Be yourself! Get the writing out there!

(He says to himself)

Dance-floor

Harry him out
Onto the dance-floor!
Hound her too!
Get them to let go,
Life widen, break ice!

Drag me screaming to my notebook,
Ankles bruised.
Tomorrow I’ll be polishing or sweeping broken ice,
Carving words
Out of
And into
Life.

Drag me out,
The lines may even dance.

Dreamed Out

All dreamed out.
Memories scoured
Agonies emptied
Joys raptured.

Lost for words worth ink
I come back to everyday
Songs stories people.

Amused, muse absent
Stilled enough to ask

Why not me?
Why watching and listening,
Why not making?

The answer:
Live this moment
Ears eyes nose open.
Refuse to see it dead,
Demand its secret.
Touched by its value
React.

Another Hamelin

Some write of what they see

Colours, shapes and sounds

Demanding description.

For others the incident

Howls to be set down

Chiselled out in words,

The moment demanding memorial.

What of the stirs and storms within

That rouse, dent, injure and impress,

Where is their record?

For me, grief paralyzes

Snatching words away.

Too much hope too

Would dance me with the piper

To a hopeless Hamelin.

In another heaven,

Hope well-grounded,

I’ll dream my hopes on paper.

Sixty

New notebook begins

A final journey

After scribbles over tea

In eight states.

This is number sixty.

Thank You

For pen and paper company,

For light to sketch what’s outward seen

And gauge what flows within.

Retire at sixty?

Notebook says no.

Listen for the children

Do your children keep you up?

Do they call you home early?

Do they wake you in your sleep?

May mine waken me.

Let them haul me from my bed

Crying to be held

And held out.

Listen for the children.

Listen.

Write flesh into birth,

Flesh into intimate word.

Parenthood

My unexpected children

Just born.

Intimate at their conception

I now stand separate

Delighting to see myself

In their strange beauty

But aware of another parent too.

My dividend:

Elation, admiration

Or desolation.

Passed on, they go their own way

Others will nurture them (perhaps)

Children and poems

Have their own lives.

Begin Again

Advent begins

And I wonder if words will arrive.

(Its preparatory colour

Suggesting purple prose)

Come long-awaited lines!

Come though the world don’t need you!

Come amidst the tinkle of shop tills!

(Jingle bills, jingle bills)

Find your crib

In a shopping trolley

Gift-wrapped paper gold

Incensed to see our souls

As merchandise on hold.

Free wise men!

Get one now.

On the Net

In air and at sea
Restfully surrounded
And alone

Time passing
Stands still

Letting me frame the mind’s eye

Its people and its possible

Its moments asking remembrance

Up there
Out there
Air and water

Netted.