Posts

New in June 2026: The Clown, Hidden.

The Clown If I must inhabit Venus’ happy court I would be her jester, Make her joys my sport. I’d threaten all the lovebirds To turn them into pie, Arraign the silly butterflies For thinking they could fly. “Nymph? She’s just a peasant, Her swain is just a churl.” I’d mock the moonstruck gallant And his maudlin girl. With sweet acerbic jibing I’d follow them all day. Though they’d just say I’m teasing I’d ease my tears away. They’d be too busy loving To give much mind to me And I’d forget in laughter The pain they never see. Hidden Set your mind on things above… For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3 My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord My death an echo of his sundered grave My song is tuning to a distant chord My soul, dawn stirring in a twilit wood In longing for his light is all my love My life is hidden in God with Christ my Lord Hear now the chirrup of a waking bird While light is yet to creep through clouds above My song is tuning to a dist...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 10: Just Messing About

Bottom, A New Orpheus, The Clown Bottom I hope that others look on me as deep, Witty, perhaps, serene and debonair: But I’m known by the company I keep And I’ve got you behind me everywhere. Others I try to approach with dignity To give a good impression to their mind: I turn to go, another view of me Presents – yours is the face I leave behind. My softest paper shows consideration, I faithfully transport you to the loo: Why must you interrupt my conversation And air what hardly passes for your view? Prelates and professors, potentates, Please don’t look down on me for my poor bottom: Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and William Gates, And Taylor Swift - you all know you’ve got ‘em. Almighty Lord, that has made all things well, You know the secrets that we try to hide. You know it’s bad for us when egos swell: You gave us bottoms to bring down our pride. A New Orpheus The Muse is a flighty bird and proud Who stays half hidden in her high cloud, Will not flit down and talk to those Who would be ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 9: Relating

SoundofManyWaters Collection 9: Relating Furies and Gorgons, Bone of my Bone, Semaphore, Bearing the Image     Furies and Gorgons   Blusterless Agamemnon The wind gone from your sails Buy a fair breeze With your daughter’s blood And get a hurricane With talons in it.   Medusa rises from the abyss With serpents rising from her hair Each slithering shape gazing With the face of the oppressed: Despised daughters, belittled Sisters, grieving mothers, Abandoned widows and Rejected lovers.   Quick, Perseus! Raise your mirror before their stares Strike home into your stony heart.     Semaphore   Somewhere we lost the knowing of each other We made an image, stuck it on a shelf. Now you are left so many lies to smother And I must labour on to lose myself.   Now mountains rise between us, gaunt and high And no-one knows what we are waiting for. Who will be first to scale them,...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 8: Sonnets

Collection 8: Sonnets Meditation on the body of Christ,  Bearing the Image,  Michelangelo,  Dark Lady Meditation on the body of Christ Lord, at your feet I fall, that holy place where lepers and harlots lie, and parents plead life for a dying child; so, grasping grace, I touch your wounded feet, and tell my need. Your arms reach out to hold my grief and shame, to lift me up, to heal and set me free; Your broken hands roll back the stone of blame to bring new life, and now take hold of me. But how shall I look up into your face, Your eyes consuming with their unmade light? For love unbounded burns me in your gaze And I must die to find life in your sight. Your feet, your hands, your shining face, these three Are mercy, power and endless love to me. Bearing the image Still without memory, still unaware Of any possibility of future, there Sprawls Adam in his golden thoughtlessness Upon the green of Eden, where he is Contemplated. While he continues whole Completeness only in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 7: Following

SoundofManyWaters Collection 7: Following A Rose Garden, Mielahti, Not another poem about writing poems, On Beauty A Rose Garden So I planted the garden for you. To guard it, a hedge of sweet myrtle, Within it, lily of the valley, rue and rose To keep me scented of you till you come. All through it of course there must flow A stream of limpid water, Running and singing and shining From a broken jar of clay. And come at last you do – but why must you Ignore my gate, break down my hedge And trample my flowers? Why could you not linger  on the lawn I laid for you, but must go straight ahead (my hedge again!), leaving only an irresistible scent, and the  faint echo of a call? So I followed in your steps, that led After many days to a high rugged hill And a torrent that thundered With the sound of many waters. Far away and small my shattered garden. It seemed you had a wider field to walk, Immersing me into a deeper stream. And at the summit, you at last, Plainly waiting for me. “L...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 6: Birds

Collection 6: Birds Flight of birds, Dawn Chorus, Towards Bigger Poems Flight of Birds Meaning and remeaning with the seasons, This is their art. They follow The Sun swelling in the East, The grub swelling in the ooze. They celebrate in vast carnival Wind, star, storm and bird-wing And the expense of themselves. They plan nothing: bird-blood beats in them: "We are and we are Yours." But this thin line of words thrown out Along the sky-tide of Your will, Does it hold anything of You? Yet because I must learn You I shall outfly these birds. Dawn Chorus Is it more of a song if it freely Sings with the death of darkness As the unrestrained Spring pours Through the throats of these tiny birds? Or are there deeper human notes That ring with our Autumn griefs And Winter silences, until They alchemise into worship? At one end of my guitar There is a chest for hoarding Golden chords, until they swell With summer harmonies. At the darkest heart of the world There is a man, all wounds, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Collection 5: Coming to the Cross

  Coming to the Cross • Always, Remembrance, Silence, Pearl beyond price, The Conspiracy Always Always this fading, always this flowering The night failing, the dawn fleeing The winter keening for the coming spring Always this fleeting, always this falling The seed hungering for the harvest and The harvest felled that other lives may grow Always this ailing, always this healing The breathing in and the breath let go Stripped out and given to the wild airs Always this breaking, always this birthing Behind us birth is gasping, grave gaping Ahead to feed the all-corroding soil Till at this crux, where North, South, East and West Converge in nails upon the embodied All A death is died that is the death of death And at His tomb a breath is breathed that Spits out stone and Life Himself steps out  To walk all ways with us and Spring is  Always Remembrance So from your high cross did you see afar in the armour, swords,  the boots and horses, the tramp of armies off to ano...
Post a Comment
Read more