Saturday, 6 July 2024

Our flight

(By Gub, 21st of January 2024, Hereford)

The inner journey 

Is just that -

So rumination is best left

To its own inertia

Progress

Lies in the outer worlds 

Of falling leaves 

and russet trees


No passage 

Sailed is entirely solo,

Even the wind that haunts

A friendless crossing 

Once Blew through populated seas


Hauntings

happen

when

Memories and souls

Reunite


The haunter's power

lies in evoking 

What the haunted has

Lost..


What tarnish

Can be lifted 

By a light

Rub of the lamp


The luminesce 

Of a past love

Aroused - 


And flames 

Reignited

Around 

The shared  story -


Recall with 

Vigour and all imaginative might

That great surging forth

The height of the waves,

The thrill of those white crested

Beacons,

The energy of the seas ocean

Hurling us up towards 

The shimmering 

Sun


And above the endless cycling of the tides,

Our flight 

From grief...

Like Christmas Morning

(By Sil, 24th of January, 2024, Hereford)

a candle in the autumn sea

love is a child clasping a leaf 

under flaming sycamore trees

at home, she peels off every garment

sleeps naked, curled up on the kitchen floor

exuding the sensuality of 

a summer day at the beach

her skin has the appeal

of fresh snow on a hill


a canvas for the gentle brushstrokes of your fingers

she will pucker up to receive your kisses

and wipe them off

love knows the rule of return and re-entry

that snowdrops

will eventually break through icy ground


that a poem is not just for Christmas,

when you arrive, defeated,

an old hound

that lost the fox's trail

she’ll make you feel 

like Christmas morning

and when you’ve made your bed in the guest room

love will always call your name

for she knows that 

although you hide

you always want 

to be found 

Knife

(Gub, 24th of February, 2024)

Life's a knife

Sharp as tatara steel,

Indifferent to time,

shredding;

years 

It's slicing motion turns 

calendars to 

Tick-a-tape


Un blunted, 

But for the dreams 

That escape 

The shining blade

and arise 

Uncut, 

As bold as any daisy 

That escape the scythe's

Toil... 

Juggler

(6th of July 2024, Sandler's Wells)


you perform your best stunts

the woman in the front row 

withholds smiles

close enough to see your fingers curling 

on the edge of that next straw hat 

you briefly caught and released

not close enough to smell the sweat 

streaming underneath the shimmering leotard

contortionists sinew 

with a pirouette, the acrobats

conceal that moment 

when they have stepped into the wings 

and the masks come off 

arms relax

they don't owe us their true faces or their slumped torsos

this is not a ticket to their souls 

later I see you at the edge of the stalls

folded under a metal ladder 

in your black cloak of anonymity 

to your audience

you exist only in a pool of light 

crossing the fourth wall 

my eyes search out yours 

I want you to know that 

I have spotted you

my watchfulness separates me from 

those who look but cannot see

in my world, I move like a film

but my audience only sees in snapshots

they want to see you teeter

but they don't want to see you fall - they say

sometimes I make a gesture

as if I am laying down a sharp sword

like I could fight with my bare hands 

or not fight at all

when you stepped out of the limelight 

you gave up on the applause

has the audience left 

or will there be another curtain call 

in this auditorium and at funerals 

I am always sat on the last pew 

they sing

lord of hopefulness, lord of joy 

but I'm outside, following a child 

amongst the graves

Sunday, 12 November 2023

Sleep

By Gub, the Whimble, New Radnor 

October 2023


On a damp peat

Path  

Cresting the green rich brow and 

Flanked by heather and gorse,

You picked that

moment and 

Said don't look back 

And 

Don't look forward,  


Let time

Stand still


And so it did 

As it has done before 

And after, and will

Again


For those walks exist 

In a lateral form,

And linear time has 

No place there.


They are for us 

An eternal stepping


A place to dream

To touch a heaven

Of sleeping giants dressed

In green felt cassocks 


And watch miniature versions

Of ourselves trip 

Lightly forward,again,  

Down the sheep 

Stepped Path…


And view a world which has 

No object, no subject but itself and know that 

Time is a liar and well rounded lives 

Are little more than practiced 

Wakings in all the morrows 

Of the universe.


When we returned home

You understood all this, 

And answered that 

Call - as you should;

with  sleep.

Monday, 6 November 2023

And then there were none...




By Gub (Last week in Felmin, Nov 2023)


Where body and mind meet
There are no days or nights
To remind us of what has past

Of what is to become...
Only what is.

Clouds drift above and stars
Fill the sky
The mountains' peaks,
Are dials signalling; compass points
In a slow passing infinity.

And yet we do count
the years -
We rest in time - Jurassic; ages
Dawn.

For without man
There is no measure
Of the universe or it's might

Or god's sight -

Our weak, frail, humanity;
Like a blink, a water droplet
Sliding down the hourglass
From here to oblivion.

Meaning yields to meaning
Only because without causality
Everything is dust

Belief
Is disbelief

So the carp rises to the surface of the pond,
To experience the buoyancy of water in the air, and in that moment masters the acrobatic dominion of two elements.

Wednesday, 9 August 2023

Velcro souls


to the naked girl toddling on the beach

your're out of sight and out of mind

as momentary 

as the footprints she leaves in the sand 

new dawn, new dog on the leash 

she surrenders in the arms of the present 

to me 'now' is a stranger whose grip-like embrace  

I'd like to refuse 

I close my eyes against 'now' and lock onto 'yesterday' 

when I could still run my fingers through your knotted fur

I want to burrow in that memory like wild thistle tangled in your hair

With claw-like grip

You and I, lock-and-key

Velcro souls