Look to samphire skies
Where nature’s stations form
Where playful dusk twists sun
And stars begin to turn.
Gaze on, gaze on
Where nations share the show
Where children learn to muse
With horizon twine and flow.
Drink-in the twilight breach
Where souls run to rivered night
Feel winds that rest and contemplate
Then breathe what we all know.
No-one owns the sky.
Who
are we
to pre-suppose
to know that we are those
that shine with special glow.
We are merely they,
that follow normal ways
asking questions as we go
of whom and what we want to be.
And what is this we wonder now?
Who the hell,
are we.
Let’s get drunk
and **** like monkeys!
Let’s roll around awhile
and wail like midnight dogs
intoxicated by our own smell.
Let’s be the untied beasts
of strange instinct within -
boundless and carnal,
without culture or regard
for nothing less than our release.
And after, we can lie together
and sniggle like embarrassed mice,
laughing at how very silly
all the other animals
have been.
I have been thinking
about abstraction.
About huge brushed pools,
with meaning smudged -
blurs of pure sensation
beyond the frame.
There is a divine push
and colour pull defined
even in the ripple strokes,
like feather blown breaths
one step on from canvas pins,
from paint, from turpentine.
In this picture all expands and flows
away from mortal confine with confidence it goes,
with unhindered power that shakes the edge of things,
with desire to distillate our own living.
And there, composing the scene,
with big-sky eyes of refracted gaze,
a creator clearly shows how life can bend,
be skewed without context and earthly things,
or logic’s curse to manifest or represent.
And the more I see, the more I look,
the more I look, the more I know.
But still, I fail to fully understand.
Why do artists chase blue shadows
for mysterious intent?
There I was.
Beyond sand-burned restless toes
Now stilled beneath my deskbound woes.
No mails to write no calls to make
No complex thoughts to navigate.
Barefoot and tributary washed
I was wind-cooled freedom stepped
Jumping waves and chasing roll of tide
As far as eyes could call.
And I must - I must remember
The melting sundae blend of sky
To heat haze shores and on.
I felt warmth of gritted soles and feet
Laid down and spilled on red-hot rocks
That led toward the edge of sands
Where men like I must run to find
The blessed kiss that ocean always tells
To souls now wearing polished shoes
And stifled reign of socks.
Who stole
the lighthouse keys?
There’s no beacon I can see.
Where is the roaming beam
that circles by degrees,
that reaches out across the sea,
to keep the rocks away from me?
Who stole the lighthouse keys
and snubbed my candle reach?
No seam of light that holds the night
or mark and guide cross awkward skies,
now just screeching gulls of eventide
once more a fearful mystery -
controlled by they, that stole
the lighthouse keys.
I can’t hear the guitar
and the cymbals sound shrill.
The bass is just a mumble
and it saps my goodwill.
All the vocals sound bizarre
and nothing fits the bill,
and it makes me want to grumble
about these musical ills.
Never wanted to be a big star,
just jump above the mill
but all I do is stumble -
watch my pride go downhill.
But the next gig will be better
and I will recognise my own skill
and these vain doubts will crumble,
when again I feel the thrill.
What makes them so special?
They can fly, yes.
They can flash like jewels in summer, yes.
So what, that they flit with beauty’s charm.
We can do all these things too.
We can, you know (but perhaps you do not).
And anyway, who is to say that when we die
we don’t all come back as butterflies?
And such thoughts should not be left
just to the melancholy of you and I.
Ah yes, you and I …
at each end of the line - pulling against
our doubts and fear like brutes in tug of war -
not knowing without wings we can fly.