stonepoem : poems & poetry

Man,
I’m still
on broken shells
waiting for a signal
to open up the box.
Hoping, for something
that says; “It is OK -
now I understand.
it was vain to think
the world is just for me”
But all I hear is tiny
cocoon wails from a spoilt
toyless child within
the soggy wool old news.
Scrunched, but wanting,
I’m trying hard - not to tear
the bubble wrap of scratch inside.
Pulling fist and knot of everything,
to nail some loose tape slack.
But what I get is blunted,
tweezered looks - that never help.
Then I realise. Indignant,
scornful tools are not
enough.

At night, in the pear orchard -
that’s where I will swoon and roll,
warmed as a firefly - like an ember
blown beyond this life I know.
So high, the guilded memory moon
that glows as if a silvered hole,
through which my wantings rise
then fall, as I am kissed
by dusk and dustlight call.
In time, I’ll mingle with the starlost
leap unbound, in sweet-seed air.
But now, I’ll seek the honest breeze -
and fall in love with tumbling midnight
leaves, like scattered souls.

String controls

the puppeteer

pulled as he

walks to lean.

Fate dangles

a pulley cord,

to the choices

of a king.

Born under greendown farmer’s scar,
but now amongst the pinched ones -
a child of earth to man-made stone
is walking through the grey.

In cities armour, there we are
pedestrian stiff-coat bones.
Sometimes, no mirth
for what we have become,
or knowledge dare not known,
the emptiness we help to hone.

O’ child of grass-seed skies
when will you help us seek,
to gaze renewed - in curiousity,
in splendour of wonder’s
perfect way?

You are not quite
as I’d imagined -
more … tenacious,
and defined.
Noble boned,
and crafted -
in the cliff-edged
haul of everything.
Steel eyed too,
like a motherbird
on guard - guessing
tomorrow’s wind.
But you too look
weary of being wary.
Let me reassure you;
of the many waves
claiming the shore,
or of the winds
against the plume,
I am only one.

You want something. Faster, more lucid -
real moments that are sharp, not blurred.
The slippage of mortality is rushing you,
like wind to a candleflame at the start
of its final gleam and flicker.

Don’t blink or shiver, but I am with you now.
Right at this moment - beamed through the wires,
soft-breathing across the bones of you.
Relax, feel my curious spirit near - go on!
Concentrate; let your shoulders fall
and the worries roll - be conscious of
the tensions sloping down.
Here, let me help. I’m raising my arms,
waving spectral palms your way,
circling with unseen fingertips -
willing you on as you read,
sensing the electricity and flow
of who you really are,
and want to be.

Oh, she is the damnation of me.
Letting me taste from the cup,
but taking it away before I sip.
I am just a blind man crashing
through the glass factory of her,
opening box after box, but never
finding the steel-lipped chalice.
She pulls me in. Like a sand-yacht
on a windless day, hauled across beach
by the angry parent of a sulky child.
I am trying to finish a jigsaw; peeling
edges not quite straight and middle gone.
Why did she take the missing piece?

Balanced on cotton thread
with arms aloft - struggling
to catch each word
wishing for the night-latched birds
of tissue bed and sleeping soft,
and back to life normality.

She says;
“Come, fly to me”.

I am a poem.
Not as complicated
as perhaps I like to think,
but maybe a bit confused.
There’s a contradiction
between who I am
and who I want to be.

Me, so proud
of your fortitude
despite the pain.

You, grown up
beyond your years
strong with hope.

Let me help
with all these
nasty horrid things.

It is nearly time
for green to graphite grey parade,
from summer’s baton pass
to wet edged days and shadow snatch.
The last gasp vivid glow,
a final flare from nature’s lamps -
the scurry from the light of day,
all by autumn’s tired call.

Gone are the tender strokes of sun,
the arms of bloom upon my back -
that harden very glue of me.
Steel wool clouds are on the way,
to stars and scent of pepper meadow
in midnight swell of owl hoot,
smudging glow with alluminium sky.

I smell the damp mortar return,
feel the subtle fibres of change,
hear the crisp night saw of curtains
sucked though the window frame,
and know - this is the first kiss
and tell of winter’s wail.

Here’s to the sons and daughters of the black crow quill,
with their moon soaked scrawls that never still.
I adore these scratched iterators of positive intent
moving through scribbled situations,
calming worries mere mortals
must ferment.
If life is trite - an open book,
all crooked texts and ink splat truths,
then these souls of word illuminate
the stilted ways in which,
we often look.

Are you truly a fool?

Or just prodding,
the ant-heap of argument
for the sake of it?

Why do you enjoy watching
your up-ended antagonisms
falling out?

For sure, you stoke
the steam of despise and spoil,
but where you go - ego flags.

What is the point of you?
Your tools are blunt, but
they won’t cut through my paper.

Well, I’ve clicked my heels
and I know.

You are nothing more
than a tiny grey grotesque
pulling the easy levers behind
the fake wizard grimace of
an intimidating mask.

In the unlit tunnel of your thoughts;
stuffed to the joists with memories,
piled high like mildewed dominoes
or musty blankets under the stairs.
Buckled buttresses struggle, like
tangled roots in cracked terracotta,
bulging from the squeeze and huff
of loose unlabelled circumstance.

You used to dutifully lay down
this priceless cargo of recollection -
comfort-stacking against the wall
the dusty happenings within your life.
Now, shoved-in - no weave or industry;
life payloads crushed and buckled,
shapeshifted by the pressure shove.
Torn by the strongarm pull of age

Listen!
You are too young to touch the stars.
They’ve been put beyond our reach
to keep them clean from naive grasp.
Tissue origami in the space wind
should never be unfolded.

Near one foot on Wiseman’s Bridge
the bosky dance of trees to teal sea.
shot-slewed on the grey incline
down toward the quartzite bed.
Joyful, feeling the soft tongued
ardent lick of bridled sun,
running down the scallop edge
of the valley, but still seeing -
all through crossthread eye.

My friend.
We’ve known each other
for as long as I can remember.
Like wheels on a bicycle,
one powering - the other, steering.
Dodging the rockish flip and flop
that life sometimes hurls upon the road.
Since early on; laughing, crying and muddling.
Through the rambling mechanism of it all,
laughing with - not at. Crying alongside,
not because of. I’ll recall us always cheering,
our steps together aside the rut and tangle of life.
Then, there is your awkward, morning grin!
Watching the scrape of my sleepy eyes;
squeezing toothpaste onto the day’s brush -
whispering sound advice, reminding me not to mumble,
making sure, I finish all my … sentences.
And now, there is someone waving a finishing flag,
I look for you to see it too. But where is that grin?
Where is the swagger of the only one who holds me up
when I have no right to stand? Where are you my friend?
Show me again! Unfurl my confidence - offer your calm surety,
help me once more to grasp the way of things.

“Are you a Hendrix man?”

…says the young stoner,
pony-tailing the ball pool,
guarding his voodoo chiles
with an alabaster grin.

Through the rope fence,
he ducks behind painted
door to turn his music up
and, er, change the mood.

We are different he and I.
But kin, like ying and yang,
tapping out Jimi rhythms,
grooving secretly among
the sandwiched families.

My kind of theme park.

Who was he trying to impress?
The splash of him certainly announced some intent
but the tortuous to and fro of his flailing arms
and the stuttered line of his path worried me.
Out beyond the others, on the tip-toes of youth
but lonely in the trawl. Why did he swim,
so recklessly?

A little girl sobs on the beach,
tears as inevitable as falling waves
whimpering, down the folded dune
of her soaked opal face - her treasure
lost and rolled in with the multitude.
Into the age of us of through winded grain
and then to stubborn rock - like a wayward cell
off a sand-beetle’s back. I try to explain;
Even the most beautiful pebble on the shore
is just a stone when you take it home.

I urge you, heed the pull of tide!
Surrender to the progenies of her push and pull
across clenched toes and red arched backs -
brushing us like fleets of soft milk necklaces.
Contemplate the glassy shivers she brings
the backward gasp of her shuddered roll,
rippling through the very bones of you.
Wonderful are her splinter-glinted shoals,
the diving loop of current’s teeth and wave,
moving bed and pushing sandbank mound.
Over and over she invites our stay -
let us be joyous in the swim.