Poetry was my first love as a writer and remains central to my creative life. The poems explore memory, place, music, love and the strange corners of everyday experience.
The Writer’s Tombstone
After the Light,
Oblivion approaches.
The barely sentient, pre-historic beast,
with hollow hope and twisted howl,
curses Time’s crushing indifference.
A message to Eternity is scrawled as a tombstone on the polished cave wall.
It means
Damn you! I was here, I existed!
Okay, okay, yes, yes.
You have a ravenous hunger
to stretch out your own few seconds on Earth.
You carve initials and a pierced heart into a tree –
your lucky charm against impermanence.
But make it good prose, even if no-one will be able to read it for a million years yet
You caught me out!
You smelt the lipstick on my collar.
I feel bad, bad…
Bad that you caught me.
I’ll have to stop it now.
I thought I could have both,
but that lipstick will always be there, between us.
You’ll never forget it, and you’ll be on the lookout.
I will have to conform to your commands.
For commands they are.
I cannot have both, alas I wish that I could.
I wish that she was as good a master as you.
Could I keep her in secret?
No! that bloody lipstick! Every time!
She is not as good a master as you.
I cannot even ask her to be that.
There is no comparison between the two of you.
But don’t chain me.
I will rebel.
I will.
I will.
feeling that tingling delight in the soul
I am almost understanding musical modes
when mental toil surprisingly turns to the beginnings of satisfaction.
Soon I will understand musical modes
and then my initial tinglings of satisfaction will sadly be gone.
The delight from my new knowledge and ability
will overcome the regret at losing that initial tingling.