Monday 18 April 2011

Back in the zone?

In place of paint

Could this be the hoped-for corner,
the breakthrough, the turning-point?
[normally I'd frown on such repetitions,
but if it's true...]

Self-portraits seem
so against-the-grain,
egotistical, but
oil-and-water portraits
are not to be managed,
and yet...
using words I can still do
the lilac light on the beech trunks
in the background, even shift
the sitter to a minor place
in the plan, find that magic
A4 sweet spot...




Too sharp by half

Mallory grins sharp-eyed in red & black
back to the wall of the ice-cream stall.
Maybe like a spy she wishes she could hide
or the wind would drop, stop
blowing her hair, that they would open
so we could share a ninety-nine
before starting on the path up the cliffs
where the twelve fearless white goats live.










What you expect to happen

happens? What you fear
will happen happens? What
you hope will happen happens?
What you believe will happen
will happen. What you knew
would happen happened.

The sparrow maybe thinks
Uh oh the hawk might get me
but maybe also thinks I can
hide round the back of this tree
then he won’t get me.



Looking for a Glastonbury festival of the mind

A maze designed to lead me back
directly to where I came from.

Round a corner of the field
- wide  Kidz Field –
a top-hatted man in red on stilts
looks over the heads of the trekking crowd.

Where have all the rabbits gone, I wonder,
and do foxes negotiate the security fence?

Tonight cardboard beer-carriers
will be contribute to our fires
while we dance to the headliners’
heavy music on the hillside.

Before the end the ground will be hard and dry,
impenetrable, full of buried plastic water-bottles



Both sides – all the sides

Day 2

The sounds of lorries & cars on the top road
approach & recede like my thoughts
as I strive without striving to regain
calm after a fraught night.

There seemed sufficient reason
to cut back the shoots of the buddleia.
Like a dammed stream or a dream ignored,
the force in due time will burst out elsewhere.

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