Once worked

Where I once worked
Now just a desk, a seat and phone.
Posters still on the wall
But drawers empty as
Notebook pages.

Where once I worked
Now new desks and ringtones
Gossips still in the hall
But not about me
Not for ages.

Once I worked where
Passion and policy collided
Service was still a call
But then it went unanswered
No messages.

Just feeling?

Love is a feeling
No, no it's about willing actions
Demonstrating and serving
Not self gratifying
But self giving
Until you are empty
Unloveable
Perhaps
And unforgiving.

Surely love is fiery passion
Thats burns into actions
Maybe reckless
Foolishness
Not self conscious
But Other focussed
Until they are consumed
Unloved
By any other
and unforgetting.

On Michael Jackson's death

A living legend dies
And we autopsy his dysfunction
As the virally broadcast loss
Dissects our griefs outpoured in public
Over songs and dances that were shared
Millions of times over
While he's beat it
And sleeps
Never to be harmed anymore.

Inspiration

Why is melancholy so inspiring?
So many sad songs
Is happiness too fleeting
That prose can't capture it?
The froth, fizz and the hours
That whizz by?

How can pain make such art?
Bittersweet symphonies
Does the masterpiece
trap and contain it?
Bound up in oil and glaze
Never to harm us again?

Midsummer

Midsummer in Scotland
Heat trapped in houses
Still light
Till nearly midnight
Windows open but no
Exhaling of the stifling air.

Midsummer in Scotland
Endless evening
Two days in one
Sometimes sun!
Nowadays barbeque, patio and
Decking are standard fare.

Midsummer, Scotland
High altitude clouds etch
New coastlines and oceans
Solsticed
and soul stirred
At the vast map of possibilities
until sunset burns them bare.

Normalcy

It’s a blanket
Reassuring and cosy sometimes.
With her cousin Constancy
Always there.
Not changing much
Maybe fraying and fading
Taking you to the source of memories
When things weren’t so bad
When the sun shone
With halcyon rays
When things were normal.

Daily enveloping
Your body’s state of being
Regulating it
Innoculating you from the life of risk
From unexpected outcomes
Closing off the world of dreams
So that they stay dreamlike and
Not normal
Not everyday experience
Neither achievable
Nor desirable.

But can normal ever quite be the same
as it was before things strayed
from whatever was last recognised
as normal?

Learning comes from mistakes
And the shattering of norms
Risk it or sleep to dream.

Catalyst

A change maker
Yet not changing
Or making anything

A precipitate
Chemically speaking
that makes a reaction go faster
without
being consumed in the process

Precipitating
events and chains of events
happenings and altering relationships
In the people around you
Sometimes without even knowing,
By strict definition ‘especially without being involved in
or changed by the consequences.’

That last part
Humanly speaking
Is hard to practice
Too much precipitates

Flash past

Californian sunshine
Bathed Kilmarnock one day
Momentarily really
Dusty dry street, broken glass glistening at the kerb
Struck by the wheels
Of the first skateboard my eyes set upon
It clunkered and thunked
Making an alien rhythm
Flashed past
A thing of US import
Really in Kilmarnock?
Could I ever?
Seen on TV only
Now on my granny’s street

I was not that boy
That flashed past
No early adopter
Could I ever?
See on TV only
Wouldn’t really actually
Have a go
Could I ever?
Watched it, flash by
Never thinking
That I could ever.

So much flashes past
Signals to other lives that
Needn’t bounce off and be repelled
It seems ‘Roger that’
Would be better.
Sometimes
To say ‘received’
Instead of mute watching
And later wishing.

Between

I am between jobs just now and in this verse I have tried to capture the various moods and phases that I've been experiencing recently.


Between jobs feels like
the gap between Trailer and Feature.
A departure and a lounge.
Relief comes in making the announcement, disclosing;
'I am leaving.'
Then an ebbing of one's power,
'When I'm gone'
Especially when making the surreal expression
'for my successor'
Then maybe that can be done, or maybe not
Suddenly one's opinion is inconsequential

Then comes the revelation of your real Identity
of one's true Companions,
staying with you after the Emmaus road.

With breath withheld
Comes the silence of Critics,
after the gavel drop proclaiming your verdict;
'I'm done here.'

Messages surprise
warm the doubtful, wavering heart.
Doubt flutters and fades,

Then Importance suddenly shows herself,
Priority crystallises,
Promise glitters
and Resolve beckons.

An iphone poet

Looks like new tech is recultivating the old art of poetry, or maybe just making it feel easy and accessible. Here's an offering of iphone poetry from blogger Michael Toy

iphone-poetry-from-university-ave

Random IM verse #2

A jammed printer
shouting swearing obscenities
not usually heard in the office
wasn’t the real distraction
instead for those with eyes to see
maybe the tautness of my face
victim of exposure to the harshness of the sun
I forced myself to breathe deeply,
sucking air into my lungs
to blow the printer and monster away

but to no avail
just mere breath can't change things
or can it?

What words can move mountains?
Empty phrases surely?
Can they really?
Change the world?

Lapsing back into the tyrannical tedium
I 'cancel print job'

Random IM verse #1

My good friend Linda and I experimented with some poetic co-creation. This is the result, the first co-authored random verse through the medium of instant messaging, line by line. Hope you like it. The link below gives the topicality.

Ed is so brilliant
a wizard on Ning
no bad thing
but not really social
one silent night
it was too hard to listen
even owls took flight
without a hoot
into the deeply dark sooty sky

logging on gave no clarity
he mourned a lack of parity
on tax and havens
he climbed the highest mountain
searched optimally for justice
wondered if U2
like him
suddenly found themselves
friendless

U2 and tax havens