poems
This poem won First Prize in the Bridport International Poetry Competition for 1986 (a prize which was second only to the National among annual competitions in the UK at that time).
ALBION’S CHILD IN ENGLAND
(for Joseph Bruchac, a poet of the
N. American Native Peoples)
like a man whose foot has been amputated
so that he can not stand correctly on the earth
i have been severed from my roots
i wander in this world looking for my people
searching in strangers’ eyes for a glimpse
of heaven or of humanity
singing deathsongs
to mourn my own life and that of the human dream
singing
casting my seed into the curving
fields of the world’s various energy
singing
giving thanks for the chance
in the hope that others may have some more of that
feeling
fertile and kind
i have climbed slow trees to sway with the wind
silent sitting high up
sitting high up like a prayer in the mind of the tree
deathsongs and lifesittings
in these ways i have felt
my roots after all
still there like the amputated foot
if not still there
those delicate many branches
sending messages as if by weather
intangible playing
among those delicate many
broken generations
potted and transported
drawn from the earth like ghosts from the flesh
my amputated foot still there in
a tingle of leaves
my roots
still there in this bush its leaves
nervous under the slick glance of the rain
my heart alive
like a prayer among the branches of this
bush drinking
skittish in the rain
Zen Haiku
These just happened one day. I had been reading a wonderful little book called Zen Questions by Robert Allen (2005), and I had bought a couple of copies for gifts, so my wife and I were both reading this book at the same time one day, and I spontaneously composed these “haiku” in my head (they are all the correct number of syllables, but there’s more to a haiku than simply that, so I realise these are not “proper haiku”). I sat working them out in my head, one following on from the other. There were six originally, but when I tried writing them down I couldn’t remember one of them. I think the last one here was the last one I composed...... tantalising!
1 two copies of one
zen book. we look at the same
page, each in our own.
2 if you’re reading a
zen book you can’t be doing
zen. you can’t, my arse!
3 you give it meaning.
zen book, chop water, carry
wood. experience.
4 stop thinking about
zen book. zazen or no za
zen, go on dancing.
5 sometimes come back to
zen book. it makes me smile to
share the author’s mind.
here’s one last poem for now: there are quite a few included in Phat Beat Freek Scenes.
this introduction is taken from the book:
Yet another occasion when I lost some of my work.... someone borrowed my notebook to read my poems, and when we hitched from the south of France together to Amsterdam, it wasn’t until after the first lift that I found out she’d forgot to bring it. It was at a sort of squat in a derelict building, so I wasn’t really sure I’d find it if I went back, which I might have done.... but never did in the end. This was written some time later as I reminisced over some of the lost work in the notebook, and it got tangled with another ill-fated trip to France to see another girl....
Plea For the Return of a Lost Notebook
i had two notebooks
one i’ve still got curled like a sick old rat in the bottom of my rucksack
under the bed
the other was left in france
it was a happy time
nevertheless
thinking about those notebooks and that time
i remember that my ditties on a pretty girl’s eyes and my love
for her because i’ve seen you glowing in the nighttime
and i’ve seen you shining in the daytime too was more of a fiction
to me then than
speaking of particle physics and quantum maths recently in
a long jazz poem that kept me high for 3 weeks
and more
she left my book behind
now those poems are missing inaction
there was a poem about smoking
on the beach in goa
which began
and ended
with the realisation that
this moment is not the rest of your life
another poem where i said the true purpose of intelligence
is to feel another which began waiting in eternity at the bus stop in the night
in the eternal timeless condition of night
another about being like small animals crawling into bed after the disco
in the same poem as later i say our culture is as resilient as
an opium habit
and wind up saying to this woman you could be the mother of my baby
bring me up right this time
i hitchhiked over 1000 kilometers to see her
a journey that ended in
some pleasure and some tears a definite parting
and hardening of the heart and then
the desolate southern highway’s evening
in france
alone
so long and waiting into the sunset
thumbing for a lift up north
to another country
the long ride through the night with
a gay lorry driver talking
to me
trying
to seduce me
all night
in french
all night in the murmuring rock’n’roll radio’s
saving grace night
hush
along the sodium highway