Golden shiver through your coat
when you were young,
and lay back on a bed of wind
with your eyes closed.

Wishing to be lifted up
above your house,
above your life and family.

In your silver Snorkel coat
you are warm and innocent,
as you sail five-hundred feet
above a frozen field.

The sun is going down
behind the nunnery.
The sun is going down
and the light is lovely.

possible then

TASCAM DR-05

someday soon

I met her once - 
Gwennie, Gwen, Ella, Olga, Jean.
It was at a gathering in a smoky apartment
on L’Avenue de L’Observatoire.
A faux bal musette,
given by a fat Englishman 
with bad breath.
It was 1925
and I was thin with poetry.

She spoke in a near whisper,
applied lipstick at every other breath.
She was drunk and sour and the clearest
person in that room,
as the hurdy-gurdy droned,
and the book chatter droned.

Fleur de Peche  was her neck.
She sipped a Pernod Suzy Fine,
while Apaches stalked the valleys 
of Montmartre.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked her,
this older woman.
Older yet possible.

She gave a crooked smile.
Beckoned my ear to her lips:
‘The siffleur montagne is the loneliest bird.’

 
(photograph by paul morand)

the woman with five names

The cold no longer mattered.
The sun was sinking into the sea.
Tan cliffs watched us.
The stony beach, emptied of middle-aged couples, dogs, us.

The cold no longer mattered.
The soft falling, 
or the sudden drop
into the necessary shock of water.

The sea and sky and sun and land 
owned their colours,
cannot be painted in words,
only by themselves.

The some clothes we wore
became a darkened skin,
and still the sun,
bleeding down the sky.

We swam to where
nothing met our gently kicking feet.
This is where I want to be,
where nothing is beneath.

And we adjusted ourselves
to the world, and it to us,
and the sun crying slowly into the horizon,
a burning orange at the limit of mind.

Something was pulling us out,
together and separately.
Side-current buffeted me into you,
into more us.

For a moment,
I considered going out there,
too far to return,
lush tiredness before the final struggle.

But then I saw you swimming backwards,
to the undefeatable urge to walk this life.
And I turned and headed for shore;
and the cold no longer mattered.

swimming backwards

The sunflowers are in mourning.
Lion faces bend to earth,
as though a holy one had passed
upon the path.

Stooping under weight of the gold,
bowed heads, once loved and still of bees.
Falling heads, curved backs, like the bodies of our old,
but theirs of a season.

Drop petals like sun segments, 
whence they ungolden.
Drip seeds to where they may not go or grow.

Broad face, repository of light, brown-gold welcomer,
spiking stem and rough of skin,
leaves like fine-grade sandpaper.

The sunflowers are in mourning this morning.
The weight of each head and all the sun it knows, 
and all the rain it tasted,
will bring it unwasted to the ground. 

The canes cannot support what the stems would not, 
nor the head support the whole.

In shallow soil you grew taller than us.
In the shelter of a wall,
bees crowded your high hearts,
snails laced your leaves.

In your lee, a tomato plant flourishes.
Shy lion heads – no heliotrope now – pride falling,
turning from your nourisher, 
sated of growth and your simple needs.

Weep petals, weep seeds.

You gaze to earth,
your hoped future,
our September.



(painting by van gogh)

sonnenblumen

No way back to you now
except by burglary;
on Google Maps I see you
with other curtains,
a strange vase on a windowsill,
the slouching motorbike 
on the pavement outside.

Someone’s thrown up
an eight-foot fence
halfway down the drive,
on which I counted stones
across long Junes.

The side and front hedges
are more or less the same;
years’ growth and cutting no betrayal.
Such reliable leaves.

Even on Facebook
I could track the photos  
of strangers in our rooms;
in your rooms, Mum and Dad,
where you waited for the lottery results,
where you bickered over lent cigarettes,
where the Christmas tree glowed
over paper plates of nuts and chocolates.

I want them blasted out,
those legitimate interlopers;
but money was paid
and a growing-up erased
by dint of illness,
by necessity of a scattering
of memory and mind.

Love lived there
amid the enmity,
the brittle struggle for peace;
and all their effort
in drudge work
to keep it going,
to pay through those forty years
of mental burden
and physical decay.
To own, as you joked, Dad,
all that land.

And here you find
on Rightmove
a history of its value,
where yet newer cuckoos
stare through windows
polished by lost hands - 

through which I still see your
faces – expectant, relieved;
as if none of this could finally
change.

there's no place

Fire in the ash of mind
as you walk by the hospital.
Leaves on the wet pavement.
Trees are dripping.

The green
of that traffic light
invisibly hurts.
Cars whip by,
lorries terrorize.
All the rush and roar
you are not part of.

You cross,
and make it.

In the café,
take your crack-lined 
mug
to the window seat,
rub a hole in the glass,
see a face
you used
to work with.

dark day afternoon

In the fading garden
a blackbird sings
on the shed roof.

The roof lets in rain,
but now it is not raining.

The bird could be my father
who also liked to sing.

Orange beak
opens
closes.

My bitterness diminishes
in that movement,
in that song.

come back

Rosa Canina

The Turks call you bird nose.
The Swedes call you stone rose.
Across the Steppe of Russia
you are the thorn bearer.

We call you dog rose.
We call you briar rose. 
In the age of gallows and fire
you were the witches’ briar.

Your petals gave respite
from a mad dog’s bite.
A tincture of your scent
performed emollient.

The syrup from your hips
passed over children’s lips.
In times of war and need
you fed a country’s seed.

Dog-berry in our dog days,
may your pink modesty amaze
through the heat of afternoons,
down numberless Junes.

I would walk up the lane
to visit you again.
Yet that lane is deep and shading
where dog roses are fading.

rosa canina

Zen and the Art of Melancholy

A peacock flies high
into the bare branches
of a winter tree,
its tail a ragged flag
against the darkening sky.

I sit in a Japanese garden,
in London,
in 1995.
A bamboo bird-scarer
beats irregular time.

She is gone.
She lives another life
I will never
know or care about.

I button my coat
and move towards the gate.
Traffic on the horizon
of sound,
comes like a whisper.

Above my hair
a ghosted moon.
This park will be closing
soon.

*

(faint background music from:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlTj6GFM7vU )

zen and the art of melancholy

I don’t want no reset 

I want a great awakening

messing with our preset

they got me shakening

oh, yeah

I don’t want no reset

I want the great awakening

want the great awakening

a great awakening

if only I could get up in time

out of time

in time

out of time

in time

out of time

in time

for the great awakening

the great awakening

the great away ay ay kening

can’t you feel that it’s happening

don’t you know that it’s happening

the great awakening

piece by piece

person by person

word by word

even the birds 

or maybe especially the birds know 

that it’s time to be wakening

yeah – but first I’m gonna have a long nap

and wake up refreshed

goodnight

night

the great awakening

The bidsong is fairly quiet in the recording, so would benefit from having sound up a little bit higher :-)

Birdsong in Somerset, 7th May 2023, evening.

Wordless


I didn’t find it in the whiskey glass,
that glowing countryside of peace that stays
beyond the studied kiss, the loveless pass.
I found it in her awkwardness, her ways
of being neat, of sitting on my lap
when I would least expect, and of her back,
soft freckled, as her hands turned on the tap
in me. And now it is her girlfulness I lack.
I didn’t find it in the Spanish wine
I poured into her mouth, then from my own,
stream red into her throat, the liquid line 
that sought the heart of her she had not shown.
These books surround my drying skin and I
cannot find words to write upon her sky.

Wordless

This room, how well I know it.
Now they’re renting it, and the one next to it,
as offices. The whole house has become
an office building for agents, businessmen, companies.

This room, how familiar it is.

The couch was here, near the door,
a Turkish carpet in front of it.
Close by, the shelf with two yellow vases.
On the right—no, opposite—a wardrobe with a mirror.
In the middle the table where he wrote,
and the three big wicker chairs.
Beside the window the bed
where we made love so many times.

They must still be around somewhere, those old things.

Beside the window the bed;
the afternoon sun used to touch half of it.

. . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only. . . And then—
that week became forever.

The Afternoon Sun - By C. P. Cavafy (poem)

Early one morning in May I set out,
And nobody I knew was about.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

There was no wind to trouble the weathercocks.
I had burnt my letters and darned my socks.

No one knew I was going away,
I thought myself I should come back some day.

I heard the brook through the town gardens run.
O sweet was the mud turned to dust by the sun.

A gate banged in a fence and banged in my head.
'A fine morning, sir', a shepherd said.

I could not return from my liberty,
To my youth and my love and my misery.

The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet,
The only sweet thing that is not also fleet.
I'm bound away for ever,
Away somewhere, away for ever.

Early one Morning  - by Edward Thomas

Just a little reading of the introduction to this lovely little book, which I picked up today. 

It was published in 1955 by Frederick Warne and Co. Ltd. Author:  Reginald M. Lester  F.R. Met. Soc.

The Observer's Book of Weather - Introduction

dearest deer

i haven't seen you in some days

seems so long since you're away

come back

come back

my deer


you lent some magic to my eyes

were you an angel in disguise

come back 

come back

my deer


in the centre of your field

one look at you and i was healed

no predator could catch your grace

or cloud the sunlight on your face


at the dusk and at the dawn

i search for you and find you gone

come back

oh just once 

my deer


i never touched your golden hide

i watched you stepping from inside

come back

appear

my deer

beneath the skies the summer set

you are the one I won't regret 

unto the spinney soft you ran

oh what becomes of deer or man


into the night you drift like dream

I see you drinking from a stream

my deer

my deer

my dearest deer

my deer

oh, my deer

my dearest deer (rpt and fade)


*

dearest deer

Angel Song / Don't be afraid 

d  c g  d

you're in 
enemy territory
whenever you step
out that door

you've been
fighting an enemy
that no one else
ever saw

f g   f  g

don't be afraid     
angels protect you

in the night in the day
angels are with you

g  d c g d

can't you feel their soul light in your hair   
and the blue cloak of protection
manifest the/a gold bright in your stare
and the white rose of invocation  of  (c)    invocation    (g) invocation

under
the Tor of Avalon
lies a king
sleeping still

you wonder
where it's flowing from
this breath
beneath a hill

don't be afraid
the Goddess protects you
from the land beyond the grave
the great mother resurrects you

can't you feel her soul light in your eyes
and touch her green gown of redemption
manifest the clear heart of the wise
as you walk a deer path to ascension   (c)  to ascension    

g d c d     
you are ascended   you are ascended    you are ascended  
and all is mended

*

(went a bit loud and too near the mic of dictaphone in places, I think - ah, well)

angel song / don't be afraid

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
         My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
         One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
         But being too happy in thine happiness,—
                That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
                        In some melodious plot
         Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
                Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
         Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
         Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
         Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
                With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
                        And purple-stained mouth;
         That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
                And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
         What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
         Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
         Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
                Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
                        And leaden-eyed despairs,
         Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
                Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
         Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
         Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
         And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
                Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
                        But here there is no light,
         Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
                Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
         Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
         Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
         White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
                Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
                        And mid-May's eldest child,
         The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
                The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
         I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
         To take into the air my quiet breath;
                Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
         To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
                While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
                        In such an ecstasy!
         Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
                   To thy high requiem become a sod.

(NB could not put the final two stanzas here due to limit on characters in description)  

painting - Keats listening to a Nightingale - by Joseph Severn

Ode to a Nightingale   -   by John Keats

break us or make us  (an extemporised song)

simple love  (capo 3)

been lookin out my window  lookin out my window for so long  am7   g  
sitting in the shadow    sitting in the shadow  of a song     am7  g
dont try to cheer me up  c  d  g em
im happy when im lonely  am7 c   d
bring on by your simple love     c  d  g  em
and we'll talk about tomorrow    am7  c   d (low)

the years have been flying,  days have been dying   they're gone
so many lost to us, and those who live through us, undone
heading for some further shore
no silver will we need there
It's simple love we may adore
such gold light of our sorrow

simple love  (song fragment)

out of rope

C I miss the sun
Am don’t know where he’s gone
F but not as much as I G7 miss you

C I stay indoors
Am pace these floors
F Forgot what it is to G7 kiss you

Em I know time is F running out
Em don’t know what this F song’s about
except G7 growing old
dm7 growing G cold x2

C There’s less time ahead
than Em what’s gone before. 
F What will we do 
with the G7 years left in store?

C Use them or lose them, 
Em that’s what they say. 
F Keep on breathing
till G7 that judgement day 

C And I don’t want F hope
C I won’t F despair
C am out of F rope
but I don’t G7 care

for these C changing F times
the C digital F stew
I C read the F signs 
to get a G7 clue

Em Just another empty F weekend. 
Em Nothing to do but F sleep. 
Em These dark and F wintry days. 
Em How slowly, how mercilessly they F creep. 

Fmaj7 I can’t make the day G anew; Am
Am has it all run out at G last?
Fmaj7 All is silent in this G listless Am room.
Am I live with shadows of the G past.
Of the past  F G

(repeat ‘there’s less time ahead’ section + add)
No, I don’t want hope / I won’t despair
am out of rope / but I don’t care /
I just don’t F (G bass) care. (E shape one fret up, soft)

out of rope

g Waiting for the bathroom to bm heat up
c so I can have a g spruce.

g Sitting at this table in the bm main room
in my c jumper the colour of which is g puce.

It’s d Saturday night in an c English g village
and c no buses am7 run this d late

g It’s Saturday c night, and g I’ve been em7 meditating
on the c state of my am7 life c
and the am7 state d of the g state

saturday night in an english village

am here for you 

(includes a mash-up from Ephesians 6:12 in second verse)


(g) let the peace come 
(c) that passes under (g) standing
(c) beyond the need of (g) striving
(d) (c) oh, let the peace (g) come.

(g) let the rain fall 
(c) upon the desert (g) aching
(c) on hearts forever (g) breaking
(d) (c) oh, let the sweet rain (g) fall

(em) I’ve been waiting to (d) tell you
(em) that we have finally (d) made it (c) through

(em) I’ve been longing to (d) love you
(em) in the way that you (d) need me (c) to. 

(am7) am here for (g) you
(repeat spoken)



we don’t wrestle 
against flesh and blood that’s ours
but principalities and powers
oh, yeah, the darkness of this world

in every high place
the spiritually wicked
the iniquity of rulers
oh, yeah, the darkness of this world


I’ve been waiting to tell you
that we have finally made it through

I’ve been longing to love you
in the way that you need me to. 

am here for you
(repeat spoken)



in this garden
stillness falls upon us
nothing here could wrong us
oh, mm, the mystery of your eyes

flows the fountain
under light from heaven
the moon a silver crescent
oh, mm, a kiss that never dies
I’ve been waiting to tell you
that we have finally made it through

I’ve been longing to hold you
in the way that you taught me to.

am here for you.

am here for you.

am here for you.

am here for you

adieu adieu

(em) back to balance 
a gate in the (c) day

(em) Ten of Swords
at the end of a (c) play

(g) (the) purpose of the (c) cross
(g) (the) pain of our (c) Lord

(g) I don’t know what I’m (c) doing 
or not (bm) doing, of (am7) course

(f) how to get back – (g) back to where? back to where?
(f) how to get back – (g) back to where

thy (c) plaintive (g) anthem (f) fades
(c) adieu (g) adieu (f) adieu
in (c) those next (g) valley (f) glades 
and (c) you and (g) you and (f) you

love to drift
through the clouds

far above
the worlds below

(the) blood of the lamb
(the) promise of the seed 

I don’t know what I’m thinking 
or not thinking, indeed

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley-glades 
and you and you and you

clock the seconds 
afore they go

reconnect 
to the flow

tender is the night 
on a winding mossy way

in love with easeful death 
yet still wanting to stay
how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you

split the heart
of the tree

divided self 
one, two, three

(the) nightingale’s repose 
her last song on the air 

I don’t know why I’m sensing 
but not seeing the rose 

how to get back – back to where? back to where?
how to get back – back to where

thy plaintive anthem fades
adieu adieu adieu
in those next valley glades 
and you and you and you (et vous et vous et vous)

(fade out on adieu adieu adieu x 3)

NB
(uses some lines and variation of lines from Keats's Ode to a Nightingale: 'thy plaintive anthem fades'/ 'adieu adieu'/ 'next valley glades' / 'tender is the night' / 'winding mossy way' / 'in love with easeful death')

adieu adieu

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will, — and would that night were here!
But ah! — to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again! — with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, —
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, — and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, —
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

Ashes of Life -  by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I had a dream three walls stood up wherein a raven bird
Against the walls did beat himself and was this not absurd?

For sun and rain beat in that cell that had its fourth wall free
And daily blew the summer shower and the rain came presently

And the pretty summer time and all the winter too
That foolish bird did beat himself till he was black and blue.

Rouse up, rouse up, my raven bird, fly by the open wall
You make a prison of a place that is not one at all.

I took my raven by the hand, Oh come, I said, my Raven,
And I will take you by the hand and you shall fly to heaven.

But oh he sobbed and oh he sighed and in a fit he lay
Until two fellow ravens came and stood outside to say:

You wretched bird, conceited lump
You well deserve to pine and thump.

See, now a wonder, mark it well
My bird rears up in angry spell,

Oh do I then? he says and careless flies
O'er flattened wall at once to heaven’s skies,

And in my dream I watched him go
And I was glad, I loved him so,

Yet when I woke my eyes were wet
To think Love had not freed my pet,

Anger it was that won him hence
As only Anger taught him sense.

Often my tears fall in a shower
Because of Anger’s freeing power.

Anger's Freeing Power - by Stevie Smith

You are no longer young,
Nor are you very old.
There are homes where those belong.
You know you do not fit
When you observe the cold
Stares of those who sit

In bath-chairs or the park
(A stick, then, at their side)
Or find yourself in the dark
And see the lovers who,
In love and in their stride,
Don't even notice you.

This is a time to begin
Your life. It could be new.
The sheer not fitting in
With the old who envy you
And the young who want to win,
Not knowing false from true,

Means you have liberty
Denied to their extremes.
At last now you can be
What the old cannot recall
And the young long for in dreams,
Yet still include them all.

Accepted - by Elizabeth Jennings

san diego seranade - tom waits (cover)

soft rain and birds on 22nd September 2024 morning

I have found so many wonderful creators and performers, musicians, writers and interpreters on this platform, and no doubt will find many more! :-) love listening to the richness of words and music out there - inspiring, healing, and so enriching to my life!

God bless all! x Mark

mark mayes

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