Strange Experience
Very strange experience just now. An Indian gentleman approached me in the street and said he’d been waiting for me and he had something to tell me. I said “Do you want money?” He said “No” emphatically. Then he said: “I feel your heart and your face shines. You are a good man who hasn’t found his place yet in life but it is coming. Believe me and be patient. There are many who are jealous of you. Many. Small people. Ignore them. Someone will find you soon and your heart will be expanded beyond your dreams”. Then he took my hand and placed it on his heart. I said “Are you an angel?” He said “Of course. And so are you”. Then he thanked me and went on his way. Now I’m sitting on a bollard in the street shaking.
Why aren’t you writing any love songs or poems?
A number of people have asked me lately “Why aren’t you writing any love songs or poems?” On one level the answer to that is obvious. But on another level I reply: “Actually, every single one of them is a love song or poem because much love (as well as blood, sweat, passion & tears) goes into making them. For love is infinitely more than merely floating on a cushion of air or firing Cupid’s arrows everywhere!”
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
The Return of the Knights [sonnet]
How hard it is to be a knight today!
Damsels never now confess to feeling
they’ve fallen in distress or disarray
(building up defences for concealing).
The concept of his chivalry they deem
to be anachronistic foolery.
Such men, it seems, are judged to be extreme
and not respected for their bravery.
But though these knights have largely been mothballed
as ignorance extinguishes the light;
the time will come when they will be recalled
to stand alongside angels in the fight.
For when this world has slithered into black
the ones who see will cry: “The knights are back!”
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Unhooked [sonnet]
It’s well-known how a fish’s mouth gets hooked
while scavenging for food in ways down deep.
A barb or two (a piece of metal crook’d);
the bait a morsel made of something cheap.
One does not have to be a wriggling fish;
it’s said that even humans can get caught.
To be reeled in is not what they would wish:
Conceding all and ending up with naught!
But this is not as hopeless as it seems
and does not make me yet forsake the depths.
There still remains a landscape in my dreams
wherein my feet descend down watery steps.
Despite the fact those barbs then did prevail
though I was drowned I lived to tell the tale.
© 2012, Alan Morrison
Auto-Flagellatio [sonnet]
There’s nothing for it: blows must rain me down;
the things that now befall me I deserve.
Remove my feather-bed and eiderdown.
From fists of iron I’ll no longer swerve.
Such punishment completes the process well
while whiplash ripples on my back were blown.
My body now is flung to Jezebel
like meat before a tigers teeth is thrown.
Yet all is not in darkness blindly dressed;
for ecstasy still makes its brightness bloom
and in my secret chamber luminesced
transcending light to form a waiting room.
These lashes are a stage along the way
while Eros makes a pact with agape.
© 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 