On the front seat
On the front seat,
Your favourite,
At the top of number 19 bus
Your arm
Was gently stroking
Against mine
But not willingly,
Like mine.
Your arm
Was careful
Not to send
Any signals
That might signal
A signal
Of being pleased
By the gentle
Intentional
Stroking of my arm
Against yours.
The beauty of the world
The beauty of the world
Lies in its infinite, forgiving, healing sadness
Which covers with its tender mantle
The unbearable inhumanity of life.
I am like a large, rough horned
I am like a large, rough horned
Ocean marine shell
Created over the decades, spire over
spire
By its marine creator, and then
Abandoned by its keeper, and polished
clean
By the resounding ocean waves.
It can now
Be picked up, and blown into,
And hum a poignant,
Melancholy note, echoing
Past delusions. But no one knows,
Or cares, or can remember,
And no one ever will.
I want to write
I want to write a short, famous
Poem, full of corrections to be admired later,
About the feeling of the sound of voices
Wafting up from downstairs
That keeps my mind from wandering
Over the soft green grass,
Thick with daisies, and clumps
Of prickly thistles, way up the Alps;
The sharp air, the crisp and blinding
Light into the blue blue sky, shimmering
Over a cold Alpine lake.
Rocks litter my path. An immense silence
Fills the air. Beauty continues to flow,
Peak after peak way far beyond
To crowded noisy polluted humanity
Somewhere a thousand miles away.
I am at the end
I am at the end
Of a long corridor of rooms.
Stretching for centuries along a wall of
jasmine,
Unknowing, silent and eternal;
Each room filled with memories
Of brightly-coloured unfinished lives.
Cold ocean waves
Cold ocean waves
Roll away slowly, patiently, ahead
Under my heaving hull,
Over the deep blue brooding sea
Endlessly
Promising nothing.
The flowing, healing wind
The flowing, healing wind above the sand
Is truer than the deaf, still tears
That hide down deep
Beneath the shifting dunes.
Now, behind the scenes,
Now, behind the scenes,
Hollow laughter and suppressed rage
Beneath a soft surrender.
The rare oriental carpet
Looks thin upon the wall. Once, underfoot, alive,
Its flight was thick with perfume,
colours and understanding.
Its dangers only increased the yearning.
The entire Universe has come together
The entire Universe has come together to create me.
It has taken all the eons of time
For the infinite coincidences to pass
And coalesce
So I could Be.
The Universe could not survive without me, or you, that flower, or that fly,
Every single tiny event is irreplaceable,
For the survival of the whole.
Today, tomorrow, now,
My emptiness complete
My role almost concluded,
I’m but a new, future coincidence.
And chance, and freedom and happiness and sadness, all predetermined,
All fitted into the infinitely small point containing all the Universes,
All as close as our jugular vein and distant as the farthest star
And all
As beautiful and pointless as an ocean wave
smashing against the long defenceless shore.
Baron’s Court Tube Station
Baron’s Court Tube Station is never judgemental
Like Earl’s Court Tube,
Which scowls if you are not in a hurry.
Baron’s Court smiles if you are going,
It consoles if you are returning
If you are nearing your end it will remind you of the good times,
Of the rusty metal flowers in the awnings at Crevalcore train station
Lost in the plains of Italy,
The hot smell of the freshly harvested wheat-fields in July,
The silence on the straight flat hot white roads without mysteries,
Just pebbles twisting the bicycle wheel as it rolls on the fine dust.
Baron’s Court will always give you some extra time
It will whisper that it’s all part of life
And that time heals.
Earl’s Court doesn’t give you a chance.
To Be
To Be alive
is the essence
of the Universe.
To Love
is the essence of Being alive.