Advent Poems
Written daily in the build-up to Christmas
by Neil Wood
Advent Episode
That Advent pageant, that dumb show
Has packed its sorry bags and taken its last bow.
The fetid urgency, the torrid force,
Those urgent waves have ceased their troubling tumbles
and have pitched us to the very brink of time itself
before we have even caught a breath.
One desperate gulp of air and we are almost half way
Into its murky depths again.
Buy me a present, yes and give me a kiss.
But for God's sake save me from all of this.
Empyrean Fields
The pulsing heart within the shielded breast,
Still bears a thousand stripes and wounds.
That thin gauze, no protection
Against the thorny, mean spirited,
Small mindedness,
of the mentally enfeebled other.
Who from an anxiously envious position
Claw at the glory of the world.
Who, wrapped within the tiny
Confines of a mind folded prison
Of their own making.
Who, trapped constricted
and horribly knotted in an authoritarian
bind of diminishing returns.
Whose only light against all their tight shut doors
Is a hate scorched arrow
Searing the gloom.
Providing a brief glance of the
Empyrean fields beyond their grasp
Happy New Year
I look out the window across the snow covered car park.
The drab lives of the passers by
Their drab clothes
The drabness of the day.
Does not depress me.
This is my life
My golden life.
This very breath that I inhale is vital to my survival
it may be my last. Life is lost in such moments.
This moment may be the very crest of a new awareness
This breath, this very pulse in the blood, may reveal
More than a nervous rhythm an urgent exhortation to
Live now! Live now! Live now!
Live each exultant breath
Each tingling moment
Each hair follicled razor sharpened point of contact
And connection to the whole.
Each thought a dance to capture the glory of the gull's cry
The leaf's fall
The sun's rise
The scent of expectation
The rise of hope. Happy New Year.
New Year Old Year
The hopeless tide of time driven by
Those shifting waves are
Known by the God who loves you.
Who is the God you know.
6.30 a.m. December 26th 2008 and
I am still rattling along the rails
of the train that left the station
That was driven by the power of boiling water
Circa 1953.
That world is lost to me now.
Around the bend
at the end
Of the garden, is the turning
that we missed.
The dry pool of summer,
the shrivelled rose bud of winter
That pot bellied stove world of 40 years ago,
Stretched through time
seems like nothing,
a moment in the memory,
a drop in the ocean of time.
It seems we are alone.
Taunted and mocked by what we do not and cannot know.
Yet we are bound by the breath we breathe
Bound to the silent earth
And yet
Rat Raced
My whiskers are twitching
My dust sensitive nose flickers
Sensitively flexing,
Nervous, anxious fretful.
On your marks 7 days to, get set, GO!
Go on the 'B' of bang said Linford
AND pick up all of the pieces.
No No No!
ALL the pieces FOOL
For the day of the LORD'S
Birth is upon us!
And we know the date is wrong
And we know that it was once a Pagan festival
And we know that what we have now
is SO different.
A big fat guy in a red suit
with a ghoulish grin which passes for a smile
and tinsel and flashing lights and a jewel bedecked tree
and the slaughtered bird and the fatted calf
and
God help us?
Rock and Rave
Let us have some festive fun
We should, we should !
I'll clap my hands
you dance a jig
Put on some music
and start to live.
You shift that chair
I'll roll up the rug.
Go Knock for the neighbours
And give them a hug
We'll shout out the window
and wave to the street
Sing happy new year
and move to the beat
Of a Christmas rhythm
Oh yeah yeah yeah!
We'll have a pint
Or maybe two
And then we'll kick it
just me and you.
We'll rock and rave
To defy the grave
and never yawn
or heed the dawn
And our tireless feet,
On the endless street of time
Will dance.
Dance until the sense is senseless
Dance until the day is broken
Dance until time
Itself becomes a shattered thing.
Trailing in our glorious wake.
Shot Through
I feel cream crackered.
Completely knackered
Shot through
De-juiced
And reduced
To a rag.
I feel wrung out
Strung out and
Left out
On a ledge
Preci- pissed.
And You!
You burn me up
Wrap and rip
And tear me up.
Feel me up upset me up and
Squeeze me dry
Until I'm left to lie
Just to save face.
I jump ship to
Avoid the shit
That hits
the fan
I'm widgered
Wangered
Shattered
slandered
Badgered
Blattered
And Battered
into a senseless oblivion.
Yeah shot through.
The Ache of Desire
The ache of desire floods the membranes,
Thickens the blood and tingles at
The fleshes edge,
Each follicle epidermally aflame.
I'm reaching to be touched,
My body arches, yearning
soul deep to the shadows of
my entire being.
And you my love
Awaken the deepest longing
And ease away the tear drenched sighs
Knitting together the torn shreds of my heart.
Pulling together the scattered remnants of
Who I truly am.
I am not yet born.
The Bricklayer
The prison walls we build are built with
Tools, all ready to hand.
They rush to our self defeating aid,
The door swings open of itself
on well oiled, bat winged joints
to lead to that tired worn path of familiar
thorns and briars that we know so well.
It snags on a shirt sleeve
Unpicks the lining of that jacket
That, once suited us so well.
It picks and trips the feet we place so carefully.
It pricks and rips at our best thoughts
And dirties our heart kissed desires and dreams
How narrow are the drab runnels
Down which our thoughts run.
No breath of wind,
No glint of light,
No broad horizon here. Just the cluttered remnants
And detritus of a shambled stumbling past.
Built brick upon brick upon brick
Upon brick upon brick.
The Great Bird
A great bird gathered at the water's edge
Its peacock feathers jostle in the light
A fragmented kaleidoscopic panoply of colour.
Its rich fingers touch the sky
Its clawing feet drawing from the earth
Grace and power and majesty.
Peerless, resplendent, golden and glowing,
Its mighty wings beat the silent air
as the Jaw dropped passers by
gawp inanely,
Stunned as the great bird
dips its cruel beak to drink.
Sycophantically the human's
with benighted eyes avert their gaze
an act of grovelling genuflection.
And then the jewelled bird opens up its throat
To sing and golden notes pour forth
Of every pitch and register that further
Stuns the spellbound crowd that has gathered.
And as it sang it bent its swan like dragon- neck
To tear off the head of a passing child
And swallow it Gannet like.
The helpless mother runs to her headless child
And beats the floor in powerless rage.
Before mounting the fearsomely perfect beast
Which with tireless raking beats of its wings
Lifts itself to the skies and cutting through the clouds
bears off the mother to unknown realms.
The Snake
The snake within;
Slithering like Eden under divine reproach.
Grovelling like a whipped dog,
Snarling and slobbering and sobbing
Like a broken child,
Teetering on the knife blades edge of faith,
Flicks out its forked tongue.
Its glass eye observes the bubbling turmoil
With cold detachment before
Shucking off the recoiled heart.
The eye turned inward
Aloof, disdainful and snakishly other
Still commands, it still commands,
With the lash and the cat and the prison cell
The bewigged judge and his
Knotted sheaf of lies.
The snake eye and its
Reptilian brother forbids
the human touch
forbids it!