sitting room

 

 

 

                                                       sitting room

                                               plastic-marbled
                                               chest-height handle

                                               smell of sofa-linen
                                               and wood-fire evenings

                                               with company
                                               and dark green wines

                                               cool black boards and
                                               the white patterned carpet

                                               with almost-meeting
                                               castle walls

                                               brow-height mantelpiece
                                               on jungle green

                                               and the piano in the
                                               corner with duff bass keys -

                                               plant-shaking

 

 

 

a scene from >>> Ramsden Heath

loud music

 

 

 

                                loud music

                     flat yellow fields
                     flupping past
                     deep green trees

                     30 miles an hour

                     in the silence outside
                     the stone face

                     of a mother
                     and a child’s

                     crying face

 

 

 

‘a small group of people stepped out of the registry office …’

 

 

 

a small group of people stepped out of the registry office.   Clouds passed over the sun for a minute.   The party split up.   Some got into a car and said goodbye.   Others walked over to the bus stop.   The street was quiet.   The bride glanced up and noticed the Batman perched on a ledge on the old office buildings.   There was a cloud overhead.   He had yellow eyes.

 

 

 

part of >>> Batman

Grizedale College

 

 

 

                                              Grizedale College

                                she came back with
                                a shy new lover
                                so he left her room
                                to browse
                                another day

                                the bed under
                                the open window
                                the breeze
                                the sheets

                                the rearranged
                                books under
                                the poster
                                and the old reggae record
                                she’d forgotten she had
                                that had been left
                                playing
                                quietly
                                respectfully

 

 

 

part of >>> breeze

after the storm

 

 

 

                                after the storm

                the evening air wafted in
                through the window
                and a bus started up

 

 

 

part of >>> breeze

‘there’s a hole in our garden …’

 

 

 

        there’s a hole in our garden
        of brick and clay
        and the rest is long wild grass
        and the clay is brown and dusty and dry
        and the rustles leaf above

 

 

 

part of >>> breeze

mauve sky

 

 

 

                           mauve sky

                the tree branch
                shifts across the streetlamp
                in the breeze

                the top-floor window
                light goes out

 

 

 

part of >>> breeze
part of the future coalescence of – let us mauve a whirl          elongated

 

writing

 

 

 

                when writing
                words are the breath
                of my meditation

                I write
                because I have written
                since I was sixteen

                I stopped writing
                   beguiled by ideas of writing
                   and not-writing

                for decades
                but I return to writing simply
                only with the breath

                when breathing
                the breath goes in and out
                no design no ambition but essential

                to life

 

 

 

part of >>> writing and being

breathing

 

 

 

                     there is a relaxed-ness to
                     recognise when being
                     what I am doing.   When
                     not being what I am
                     doing – thinking –
                     I am neither being
                     nor doing.   But when
                     being what I am
                     doing I am breathing.

 

 

 

shamatha – vipashyana

 

 

 

                                         shamatha –

                                         the
                              distinct
                                         notes
                                         weebles pips
                              bends                whistl-
                                         es of
                                         the
                              black
                                         bird

                                         vipashyana –

                              different every time