Dangling on a Single Thread [sonnet]
So many years since perfume graced my nose;
I’ve now forgotten how to bathe in skin.
No fecund business in that garden grows;
no longer would I know where to begin.
The Beauty of Darkness [poem]
Some think of light as love
and, by implication,
they must think of dark as hate;
while those who think that
light equates with truth
must, by inferential logic,
think that dark is only lies.
Still others soundly say that
light is representative of
knowledge sacred or profane
and thereby do assert that
ignorance and darkness
are from tributary veins.
Conversation about Spotify
NICE GUY: “Are you on Spotify?”
ME: “No way! It’s basically a music pirating channel disguised as a legitimate download company and although it makes money it pays artists next to nothing. Really, almost nothing”.
NICE GUY [laughing]: “True”.
ME [also laughing]: “It’s weird how people will not think twice about buying a fika in Espresso House and yet do anything they can to wriggle out of paying the same amount of money for an artist’s hard work”.
NICE GUY: “Yeah, so do you have an actual album for sale then?”
ME: Yes, I do! [producing album magically out of box]
NICE GUY: “Great, I’ll buy it then!”
ME [thinking in my head]: “Now there’s a real gentleman who gets it” 😉
Ignoramus Protocol (we know nothing) [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 so far known
to humans in this wondrous world
is only that which has been seen till now;
(microscopic limitations standing in-between).
There must be even smaller ones to know
within this effervescent sparkle show.
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.
Glimpses [sonnet]
The truly honeyed parts of life for me
are in the glimpses gifted to the soul.
For as I age they come more frequently —
shattering shafts of light which make us whole.
If you’re intrigued to know what these could be
(to know what curtains angels may remove)
they only flap them briefly so we see
what lies beyond all words (their world to prove).
Equinoctial Promise [poem]
As summer dies so beauty fully
with her sigh (sforzandolike)
and autumn’s golden smirk
falls silently as homeless leaves
drift rocking side-to-side and down
to earthen featherbedly end-of-ride
i smile through tears which mingle
with the lightsome lazy mist of dawn
The Flesh-Market in Nice – A Meditation
At 5.30am, after dropping my daughter off at the ferry to Corsica, I drove the length of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, from the ferry-port to the airport. Almost 7 km (4 miles). I passed the huge display of flowers left by mourners against the sea wall as a memorial to the 84 people killed by a 19-ton lorry driven by a crazed French-Tunisian with a grudge 44 days ago. As the traffic lights were against me I had time to hear the echoes of the screams and feel the thuds and breaking bones within my soul. This world revolves through pirate seas. One is only here for the lessons and adventure and ‘random’ madness proving what it means to be a (temporarily) disconnected soul from Essence.
The Souls of Dogs [Sonnet for Leo, who died August 19th 2016]
“But do dogs have souls?” he speculated.
“How many angels will fit on a pin?”
I replied; and hoped it demonstrated
how gauche, absurd, his inference had been.
They wear hearts on their tails; no thought is hid
from view — unlike the way that humans do
suppress their feelings, lie and keep the lid
held firmly down and not reveal what’s true.
The Tumbling Curtains [poem]
From the corner of his eye he saw the curtains start to fall
from stage-left — stage-right (actor standing midst it all),
a little back from where the velvet cloths would meet and
where he earlier had stood (an X marked where he’d been).
Thusly, when they fell, his act would disappear from view.
He kicked away his seat. “It’s happening on cue”, thought he.
“No place now for complacency or apathy in anything I do”.
The Naked Troubadour 