Something for Nothing

Finite.
What all good things come to
Where the stopping stops
and the entropy ends,
the inexorable slide
to the blackest of black holes.

Only,
that’s a lie,
isn’t it?

There’s no colour,
no possible description
just the knowledge that
this won’t go on.
Nothing goes on.
Nothing.
Not even the word for it.

Try snapping your fingers.
Then stop.
Now, that silence-
imagine that’s how everything goes.
And no-one there to listen
Not even god.

And remember, death
Is not a subtraction, a taking away
It’s a never having lived.

What we need are Visionaries( more a getting off the chest rant than poem)

And from my dreams
this morning came this:

What we need are
visionaries,
not dreamers,
with
vision of necessary action,
clarity of call
and
not dreams of utopia.

Right now
we need
a rally to socialise us,
a harnessing of individual strengths,
leaders who can rise above Party allegiances
leaders who understand
Progress is not about technological advance
but
about the dissemination of Love and Logic,
the provision of food and shelter and healthcare for all,
the right to education,
the restoration of wonder,
the respect with which we treat our elders,
the protection we afford to the vulnerable
the schooling of our young, being encouraged to question and debate
without answers relying solely on religion, or the authority of the teacher
we need common sense to be common
we need business to be the business of our daily lives
we need the phony divisions of country and race abolished
we need the Arts to be our religion
we need all men to be fearless when speaking with a true heart
we need to let our Selves soar by joining hands with others who fly
but as a first step
we need visionaries-
not dreamers.

New Year, Gorbals, 1964

New year foghorns
sound,
booming midnight
over the Clyde,

vibrating hard
against
the sooty clouds’ cover,

as whisky and coal
dart door to door
around
damp tenements.

Boots muddied
by the damp glaur
clump through
oil-greased puddles

as couples
in collars-up coats
yatter
excitedly
over the boats
bullfrog belching.

Now, Then

Now, Then.

That comma’s a border
we creep over,
and disappear,
knee-bent, hunched
and assimilated
to the permanence
of done deeds
and what’s gone
on.

These two things-
the fixity of the Past
and the possibility
of the Now.

The border of Now and Then is illusory.
The real one lies between entropy and change
There is no past in any real sense, only change
and the effects of change.swelling and bloating,
expanding our history. The authority
of Time the Usurper-tells us lies.

What use is this past we can never access
except when it’s leaping,raw and raging
on you like a dark panther in the night,
tearing your laughable pretences to quivering shreds.

Trouble posting comments

This is just to say
am having trouble
Posting comments
to blogspot blogs,

getting told my
URL has illegal characters,
which is a shame
for the posts are

Delicious.
So sweet
and so hot.

A Poetry Primer

The           words
first            I
six             saw
 
gifted         neglected
me             Imagist    
a                poet
 
Fred J. Schönell
 
The            of             Spell-well
first            his            word
page          first           book
 
starkly        bold
declared    Poundian
his             agenda.
 
man           get
can            wet
ran             let
 

Small Windows

From her home,
and through the window,
over grim dishwater
in a cold kitchen sink,
she can see
straight to the old work,
with her wee boy
below, knee-high,
gripping her skirts,
straining to reach,
and her hand
pushing him blindly down.

Her eyes begin waiting,
again,
a long second or two,

until,
in a small window there,
a far-off figure
shapes the letters
of a name
with a finger
on the dirty sweat
of an industrial pane.

The boy works it out:
he’s Russian -
I-L-Y-A.

He’s in a rush
to finish,
and signs
the first three letters
only.

The boy settles to his heels,
sees his mother look
happy or sad,
and wonders
what he cannot
grasp.

SeaMare

This winter’s first hint of a hard wind
helped a half-dead sea haul herself,
gasping, out of puff and thinly sprawled
onto the sea-front road,
collapsed, having crawled
over the new sea-wall,
her white breath expiring
in sizzling little bubbles.

ffrriiissshhisshhh

And she lay there,
waiting for the next old wave
to clamber on her back,
getting its wet fingertips
that one inch further.

And as she lay,
she listened
to distant sisters huffing
and hitching their skirts,
freely running over grasses
at the far edges of town.

On Botero’s After Velazquez, 2005

Bike pumps for brushes
puffing the flesh.
Big sofas of folk
bursting the canvas.

I swear I saw
Beryl Cook supping
tea with Velazquez,
with her rattling on as he snored.

And as he dozed, he dreamed
of las Meninas,
of mirrors and light and elusiveness,
of the humanity of paint.

And she extrapolated her theories
of big-bummed bathing beauties,
of eating cakes in corner cafés,
of comfiness and cuddles.

On her next date
she was seen, with
Fernando Botero
enthusiastically taking notes,
His eyes gleaming
with Abu Ghraib.

Bike pumps for brushes it is, then.

The Holding Company

You

wholed me.

I

helled you.