FRACTURE
FRACTURE
Noise vandalises quiet
Fragments of colour
Dislocate and splinter
In the heavy air
Voices compete
For a thin thread
Of attention
Weaving in and out
Amid the shifting collage of
The banal and the deadly
Layering the walls
Of the mind
The sin of wearing
A contrasting belt
On an ample waist
The dangers posed
By a neighbour’s right
To live on my patch of green
The limbs of the child
Scattered on the war-torn road
Reflection sacrificed
Shredded and nailed
To the four corners
Of opinion
Escape the hum
Of divide to rule
For the place of silence
Where thought begins
And all that is fractured
Is drawn to the centre
Jagged, but whole
Blind rage drops its fists
Finds nothing
In its hands
But a piece of bread
From a shared loaf
RECONSTRUCTION
RECONSTRUCTION
Wounds healed over Stitches dissolved New skin shines pearl-like In the morning sun Stretches to touch The wholeness Of things placed Just where they should be A tree in the ruined yard Clings by its roots To soil slowly enriched By last year’s fallen fruit And bends towards the light Pouring its warmth Through slats in the blind Onto the chair Outside, the stones ring out With the cut and scrape Of mortar What has been, is named With each slab laid down Truth is released And the blocks grow to form Not a monument, but a future home The room sings with the sound Of work in progress Reordering chaos The drawing together Of hard choice and wonder At how right it is That the wind still blows On a field of corn
PENTECOST DREAM
PENTECOST DREAM
Fine rain
From way beyond
Our consciousness
Falls undefiled
Transparent pure
Devoid of acid
Human waste
So, mirrored in each drop
We stand immobilised
In shame at all that we are not
And awe at what could be
Faces upturned
Across the world
Tongues out to drink
New ways of life
Eyes washed clear
See with contrition
Bombs cease to fall
Abuse halts in the mouth
And in this moment
All is silence
So, where do we go
From here?
WILDERNESS – LENT 2025
LENT WILDERNESS 2025
High towers once inalienable
Upended one by one
The dust of their falling
Sticks to the clothes, grits in the toes
As we stagger ill-shod and unbelieving
Through the wasteland
Of past certainties
Our hearts shot through
With the insult of this
And all betrayals
We take a long hard look
At the blank landscape of our time
Inked over day by day against our will
By the hand of one
Who should, we thought, have been a friend
And so, this no-mans-land
Where right is wrong
Is our new normal
Here we stand
Aimless in the wilderness
Tempted to gorge our minds
On anything that’s placed at hand
To colonise our souls
And fill the void
Within which we must face
A silent confrontation
With ourselves
In order to discern which trace to follow
When the track forks in the desert road
And only one leads to the other side
ERASURE
ERASURE
It starts with a fingerprint
Dirt denting the corner
Of soft cream vellum
Cotton fibres interwoven
With care over time
Attention is drawn
From artwork to stain
A thumb smudges the charcoal
Outline of the hills
Forever changed
Frontier soil eroded
The history
That marked the page
Blurred
The hand takes an eraser
Wipes out a city
Ruined foundations
Of human heritage
Faint imprints
Embossed on paper
And in memory
Remain
The fist insists
Rubs out all trace
Of each defiant face
Whose story
Deserving of a seat
At the table
Testifies to yesterday’s
Truth
Fine line pledges
Etched in margins
Small print warnings
In faded blood
Are masked by brushstrokes
Wide enough to hide
A million lies
Suffused in ink
Meaning fluidifies
Myths emerge
And evil is baptised
Into the faith
Zoom out
Each detail
Every name
Figures indelible
In the book
Whose words call
Into life
While Empires fall
SOUNDSCAPE
SOUNDSCAPE
The music of ‘wellness’
Washed clean of all colour
Plays out its servitude
In the glass lift
Boards of directors having concluded
That calm can be conjured
From shallow waters
The panic of thought
Contained by the bland
Corporate music
Oils the transactions
Of profit and loss
Caresses the ankles
Of greed and desire
Wraps up the senses in
Wall-to-wall feel-good
Till the soul caves in
And clicks on ‘buy’
The music of empire
Descends its full bombast
To cover the lie
Drowns the lone voice
Calling out in the desert
With brass, fife and drum
Falls in with the goosestep
And charts out the score
Of the screenplay of war
There is a music
That autocrats fear
So they hang from the trees
Broken-skinned drums
Lyres ripped of their strings
To scare off the doves
Lock up toothless pianos
To moulder in sorrow and
Smother the underground railway
Of song
The music of life
Woven into the helix
The beat of the breast
The rim of a glass
The chop of an axe
The drip from an icicle
Echoes from canyon to glacier
Sounds the sea floor
Lifts the heart into space
Past flying debris
To where atoms converse
With harmonics which bend
Perfect imperfection
Beyond calculation
Wild limitless voyage
Through question and resolution
And grounds it again
In the blue green earth
As we look at each other
Breathless, wide-eyed
Complicit in hope
Our lives play the music
Of the masters we serve
NOW
NOW
Now can’t be edited
Burnished in the looking back
Until it is past
But the fear of winter’s devastation
The unravelling it brings
Can derail it
Sitting quiet with Now
Takes some attention
As a piano is coaxed
Into tune with itself
String by string
The whole being absorbs
Wild windows of green
Attends to the value
Of an apple
Transient sun on old stone
Or the smell of rain
For some, ‘now’ is the rush
Of destruction
Viewed through the flap
Of a ripped tent
All consuming
Landscape of loss
My ‘now’ is a place of safety
On the summit of 70 years
The pettiness of all my wanting
Slowly gives way to gratitude
Awaiting the day
When the world’s tears
Turn to springs
Burgundy, 13.10.2024
STILL PROCESSING
STILL PROCESSING
Disquiet drops
A question mark
At the banquet
Table where
Overripe, hardened
Mellow and bruised
Fruit of the vine
Are gathered
I balance on its crest
Slide round into the hollow
Of its pause
Sit with it for a while
Listen to its lilt
And wonder
I, who so often
Jump flea-like to the
Period. Full. Stop.
Of closing affirmation
Is it I?
The ultimate betrayer?
A WALK IN THE PARK
A WALK IN THE PARK
Slow placing on a winding path
One thought in front of another
A jogger huffs impatient
Warm breath at my neck
I stop holding hands
With contemplation
To let her pass
Then they’re all
At my back, in my face
Priority to the app-blaring
Chattering voices
Importantly knocking my lined up
Skittles of quiet for six
My cauldron of petulance
Simmers
Endless lists of
Things underachieved
So much that amounts to so little
The visceral terror
Of being too dull
To finish a thought that is
Fully alive in this privileged town
Where bombs do not fall
Water is plentiful
And gratitude scarce
A slumberer lies
On a bed of old bags
A Pomeranian’s tail
Bobs ridiculous ahead
A man waves cheerful
Two hands in plaster
I wonder how he fell or fought
And whether the sad scent
Of homelessness
Could be bottled and sprayed
On real estate moguls
And global elites
To goad them to help
Children babble and circle
As their minders talk
Loud into phones
And the life of the park
At the end of the day
Makes me smile
CONTEXT
CONTEXT
Stones from pre-history
Ground by the years
Shells pounded by sea and wind
Transported and beached
At the hourglass waist
Of this place in time
Where the rasp of bare feet
Meets sand
My ragbag of atoms stands on the shore
Stardust from the beginning of time
Repurposed with water and air
And a soul that sings
Of its smallness
Amazed to be part of
The vast project of life on earth
As the wind tears at my coat
We flee the context
Of more than ourselves
Step out of the frame of light years
Into the algorithm of
Counterfeit goods that
Plunder and crack
The face of the earth
As it shoulders the weight
Of our human importance
I dream of my dust
Ploughed into the soil
Enriching the ground
Of tomorrow
Will it still be there?
Mud at the wall 