The Likeness is Applied to the Canvas poems
Please note that this display merely presents the poems as plain text in a list. For the complete book including cover, preface, and full indexing, please see the PDF or WORD versions.
Our Fabulous Dead
If you listened to the dead, they would rant all day.
The skull as conch – hear the note it plays.
Lips pregnant with paradise can seldom abstain
from dissecting their prey; reprising as elegy
every credible lie and unseasoned truth they contain.
A withered husk as tutor? As if sod and clay
had blanched their frame, charged mute jaws
to shout that confirmation, shrill exhortation,
from dust. Unfetter them, unbind the shroud – see how they
always agree on every interpretation or classification,
they will never disagree – merely keep their own counsel.
Let bearers shoulder that weight, as death should.
Throw them in the air. If they fall correctly, you may
pick them up, bend as yew or elm to shape a bow
then fire your arrow dipped in their blood.
Derby
Sunday. The bare-arsed cheek of it.
Stranded at some barren siding.
The dead travel faster than British Rail.
Speaker coughs an idle lying
yarn about this and that. Outside,
a disused beck. Two boys sit fishing
with a net. Which reminds me,
they say if you take two tadpoles,
wrap them in cloth, keep each wet,
they grow into frogs with three legs.
There’s a reason for it, apparently.
Everything’s connected, cause – effect.
We will be forty minutes late into Derby.
Guy for the airport starts to sweat.
Croissant buttered with a plastic knife.
The mystery deepens. No coffee yet.
Brief History of Desire
In the depths
taste is an afterthought,
a late delivery of sense
you can live without.
It is in the mystery
of these things
we lose ourselves.
Wine of a moment,
bare room,
loss of space
between lips and hips.
It is in the day
of the event
we catch our breath. Cull sanity
from rubble.
Lead the guilty body home.
Memory
When we are born, loves us. Stumbles
to our core; kicks against a blank page;
shapes dreams with stick of shadows past.
Falls improbably when we speak
of childhood days. Indistinct. Timeless.
Some grow that grasping frame
as a global test, its hammer pounds their steel
harsh against the anvil: pummelling,
crushing, shaping. The hollow thud
fills the night air with restless waking.
Others in fear seek refuge
in a lonely track which only looks ahead.
But refreshed, fed on scraps of paper,
calls our name. Never when you want,
always when you don’t. Dressed in
autumn years this half-forgotten rascal
comes home to roost. Raps knuckles
with the golden rule.
The old fox rails and shakes the villain’s hand.
Car Park
Sod them all. They told us not to play here
but on this estate, where you can scrape enough mortar
from walls with a stick to make your own sand pit, where
do we play? Decent football pitches harder
to find near us than pirate treasure. Not bloody Eton.
Besides, it’s the boundary line between us and the gang
we play from Cobb Avenue. Time in the war where on
Christmas day they stopped shooting and sang
carols and stuff – took their jackets off for goals.
Well, no-man’s land’s also our ideal location, so they
can stick the notice up the council’s arsehole.
Me, I’m wondering who salted cash away
from cement they didn’t order. We only stop playing
for broken bottles. Glass underfoot. Like on the telly
when they cancel games for snow or flooding.
With us, a dickhead with too much cider in his belly.
Welcome Change
Welcome change from company I normally keep:
keyboard, screen, and yours truly. Sound of people –
their stories, reminiscences, troughs, and peaks –
cast adrift into the ether. I am both willing and able
(on occasion) to hear other’s thoughts out loud.
I heard a report that conversation,
(a vehicle for exchange of body language and sound)
can be a rich source of information.
Hence, if one becomes a good listener
it might actually be of use. Well, who knew?
Not that I need the help of any such banter.
My thoughts in perfect working order. Another view
is hardly needed. I just thought this might serve
to illustrate how much better off you could be
to hear my voice repeatedly. Really, you deserve
- No need for thanks. You’d do the same for me.
America, America
I poured America from the bottle.
The taste no less than a feast of guidebooks,
each place shouting its name, waving its own
dirt road like a flag calling the hungry,
dispossessed, to lie in their wine-blessed cloth,
leech the good soil, to harvest fat green grapes
and squeeze that single run of nectar dry.
To go there one day! Dig each foot deep, deep
into the vine-clad clay and boundless land.
Follow old trails and the smell of ripe fear
ridden in a one-horse town as night falls.
I would wipe my feet on the dust bowl mat,
drink from glasses shattered by my drunk host.
Travel broadens the mind. I know that now.
Vigil
His frozen wits
occasionally wresting free
when he pulls her arm or shouts for tea or his son.
Mostly he is quiet.
She plays her part
in good faith. Cropping legs
of trousers as he shrinks,
dabbing piss stains to the left of the zip.
When a neighbour calls
there is talk
of how lightning can leap from televisions
and how weather is affected by planes.
Sometimes when he yells at night
thinks to smother him with a pillow
but knows he is still strong
and may hit her as he used to.
Rant
The price of tickets rises exponentially
with need, or shortness between booking
and journey. It is the offset of supply
and demand writ large, chips falling
where they may. All of life a struggle.
This is one more facet, one more aspect
of that battle if you needed any such example.
The tale of when you connect
two places on a map, or send a person
to a destination, scene is set
for others to not only provide transportation
but to squeeze revenue and profit
to maximum effect. Same all over,
companies must be fed. But where has service gone?
Pride in what you are part of – or might offer?
Efforts now confined to marketing slogans.
What about Often promises but seldom delivers?
That should be on all the posters.
Tales of signals, snow, and flooded rivers,
crawling on a stretch of track no faster
than a bicycle, because (and this is good)
the wrong leaves fell beneath the wheels.
God invented railways so people would
know how eternity looks and feels.
Fell Walker
Road fading
in the wake of legs
outstripping all distance laid before them.
Tension
coiled between dull eyes
and pistons of feet
playing itself out,
throwing an arrogance of flesh
hard against the bodiless might of hills.
Ankles puff and rattle
insulated from the trail
as muscles plunge deep into service.
Unpacking the spine of the world
in strips
sliced from earth’s rippled skin.
Wringing last drops
from brass lungs which hang
clanging,
bells pulverising their own mountings.
Stops.
Scans the spoils of his stride,
dimension of journey planted.
Suddenly jerks
shuddering with steam
rested fibre
lurching to fresh exertion,
slat of body
tensed and set once more.
Rail Station
Monument to an enlightened hand
whose vision, plan,
of steel-tipped track and locomotion
once spread with missionary zeal.
Casing, bolt, wheel,
testament to that devotion,
precision of their dream.
Cathedral to a faith
built beyond mere need.
Iron and stone as canon and creed.
Now, reduced to blemished grandeur
platforms strewn in disrepair.
Anachronism, oddity,
in today’s less extravagant times.
Passion, fervour, somehow lost
sacrificed to a lesser god
of efficiency
and us, left all the poorer.
Cliché, sin, and recurrent curse,
to know the price of a thing
but not its worth.
Blackpool
Bundled in the scorching sun
long days spin
webs of sand and buckets,
ice cream vans and salt sea.
Deck chair wars
fought silently on strategic beaches,
armies of red stripe
slyly outflank
blue stripe, twenty pence dearer.
Tide wipes the slate clean
at end of play.
Wriggling seaweed
grasps giggling toes
jumping in the splash and spray,
with plans of fresh tomorrow’s
and fish ‘n’ chips again.
Confused crabs scan
bulging bags and floppy hats.
Mutter silent crab oaths
in rock pools
awash with wide eyes
and pink fingers.
Little hands shape castles,
fortress from a spade,
as older hands
(no wiser)
let a summer slip away.
Shipping Water
Nowhere left to hide for the cheapskate
who wouldn’t pay the going rate. Ceiling is a river.
To go for the insanely low quote probably a mistake.
Mad Italian roofer, no scaffolding, balancing on a ladder,
more circus act than trade. The bedroom has just drowned.
Then, newly fitted kitchen, pride and joy, discovered flooded.
Trap is checked, bends are traced, but breach not found.
Who would not use the good plumber? What bonehead
called the local cowboys in to make a tiny saving?
Screwed forever. And cursed. Words are said. Insults fly.
Comments such as Cheap bastard and Miser begin the reckoning.
Those whom the gods wish to destroy…
well, they send bad weather. Poured all week.
Where is Noah when you need him? It gets better.
Eight guests for dinner and suspect the leak
is the shoddy bit of pipe to the dishwasher.
Grave Digging
It is precise work,
sweat
drifting from corporeal brow.
Cold steel
puritanically aligned
upon a dark and bawdy soil.
A secular passion
from this Poseidon of the tuber
whose indecorous hands
belie
a sense of artistry,
an accuracy of pleasure.
Who, in search of perfection
burrows crude clod and loam
to his terrestrial will,
shapes domain for depth, size, and contour,
flattens hewn dirt
with a spirit of adventure.
Scans
with an unerring eye
the indecent clay and lascivious dust.
Exhumes lessons from the day.
Curses, and moves on
to cut the seductive ground once more.
Succulent
Your alien green style
infatuates the eye.
Balloon leaves,
structures, as if primed to fly
or fall harmlessly
at a wind’s idle whim.
Yet I know
the worlds water imprisoned within,
held hostage
against life’s harsher times.
How the delicate, frail,
can outsmart a desert, sun-blasted climes,
which would roast me whole.
A short, puffed length
of buffed, lime nonsense
a fine disguise for subtle strength.
String
Bits drop off as you grow older.
I have seen whole people fall apart
in a strong wind or from a bump in a road.
Pieces everywhere.
A muffled Excuse me
as they search desperately for a leg or arm.
The young know this.
They are held together by strong rope
and laugh at such flimsy construction.
They can drink all day
and not get up at night.
They are gods to old folk
who worship them
and would sleep with them if they could.
No fun having detachable parts.
The old complain bitterly.
The young roll their eyes
in that way they do, perfected in their infancy.
The old mutter darkly
draped in rubber bands, Elastoplast, and string.
Something about Just you wait: you’ll see.
The young recognise this as the sour grapes it is.
Beginning Writing with No Thought of the Whole
Too fast from the blocks: a marathon, not sprint.
Off running with no idea where I’m going.
Searching for inspiration ten long days in, barely a dent
in the commission, plagued by indecision, not knowing
arse or elbow, or which way to go to finish the journey.
Tell me, what sort of idiot sets out
trusting to fate? Needs to overwrite a story
to fit the elements together? They tell me doubt
can be a wonderful thing. Adds spice. The unexpected.
Under time constraints, print runs, sword hanging
and closing in, any gap between hand and head
is a bad thing. I know that now. Safer to string
lines from introduction to conclusion to construct a path
then walk down its length and mark a track
with words as signposts to guide a reader. You do the math.
Better to tack start to end, than stitch all the sections back-to-back.
Editing
As if all the world could fall due to one wrong letter,
skewed paragraph, incorrect tagline. No doubt
over-analysis is an affliction. Drags you in. Work never
good enough to go. But there is no time to linger. No letting out
of any reins to canter aimlessly or scan the view.
The respect that language, forever growing, evolving, expects.
Constant vigilance. Where a phrase can be read in a new
and unexpected way to re-invent itself. Where solid text
can spread from a misplaced comma or rogue apostrophe.
Where revision or omission brings a threat to meaning
which the simplest change can manifest all too easily.
A challenge fusing disparate parts together, of revising
size, content, and style, to stay within the shackles
prepared for it. It is an insular occupation.
Behind the front line. Foot soldier in the battle
between timeliness, detail, and lure of perfection.
Sharpening a Blunt Pencil
Flimsy first draft, a commissioned author,
the need to shape and strengthen structure
to make it support its own weight.
Truth be told, the manuscript in an awful state.
No end of patching required.
Still, writer, hired and delivered
has spoken
so make ready the pen.
Slice the whole apart,
move, substitute, part
unsupported conclusion from threadbare
foundation. Down to judgement, really. Knowing where
to go in guns blazing or leave well enough alone.
Eventually, the bones
made solid. Astonishingly
by the end, the work grudgingly
converted from confused mess into decent reading.
Creating anything worthwhile seldom easy or undemanding.
The seemingly effortless final version
underpinned by talent, experience, and endless revision.
Soliloquy
I think about love a lot.
What it is and what it is not.
Is there a bargain to be made?
For each new love one has to fade?
Or is it unlimited, simply flows
however much it expands and grows?
I have looked at love more than most.
Perhaps, I have looked too long, too close.
A collector who pins out every specimen,
carefully teases out the limb,
but strips the butterfly of its wing.
When young and impressionable
everything so simple.
Black and white,
wrong and right.
Older, we realise life
wields a more subtle knife.
Burial Customs
I have not been there since his dust was sown.
It does not seem to me to be of note
where the ashes of a life may be thrown
whether on unknown fields or streets he knew.
Why visit there? What might I hope to see?
Not the substance of stone or sepulchre
you could somehow invest with mystery
and in its mortar place a fragile trust
so you might rest assured They only dream.
But scattered over an unyielding ground
assuming no identity or scheme.
Surely, hard to remember there or mourn,
remnant dispersed in anonymity.
A reminder of what I must become,
inheritance of life’s one certainty.
Page of my own life unwritten as his.
Conversation with Ghost Monks at Leyburn
Confined by stone through arched vaults
and smooth wood
did you smell the burnt smoke
and feel the candle’s heat?
Were you bound in leather pages and coloured ink
like the book
to dance on sheets held in frail white hands
broken by relentless years?
Did glass that splintered the good light
illuminate your way
and astonish in its intensity, the coarse linen
and prostrate limbs laid on a cold floor?
Tell me now what held you; kept you there.
What stilled your heart through a river of doubt
and confusion
as young skin aged to vellum, and eyes strained in dim light
to fall exhausted in their sacrifice?
Was it voices in song that would not let go,
the empty room and silence?
Tell me now for I do not know,
your penance beyond any reason or measure
but I would walk with you
and try to understand your way.
Uncle
For as long as I knew him, he had old men’s bones.
Looking back, he was barely older than me now.
Whose hide did he wear and why?
Had his worn out on the graveyard shift
helmet off, picked up shrivelled skin as a coat
before he realised, too late?
I broke bread and watched him eat
mash and sausage and thick gravy,
that empty plate ritual performed each day.
We went to see pictures. Afternoon matinees
when I should have been in school.
Ice cream and Kiora
in a deep, dark heaven watching She.
A shower of eternal youth
cascading to the back row.
Me, a boy, looking at him and wondering.
Judas as a Small Child
Of course, he was a bit of a lad
even then. Used to pull my sisters hair.
Throw mud at me and run away
laughing. I never could catch him.
Always first in races. Ran like the wind.
Great at games too if I remember. In fact
that’s what sticks in my mind most, his energy.
Always on the go, and good fun too.
You could rely on him in a jam. We had
plenty of those. Always thought he knew
best. Argue with anyone. Got into no end
of trouble. We used to tease him about it.
He’d get madder and madder, but we’d laugh
afterwards and be friends again. There was
no malice in him, you see. He was a good
mate. Bit headstrong but aren’t we all?
The Marina
Do you recall the last time I said that?
It stands apart from all the other times
as we were down by the marina. You know, what
used to be the beck. Part that climbs
up to the footpath near the old cinema.
Surely! The place we used to go
to see those arthouse movies. Don’t you remember?
One with what’s his name and Bridget Bardot
that was a shocker. No clearer?
Corner from where we had
booked a restaurant to follow. Our very first dinner!
When you said your dad
would murder me if I didn’t get
you back in half an hour. Surely now?
What’s that, your dad? Old git
with a limp hitched to the evil cow
who was your mother. Her? She stayed
with us when she sold her flat
without telling anybody. A decade
sharing space with that viper. I almost snapped
and began to drink. No? What about the day
she stole our cash and ran off with a trucker?
Anyway, as I said, the one thing they can’t take away
are the memories we made together.
Winter in Oxfordshire
To set out on a morning such as this!
We struggle in the snow but push on through.
Our breath ignites the air and hangs as mist,
a whitewashed world subsumes the one we knew.
As far as you can see the sheet complete
apart from where our tracks disturb the fall.
The ruts and divots sculptured by our feet
stand proud, the only marks of life at all.
A stillness in this bleak and empty place.
We stand, as if to move would break its spell.
Then turn and leave behind that barren space,
the cutting wind too harsh for us to dwell.
The frozen drifts become our enemy
until back home and settled for the day.
At rest, perhaps the only eyes to see
a landscape which the rain must wash away.
Preference
Something about a photograph draws me in.
Not today’s model – mobile phones, the selfie, whose ambition
is nothing other than Look at me. Those dated back to the beginning.
Victorians with their rigid compositions,
heads requiring support, through to the box camera,
instamatics, the sixties. Pastoral scenes hold no interest for me.
Always people. To capture an image, persona
of a person who at that time, treating a camera more warily
than we might do now, revealed more of themselves.
Staged or not, fascinating. An education to look back
at subject and setting. Often, the placement and form compels
the eye to go further still, to search for clues and gaps
in the story. All long since dead and yet speaking
to us. A kind of immortality. Paintings too, similar
but no less compelling. Pigment lacking
the precision of film, but still that core of character,
individuality, captured forever. Artist at liberty to create
fresh perspectives – not tied to a moment. Which is best? For me
the old cliché pertains, how a painter can enhance a portrait
from parts placed deeper than the lens can see.
Silks Chosen
A desk clapper. You could let the lid fall
hear it bang, even lend a weighty slam.
Attached to seats. We had arrived!
Protractor, metal compass,
triangle and ruler – always splintered.
We slid into line. Trotted out
wood block horses,
pulled metal reins from oak saddles
champing at the bit. Starter’s gate.
Fences inside the beast.
Opened the box: books stared back at us.
Suddenly asked who could spell………
Silence. An arm went up. Mine.
That motion began the race.
Hooves pounding, eyes fixed ahead.
Could feel myself pulling, over the jump
and down. If I had looked around
it might have been different. Got it wrong
but I didn’t. On its back forty years.
All in a moment. As quick as that.
Meeting Place
The ghost of a breath
shrouds a window. Remnant of a breath
tips into drops. Day rises
as a morning sun, bold with summer, calls.
Soon it will be too late. Tourists will arrive
unexpected as deserts. Innocent people
with secret names
will stand on walls, light fires,
shout about children in loud voices.
A car will shrug its shoulders,
cough, splutter,
stretch over a fragment of road
an arm pulled by invisible strings
drawn across frosted glass.
It will travel
like a snail into the distance.
The Cricket Season
Summer’s long song,
whack of leather upon bat, tea in the pavilion.
Though I’ve lived here years, I can scarce recall
when that red ball
was not landing in my garden. Village full to overflow
to watch an innings go
as life, drift and splutter.
An airless heat. Sun high, lemonade and ice.
How does the camel’s spine crack?
With age – or bowed by straw’s heavy price?
Yes, I said in full view. No problem. Have it back.
That night called some innings run:
raised finger number one.
A spade, both sharp and true
can cut a grave in the hardest mound;
bury a grudge then flatten the ground.
The Jones woman saw me, so I killed her too.
On a point of principle rest a million sins.
Eye for an eye,
curt remark – who would count one more than another?
Not I,
and no less a sportsman for my furtive stand
or lack of linen white. Speed, skill,
the victor’s swift and practiced hand.
Career run, I rest my arm. A team falters none the wiser
bereft of legs to chase to the fence.
Yet often I still dream of slaughter.
The ball’s loop, a silent glance.
Who would begrudge the fox a hunt, the slug its salt,
the drowning man water?
Grandmother
I was the last and would have wished it so,
my mother said wish illness on no-one
but it is hard when your life fades not to throw
envy to the wind,
call others to suffer as you have done.
Though the labour long, it was nothing new.
When they first spoke of twins I had wept.
Even so, all through
the days and months I kept
myself in check, as if then I knew.
The heart is such a fragile thing.
Children may break its porcelain
with barely a murmur or passing sigh.
I felt the fluid start to collect
when I heard their birthing cry.
Life can be the cleverest thief,
what it gives with one hand the other takes
yet I would not have chosen differently.
I do not fear death so much
as that they will not remember me.
A Disappointment, Even to Myself
A cute arse has just glided past me.
Thoughts on more weighty subjects
forgotten. Its motion has a beauty
which could fill a hundred pamphlets.
Distracted, yes. But when treasure such as this
has wandered by, however crass
or incorrect it might be, would be remiss
not to comment. They say all things must pass
but images remain. God bless tight clothing.
I speculate on its unwrapped state.
And in good company. Two favourite sayings.
One from St Augustine, the old reprobate,
and I paraphrase, Lord make me chaste – but not yet.
The second more difficult to ascribe.
Plato, Socrates, Sophocles – the subject
of debate. Also, modern genetics has clarified
it relates not just to the male member alone
as was once thought, but to the entire span
of the unruly and stubborn Y chromosome.
As the saying goes: It’s like being tied to a madman.
So there we have it. Man’s mind at battle
with itself. Which even at its finest, will skim
between deep analysis, attempts to unravel
life’s mysteries, and the set of a Carry On film.
The Skin Bin
Sometimes we die
and are carried in wood boxes
thrown skywards at a shoulder’s insistence.
Freedom of speech withheld
as someone beats truth to a pulp with eulogies
upholding great lies on our behalf.
This is a good thing
as the crowd are all sad
and speak inconsolable misery.
Sometimes when dead we become victims
and police raffle us
to the living. Those with best grudges win.
They are dragged struggling into cells
as we have become a crime.
Sometimes we die incognito
stacked in locations no-one knows
so we never get flowers.
When dead a long time
people may call us fictitious
denying we ever lived at all.
One of the most disturbing aspects
of being dead.
ART
The Likeness Is Applied to the Canvas
Invisible string
between hand and eye
pulled taut.
Lovingly inspected,
the gaze consumes each detail
weighing light and shade
and where the eye boldly wanders
hand
obediently, precisely follows
until shape and form appear.
Then, in layers of pigment
charcoal clears
and colour flows from fingertips
who ask
to confirm tone and hue,
and between the two
the balance is set,
agreed,
and portrait,
once mere cloth
struggles into view.
Rembrandt
Saskia is dead, and in her passing
the fragility of life is laid bare.
Endured again, the rigour of mourning,
the disappointments, misfortunes, we share.
No mirror so harsh as that held by death
in which few dare look; still fewer study.
With what artist’s eye did you scour its depth?
What reflection seek? What image copy?
Though pain and sorrow may mature the brush,
add shade and substance to its armoury,
to trade love, contentment, for genius
who would fix that price or pay willingly?
Poem
A spark
when caught
reveals
the cacophony of thought
the mind conceals.
Then escaped, running,
spreading as a flame
all-consuming
until burnt-out,
combusted,
retreats to leave a skin of charcoal
frosted
over charred ground
cleansed, re-set, ready to begin.
Players
step in,
stories
clamouring to be heard.
Ears now primed to listen,
hand in place to record each word.
Rehearsal
Curtains closed; the work begins.
In moments such as this
voices grow and entwine
and as lines tighten, lock,
the whole advances, stumbling
into tragedy or comedy.
Scenes repeated, flexed,
until subtle shifts
stretch beyond the foolscap skin
allowing form to emerge.
Now full grown, strutting.
Later, an audience claps
and beast fed
returns to rooms in shabby boarding houses
and run-down digs to rest, recharge again.
All worlds encompassed
in an audience, in a theatre, in a street.
Nothing else exists. Or can exist. No wider stage than this.
Sparks float upwards to heaven,
tied to smoke – small notes –acts reported and reviewed.
Music
In music we redeem ourselves
distinguished from the humdrum,
poverty called life.
Aspire to the tongue of angels.
Lose ourselves
in translation of their rhetoric,
drama of their speech.
When we land
we label this ephemeral,
marvel at its delicate touch.
Clothe the ghost
dotting phrases in the prison of a measure
to capture
and claim them as our own,
blunt pins tethering notes to stave.
Chaff
A sip of creation
is all you need. Though a great pool
waiting, too much leaves vision
drunk, obsessed with images which fool
an eye into believing
it encompasses everything – the whole panoply.
When all the while, it is seeing
a part – random pictures, offshoots, free
of any meaning, import, stature.
Only curated, bled with personal testimony,
does the mix set: the message matter.
Without that element, art is empty.
Sculptor
Being
transfixed in shaping
stone and plaster.
Passion reflected in every gesture
of a body
constructed to house that extraordinary energy
which explodes and ricochets through the manipulation
and transformation
of clay.
Excess roughly scraped away
to release the structure
hidden inside that formless mixture
which only those hands could feel
or craft to reveal.
Stands, finished,
embedded in that image.
Chaotic Music
I will make of you what I will.
Broken runs picked up, set aside.
Strident dissonance played until
I have walked your mile, tried
to embrace your whole. No structure? We
need counterpoint, accord. I will strip noise
to bare note and build harmony.
You will be quite changed: the joys
of destroying what we do not understand.
World over, what does not fit, order introduced.
Existence must be safe, insulated, planned.
Mystery tamed, and in that act, reduced.
Early Hours
Another day has fallen as I speak
and sleep envelops everything I write.
There is no light to find the words I seek,
I cannot see their footprints in the night.
Perhaps come morning I will search again,
they stay or go with such an easy grace.
I think I am too slow to play this game,
I cannot guess their course or match their pace.
As hunters do, I must prepare and wait
to find a memory which is the best
to slice apart and use its flesh as bait
so words can pick the scent and come to nest.
A bloody business this, this poetry.
The debris of our lives laid out to see.
Nonsense on the Definition of Art
Not in the editing
or drafting,
ninety-nine percent
perspiration, or in whatever a thought might first present,
it is in the emptiness and error,
looking fully into the mirror
facing a pit of your own making,
reaching in
as fractious and daunting as that may be
to carefully
craft from that retrieved thread
the painting left covered, the unloved sculpture, the poem never read,
and still go back.
In that act
is the sum of it.
To recommit
to the task no one else commissions or is there to see.
Journey
into the mirror – painful, uncomfortable,
there! There is the art of it, forged in that struggle.