Temperature below zero
novelty for a town not used
to minuses. I contemplate
winter, summer living
in these hills rain-kissed
summer-washed with plums and cherries. But in this cold as the media rants about the cold wave
my blanket of warmth are the peopled roads, mystique of warmth, caps, mufflers and layers of woolens. In rasping tones we admonish cold and winter.
Living has a strange music, a rhythm. In seasonal whirlpools we
stuntedly grow.
My moments of solitude are anything but quiet,
there are far too many distractions,
noisily and colourfully waiting
just around the corner from the normal, grey world.
Nowadays I’m as selective as I can be about
which image footprints I let wander through my mind
…it all becomes part (Like it or not!) of the overall collage.
I can bend an hour into three
like a silversmith with soft moonlight.
Boredom when not impatience
is mostly reserved for teenagers and unhappy people.
The train of thought is an experience as well as a journey
and as wonderful as books and movies are,
they are still only beautiful snapshots
of the unchartered magic forever waiting to be explored
…I’ll see you in there, catch me if you can?
More at http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/.
My greying hair sticking out
like an ugly wart is actually
a make up for my childhood
years, now distorted, but still
growing up on crutches. So the face is the same, though
the body although overgrown is still like remote sensing catching
those early bones and structure. Now I want to further grow and throw out
all the remnants of the past to be an old man, coughing and withering like sick men in hospital beds. The problem is that childhood catches up with mirages and dreams that break, make even and then disappear. So the only option is to be real about age, and the senior citizen certificate. Poetry, however, is a foil to sudden mists and wavelengths
which outmanoeuvre truths or realities. Then take a book and read, eat, sleep. No grandchildren. Do the homework for your daughter and take poetry trips.
I step outside at midnight,
air drenched with woodsmoke,
dash of peat, a single cow
complaining, her troubled breath
weaving over the low hedges,
all birds tucked away
but there is movement still,
some shy creature wrapping itself
away in unassailable darkness,
and in the sky above
galaxies have gathered,
stars turns on star,
silver glitter and tinsel streamers
tumble down to the waiting earth,
the entire universe
assembles around my questions,
and I am drunk on raw ice.
winter moon
taken of life support
stars sparkle in the night
winter moon
lilies on your coffin
a final goodbye
Pacing that cold beach
of a dark night
you fish for truth
in those swathes of space
where a ship’s lighting
embraces the moon.
There is a slice
of sky and shingle
where you cast your nets,
spreading
starlight around you
for illumination.
The gods mock this,
their gimlet eyes fixed on you.
Bareback, they ride by
on bright horses, tossing
glitter sideways
as you slacken.
They sabotage your nets,
mutilate your catch
and the scraps
you have garnered are damaged
and drift away.
You need sorcery now, not science.
It arrives when the fire in your hearth
flames in the snowy bushes
of your garden,
and there is no need to infer purpose
other than the magic
of illusion.
And it is here now
the handcuffs which
will take one to a home
not prison, home
which shelters truth
speaks in rasping voices
and tells you that protests
are no mere ideology.
Only voices
raise them in homes
homes of fetters, homes
where truth unleashes plague.