a reading of “No Ticking but the Tide”

No Ticking but the Tide

Come cold October
there’s a wintry feel to the coast.
Where the wind howls hollow through,
slicing pale grasses; and the incessant sea
keeps coming in the repeated strokes of a comb
on a bald head: habitual and pointless.

Gulls echo and bob above the sea, kite-like.

The sand, interred with each succeeding wave,
one wave, rolling in forever and again,
passes the time ticking off endlessness
and in its’ emptiness there is no measuring out of clocks.
No ticking but the tide.

An unpeopled beach is ageless, so I’m told,
and this imaginary headland is beyond time,
but perfect in unsullied nature.

The only time I see this scene
is with eyes shut,
remembering the tide is a Mexican wave
and never moves forward,
only jumping up and down for effect.

The Particular

Just as an overstuffed silence
empties itself
with the echoed hum
of some distant bell,

and how with the first word,
the canon of English literature
gurgles down the drain
of a once empty page-

all my imaginings
of who I was
rewrote themselves
into non-existence
on seeing the me I could be,
in you…

a potential ocean
evaporated by a raindrop.

Exhalation

the little Ofs

belonging

side side

of the bys

in the fors

you my reason

as is the side-show

ah you

y reason m

belong of ing

belong of ing

s’love of love

the little ofs

y me ou

home

o
the why

ah
the how and the why

of
a love

where
a question

irrelevances
itself

where
maybe a sound

would
do

like
a seep soft sigh

Love Finds its’ Way

Love finds its’ way

through back-street bins

overflowing with yesterdays

dinners, over paper-trailed

pavements and dogshit;

through alleys badly lit

in the full glare

of trafficjammedcars and blaring horns

on mad motorways,

it jostles pavement-stacked crowds,

pushes grannies to the ground,

elbowing ahead of those too slow

to care or know the touch of love

is not an air-brushed dream,

but a stiletto stuck to the gutted hilt

of a beat-held heart,

and breathlessly screams

it is not the scent of apple –blossom on the porch

but the violent mugging of an unsuspecting drunk.

Bubble and Spark

Frost or steam

impermanences.

The flickering flame

of a dream dance.

Dinky little steps.

Plinking

piano keys.

All these-

Universes when gone.

Relative heat.

Seasons and feelings

bubble and spark.

Persona.

Contrasts

of bare existence

over emptiness.

If anything is forever,

it is nothing that lasts.

Untilled

For then,

and always then,

like now or later

I had said-

“I will love
you until…

of a winter

our rigid
bodies,

sack-wrapped,

are bundled from the back

of a conscienceless truck,

in some forgotten field;

and as we fall,

our

sentences tumble together

in the untilled soil,

holding hands

with our

stillness”

No Echo of Trees

Straight, and faintly

stroking the landscape:

cranes,

all leg and neck,

staves of sheet music,

wading the lake’s studied calm.

Then, hedgerows crossed out

by insistent unused lanes.

My eyes skate

the shaded windscreen glass

until

another passing pine

lashes the sky

and
an opened gate

hyphenates a fence.

—-

Words
manifest behind closed eyes:

the gaps resonate,

sounds and ciphers

cast
to times roadside ditch.

Perception
and description switch.

I look again, past the driver:

the outer world reveals no gaps where things are not,

no echoes of trees on desolate moor,

and then close

to confirm what’s written ,composed;

view the spaces which fashion the language

and know everything is where it isn’t.

Stiyin at Grannies

-Pish!

she’d say,

seein couples kiss oan thi telly.

-Get that pish aff!

Sittin therr in a mock huff

-As if thirz no enuff muck oan!

An then her talk

ower dinner an soup

wiz peppird wi fucks.

An az a wee boay

a fun it hard tae skwerr

an auld wummin

thit goat affruntied

wi snogs oan thi boax,

bit goat her kit aff

n chiynged

in front o ye in thi moarnin.

Septembering

Dusk devours chroma

at the Septembering of a day,

when rooms succumb to the miasma

of a rumbling, hungered night-coming,

and darkness’ dust scrapes

lazy, late afternoon hues

on blued-evening white doors,

and walls lilacness commences the crawl

to dulled corners charcoaled bolder

in advancing hours.

The twilight resigns, fading

to the democracy of the dark;

but us, tip-toeing to infinity

with the logical line of endless words,

in slipping sleepwise we fall,

and saturate grey sleep

with stark contrasted dreams,

our spectral artistry emblazoned

in glinting needles of clarity

cushioned in the nebulous clutch

of our every unknown.

Flickering eyes, in mimicry

of the unseeing creativity

of one wide awake

who, in the pitch of midnight,

creates a pageant from starless sky.

Waving

The tree outside the window.

Sparse leaves:

yellowed, brittle and curling,

flutter

like the gloved hands

of a class of six year olds

waving to family,

as the teacher leads them into school.

One breaks free

sometimes,

but instead of blowing home

falls to the ground

with all the other dead dry children,

who twitch, occasionally

shuffling their shoes.