The Rugged Blood

This small collection of simple poems are inspired by, rather than about different parts of the country I have visited over the years. They have been written on location, usually with a nice pint of stout or cider depending on the weather :)

Diyas (The Tealight Path)

Leicester, Leicestershire

Guardian lady of tender care. Lone Dryad, blessings across the common grass.

My steps corrupted, where our pathways entwined .

Fantasy and duty; Your warming realm.

Sonant. Vocal. Educating wild men. Yet your lips cast allure.

How then, must I behave?

The Infernal Bugler, calling out to hunt and be hunted, his shadow beckons on moonlit walls.

An antler to your shackles. Crushing resentments iron-forged. Prancing Ferryman of the lunar sea.

Wisp you away into starlight, where your glow is their envy.

Forbidden in law, and false oath morality. Right by the cosmos.

Unstoppable.

Those who would possess us not to lose us, undeserving of our moments.

Living by books of a thousand years, deciphering meaning through millennial dust.

Repeating routines.

Leave them with the ants of the mound below.

Perpetual options, yet its our lips that touch.

Proof of design, and a flawless designer.

The wild spirits of pleasure and intrigue.

The universe serving immaculate presentation,

with no gain in mind but our wonder and joy.

What artistry to behold!

A soft-hearted woman to roam with, leaping at dreams down a tealight path.

Moths to a dazzling flame.

Into the magick unknown, unfurling like clouds at our footsteps.

In a dark blue twilight; We will never be found.

There we can mock them. Make faces and posture.

Composing a love song they are desperate to hear.

But never! They can cry out for thunder, and we will send them a murmur.

Our music is written for us.

Warpoet

Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

An old war poet walked out to the rapeseed.

In through the blinding yellow, a mirage of the sun.

Having spoken for more than the flowers,

In one breath, than all carved in cenotaph stone.

His shadow escaped him, darting across the backs of his eyes,

tickling the soil beside him, before scurrying below perched crows.

He wished he could follow. In prayer of a suited exchange.

Not Canary Wharf or Wall Street, but still a devil's bargain.

What could he see behind that carpet, that curtain of yellow and green tassels

and threads his voided other seemed to swing from, a noble savage of famous novels?

He once was.

He would slip past just to play on his mind. Before fading into some fresh chapter, some opportune place. Where the unspoken words of his fallen brothers, finally hush.

Something to render him inspired, so as to escape a canvass well full ,

Where the wars had been through all of us.

The Expat

Manchester City Centre

Unofficial diplomat

Called upon to justify

National history

In all of your travels,

No.

You were born for the hunt

For the blood in the earth

For the voice you can hear

In a billow of wind,

Far away.

Global citizen

Fast beating passport

Mountains below the ocean

The only restriction,

Uprise.

The universe is ours to explore;

The joy is in the journey.

The Cadence (A Canal Suicide)

Preston, Lancashire

How can we escape the wailing hell?

It screams while it swallows, yet never chokes.

It has never been satisfied

With my pleading, or yours.

It relishes its own torment,

For flavours are sweeter when starving...

May we pass on eternal bliss?

Praising for the sake of praise.

Wanting for nothing and having it always.

Can heavenly harps not be silent?

To not even sleep. Not even experience.

Not even be atoms in space,

or a regret someone tries to ignore.

We are always aware.

Surely the greatest reward,

The most gracious of mercies,

Is to no longer be.

To slip into cadence,

Of the verse that never hushed.

On the Windswept Moors

Stalybridge, Cheshire

My final breath on the windswept Moors.

May it travel bereft of earthly chore.

Where I've climbed for so long and so hard, my ascent,

would lead me to nothing, for miles on end.

No higher to go than this barren escape.

Looking down on the factories, shackles and gates.

I once was a number that hadn't been counted.

Now lay me down, like the Grouse, leave me shrouded.

Where innocents lost, visit town no more,

So many last breaths on the windswept moors...

Deadbeat

York, North Yorkshire

You created us all in your image; impressions of struggle.

A teenager demanded of excellence, by only yourself.

You clawed at the canvass. The easel was broken.

You splintered your fingers. You bled in the palate.

You left us unfinished and called it "abstract."

And now, we are modern.

Some call you perfect and worship your name.

You vanished without explanation.

Those who can't handle rejection have books,

written by parasites that feed on the weak.

Ghost writers, for those who are dead to us.

Our bodies attack us, we battle our cells, in prisoner's flesh.

Guessing the reasons we suffer, we try to keep strong.

We remain for the fear of not knowing.

Some of us do.

Titanium cracks under tears in the hard stretch.

If seven days is all that it took...

I wish you'd have put in the nights.

Why even bother?

Soft

Grasmere, Cumbria

Your locks: tussles of wonder, string along the breeze.

mousy in hue-autumn is soft all around you.

A golden kiss endears the soiled, sun-topped mountains.

I dance the light. Autumn is soft all around you.

Jade and Beryl Embers, tease the boundary wistful.

Gazing through me. Autumn is soft all around you.

Nature playing your wisps is a master. You sigh.

Holding me close, autumn is soft all around you.

When webs of white are woven over grey-your brow.

May we wither with leaves, autumn so soft all around us.

Skerton

Lancaster, Lancashire

Voices ring embittered tones.

Smiles hold partial, fleeting when shown.

Southerners aint welcome round.

South of the river's,

just one mile down.

Pit Bulls remember their roots,

fighting to death over excrement left,

previously blessing my shoe.

Missing teeth chatter,

missing cats scatter,

missing kids matter-

missing police natter.

Eyebrows ascend at your death then retract

the refractory period, lasts till your back!

Pubs without name,

thugs without aim,

cut you with blades,

all for a game.

That's Skerton.

In It's Time

Sheffield, South Yorkshire

In the waters of youth, I bathed without care.

Skimming the mercury shoal. Gently. Content.

Imagination stirring. Swishing in hapless nowhere.

Ripples expanding horizons. Reflecting cerulean glint.

I frolicked.

Yet torn from the second womb, I did flounder.

Courting the air. Begging for Gaea's Kiss.

I struggled to stand on two feet.

Hardly established. Boulders beneath.

I did bleed.

Nothing is fair in the desert.

Sandblasted struggles; We harden and sore.

Searching for all fairer weather.

Thirsting for all we were lorn.

I wandered.

Until the beguile of solar dispatch,

pervaded away from your radiant gaze.

Together, infinity cracked!

Our eyes connected in unity.

We defied.

Watching our child in the water, I sigh...

"All in it's time."