Letting Go (The Process Of)

LETTING GO (THE PROCESS OF)

This painful churning
(You know of course more than well)
- Unavoidable

Ragged

RAGGED
……………………………………………………………………………………………Pour Alain Fournier

Leaning close to a tape recorder speaker
To search old pop songs for her memories – are they hollow men?
(You can detect the echo between record player and microphone
Across the big room near Birmingham where they were recorded)

As a saint you have tried to detach yourself
You have told every little secret to many people
To destroy the purity you have repeated your stupid story
Till it runs like a gutter with nameless old remains of words

Broken in half the fragile beauty of spring
And sucked at the bones – walked a hundred times by the same river
Leaning over sad parapets to search again for the flecks of dreams
Which unlike your memories, failed saint, you could never destroy

As you still feel the need to defend yourself
Against the chink of coins made by other people’s memories
Tired of generosity and jealous somehow of their secret sighs
You swear that you were wrong and will be a miser now with them

Are you ready then to find the hidden path
Which leads to a domain ringed by trees that in your youth you sought?
Failing by yourself (nothing is left when all has been destroyed) can you
Ask another, bohemian herself, to complete the map?

You stare at her as she stares at someone else
You have nothing to say, but if she ever slept beside you
Next day, as militants searched for solidarity and saints for God
Perhaps you could search through your blankets for long strands of her hair

Blind Faith

BLIND FAITH

I won’t let them fool me
these nazi commie liberals
these muslim-loving terrorist-supporters

They think I’m stupid
but I’m not stupid
I’m not so easy to fool

Capitalism, deregulation is beautiful
and the free market is magic
and will save the world and make us all rich

Socialists are the scum of the earth
dangerously and evil immoral liars
the spawn of the Devil

Democracy is all about freedom and liberty
invading other countries
and massacring their infidel populations

I know this is true
because I read it in the paper
the same thing every single day

Plus also it’s on the radio

And besides it’s on the TV too

So I know it must be true

No I’m not stupid
I’m a tea bagger, a true patriot
God save America, that’s what I say

(Me too! – Ed. )

Today My Non-existent Died

TODAY MY NON-EXISTENT SISTER DIED

A grey wind comes in from the sea
As the voice of bells from a statue buried beneath the sands
And caught up from the open dockside
Brick dust as a brigand blows
Far out across the lifeless lands

Where beside six short walls of stone
Six cloaks flap repeatedly – flames dancing to a restless tune
In thin emptiness before the stars
With fistlike strength five shadows
Squeeze the blood orange of the moon

One hundred or two hundred times
A slow gesture repeated is on the moonlit wall beside
Repeated to the strings of the stars
Plucked by five shadows – today
My non-existent sister died

The wind tears the wings of the notes
Their blood falls like moonlight into the strange cities of the world
Needles to the sky – solitary
Two men wait for the nightfall
Their ancestry of flags unfurled

Stone towers and devices of iron
Grass dies like the straining fingers of a pillar which tumbles
Disjointed by the force of the sun
In the country of nothing
A trance where stone slowly crumbles

A tub full of water stands quiet
A squat shadow invisible in the silence of its mirth
To all but the searching of the rain
Its laughter remains unheard
Spread thin across the waiting earth

Within the clouded beads of knowledge
Thinness is a grey wing from the sea – a voice of bells which play
A non-existent tune by starlight
Mirrored in a water-butt
For my sister who died today

Wool Gathering

WOOL GATHERING

I was drifting back this evening
To that other evening back at Lynne’s

I’d just finished walking the canal
The 117 miles from Leeds to Liverpool
About the same time I started that course at Uni
Both, looking back, I suppose
About proving I wasn’t over the hill
Not just yet anyway

… But I digress

Anyway, Lynne’s phone rings
And she tells me it’s you
And hands over the phone
And I’m thinking
“How long is it since we last spoke
Thirteen years?”

Then that sweet little voice of yours
Comes out the thing and says
“Hello you”
And something inside me melts
And the eyes swell up and overflow

And Lynne, I can tell, is amazed
At my over the top reaction
And I see this and I think
“So, my dear Lynne, all those times I told you
‘She’s the love of my life, you know
The one and only’
You never really believed me, did you?”

And after that we met up a few times
Spent some days together here and there
Culminating in that Valentine’s Day in Preston
That was pleasant enough
But in the end only a retread
I suppose
At last
I was finally ready
To move on

Hope

HOPE

Though warnings sound throughout the land
And no one seems to understand
And though the end is close at hand
You and I will stand
My brother
You and I will stand

Though they send their planes to sow the land
With seeds of the destruction they have planned
And the rumours of war are on every hand
You and I will stand
My sister
You and I will stand

…..BRIDGE
…..Yesterday´s joy soon turns to sorrow
…..What´s right today may be wrong tomorrow
…..But when we’ve fought our fights
…..And had our fun
…..We shall all be judged by the things we’ve done
…..When we’ve fought our fights
…..And had our fun
…..We shall all be judged by the things we’ve done

And one day soon their fortress grand
Will crumble back into the sand
And we shall sing throughout the land
You and I will stand
My brother
You and I will stand

You and I will stand
My sister
You and I will stand
——————————————————————

It’s a song, so don’t expect too many pyrotechnics in the text. It’s supposed to be direct, straightforward and easily sung by vast crowds of very determined people.

The Last Chapter

THE LAST CHAPTER

Old sorrows, brief joys, flare and fade away.
Too late now to recapture or repair.
You dream of passing drowsing in your chair,
waking reborn to dream another day.

The Legend Of The Moon’s Reflection

THE LEGEND OF THE MOON’S REFLECTION

Deep in the Northern mountains’ silence
Once long ago
Far from the lands of men there lived a Prince
Cold as snow
All day long he would wander
Like a man possessed
As he went he would ponder
His life’s helplessness

Why it was that what he loved the most grew old and died
Why he found no place of rest however hard he tried
And he threw himself upon the mountainside
And knew himself to be alone and bitterly began to cry

And in his misery he saw
As if in a dream
That where his tears fell to the ground
There sprang forth a stream
And the stream fed a river
That flowed glad and free
From the hills to the lowlands
And so reached the sea

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever

And by means of this vision
The Prince was set free
And in his dying moments
At last he could see

Why it is that what we love the most must disappear
Where that place of rest is that is always free from fear
And he flowed into the river with his tears
And knew himself to be the sea without a knower or a seer

And if you gaze far out to sea at night
So they say
Sometimes you’ ll see his face shine in the moon
Far away
And the river still flows
From the hills to the plain
And the sea feeds the river
With drops from the rain

River and seawater
Flowing down together
Though the river ends
The sea lives on forever …

Langeais

…..
LANGEAIS

Busted pillars of a Roman aqueduct
Up there behind Luynes
(At the back of the moon?)

Where dustily and pennilessly I drank
From a plastic bottle I’d had filled
From the very cheapest wine on draught
Ate sardines with my fingers from the tin

Then smiled bemused
Following drunk on a bicycle
Some faint black line on the road
All the way to Langeais

Dismounting and blinking in the sun
Holding my smelly breath at the gate to the castle
To buy a ticket then run after the guide

Where I heard about the widow of Louis, Duke of Orléans
Who (dressed in black) coined the famous phrase
“Rien ne m’est plus, plus ne m’est rien”
(“I have nothing left, nothing means anything to me any more”)

Which phrase, I thought, was too clever for grief
But some months of grief
And some poems later
I don’t know

I Have Not Locked The Door

I HAVE NOT LOCKED THE DOOR

A prophet without a name
A patriot without a country
Lost in a dying church
Lost in a black prison
Spanish prison
Small yard to walk round and round
Dry throats of guitars
(This is a short poem
For those who have someone to return to)

When you really need to be close to someone
You do not dare go away and admit you have failed
That is why people sometimes spend the night together
And stay together forever
Until even the touch of another’s hand is empty
And you share things individually

Take a last grand look down the fire escape
In case you ever need to run away fast
——————————————————————

So … I decided, on reflection, to give a little background to this piece. Picture someone who is trapped in a relationship and is trying to give some advice to a good friend who is about to enter one. This is not written from a personal here-and-now perspective, but is not pure fantasy either. I simply wanted to capture some of the intimate, unspoken feelings from that point and moment in time. View it as a mental movie to enjoy (or otherwise, as desired); expand it to 90 minutes; make a movie; do it well enough and you could be talking Oscars. Selah.