fate which,
as you might expect, was punctually late apparently because
a dalliance with some fair beguiling sweetly-smiling maids
plus all the after-bathes had stopped him in his grisly tracks
(at least that’s how the gossip-mongers falsified the facts).
The Ball’s in your Court [poem]
What’s that? You said.
(you must have heard a funny little noise).
It’s a ball, I replied.
Doing what? You sighed (exasperatedly).
Just bouncing on your own side of the court,
said I, (but not beratingly).
But why? You intoned. Is there something
I’m supposed to do?
I scratched my head awhile
(for in my game I have no place for patent guile)
Rock of Sages [poem]
There is a rock on which
I set my stately arse —
a throne through which
a myriad fleeting concepts
quaintly pass untainted
every countdown day to
when I exit right of stage
with no surprise effects
(bedecked in disarray).
And thus the Day will Come [poem]
And thus the day will come when every mystery mote falls into place
when every vainly sign
[which chanced itself in every bleak unbrace
on every lunarscape or masquerade of hearting aching breaking veins
unmaking love refrains and all the broken promises and wrongnesses
and unexplainful silences misunderstandings empty ramblings all the
soulless vain mishandlings angry outbursts dried-up thirsting ousted
curseful never-coming-even-closeful best case scenes made arioso
though they should be grandioso riven run through cut to quick too
driven out and undervalued scavenges for healthful soulfood under
token lifeforce subdued silenced wholly misconstrued unlicensed
crisis torque aborted countless golden pleasures thwarted stridently
connivances beclouded drowned]
through specks of cherub-dusting
clean will straight be traced and quarantined as chastely atom beams
© 2012, Alan Morrison
The Cleanly Dance of Song [poem]
When people speak with tongues which look like forks
in a road which should be only straightness all the way
I purposefully now destroy their Y-shaped glottal prong.
For satisfied I cannot be until all snaking sneakery
has been transformed into the cleanly dance of song.
They say one thing and then for reasons thoroughly
unknown to me — like juggling chunks of rotting meat
mordaciously — they take another different road
across which countless slimy toads have crawled but
never made it to the greenly growthsome other side.
In play I grab their swaying cobra heads which slyly
hypnotise the overbred and eager victim earing crowd
before those fangs with venom filled can morph a
winter coat into a shroud and break the sacred thread
which some (the wise) have labelled Truth instead.
I ever nowly wonder why they cannot walk on down
the simple path wherein a single sole cohesive tongue
would never wriggle in two parts thus leaving harmony
unsung (not to mention countless lonely broken hearts
from which each lastly drop of blood was wholly wrung).
Or else this world becomes a loathly labyrinth of walls
constructed from the skins and tongues of snakes in
place of vast and open spaces (scary for the uninitiated)
crazy-blazed and from abovely swathed with only light
and true to every law of life on earth is made of only love.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
The Scent of Autumn [poem]
An Autumn feeling comes upon me now
as if the dying Summer overreached itself
unable to regain its former health
like wilting purple flowers in my soul
like a browning leaf which clothes itself
for its sooning earthly role.
Although already now I long for Spring
(and all the budly burgeon that it blessly brings)
I let my longing fall into the chill of breeze
and feel the empty tendril-tinted freeze
I know will cover all
when Winter’s icy fingers
crack my tarnished crystal ball.
Despite my overwhelming sense
of letting lovely go
of no more left to grow
of griefness undefined
of leaving things behind
and stifling scent of gravely soilsome rot
I am precisely where I should be now
(although I wish it not)
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Line Lesson [poem]
Bathed in the silent swathe of
illness one
and all undone or smothered, the man
who juggles letters on his fingertips
discovers that he scrapes the ground to
sell one sin
without regretting where he’s been
and all the clefts he’s hidden in
With stealth he wanders far with
linen soles
on shoes which drolly seem bizarre
to trample on the mountain range he
spans entranced and hampered by a
lesion lens
which, perching on his sacred face,
interprets words in uppercase
Ferocity [new poem]
There is a place where particles
of any kind of mine can flow
explode unload implode feel
free to fulminate ferociously
upon and under over through
vermillion skies + cobalt blue
between the skin of me and
any yearning you who innerly
and sweetly keens for all the
unexpressed and indiscreetful
dreams which long to show
the petal-richness havens of
their full unfrozened flowers
flowing every atom bursting
out through hidden pristine
protoplasm’s graphic hidden
patterns crazed expression
glazed impressionistic heart
of all I sensolutely mutely am
Lost in vastly spaces radiantly
emanating nothing wasted
cradled by the taste of hazy
everglades I crave for deeper
secrets in the hidden crevice
parts of moistly maidenhead
where flowers never throve
before yet here I must bow
down in worship tearingly
no fear adore and scrape the
floor as subjects did in days
enstyled as yore when love
and adulation made its mark
and knights had power and
grace and ladyes strong had
dreamdeep as a watermark
I kiss your feathered feet
and work my way up to the
centre of your gifting bliss
The Naked Troubadour 