When you look away
Your eye
Whiplash.

When you open
Your gaze
Lash goes to my soul.

How, so cruel,
So balming both

The covering of
Your magnificent
Eyes

Timespace illusory

Why so deluded?

2
Time existence flow

Only now!

Only now!

It is the moon again

That mirror girl

Who shows you

What she wants to reveal

Month by month

Now and then

Onedayiwalkedthebeachatlipanoifullmoonsetoverthepromontoryanditur­nedandwalkedbackassunroseoverthemountainitisoneofthefewtimesthatn­othingasiamiknewiampartoftheuniverse

How accents
And landscapes
Merge and change

20  miles
And incomprehensible

I finite space

A scratch of toenail
Startles fever

I walk a ladder to heaven

My robe
Many coloured
Falling in shreds
From my shoulders.

Grey beard?
Grey beard?

My wisdom dissolves
In your gaze.

Up all night reading
Cold mountain poems

Lit by full moon
In clear sky

We came
Out of africa

Now we are
Coming out
Of earth.

It is what
We do-

Migrate

I shall be sleeping soon

And you
Too

So sorry to bring
This news

But I shall be sleeping soon


With you

And then one day
You are old

Glimpse a shop window
And confirm.

And suddenly you are old
With shopping bags and
Taxi driver carrying
To your door.

Bottles and ready meals
The bath too hard,
Work boots unused from the
Cobbler

And suddenly you are old
And yet not old enoght

To die.

The plunge into silence

Only a gong-

Gentle reminder
Of world beyond-

Of sound

How did the wild wheat
Survive the sheep
Shorn grass

The wild rice
Survive the
Buffalo graze?

And how did this small boy
Survive the
Dysfuntional family,
Calamitous friendship

And the obligations
Of love?

A whole bunch
Of stones

Circled round

The sun

Eternity is dark

Fleeting spark of stars

Simplicity of small lives

Snuffed inevitably-

Dark

Light

The texture of being

So fat

Barely able

To access

The restaurant

Squeezing out words

Paint tube

Picture

Hoping to see

I am dying

It is good

If I concentrate
Once more

There wil be

Nothing!

Momentary pleasures

Gone

Gone!

So hungry

Young women

So old!

So old!

How lonely am I

As lonely as that

Seagull in a blue
And empty sky

Wither, whether
Bye bye and bye

How lonely how lonely
How lonely am I

Pigeon roadkill

Crows kaw
With
Delight

Heavily courting
Pigeon ****
Puffed up green
Nodding a dance.

Hens peck and posture
Disinterest.

But so many pigeons,
Hens lie

Amongst all
Those billions
Of words...

Still knowing

Nothing...

Full moon misted,
Wisped,
Thin cloud
Fragile atmosphere.

Small lump of rock-

Why are we so
Mystified by you?

I  smell the earth
In your words

Last time

I saw you
Loaded on a van-

Not quite dead

Yet

Impatient for death.

Tell me why
Patricia.

No need.

The spilling
Mess

Of his seed.

Mad along the
High street

Washed your blood
From poor
Neglected brain

Down dismal
Drain

Youngish for your
Age

Your page burnt
By candle

Flame.

Cyril

Mind clear and
Almost singing.

But years weigh
Like gravity upon
The body.

This is it, then.
The end.

Unable to rise
From your throne-

Look death in the face
And say

Thank you for my life.

94
Clever

Dying

Advice.

Sir
Honour
Priviledge

To know you
This short time.

And your wife
91
Taking care

All else useless

The brain alive can help
Hope
Love and cry

All else useless

Yesterday
Sun up came

Today
The same

How wondrous

This sundry
Banality

How long i loved you
Let me down.

How slow the moon
To die.

If only we were dead

Together,

Then how long the moon
Can love

What a plight

To circle a planet.

New moon

I saw not the moon

She loved me never

Lumpen rock

I saw not.

The moon and how
High out of song
She shrilled-

The lying moon

And if

After the moon

Died

It said

This is it

This is sad.

No matter

The moon

Like me

Is a fool

You are not a

What is it?

You are you-

Biddy you slept
In the crook
Of my legs.

She was gone.

Who are you

Contemplating moon
On my birthday

1
Full moon
Haloed by cloud

60 years on the planet.

Who am I?

2
Tonight the clouds ride
Behind the moon.

Universe
Inverted.

3
Moonlight is sun
Pouring out,

Dimpled mirror,
Dead to light.

4
A good sleep last night

Dark and dreamless
Dark and dreamless

5
Sun shone
Directly on my face.

Do not be sad,
Moon-

This is
Grace

Squabble
Cackle
Seagulls

All morning.

Only a plethora
Of cockles.

How like us
They are

Fighting over
Plenty

I wake
Crying
And thank all the gods
(As yet unnamed)

That you may be here

Sometime
(Smiling)

Turned in the morning

Surrounded by book
And bottle

All subtly drowned
In the love
Of learning.

Li Po and Beckett
Solemnly cover my
Leanings

How lonely I am today
Tiny speck in all
Empty immensity.

How alone am I today

Hair flung heedless
Chest to pillow

I rise
Cautious to her
Breathing.

At this late stage
May I once more
Dare to dream

Of being?

The only
Not wanted
Was
Breath

All of you

My darlings

I loved

It is accretion

Not blinding light

The beauty,
Enlightenment
Comes slowly

Like a spring flower

And falls
Quickly away

To floor

Don't look at me
Accusatory

I loved to you
Knew once

And yet sent
This saggy ***
Away!

Still do love for you i

This tree
That tree

I don't know
Outside my window

Only you.

We chop and
Chain at you

Yet you grow
Each year

Bark,

Wrinkled as a
Brow

On the pipe
Perched as if

Grvity
The world

Joked

Magpie
Piebald

Spoke to crow
No grow
Go,

My waste pipe dream
Warm dawn air
Stench of violets
And spring.

You and I
Magpie

Brave in the dawn.