For Grandpa

When young in shadowing years
Shocked fragments of stark broken toys
Had power to choke up stinging loss
Lent hot form in human tears
Cherubic youths accustomed not to truth
As oft erupt in bitter rage
Lifted faces creased as seeming justice
Snatches back unpromised gifts

Gazing on your deep lined face
Familiar sounds a haunting note
Fading in a minor key
To lull the twilight of your years
Though once the sandstone cloisters
Echoed out your purposed step
Beneath that furrowed, weary brow
There is a wilder, stranger music yet

Had I never felt your sagely look
And trusted unconditional your words
Lent gravitas beyond what scores
Of men could hope to wield
What I know of love would be
So ragged, incomplete
My debt is to a symphony
Dischordant yet recalled with joy

The toys of old are gone
Fast fades the poignant sting
Their loss once birthed in me
They seem as passing trifles now
Your final lesson I will remember ever
Oblivious though you were who taught
No man may enter that kingdom
Save as a little child

Children, never grow old

At last we find me

Deal not in pleasantries I

But gaze upon the void

You wetly mortal coil

Fallen boneful sack

Spoiled fat on promise

/

Creation offered

Judge me not who takes

/

Half-glimpsed delights are found

Up close to be but plywood sham

A groom lifts the veil

Finds an unknown haggard face

Redolent of someone

Something loved

Yet not

/

From arduous toil I half expected

Opening before such weary eyes

Vistas green and pleasant

To justify the trudge.

Even children know horizons are

Constant as birth and death

These children trick me with their truth

May they be seen not heard

Lest I

Hearing

See and hear

Know I am less than this outward

Bluff colossus choked with rust

All that could have been

That could have been

Is dust

/

Among these silent groves

Tranquility of nothing

Mocks the bombast swell of pride

My flings with Eve and idle play

At fair Pandora’s side Paid meagre

/

Still I count the cost of wasted toil

Cuts borne from all this being

Seem as lead beside those radiant scars

I would have sold it all

To know it had a meaning

Caring not one iota what

It was

Do you not know?

Blood of my blood
Son of my breast
Lamp of my lofted light
Diligent you worked

Flayed given flesh
Laid bare immortal ribs
Gouged offered blood
To wine-red Rivulets

Crimson stained wood
Carmine painted dust
Israel’s baying mouths
Lapped my clotting blood

Cloying flavour masking
Rough unleavened bread
Simple rustic wine or
Crowing on the dawn

Take my picture I will still die so there

Such ingenuity
From little necessity
Rolls off the tongue pleasantly
An epitaph worthy
Of Camera Obscura

It sits reassuringly
Tempting, alluringly
Driving to artistry
Birthing necessity
Fingers flick shutters

Life stunned momentarily
Carries on gracefully
Parts incrementally
Fall with such gravity
Sifted on History

As in almost infinite
Age spanning archives we
Sort and decidedly
Document carefully
Closet away

Photography’s legacy
Lying so dustily
Hoarded unseen as we
Covet so greedily
Rarely to savour

What needs no epitaph
Always will stand
A reminder of
Mankind’s futile
Attempts at defying
Mortality.

QinetiQ, I left you and my heart sang

It will be a sun drunk day
Heady, thickly fresh with youth
Twittering joyous birds
In sappy rustling boughs
Rounding off in song
A cooling grassy breeze

Oh come the marvellous day!
At last, to leave the mocking walls
Walk a shimmering road
Through amply hated gates
Stumbling headlong
In summer’s warm embrace.

Winter stay from my sight

Ring out the falling, turning leaved salute
For autumn's death knells out once more
As every squirrel waits with bated breath
Bluebells die on forest floors

In strident step, heads down, we bid adieu
Then mourn with cannon crack of frost
A thrill of smoke breathed, scarf-necked dawn
Of Winter married, autumn lost

A face with fourscore year and ten and more
Atop a tweed-decked, age-wrecked frame
Curls flame to leaf with chilblained hands
He sits, and puffs pedantically

Through myriad parks on fog-damped afternoons
On greying grass by naked trees
A merriment of children run
With mongrel dogs on makeshift leads

Spring's careful, tender beauty breathes her last
Among a throng of silent sighing cries
No man may hear the fading of its throes
Yet still, it washes over, makes us wise

For here the Season’s harrowing honeymoon
Rebounding, running, tumbling down the line
Year on year, and age on age the same
Of Calvary's pain foretold in Wintertime

Mouse though meagre it is you I envy

To see an Eagle drop
In stoop from lofted clouds
On gilded scimitar wings
Sewn delicate as dreaming
Of heaven’s silken veil

To see the catch in time
With your own catching breath
Though just a trifling thing
That mouse betrays a meaning
Greater than Death

Have eyes to see

Tomorrow reality will be birthed
At maybe a little after eight
Baptised with the insufficient touch
Of Coffee and of soap

I will see those I always see
Appear to work most studiously
Dreaming so very far away
As our sun begins her fall

Perhaps the shyer exit will prevail
The same sullen trudge of grey
Or death’s golden tinge
May touch the heavens

Each hard crafted plan man-made
Held in beauty for a fleeting touch
Slides imperceptible into the void
Where do the seasons go?

For all the myriad faults I bear
The life dragged chains
Are transcended gracefully
In the little things

Avert your eyes

Make way, make way
Believe the cry of youth
Palm leaves thrown down
Portray destruction;
Riots in a holy town
Yet magnified to signify
They saw and knew the light

Make way, make way
Heaven shines dark from earth
Dark eyes of man
Forge dark of light,
Stared long, and blinded sight
Turned, not to see
A broken Icarus’ plight

Make way, make way
I Am he that decides
Should fruit divine
Be taken, given
We spiral, drawn on mortal wings
To steal the cloths of Heaven