Child's Play

Child’s Play


The brook, which ran across the field, was knee
deep and slow running, I often put two pieces of
wood adrift at one end, pretended they were boats,
then running downstream to see which one came
first. My boat won; I cheated, but acted as I didn’t
know. The farms were few and far between and
no children around, except for a little girl but she
was busy playing with dolls.

At times I stood in the stream, very still, was
fascinated the way the water ran around my
legs and I was an island. When I began school
I didn’t know how to play with children, told
them how I played at home, when they laughed,
I hit one of them over the head with a wooden
clog. I was good to come home from school go
down to the brook and be an island again.

deadly sex

Deadly sex

I knew she was seeing other men but pretended
I didn’t know didn’t risk confront her,
It pleased her ego to have sex with many men.
She wanted me to know about her infidelity it
made her lusty. She hinted she teased, bloody
games she played and our love got more intense,
anger was involved, left scars on our mind and
our bodies. It was love that kills, I didn’t play
that game, her next lover strangulated her… how
easily it could have been me. Desperate to win
her love I nearly killed her twice

senryu

Senryu

Red plastic roses
Faded sepia by neglect
Melancholic bouquet


Senryu

Red plastic noses
For us to look at and laugh
Sad is the joker


Senryu

The gloomy guy
At the traveling circus
Is its funny clown

dog years

Dog Years.


It’s been two years gone, but I sill
find strands of dog hair in corners,
(doesn’t say much for my cleanliness)
twelve years we had together she even
came on holiday with me; and when
a new woman came into my life she
didn’t make a fuzz sure as she was of
my love for her.

I lift a strand of her hair up to the lamp
light and remember the cruel day when
she got in the path of a car, when I sense
a movement behind me, the swishing of
a tail dare not turn around, but when I do
I see a shadow fading. Goose pimple on
my arms:” you dreaming fool, go brew
yourself a nice cup of tea.”

winter storm (tanka style)

Winter Storm


North Atlantic winter,
shafts of sunlight race across
glass green mountains
deep fear inducing valleys,
in the mess, talk is subdued;

forecast is stormy.
New York is suddenly afar
but will we get there?
A bow down a watery vale
and not coming up again.

Smoke a cigarette,
she takes the sea like a duck.
Try getting some sleep
storm is always worst at night
daylight somehow calms the seas.

poetry reading in Oslo

Poetry Reading in Oslo September 2008

These cold massive buildings, housing
national art and treasures, cold, frosty
clean window shining like Himmler’s
glasses; ice blue eyes keeping an eye on
you; making sure you’re not trespassing
with unbecoming laughter and silencing
you into submission. Fear full we left
a day early and flew towards the sun.

senryu and tanka

Senryu

In the night
All flowers are colourless
Give me the day



Tanka

Last night, wonderful!
Sang beneath a street lamp
Supreme confidence
Today I sit in darkness
And is my old fearful self.


Senryu

In obscurity
The moon caresses graveyards
Give me the sun

inventiveness

The Inventiveness

The flour swept
up from the floor
She took home,
enough to make
four loaves;
the black bits and
pieces in them
she said was
grounded nuts
and raisins,
the bent thumb tack
My sister found
she called good
a good luck charm.

short summer

Short Summer (Tanka)

Lamb on blue I saw
Went indoors drank a few beers
Came back out again
The lamb were now grazing sheep
Darksome as the winter sky

intermezzo

Intermezzo


From my third floor flat I looked down
and saw two men sat under a tree sharing
a bottle of wine, went down and joined
them with my bottle of best red.

I sat under a tree with two men we were
sharing a bottles of wine, looked up and
saw my shadow lurk behind the curtain,
I smiled and waved, free at last.

Aliens

The Aliens

The still warm sun and the zephyr is keep
winter at bay, there is sadness in the air, as
a farewell that can’t be delayed and the boy
has run to the outer fields, sits on a stone
pats his dog and learns about the unavoidable.

Dark clouds from the north where nature is
solemn and there’s not a hint of frivolities
in their cities architecture, winter in hearts,
will disperse heartless protestant culture that
does not allow for lofty dreams and passion.

The zephyr is now a chilly wind, new rules
people must work harder, the leaders say,
and the almond tree must stop flowering in
mid winter spreading unseemly thoughts of
May, love and nights of passion.

whirlpool

Whirlpool



When I opened my eyes in the dark bedroom
I saw a universe with myriads of coloured
Lights like an rainbow that had exploded and
Fragmented into millions of pieces

Vail of mists sailed by, once they had been
Mighty clouds full of thunder and lightning
Now they were a mere whisper of a memory,
Yet their silence overwhelmed me.

There is no human voice here, in this realm
Of oblivion, I strain to hear even the faintest
Noise be it of animal or man, as the stillness
Drags me under in a vortex of nothingness.

the good time

The Good Times

I used to be a seafarer, sailors meet and part
just like ships, nick name is used to avoid
friendship, so when one leaves the ship he is
easily forgotten; what was his name again?

I never worked in an office and knew not
of the scheming going on but I disliked,
when I worked in one, the false smiles and
the hidden knives and gossip

I knew nothing of networking and to whom
to have a drink with in a pub and since
I wasn’t interested in promotion, those who
failed cried on my shoulder

When I left, I did quickly and was saved
bland words; “come back and visit us
anytime.” My god, I left because I couldn’t
stand to hear about their tiny problems

I’m glad I have been spared retirement, to
sit on a chair by the sunny wall and talk
about the past; like the old day should be
anything to hanker for

Time marched on life is easier now than
before, but sadly people stay the same
and that’s a shame; it is as we feel guilty
for having it all and to struggle a bit more.

Yes, you are right I’m a right old prick
lives frugally and take the bus into town
believe in eternal peace and bicycles,
it’s a wonder I haven’t died of boredom.

poetry festival in Oslo

Poetry Festival in Oslo

Poetry bash in Oslo Norway I was invited,
should I be pleased? I was skeptical from
the outset, so I paid for my own journey
just as well what I found was that we all had been
had there was a hidden agenda here, I sensed
its murkiness it was not poetry from the likes
of me this was about, but it was about the promotion
“o gay literature.” Ok, nothing wrong with that
but at least they could have been honest about it,
perhaps the people from the department were
fooled too

tanka and double tanka

Tanka

Ashes on the sea
A showy and mean gesture
From earth to earth
Let me fertilize a tree,
Say, a flowering almond tree



Tanka (double)

It was so sudden
I had just parked the car
Outside the big mall
Flashing pain and deep silence
Wait now in a dark morgue

For you to claim me
If not a paupers grave waits
Not that it matters
It’s all such bloody vanity The need to be remembered

tanka

Tanka

The seashell I found
On the people empty beach
I can’t listen to
If the siren’s calls my name
I will drown in her embrace

Rainbow coalition

Rainbow Coalition


On a fence in that part Chile from Argentina
there is a long barbed wire fence full of plastic
bags, some from posh shops in Paris, London
and New York, There are Japanese bags too
and some with Arabic letters, you can say it is
international garbage fence, but not quite, it is
eerily beautiful like a pale sad rainbow.

There used to be skeletons here too they all had
broken bones as dropped from planes, but
they have been removed now if you are lucky
or ghoulish you might find a collar bone or two
or a skull cleans by the wind; indestructibly sacks
flap, so deafening that you can’t hear the song of
the condors.

suddenly one day

Suddenly one Day…

Warm day
hot wind blows
makes it
difficult to breath
inhale dust
I can’t see
a layer or red
on the car
inside too
Pain in chest
I curl up on
the back seat
sleep
When I awake
I’m not dead
wind has calmed
I feel fine
up my nostrils,
I can smell
Africa

A Landscape

A Landscape

Here in this landscape of bushes and crippled
trees, silence speaks of the final peace.
Grotesque dead trees, daylight ghosts, stand there
with dead grey boughs stretching upward appealing
to a fairytale god, “give us today a new life” but
no, there is only one god he is almighty, and hears
not your fearful whispered wishes, those who do
not understand are doomed to a life of an empty
pursuit for pleasures, crowding nightclubs and
casinos trying to avoid being alone with the night
and facing the truth: we are mortal and heaven is
to be remembered for a while by other mortal.
Faces in a black frame seeing you seeing through
into nothingness. Yet I fear not this landscape as it
is shunned by man and no harm can happen to me
here except the inevitable

The Long Delusion

The Long Delusion

I sat in a café when she came in, hadn’t seen her
for ten years, she had aged badly, used to be slim
now she was scrawny, and her glorious red hair
had lost its lustre. Her eyes grey and bland, they
used to light up and shine as diamonds in the heat
of the night, perhaps they still did. She sat down
we had coffee talking about harmless things

Then she said: “Why did you always give in and
agree with me when we had an argument?”
I was going to say: “I wasn’t interested enough in
the cause to argue about it” but said: You know
me dear, everything for a bit of peace in the house.”
I thought it was because you didn’t love me,” she
said and for a moment looking lost.

I was an island in a stream of people, but hear and
saw nothing, what a fool, how deluded, I had been
all those years, of course I didn’t love her, it was her
warm embrace I had yarned for and still did.
When I looked up to agree with her for the last time
She had gone she had gone, her scent lingered in
The air, then dissipated as all things must.