Anthology 2 - Lady In Mauve
Poetry by Neil Wood
Lady in Mauve
Oct 2013
On a painting by Lyonel Feininger 1922
The taut tight figure bestrides with peerless
Grace the prisoned city beyond.
Her haunted, driven face is gaunt,
And pinched and bitingly modern.
Her shattering-shifting form is
Prismatically held and
Balanced precariously on a slender vacuity.
The viewer's eye dances across and
Around the angular form.
One of her hands grasps the vacuity
The other cradles her own wedge shaped womb.
Does she carry a child?
The nun's habit hat says NO!
But the broad wide hips say YES!
There is life bursting here.
The Vine at Kinver
The Vine sits nestling behind the bridge,
white and satisfyingly rustic.
Trees lean to the windows and light
bounces off the still water, reflecting the pub
the garden and the children's swings.
And the Geese.
They roam with strange hens as friends that
cluck and shake their fleshly pink crowns as they
scavenge, mob handed, amongst the diners.
Inside the fruit machine glares incongruously
sucking coins from foolish pockets as they
stand apparently 'dududu' glazed by the flashing lights.
The 'L' shaped rooms squeeze in on the guests who
sit quietly supping Enville Ale.
We sat surrounded in a hot corner and we talked
and drank and drank and talked and listened to
The Kinks and James Brown and Ow!
We felt good.
We left past midnight meandering lamely down
Dark Lane our legs strangely adrift.
"Some-ones stretched me strings." you cried
as we floated soporifically home underneath the studded sky. The Vine at Kinver The Vine at Kinver The Vine at Kinver The Vine.
Afters
He digs a hole with bloodied hands
And torn to shreds finger ends, for her.
She fills it in insouciantly uncaring
And does not notice his trials.
She flies the flag of independence
The flag of a strength beyond measure.
She loves him deeply, expecting
All and everything for nothing.
He runs her a close second,
they dip together at the tape of a lost love.
He reels her back in on the slender thread of hope
But that weathered strand cannot hold
The weight of bitter anger and disappointment.
The sudden turning tide of hope lost
Of love betrayed.
She only hears her own song.
He sings mostly to himself.
Last Night
Feb 08
Last night in your eyes there swam
An ocean depth of time.
Ceaseless currents and swirling eddies
Flickered beneath the surface
Countless millennia stirred and shimmered
In the half light - half dark of our love.
And a hawk like hunger was veiled in
The shadows, as passion stirred the whole.
The smoky limitless pools that
Are your eyes were smouldering,
Aching to be released,
yet fearful of discovery, they danced.
I held you gazing in awe
At the beauty of your eyes
As the shifting light caught
Oh so briefly
Something so delicate
So precious
So rare.
A Kiss on the Lips whilst Loving
A kiss on the lips whilst loving
Brings with it a gut wrenching
Desire,
For completion.
​
A kiss on the lips whilst loving
Brings with it a nerve jangling
Push
To be made whole.
​
A kiss on the lips whilst loving
Is tender and soft and
Tolls on the bell
That hangs in the heart.
​
It is brutal and cruel,
And yet awakens the soul,
to love life and death
And of a pulsing
Desire
To be one.
​
A kiss on the lips whilst loving
Is breathless
and saint-like
and holy as God’s breath
on a summer’s eve.
Beware
bLate Aug 2013
My transmitters are switched on
They are heavy.
A deep and powerful vibration emanates.
I am vital. I am real.
No cardboard cut-out here!
I may appear to sleep but do
Not be fooled.
The volcanic heat of my passion remains
I am vital. I am real.
Touch me and I quiver
Cut me and I bleed.
I am a pulse of the eternal
It could not, be, otherwise.
I am large
I can appear small, docile, at peace
But do not be fooled.
A caustic heat burns within.
My gentle mask, my empathic soul
A mirror only.
I am desperate for a love that is
True and abiding so
Love me or just fuck off !
A Man Alone
A woman under a drizzle coloured sky
Walking two brutally big Alsatian dogs.
But,
with no man.
A woman living with three dogs
And two cats but, no man.
A woman with a cat, an interest in poetry,
And a wide bed with a cool spot
for those hot summer nights
and a homeopathic practice
but no man.
A man alone
A woman with a
squawking-parakeet- of- a- bird- in- a- cage,
but no man,
She feeds it talks to it prettily, tenderly
She cleans up its shit
And laughs when it bites her 'til the blood flows
But no man.
Men are all self- obsessed- sex- crazed- paedophiles.
It's obvious, obviously.
A woman with a son, an ex husband
and a lesbian lover.
But with no man.
A woman with a man she secretly hates,
With two children she loves
But without a lover, except in her
Clouded, guilt ridden dreams.
A man alone.
A man shafting three separate women
in an apartment as empty as his heart.
A man alone.
A man walking, without a dog,
Without children,
Without a woman,
Without a lover,
Without a parakeet screeching in a fucking cage.
A man naked in the trees
Beating his chest, ripping out his hair
And wailing like a broken child.
A
Man
alone.
Forgotten Refrain
What is it that will be remembered?
What is it that will remain?
Only a trace of memory
A song with a forgotten refrain.
What is it that will be cherished?
What is it that will be named?
Only the sweet caresses
Of love when we are inflamed.
And what is it that will be vaunted?
What is it that will be known?
Only a shallow echo
Of a truth buried far down below.
A truth buried deep so deeply,
A switch in the human brain,
A Knife blade cut to a different path
That has reduced us to naught but slaves.
And maybe one day we'll awaken
To that truth we have long since lost,
To a world of Peace and Freedom
Built on love and on mutual trust.
So I send out these words arising
I give of them freely to you,
So that love is released and is binding
And will free us from man-made taboos.
So the whole human race is bonded
One to each other with Love
And that Love and Light bring resolution
And will leave us in Peace evermore.
Inconceivable Blue
A blue sky,
utterly blue from dome to dome,
from pillar to post
from tree to leaf
from tall Church Spire to each
and every single grass blade.
All shining anew
Amidst the inconceivable blue.
And you said
I wanted to be rid of you
From that lowly tangled knot of feeling
From that worthless place you
Spun my words to make
Your own poisoned dart
Your own sharpened knife blade
That cuts so deep into the venous flow
From your blood red heart.
Blood of my blood
I felt you aching amidst the inconceivable blue.
I felt you fall away to that
Wicked place of self- loathing.
My words shrivelled and shrank
In the cold air, bouncing off that
Web of self deceit those taut
Strands embracing you so chokingly.
And still the inconceivable blue,
Softening to white at the dome's edge
Was mute witness to our shadowed world
our shackled exchange. Mere words amidst the inconceivable blue.
John Keats
Oh John, sweet John, whom time brushed oh so cruelly with her wings,
sending her grim friend to call you home too soon.
I see you sitting amid the corn, suffused with light and drinking wine,
plugged to the earth's deep core, both hearts conjoined.
You sing her soul with such luscious sounds,
your songs deep richness, beating out the drum of all that's true.
Oh John, sweet John whose solo flight so brightened our dark skies,
whose voice so rich and sweetly sang of all that's rich and sweet.
Whose golden sound chimed oh so briefly,
yet wrought such verse that kisses as it sings.
Here lies one whose name was writ in richest blood,
that runs from the heart, to the souls core, to God's feet,
to the very well from which He drinks.
Let Me
August 08
Let me be a point, between two other points,
On the edge of the map of your world.
Let me be a dot on your horizon.
Let me rise like the sun in the dawn of your day
Let me… please ?
Let me be a space in your mind
In which you find peace and restoration.
Let me be a fire that keeps you warm,
Let me be an indistinct sound
That echoes teasingly and tugs
At a beautiful memory in your mind.
Let me be a footstool so that your feet are never weary.
Let me sing a lullaby to ease you into sleep.
Let me be the bird that eats the crumbs
That fall beneath the bird-table that you keep.
Let me be the full stop that gives you pause,
The comma that helps you breathe
A word that spins and spirals
In your mind and makes you tingle
to the core of your being.
Let me be balm to your wounds
Let me be the calm to your storm.
Let me… Please?
The Tide
2009
The tide of my life has finally turned
The waves licking at my feet
No longer corrode and burn
But caress and soothe.
Are you my drill- hall saviour
Are you my saint- singing whore?
Are you the bitch dog that I’ve been sniffing for?
Drill into my skull
Sing your soul song’ til my tears run dry
Hold my gaze eye to eye
And fuck me fuck me fuck me
Suck me ‘til my balls run dry.
The 6.36
I was waiting, just waiting,
just waiting for the train.
The 6.36 from Rochester to London
and back again.
You know...
My father was a railwayman
he wore the cap and braid...
He once startled mother; who clutched me close
as he jumped down between the clanking carriages,
into that black mechanical hole.
And throwing levers, he shunted, shoved and
shouldered the train, single handed.
Back in the days when I was a boy
and he was my hero.
My Dad the quiet man
now quieter still.
My father was a railwayman
Great Western line and proud
The rich cream and chocolate livery...
He'd be called to midnight manglings
under the cruel steel wheels.
Out into the deathly night he'd stride
leaving my livid imagination
leaping bloodily, to gore spattered tracks,
the unspeakable horrors of twisted limbs.
Some daughter's- fathers- lurid-death,
a screaming obscenity
for my father to contain.
My father the quiet man,
now quieter still.
My father was a railwayman
of signal-boxed-pot-bellied-fires,
of tapping wires and clanging bells,
magic sounds that
conjured trains out of the air.
He'd pull stiff,tall- rachet- handled levers,
from a half moon grid, worn smooth by many feet.
and
He'd laugh, that resonant voice,
a rich baritone and though he couldn't sing,
I'd trade all of Verdi's operas
to hear him once again.
My soft strong hearted Dad
a quiet man
now quieter still.
Love and Hate.
01/02/99
I hate complexity, unless it is me that is being complex.
I hate cleverness, unless it is mine and is enigmatic.
I hate the conjuring tricks of the knowing few, Shibboleths!
I hate the smug satisfaction of the comfortable set, who fart quietly and chew
the sweltering fat of their own bollocks.
I hate you reading this YES YOU! YOU 'RE A BASTARD!
I hate the poetry that says nowt, the poetry that is wordplay, metaphorical
masturbation, poetry that obfuscates meaning, that needs a close personal
knowledge of the poet to be understood, chasing them through their own
tortuous codes of meaning up into their own arses.
I love the poetry of the greats,
of Keats and Shelley, Byron and Yeats.
I love the movement of the wind as it glides and of the waves, as they
magically lift and fall, spiralling tumbrils of welter reflecting light.
I love the Tigers stripes, and teeth that are bared, the Lions roar, the bats
dark lair.
The yellow black of the bee that stings, and that summer garden stillness and
the ease it brings.
And...
I love Music...
Seminal sounds that shiver, sounds that rip and tear the heart, sounds that
spiral us to hidden depths of feeling, sounds that call us back, back to the
hearts core, back to the amniotic fluid, back to the sea.
Magraw
Sept 30 2011
There are no more words left in this tired old head.
None.
Zero.
The flittering and skittering amongst my
dust bowl brain produces... Nothing.
Nothing but a sense of a cavernous space
and a looming obsidian darkness;
that is impenetrable and mysterious
and echoing noiselessly.
A mute inamorata is lost in the shadows
and calls me.
But only the sense of the sound wave
hovers quite insensibly. She is gone from me.
Gone.
And nothing remains.
Midnight Mudflats
And so we begin with ancient tales,
of Brythnoth,
and of war amidst the swarming now.
A slow emergence from old wounds begins
As we drew a shared life giving breath.
A deeper connection made and restored,
A loving touch and healing words conjoined
The quest for a deeper truth re-forged.
And then the silvered light of
The midnight mudflats
The torrid dark heavy with the night
And what yet may be.
Life hangs poised, pregnant
As the moon dances.
My Life
My life, is not your life sweet angel breath.
Your world of tortures and conceits,
does not belong to me.
Your head full of junk and
jive and
cluttered rooms and
pant and
bra filled floors.
That coffee stained, cigarette but-buttered-toast
of a hangover October morning, is yours.
Not mine.
Can't you recall?
My life, is not your life, Oh angel sweet as breath.
Is that, truly, who you think you are?
Can you picture nothing of what's real?
The truth is here, right?
Close, Oh so palpitiously close.
Can't you feel it?
My life not your life, Oh breath so angel sweet,
My life, not yours.
Oh My Lover
Oh my lover
Oh my love.
Let us swim the tides together,
Let us plumb the depths of all we are,
Let us splash and frolic in the waves.
But no castles in the air.
No Not that!
Oh my lover
Oh my love.
Let us rake the skies unbounded,
Let us arch our backs against the breeze,
Let us crest the wind wave, hair out flowing.
Let us tip the treetops breathlessly
But
No dog in the manger shit from the past.
No Not that!
Oh my Lover
Oh my love.
Let us crash the boundaries 'shuck and jive'
Let us drink from the lip of the cup that drips
With the honeyed dew of the manna from heaven.
Let us dance through the tiptoed night
Let us sing to the highest heavens
And to the farthest reaches of hell
So that bells may ring.
But
No petty mealy mouthed mendacity.
No. No.
Not that!
On the other Side of the Hill
On the other side of the hill
Sweeping up and sweeping down
Lay a Cleopatra beauty
And a prize beyond rubies,
A prize to me undreamt of.
On the other side of the hill
Was a love rare as Cobalt
As deep as the Ocean
As real as death
Yet waiting to be found
On the other side of the hill
Rising up, falling down
Was the terminal point of all my searching
Binding me to the Earth and the sea and the sky
Binding me to a truth that cannot lie
Binding me to a love that lay always 'til now
On the other side of the hill.
Pin Head
Aug 2013
I am not alone for the whole world is with me
As we spin on a pin head of beliefs.
We are like moths to that flame,
We gather to beat our chests and wail
In that dim light.
Like hearded sheep we bleat out
Our existential woes,
We throw our hands up to the heavens
In supplication whilst worshipping at
The Temple of an easy life, lest we be troubled, to step,
one inch from where we are.
We see not the chains that bind
Nor the tricks of the knowing few
We rest our conscience at the kitchen door.
Remember Remember
The weeks before were spent scampering and scouring
for things to burn.
Heaving with tireless limbs at loads too large.
We'd tear our hands on tyres grown thick with bramble and ivy.
We'd pant at palettes and tree stumps,
We'd half drag, half carry our booty,
Scraping knuckle and knee and bone,
Our sweating faces smeared with dirt,
Back to the fire, grown huge and unwieldy, in Noreen's
Back garden, straddling the path and reaching into the sky.
On the night,
We'd be dispatched, sister and brother, clasped arm in arm torches waving down Wavell Road
all a bubble yet cowed by the darkness.
Other fireworks strafed the skies, startling and thrilling us
As we ran from lamp to lamp sheltering in
Each pool of light, alive with wonder.
The roaring fire, once touched with flame, would lick and leap.
A primal force unleashed, the awesome hunger feeding on
Our feeble stack of sticks.
"Sandy" would whimper, nose crammed against the doorframe
As bottled rockets, bangers and tree stumped Catherine wheels,
Would rake and stream the night sky with colour.
Coned volcanoes named Vesuvius would flumpf tired plumes
Of purple into the air.
All too quickly the fire would wane, the fireworks would run out
And we'd stand forlornly round the saddened fire, gorging on
Ash-grimed potatoes, sausages and beans.
And then we'd trudge our weary way home,
Full of warmth and love and happiness,
And carrying in our naive hearts an innocence long since lost.
Turn your Face.
Turn your face towards me, so I can see the light
reflected in your face and in your eyes.
Turn your face towards me my heart sits in your hand,
turn your face towards me.
Turn your face Oh turn your face Oh turn your face to me
I need to see your eyes and hear your voice.
Turn your face and see me,
so that we may shine and grow.
Turn your face Oh turn your face and heal this dreadful chill
so deep a thousand suns can't thaw the cold.
Turn your face Oh turn your face please turn your face to me.
I'm hurting and one glance can heal my wounds.
Turn your face Oh turn your face just turn your face and smile!
The Horror
The horror of the touch,
the flesh reviles mind induce lust
and so it did.
An incurable blindness
veiled my sight
but the eyes still see
and the heart still recoils
FROM
The stubby hard texture of the bloke-like flesh
The blunt unemotional and
disconnected sexuality
The grimace of that 'come face'
This disconnection was not mine
I swear I was not joined
Though I held my heart within.
There was a construction formed
but the rub of the joints
gave rise to a sickening toxicity
A hoodwinked love
betraying all that love should be.
And the pictures and the horror will
not leave me and I hate myself therein
The Amber Colour of Your Eyes
Sonnet 3 March 06
I look into the beauty of your eyes
And see the depth and purity within,
Those amber colours dancing, causing sighs
To all who gaze upon them and then spin
Into a fantasy of love inspired,
By child-like glee of heart and rapture joined.
But then the vile black world is caught on fire
And cracks with iron feet the love that's found.
He rigs the world in shadows not in light
And then the doubts and fears like ivy bind
The tangled skein of love for which you fight
And ruptures in black bruises all you find.
To hold the love you've found close to your heart?
Or let the fear lead you towards the dark.
The Lady of the Lake
For my Guinevere
My once proud and steady heart has betrayed me.
From its settled station it has been unseated.
Its rhythmic lub dub lub dub lub dub is no more.
It leaps about wildly in my chest
Pumping fiercely then trembling violently,
Sending waves of rippling heat
And blittering bubbles of explosive connections
Cavorting and crashing and colliding.
Like an internally fired up giant sized out of control defibrillator
That sends shuddering waves shifting and flowing from
The pulsing excitement that has been engendered.
My once cool head has utterly lost its bearings
I do not and cannot hold onto
the thoughts and feelings that careen
and spin and flick and course like a tsunamic wave
thru even the darkest regions of my brain,
flooding it with light and gaiety with joy and exultation
so that I want to ululate and roar like a caged beast.
The heavy, heavy, heavy weight of loneliness
And Isolation that I have bourne so stoically and for so long
Is Gone
And the meaning of this poem I leave in your ears.
Last Night
Feb 08
Last night in your eyes there swam
An ocean depth of time.
Ceaseless currents and swirling eddies
Flickered beneath the surface
Countless millennia stirred and shimmered
In the half light - half dark of our love.
And a hawk like hunger was veiled in
The shadows, as passion stirred the whole.
The smoky limitless pools that
Are your eyes were smouldering,
Aching to be released,
yet fearful of discovery, they danced.
I held you gazing in awe
At the beauty of your eyes
As the shifting light caught
Oh so briefly
Something so delicate
So precious
So rare.