Lost in mist…

The charcoal avenues, the grey cars hissed

Like metal zombies, fated, running round;

And metal children, outrageously pissed,

Were yelling at ballgames in the dreamers’ playground.

Concrete cave:

Those paper parasites, gormless, grave —

The grief they gave me rots on iron shelves.

Essays at ease in paper-life sit saved,

Assured of sanctuary to their sad selves.

Silver tree:

Raining on willows, silver rains on me,

The misty reader and the paper-child.

Dreaming the road to university

We rewrite roads the joyriders defiled.

11:8:93

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 10:29 PM GMT

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Alone, there is no silence when alone

I will not talk to you, there is no peace,

I sold my spirit for a heart of stone

My screaming soul seethes and it will not cease

And emptiness, the thoughtlessness of night

Descending spreads its cloak for me to drowse

In dreaming galaxies’ unearthly light

As pale as the lost past which they arouse.

There is no memory, there is no pain

In dying visions of the cracking rock

Falling in dust and splinters yet again

Till numb oblivion: the black block.

1992 (?)

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 10:23 PM GMT

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I need to breathe.

Sing without me now, my dear, sing on,

For soon you’ll sing without me, now I’m gone,

And heaven’s breathing’s brightly blown among

The dead heads and blooms of song unsung:

Sing for life: eternity is long.

I need to breathe; the breath of life is light,

Something I cannot touch among these shadows;

Flame dipped, flickering, bobs below the night;

Crushing black is glanced out where it glows.

Fields of poppies, gardens and fresh flowers,

Dew and daisy days, the rose’s hours;

Through thornless thickets the wet wind wails and sings

High on the smell of rain tomorrow brings.

1992 (?)

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 10:18 PM GMT

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A thousand lights are hanging in the Thames,

Garlands strewn by swirl and tide

Into a protoplasm of stars

Echoing reticence of frosty night;

Glitter so gladly and so bright.

I wish to touch their candied radiance,

They lift me like a trip,

Smiling, splashed fantasticated suns

Immune to miseries of wind and rain,

Shards of celebration drawn from sleep,

The cosmos of a reverie reflected

In the blood of a town too jaded to dream.

11-12 January 1997

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 10:12 PM GMT

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Come to the window, sun,

Breathe your spring air in

Into my room, the soul wherein I breathe

In the temple of my dreams.

It’s bare outside.

The leafless oaks yearn stiff-branched

To the cold sky and all her forgetfulness.

Sun, bring spring and all your tomorrows,

The ripe-hummed sleep of summer afternoons

And let me forget the chill insomnia

Of bitter winter nights.

                                17:7:92

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 10:07 PM GMT

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The sky is warm tonight,

Sparkle a million times:

Take me into the sky,

I want to die tonight.

Let me forget this dusky tree,

The river’s chuckling glee,

Quivering silvers of moon,

The flowers, curled into sleep:

For if I hovered where I cannot find,

In gloomy heights, some heaven

Blue as seaglow, curled

Like a sleeping shell

Memory should dissolve in flows of sand

And every star outstrobe

The shimmer of dawn:

No bliss of dew, only dreams,

Quiet and lost beneath me>

Wave on wave suffuses

Whispers of existence,

Sleep, sea breeze.

And when tomorrow clangs don’t wake me:

Where I’ll be, alarm

Sinks under snooze

A drop of placid sea…

I’ll come down if I choose.

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 6:43 PM GMT

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Dumb in a numb tree, wailing gaze,

glancing glad and mournfully, afire and tired,

she falls asleep: the furnace of her eyes

refracts, a million-fold, the cosmic fire.

If she is two, her dream-half falls awake,

finding one she lost in a rainbow's eye,

the dewy pupil of a sleeping flower,

ensphered like evening's sun in eyes of rain

and raining dreams and pools

the rain grows trees.

Night writes her book in the words of day

and after dreams her poetry awakes:

a drab aphasiac in this world of words.

Posted by gledwoodpoet at 4:23 PM GMT

Updated: Thursday, 11 January 2007 4:35 PM GMT

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