I watched you wrangling those sensations turning your heart upside out, inside down And dipped in ink kissed the page I heard your words fall articulate fictions collected spelling out the world filtered through your eyes…
I sat, awe-struck at those flippant phrasings pouring from your pen Truest lies, the lying truths splattered accurate clinging to the pages I believed the textures you carved in open air the spoken honey of your prose a world seen through dark eyes…
All gone and gone time laughing at us It’s all forgotten time mocking us all for nothing like rain at sea Those sparkling lines those beauties bound all forgotten like rain at sea like rain at sea…
[2013]
Thanks for reading. I have no memory of writing this one but I quite like a couple of the lines so thought I’d share.
A hyper-sensitivity of feeling your art connects across the senses The roughness of ancient bark beneath gentle fingertips A kiss from rock-pool water warm against bare ankles
A double exposure a murmuration it’s poetry, the sensuality the sheer never timid beauty lensed so gracefully with such assurance and dexterity
The texture, a waking daydream a cloak of fog, shaft of sunlight A cinematic freeze-frame marked by absence the distance or proximity of pain and recovery
Point and click, your dark-room trick it’s as if you have control over the mountains the birds, the tides or consummate authorship of the nuance you convey
A solo figure in vast expanse an aloneness I recognise searching but serene Lost in the careful creation of an endless mythology loudly reverberates in me
The slow creep of new tissue like quietly vanishing tattoos it’s at your back and haunches as your work builds and soars so far from that place expressive in its woozy warmth
I hear the touch, witness the aroma I exist in awe and quiet wonder A world scatters its knitted beauty a murmuration Little charcoal sketches across watercolour paper
The spine is a map a breadcrumb trail we trace with our fingers but we can’t go back ephemeral and observable only in reflection or a photograph
Dusk tides, an evening deer a crumbling barn, eiderdown snow A swimsuit girl, the Northern Lights a neon sign, a broken rainbow midnight phone booth, stitches in skin untethered and inspirationally free
Your photography is a place I love to visit when I can It’s pure poetry you pen with the light, with your lens A lasting comfort, you translate the message I can’t help but take;
It’s impossible impossible not to love the beauty of this world…
[2021]
Thanks for reading.
An ode to the exceptional work of one of my favourite photographers; Margaret Durow.
The ocean calms me envelopes me supports me when I need to sail Powerfully, it won’t hesitate to remind me of my place or comfort me when I fail
Its waves sing along in time mirroring my mood or challenging me to improve We laugh in the shallows or toil through the depths almost always perfectly in step
Every day is beautiful a work of heart and trying…
The muse of my life; my happiness and though your face isn’t peering out from every poem Sometimes, we are artists making makes us happy in each other’s company we’re free
Sometimes, we’re salty Sometimes, we don’t say all we need to say, straight away but it flows out in the end and we’re back on course again
This life we made together our voyage into the future You my love, you are the sea Please never leave Raise your loving waters and swaddle them around me
Every day is beautiful a work of heart and trying to be my very best for you…
Take me to the hidden lake let us wander through the valleys of your heart Let us revel in the splendour of all that rests within Accumulations, it’s what we are everything we’ve felt and seen
Let us swim in the hidden lake in that secret world deep at the core of you Make it rain, bring forth the sun We’ll watch the waters flow across your canvas into the sea, into reality
When the soul flows through and out of you…
How long I’ve wondered where this thing springs from How long I’ve yearned to learn what is the source that feeds your ocean How long I’ve ached to understand where creativity is born
Is it the gifting light of some divinity or weird wiring in the brain A prophet with a prayer to share something deep to celebrate A seer into the fabric of what is with raw sensitivity, purest empathy or a jester writing their own joke book
When the soul flows through and out of you…
The unique way you see things how you intuit and interpret painting the ephemeral The haunting way your voice speaks of the rich duality as it carries the tune of living
Don’t despair, the lake is always there some days, the level low some days, only a trickle flow Some days, the dam spills over some days, the trek into the mountains takes a little longer
We’ll always return with something new there’s nothing more beautiful there’s nothing more true
Some dusks, they take too much and of men, I am duty-bound to be loyal, to provide… There should be a shelter I can create with my hands so when the clouds revert to water then she will have some warmth
But I am a coward, sometimes I am a snake, sometimes a jackal and a vulture I dream to take it back undo my failed moments so my ‘always’ could be true
Men look at me and smile some simply see I am like them drawn to flames and to destruction other men see me as a joke not as a man should be armed to art and to creation she seems to like my contradictions
But I am uninspired, sometimes I am a beast, sometimes an animal and a killer I long to take it back undo those bleak mistakes so my ‘always’ could be true
I have been a knife and I have slit before so my ‘always’ will never be true…
A taste of fame microscopic a little glow from my tiny flame And sure enough lost and troubled souls began to circle hungry for warmth
They think they know you from the lies you sold the way you mixed the paint those clumsily broad brush strokes…
A flash of talent minuscule in its dimmish burst Surely then, they shuffle closer neglected, in need of light hoping for a glimmer of your humanness or the residual heat from a fire you once described
Convinced they know you without asking any questions assuming everything from a scene you span so many years ago
Folding out your wings and fastening them to the breeze you stand firm upon the window sill Instinctively, you turn from me I feel the coolness of the air and know that soon you’ll be nothing but a poem on some damp page I’ll tuck away my eyes finally wiped dry
What is that holy terror beating at the heart of you? You said you long to bind your essence to the history of the world but I wonder, will you find your truth or some brittle hedonism And what scares you most is thinking that your story may go unheard
In your pursuit of freedom you’ve chained yourself to so many things to pretty bottles, departing trains torn pages, leaky pens smiling faces with haunted eyes or words of seduction so wantonly exchanging flesh for a clever rhyme or two
You sing as if you are a bird but I know you as a kite All these things, they are your string and in your endless daydream you can bare to wield no knife I know I cannot own you your art, it consumes you furiously chasing some distant dream even you can’t see
But jumping from the sill the wind plots you a new course Maybe soon, you’ll find those answers be they peace or understanding perhaps some deeper seam the bond between all things or just to give a label to that holy terror beating forever at the heart of you
Be sure to call me one day in the lonesome future if you feel the hunger has abated and you can bare to finally belong…
Always, I want to see their place of work I sit and wonder of the artist’s desk what trinkets, what tools they choose
Always, I picture in my mind the artist’s desk and what pin-tacked postcards what scribbled notes of inspiration may surround it
Is it by a bright window or in the bowels of a basement Do they toil below a craning lamp or by dim candle flicker do they have a desk at all or just a strong knee
Always, filled with nosiness I love to imagine the artist’s desk the magic place where they give birth to what always was…
I want you to be unruly write hard and clear about tangled emotion those who don’t make me suspicious I know there are other things like genocide and selfish parking and the bruises received behind closed doors
I want to know people who are walking antennas sensitive and gifted nerves nakedly exposed flailing in the fallout
I was raised to keep all hidden I was raised to deny all feeling “suppress, suppress deflect with humour” on the freezing football fields “stand in goal and we’ll aim at your head”
Thank you, fuck you the North East of England I found a way to let it out I’d have hurt myself or someone else if not for finding the page and letting it all out fuck you, thank you the North East of England
I want to meet people who are lightning rods for strangeness and experience hearts on tear-stained sleeves sopping wet with hard-won wisdom articulate and true
Move me make me feel something there is no shame and we are not ashamed…
Floating through the house all curtains open lit up against the night let the people see what you want them to
Curating the moments, so carefully trucks pass lost walkers returning from the fields catch glimpses see slivers of the character you created
A sensual, lost, bright mind the answer, the home to any lost soul…
Close-up on your pale face painted, pained, so perfectly the precise nature of your openness a second thought and then it’s revised a second thought and something not quite right; vanishes you vanished it
The scene is so moodily affected controlled and filtered so accurately gloomy in brooding midnight An ambiguous painting our eyes can’t help but dwell upon
Seeing all we want to see seeing nothing real
A beautiful, longing, artistic mind a destiny, a home to any lost soul…
Do you remember do you recall who you were before you were the imagined answer before you were the suggested home for all those lost souls…
Freedom is… A blank page, ruled with margins for scribbled after-thoughts Ink in the fountain pen and some new idea to spill A canvas, with pallet oiled and brushes ready A quiet room, an acoustic guitar in tune A sunrise, derelict buildings, wide lens and film ready in the camera A garden, soil turned and green fingers Wet sand, a new love and a sharp stick A science textbook, a biro and a teenage smirk
Freedom is… Truths to tell, a close friend with a sympathetic ear White folded card, marker pens, glue, an impending birthday A concrete wall, spray can in hand, something to say A ream of material, needle, thread and buttons An audience, a microphone, a knowing smile A piano, no music written but itchy fingers A blog post and a theme as free as freedom itself Freedom is your life, and whatever story you choose to write with it
The Lighthouse 