Hindustani Raag & Roll. 31 minutes of stunning Psychedelicous music. The whole live set from The Victoria, Queeensbridge Road, Hackney on 14th July, 2022. These guys are fantastic! Catch them live wherever you can, while you can!

Thank you to Sameer Khan for agreeing to this performance being shared on Soundcloud. Peace and love brothers and sisters.

Karma Sheen The Victoria 14 - 7-22 2

Pens Meadow

It’s rumoured by some
This is where to come
If your pen is running low

Here you will find
Poets at peace of mind
Breathing nice and slow

With nectar to drink
They no longer think
Just let their senses flow

Pens hang from trees
With Writing paper their leaves
Ideas float down like snow

So, if you’ve had enough
Because writing’s got tough
It’s important that you know

You can take a walk
Stop your head’s crazy talk
And to Wordsley you must go.

~

I've never been to Stourbridge, but I hear it calling me.

~
Chris Perry

1st July, 2020

Pens Meadow, Stourbridge

Twirlies

I trod the shingle at a steady pace, stretching to retain my stride
On the loose-formed step of beach unsettled by the slip of tide

Yellow sea poppies tugged at knotted strands of green string stems
Sand martins fought the blusters of breeze, ducked and dodged the punch of gusts

Scowling terns patrolled the shallows, stalled to fall and stab needle beaks at sprats
Recovered unsteadily against the wind to climb and glide the bowling blow

A grey seal magicked his whiskered profile from some choppy trough
Looped back into the murk of brine to again become a shadow of the sea

Crumbled sand and grit had slumped in rain that reshaped the cliff
Left rounded flints of giants’ hip bones hemming the fringe of scree

A drooping line of fishermen edged the water, winding in curling waves
And hauling out lustrous mackerel that spangled sequins against dull stones and sky

~

Christopher Perry
4th July 2020

20200704 Twirlies CLP - 04.07.20, 12.19

A Quiet Retreat

There is nothing quite like it hereabouts
Cheap, quickly thrown paired-up council houses
Creak and clump with those living here and next door
A baby and new grandmother with a high-pitched running commentary
Carpet removed from stairs for cleanliness becomes a tuneless glockenspiel
Four houses down are the newly swapped-in from London
Amplification is set at Hackney Saturday night levels
Each word, each beat bows the windows, shivers the trees
A pigeon, a crow, the rush of the wind, the push of the sea
Fill the gaps between BBC6 Music and the USAF patrols
The tone-deaf dog pipes up as supper time approaches
And a hose is turned on to water wilting plants
From the heath there are a shot-gun’s double-barrelled spits
It won’t be long before the moonrise heralds muntjacs’ barking
And owls return to haunt hedgerows

At least at dawn on Sunday the city rests

~

Christopher Perry
4th July, 2020

A Quiet Retreat

Words I Wished I’d Known Then

Sunday afternoon back at the dinner table
Falling asleep after washing up job done
Attempt at the history homework barely begun
Sleepy from roast lamb, roast potatoes, sweet carrots
Full of fat and pudding, Bird’s custard too
What is the question? What is it I need to do?

~

Whatever it was, did it matter so much
That when my father came in with his great expectations
I wasn’t sure; had not held pen to paper long
He not yet 40, but fully grown, armed with a wartime temper
Bombed, evacuated, bombed out of a third home again
Before National Service screwed his childhood tighter

~

I ducked the first swinging cuff
It glanced off my turned shoulder, caught my head behind my ear
Knocked me to the floor where I curled up, expecting more
Felt him kick me, once, twice then heard him slam out the door
“Fuck you!”  I should have shouted to his back “And that fucking school!”
But I was not yet ten; I’d master swearing soon enough

~

Christopher Perry
4th July, 2020

Words I Wished I’d Known Then

Dissonance

I was surprised when night first came for me here

There was none of the noise that normally lulled me

No swishing fall and rise of waves on shingle

Not love calls of owls resonating from the heath

Here, the very city itself sleeps

~

Night workers move softly

The traffic stops

Trains slip into sidings and rest

Even a passing party of locked-in drinkers at last released, pass by but once

Unlike the barking of Muntjac; the vixen’s reprised cry

Unlike the shifting leaves, shuffled by the slightest breath of breeze.

~

This city silence held me awake

Tense with bated breath

Longing for the sound of something familiar.

~
The light of dawn was faintly outlining the shadowed edge of the bedroom blind

When I was finally called away by a blackbird’s alarmed call

Followed by the caw of crow

And at last I could sleep

Until I woke to sparrows bathing in gutter dust.

~
CLP, 27th August, 2020

Dissonance

The World knows a few stories about about me. The taller the better.

VoyagesWriting