There is no Earthly reason

for the sun.

Once I looked at the light through

the eye of a Spring leaf,

and thought I had found the reason.

Autumn came

and it fell away

and Winter trees had no leaves

to give me sight.

'I was blinded to the Death

that is buried beneath it all.'

We fail to discern

that we always blame

our own face upon the Sun.


I look back up the hill

to the scorched height of Summer.

My dream kingdom gone,

and

The ceiling of clear blue sky,

that evoked a sense of Infinity within me,

has passed like a cloud.

I Turn and see

my lengthening shadow

stretching to reach the evening.

I walk down past the leaf-failing trees

wrestling with the wind.

I find a seat overlooking the slow river.

The world leans to starboard

and night swamps the land.

I drown

for a season

in cold prickly blackness.


A man of drought

shakes his head in disbelief

as a moist cloud

passes over him

to rain out at sea.

In the distance

the City he abandoned

wavers,

a mirage,

in the heat.

He is a whirlwind of sand that drifts

on the breeze across the barren plain.

‘I am no-one nowhere that is everywhere I step.’

He comes to a burnt-out crater of the moon

where the carts at evening

bring the broken pieces of fallen Empires

to bury and burn

as if discarding scenery from

a play

and all the plays-

distractions

hiding this dead land.

Do all of these abandoned doors

and broken archways

in the crater

lead to nothing but dead-ends

as the bleached bones here tell?

I look out to see

lightning ripping the night sky.

Dust and dream are all we are

it seems

till someone turns on the light.


Slumped flesh is pale and thin.

I tap my face,

a bony finger raps on my skull.

A dark voice calls out

from within

that

it will be with me soon.

I shiver

and quickly answer

that there is no hurry


The road is World-wide

and we know nothing

but the travelling.

As to the ‘Why’

many are the reasons we cast aside

the further we go along.

People circle about

in the rounded Cities

It is such a busy world

people

with places to go

and things to do,

feeding this insatiable beast.

Despite finding no reason

the road insists on being taken.

The road moving through the night

sees an immensity filled with stars

that tend to render to insignificance

all we do

but

the source of some light

has long ago been extinguished

while some has not reached here yet.

I stand and ponder,

upon a road still moving,

is it all a never-beginning,

never-ending road

in reflection of Eternity,

ever chasing after Infinity?

I walk on

wondering

if that I that is True

be Eternal

then it has

is and will be

Then how and why am I

amnesiac

here

in this Knowledge-arid World?

An Image occurs

and I see myself

falling through a crack in jammed clouds

to land in mud.

I arise and begin the ascent

my linen,

naturally,

besmirched.

I amble along

but even that is too fast

and I go with no

particular eagerness

or expectation.

I stop.

This flourish of speculations

has distracted me.

I see petals strewn about.

I have walked past Spring.


Another mountain trodden down

and I look at the world left below.

I discern some sense to it.

Turning

I see, far ahead,

an even higher mountain

and between where I am

and there-

a shadowed valley.

I weaken

and sit upon a rock.

As if from the moon

I look down and ponder.

My fortitude wanes

as my reluctance waxes.

I should roll a little down

the mountain side

and lie

hard-stoic as stone

facing rain, fog and snow

till my personal night

rises within me.

Ah, no.

I come down from the moon

and begin to descend.

Mist comes in

and the mountain

begins to fade.



Step aside!

This Summer’s Young

are coming through,

swarming out the unlocked school-gate.

The light of bright ideas in their eyes

cuts sharp as a knife.

They would

have their way

and start the World again.

Down on the beach,

between school

and the road into

the hungry city

they are discussing plans

they have for their Tomorrow.

I have seen them,

hot nights

upon the hill

gathered about

burning trash-cans

drunk barbarians

looking through the flames.

they would burn down the World

that has scorched them.


I stand on the edge of the world

no closer.

A tree.

and all I think

dream or fancy

gains me nothing

at the end of the day.

It is but the rustling of leaves,

from where I and the world

brush against each other.

It is as

murmuring wavelets meeting

the shore of the world

and combing there

finds little of worth.


The time has come

to scrape the eclipsing sun from the Light

it represents.

No.

Let it set of it’s own accord


I look at my reflection

in the mirror-

And shatter.

Could that really be me!?

Time,

the lines you have etched into my face

draw me old

and crumpled

as a bed I have slept in too long,

now there be a thought to awaken one.

I peer into my eyes

Where are the pearls,

Time served

is supposed to inherit?

In my pockets

there is only stones

I used

to keep me from flying away

when the wind lifted up.

With bones pronounced

I am only developing character.




Winter morning.

Cold-water bird song

trickles into my ears.

I go outside

and stand in the chill white

of morning’s eye.

I rub the stitches of sleep

from my eyes,

yawn

and my ghost

escapes

and merges into the mist

I stand in.


World,

where are you going?

You point to a Paradise up ahead,

but from where I stand

you are going in circles again-

A whirlwind,

tearing the torn Earth

that the grass will have to heal.



Perhaps the boy

was burnt

by fire he stole from heaven.

Where he leapt

the door stays open for awhile

an exit from the ghetto

of the world

where the sun always fails.

I peered over the edge

imagined the painful

cracking of my head

and stepped back.

In desperation

out of despair

I have cut myself on the

thought of suicide

but

this death bruises the ego too much.

Walking away

I wonder

was this an unfinished life?

Does someone

pause

before closing a door somewhere?



The swiftly flowing water

and the stones of the river-bed

trouble each other.

River,

where are you carrying me too

passing through days and nights?

unto a waterfall

to tumble

into a rip in the earth.

I look up through thee

and suffer Eternity as a hell

of Time unendurable.

then It happens that I am lifted

to feel the embrace

of a sense of permanent being

content in itself.

Then lowered again

into the stream.

Shall I rise before I Fall?

I was drawn into thee

so long ago

Life is a myth

memory keeps narrating.

Real life goes on without me

somewhere else.

It is a dream.

and when the dream

that is Me

disappears

then evaporates

too

all philosophies

of why I move.


After the rain,

before the dust

all is new

brightness flowers

within the blooms.

But before the phenomenon

of it all

can embrace me,

a shadow crosses the sun

and everything

returns to it’s usual mundanity.


When the world was flat

I sat on the edge

smoking cigarettes

staring at the baleful green waters

that filled the abyss below.

Some dark creature down there

calls to wavering youth.

Look how large the sails

on the yachts

that pass by.

My dreams are getting too big

for this little place.

I would know if indeed

the world was round.

I stood at the back of the departing boat

watching as the land that built me

and its architects there

sank beneath the waves

and swallowed

too

my confidence.

Yet

though marooned on

doubt

The land I dreamt

would

set my imagination running

rose

glittering

out of the sea.






Up the river,

pushed by a gale,

the storm came

unloading it’s cargo

of lightning and rain.

On either side.


Winter night

presses hard black against the windows

and cold seeps through.

My reflection on black

watches as I

Close the curtains.

Wrap me

between the covers of a book.

I will be the story of a man

dressed in dark blue,

Who every night enters the city

to break into people’s houses whilst they sleep.

I am not

However

here to steal

I am merely looking for that door

that I believe will

let me out of the world.

When I am tired of this story

I will cut myself up,

rearrange all the words

and become another tale.


These cries

the seagulls cough-up

down on the shore

are the cries of sailors

lost at sea.

That caught in their throats

as they flew by.



Stark Winter tree-

a frozen shriek.

Tar-black statue of fright in the snow

that never melts.

I fall back into it’s grip.

My throat tightens

and nausea begins to swirl

in the pit

of my stomach-

Dread imaginings are churned-up.

Since childhood

it has echoed

across the years

and it shakes my day.




I sit on the side of a hill,

coat across my knees.

Warm sun remembers us

here in this cold land,

beginning to thaw.

We are set within

a cloudless

blue sky

that goes on forever

all around us,

opened by the light of a high sun

and a sense of eternity

hidden in all-

buds,

and nudges forth the thought

that even those

who to the low dark places go

are allowed to do so by this,

to them,

hidden fact.




What good am Me to I?

That which I call myself

is just a cloud,

for a cloud has no

true shape

moving slowly

altering all the time

in the currents of air.

Yet the sense of being persists

stubborn as the sun.


If

with a scalpel of discernment

one were to cut open most people

one would find

some with

the heavy stone of the world

on their backs

some with

a deep pool of sorrow

in their hearts

causing rising

damp in their souls

some with a tragedy

etched into the bone.

Or in some

ice in the marrow of the bone,

That aches like a manacle.

But this doctor’s examination

I do from the safe distance

of my tower.

Moist eyed

I look down at the slow river

and I know now why

the ocean is so deep.