Today's just a day
That's not Valentine.
No roses, no wine.
Today's just a day
I still want to say
I'm glad that you're mine.
Today's just a day
That's not Valentine.

Here as I sit and number pretty jewels,
the colours small and shining as they stand
arrayed or strewn, in lines as though unplanned
and re-repeating words of other fools
anew, to show my more pedestrian mind
reminders that I still can think anew,
just on a whim I look across to you
and in your eyes and on your page I find
eternity, infinity on earth,
the rainbow stretched to where the planet ends
the thunderstorms themselves your willing friends,
the rains that drown the land to bring its birth...
my petty counters fade: your rain transforms,
and so I ask to share your thunderstorms.

So many years have passed since first you sought
the lands beyond the edges of the sky,
so many moons reflected in your eye,
(familiar newness, fear of leaving port),
since first you sought, and failed, and learned to fall,
(first hope, then cynicism, silent dread,
the countless stars, still counting overhead
the seconds to your final voyage of all...)
  and last, in glory gold and red around
  your greatest search, your final quest to know!
  yet... ashes drift, the embers cease to glow,
  and darkened life in frozen death is drowned;
and ashes on the swell are seen no more.
The silence surges. **Error 404.

With mind in neutral on the train today
I thought about a poem that I'd seen
ten years, four thousand miles, a life away
inside a cheap religious magazine.
The rhymes were forced, the metre was a sham,
the metaphors far-fetched and rather trite,
the feeling shallow-told, yet here I am
remembering the words again tonight.
    I wrote another poem, as a kid:
    another paper bought it for a prize.
    Ten thousand pairs of eyes saw what I did.
    I wonder if, from all those pairs of eyes,
still, somewhere on this planet, I might find
some reader with my poem in their mind.

Dear Sir: This application form,
from one potential employee,
will tell you how I should perform.
I have a first-class BSc,
ten years of writing ANSI C,
some Java; Perl with DBI;
and tendencies to wander free
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I know perhaps it's not the norm
to mention this on one's CV.
I wonder if you'd just transform
the job I'm asking for, to be
not writing code, but poetry.
Do ask your boss. It's worth a try.
He'd sing, himself, when he was three,
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

I'd stay till ten beneath a warm
duvet, and then I'd climb a tree,
my face upheld towards the storm,
or paddle barefoot in the sea.
Perhaps a friend comes round for tea.
Perhaps among the corn we'd lie
in silent solidarity
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

Sir, I enclose an S.A.E.
I wonder if you might reply
and leave your desk to run with me,
and gaze, all wordless, at the sky.

And I have nothing else to do again
But walk these halls and wish I wasn't here,
But picking berries in a country lane.
A shadow is my face, the dust my brain,
My voice is but an echo in your ear.
And I have nothing else to do again
But counting every pace to keep me sane.
Dead as I am, I've nothing else to fear.
But, picking berries in a country lane;
Within me lives the spectre of a pain,
The ache of endless summer, yesteryear,
And I have nothing else to do again
But live in memory without my chain
And walk an aimless autumn Cambridgeshire...
But picking berries in a country lane.

Each universe must reach its long refrain.
A moment all my chains must disappear
And I'll have nothing else to do again
But picking berries in a country lane.

My inside's on the out, the day I die,
Though (here and now) my inside's on the in.
Spread out like spirit butter on the sky,
the sunrise flaunts its colours in my eye
like all I'm not, sequestered here in sin.
My inside's on the out, the day I die,
yet here the world's outside and I am I,
divided from the cosmos by my skin.
Spread out like spirit butter on the sky
the clouds reflect my soul, the lights on high
are macrocosms matching what's within;
My inside's on the out. The day I die
is creeping slowly closer. By and by
will freedom of my captive self begin,
spread out like spirit butter on the sky.
And separated out, I still may sigh,
The waiting's brief, the barrier is thin;
My inside's on the out, the day I die,
Spread out like spirit butter on the sky.