Anthology 4 - Questions
Poetry by Neil Wood
Come Holy Spirit
After 'Veni Creator' by Czeslaw Milosz
Come Holy Spirit and breathe on me
Not with the breath of flames
Nor with a tongue of iron
Nor yet with a threshing tool
to beat out my wickedness.
But come like a dove
Come with an open hand
Come with a healing word.
Let me hear it.
And I will bear it away
And like a brazen trumpet
Herald a new dawn.
With a pulsing heart and a
Tremulous voice, let me
Sound it to the mountain tops
And in every creek and crevice on the earth
Let the word be heard to give alms to the weary
Solace to the broken hearted
freedom for the downtrodden and enslaved
hope to the hopeless.
Or maybe not.
He Was Torn
He was torn, torn ripped and shredded.
He was blown, blown worn and scattered.
He was and he was not.
He had escaped and yet was captured
He was free yet still constrained.
He was and he was not.
Connective Tissue
When we look into ourselves what do we find?
But a crowd of clamouring voices,
a panoply of pictures, a silent wall of sound.
Is this the bedrock of memory? Where scattered fragments
whirl, searching for meaning in the dream-world landscape.
These intermittent flashes from the past,
juxtapose and jostle across the brain, too fast for words,
too brief for contact.
Perhaps our whole life lies a hairs breadth from recollection,
imprinted on flimsy dendrite threads synaptically connected.
I look out of the exam room as the May-time blossom
tumbles, taking me back to the blackened limbs of winter trees
jewelled by snow.
I gaze through memory; from the Dudley College corridor, overlooking the
zoo, stopped in my tracks by the stunning beauty.
Then somehow to the trackside and the snap of the tapes
and the spitting roar of Cradley's Heathens
2,4,6,8, who do we appreciate.
A whole cavalcade of interconnected pictures
whirl like the blossom, which pulls me back to the tired shuffle of papers,
pale imitators of the dancing bloom tumbling under the sun drenched trees.
Crowded Silence
The crowded silence rushes to fill my head.
Such heavy duty stillness
Such weight of expectation
And with it a line
The connecting thread of thought that
Binds us to a course we think is ours.
Whose life is it anyway?
Shall I choose
A roller coaster of uncertainty
Or the dull routine of service?
Safety or danger?
Life or it's mummified other?
To be or not to be
Are you vanquished by the tide of events
Or do you ride them like a surfer
Commanding the waves.?
Juxtaposition
I call out into the night
I call out into the deep mystery that surrounds us
I call out into the 99.99999% of
emptiness that makes up the impossible world
of physical reality.
What is it that we don't know and cannot see?
I call out, within hoping to connect with my own heart
The blocking mind thwarts all attempts
Its easy they say
Its love they intone
A short step to the core of all things
Outer space and inner space are of
the same coinage they say.
Well fuckin ell I say!
Open my eyes, show me the path
and I will take the steps
but hurry for the light is fading
and the end of all things encroaches.
Knife Blade
Language of the mind
Language of the soul
Who can build that royal road?
The hearts core bleeds and blood
will have blood they say, blood will have blood.
The clown dances to his own rhythm,
A rhythm too distant to be known by you
and I
But he knows, the clown knows... something.
Language of the mind
Language of the soul
Who can build that royal road?
'Why did you bring those knives from the place? Why?'
'Who'd have thought he'd have so much blood in him!'
A little water cleanses the mind
Leaves all memory and fate behind
And washes away all but the stink of death?
Which haunts me haunts me
Trails my every thought and deed
Chases me down dark nightmare alleyways
Dead-ending all thought. All Hope.
Turn away turn away! But to where?
Why carry the blades at all?
Who heals those wounds?
Who?
Who can share the burden?
Who is brave enough?
Dread fate
Dead deeds
Buried need all
Surface so unkindly
A wrecking ball of mad desire.
Language of the mind
Language of the soul
Who can know that royal road?
Limits
Aug 2013
I do not have the words to express their limitation.
Will music, action, base sound or vibrations
Crack the code?
The imperceptible is thus beyond us
And so
Why try?
The grape, clouds the limiting edge
And shades the edge of consciousness
The mind searches the soul cries out
And only shadows remain.
Dawn has not yet come
Dawn has not yet come,
The sky is black
The traffic drones
The machine age
not finished
Is at our finger tips, at- at -at our finger tips and out of our
reach.
With one touch of that finger
the soul is released
with an intake of breath,
A careful step,
We are a heartbeat away from the discovery of
The dawn that will not come.
With the flick of a switch we think we
Command the world
But this is a deception.
That dawn has not yet come
Deathsguises
I turned towards the darkness
down a road that seemed brightly lit.
But as I walked, I was being shadowed
by the soft penumbra of its sepia spread.
It encroached in the garden as I toiled, working the soil.
Gliding silently across the shining grass,
sliding imperceptibly 'til
It was dragging at my limbs and
wrapping steely tendrils round my heart.
I was blind and ignorant of what I had begun to carry
and though the burden seemed light it
Sapped my strength and tore at the tired
constructions of my shadow life.
Until barely breathing;
a marionette pulled by invisible strings
my eyes saw for the first time
the growing weight, heavy as death
and black as Hades inside me.
I fought with tigerish strength as poisonous
flumes from the guttering darkness choked me.
It wailed and spumed and screeched
a horrid death
as it was shucked from me.
Its dragon claws pulled like the bloodiest
teeth from the foulest mouth, festering with
suppurating wounds that weeped
as they sang as they were healed.
Now I walk towards the light and
Though nakedly raw and aching for the safety of known fears
aching for the soft safe shadows
I stand diamond bright and shining.
Though oft times wreathed in darkness,
I regain my strength as
I strive to remain true to my heart
true to what I know
true to that which I dream.
Dust and Ether
1st '15
Each and every breath of wind,
Each flurry, each gust, each tearing gale that
Rips and twists our feeble world, is different.
​
Each and every breaking wave, the crescent arc
Its tumbling foam, the sound it makes as it breaks, is different.
​
Each and every leaf on each and every tree
though similar in shape and form
like us is uniquely different one from the other.
​
Each human hair
Each winking eye
Each face, each voice and each and every tear is different.
​
Each rising thought each and every human hand
Descending and decaying into dust is different.
​
The dragonfly the bee
The scent of flowers the scent of you and me
Each glistening jewel each binding thread each breath,
each moment is a unique dot of the eternal mind of which we are part or all.
​
Each flower bud each ear of corn
Each soft bird's flight
The raven's claw
Each wailing child in the dead of night
Joins and connects us to what we truly are.
​
And what are we?
Essence of dust and ether
Formed by forces beyond our knowing
and yet within our reach. Hold fast.
Hold tight for your journey has just begun.
Evanescence
August 31st 08
I sense the ship of time's already sailed.
My eyes? Bereft of youthful vigour's dance
My heart? A bloodied place, love's course derailed
Therein the saddened hours do lie askance.
My soul a wearied skein on which to throw
Some semblance of a life, some richer vein
Some light that only lovers know
The whirling point beyond the reach of pain
Some place, some way of being, some other joy
Beyond the reach of time, beyond the fall.
Where nature's appetites are never cloyed
And passion tiptoes on the edge enthralled.
Some place where time itself is held at bay
And childlike joy greets every sweet new day.
Man at War
Jan 2007
Why?
Why write?
Why breathe? Why speak? Why look? Why Know?
To what end and for what purpose?
​
So much endlessly inane jaw aching mind numbing chatter
chatter chatter.
​
word words words words words
words WORDS!
​
They search the soul for the grain of sand that contains
Some elemental truth.
​
Yet despite the fearsome and forensic gaze of mighty brains
it cannot be seen, let alone conceived.
​
All forms of expression. All Art clutches at the dogs hind leg
that pisses on us all.
​
What truth do you seek? Whose truth? Whose purpose does
it serve? Whose reality? What is real anyhow?
​
Some glimmering notion locked in the tri-umvirate kernel of
time,
​
Some thought behind and beyond the word our only tool
lighting only a tiny spark in the vastness of the Universe.
​
Screaming and Drowning
Something screams inside,
such a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny sound.
You cannot hear it.
But I feel it.
I'm struggling desperately,
crushing blows of softly burnished steel bind me as I scream.
I am wrapped, onion- skinned, in thick duvet weight of years;
thick heavy weight of time, layered dense with many sleepings.
I am stretched back against a taut line of time
that is so unyielding, so soundproofed- hurtproofed-screamproofed.
And yet... I hear it still.
It calls me.
"I am here, it says, inside,staying quietly powerful.
I am strong and true and fighting,
yet needy like a child, struggling 'gainst the wrappings,
MUMMIFIED!"
"I am large like a planet, tiny like an ant,
loud like tornadoes, quiet like a mouse.
I am still, yet running desperately, hot yet cold,
I can bite like a tiger, I'm ferociously bold.
I could swim the Pacific ocean, so mighty mighty wide,
A lazy little sidestroke all the way.
I'd cruise the Hawaiian islands, taking in the sun,
before pushing on to Salinas, Monteray.
I span the globe a giant, I gaze out to the stars,
Reaching, hands outstretched and arms outwide.
and all the time I'm sitting, watching passing cars
wondering how much longer I can hide.
Silence
Silence as a punishment ?
A voiceless head? Is that some wicked notion of the devil?
Or a dream devoutly to be wished.
No tortuous questions,
No aching thirstiness.
For I am desert dry.
A dustbowl of unmet need. A core
Unchallenged untapped and uncorked.
Bubbling or Festering? Or
Like old wine getting better with age?
Ha! Dare dare dare, I fucking dare you to
Come out of hiding.
The giant in the quiet man squashed down to pint size
The Genie in the bottle
The quiet voice in the storm of self- doubt.
Can you hear? Will you be?
Ties and Lies
Ties and lies and the deceitful human heart,
Interloper into our rational world.
We dare not, dare not, dare not, not be rational.
We spare not spare not spare not the murderous heart
Inky black and rotten to the core.
Seat of the primal screaming terror child within
Born in sin
Needing to be watched
Guarded against
Held in check
Imprisoned!
The dagger mind spurred on by faith and
The word of God pins and pokes and cuts into submission
The guilt ridden, irreducible heart.
Which beats still murmuring quietly, in the shadows. You must pray for the forgiveness of your sinful heart
For unbounded and unchecked it would be ruinous.
Unbridled it would run amok we would become
Avaricious lustful greedy deceitful and deceiving.
It would poison all human endeavour
Despoil our noble aspirations
Turn to base desire all our hopes and dreams.
Do you think?
Soundless Whisper
July 2nd 07
Arriving and leaving, two rose- bush thorns
That prick and tear my heart.
Leave and someone and something is left behind
a familiar smile, a frown.
Tired thoughts from the tired shreds of a weary life.
How can they be left?
Words, hang in the mind
Mirroring and echoing past hurts.
And yet what are these words?
These sounds in the air,
These strange shapes on the page
That play so with our hearts and minds.
Conjuring torment.
Arrive with hope
Arrive with the hope of being greeted
Arrive to find another empty room that
Fills with the hurts and scars that I carry
That stretch to fill the time they're given.
I sit beneath the welcoming blue
The sun warms my heart
The trees whisper a greeting
The wind caresses my hair.
I am met.
Oh that the breeze could capture the words
Of hurt I utter and carry them away in the mouth of the wind
To become another soundless whisper.
What is There?
October 13th 09
What is there that is left to be said,
With you on the heights
Over the withering sea?
What is it that holds your gaze?
That fixes your feet?
That glues you to the core?
Heaven
Was the womb.
That glutinous sea of stars
Our fall from grace.
And you pore over ancient texts
In Sanskrit, Hebrew, Latin, Greek...
Vying for some perfect sense of a truth
That does not and has not ever existed.
Seek the comfort of loving arms
Of approving eyes
And of familiar voices.
All else is arrogance and folly
The Bag Man
Who will sign my form?
I must complete all the boxes!
I must keep within the lines
I must not spill over at all.
I must pay attention when the bag man speaks
I must I must I must follow.
I must also speak in soft soft tones
And my words must fit the standardly
Expected rhythm and metre.
And the content on which my words must sit
Must be regular and not too wild or broken.
And it must be recognisably understandably sensible
No wild or whirling words.
It must fit within what's known.
There's a willow sprite that sits on my shoulder.
He speaks! I hear I listen I am aware. For he is here.
All shining gold with a tongue of fire.
The shape of all matter is thus
Listen, listen, listen. Is that an echo?
'You will hear me. I will be heard.'
In the jungle heat and the rabbit hole moment
he speaks true.
The Smell of the Rose the Stink of Death
27/12/07
What I think, when and how I think
Is a mystery beyond measure,
Beyond thought or the dull tool of words
Even beyond the reach of scientific method.
We are drenched in language, swamped.
Troughing like pigs fed on the same filth
And yet a rose may grow
And fill the air with a heavenly fragrance
Whilst being rooted in shit.
And so the world turns and spins
Locked in self perpetuating and tortured beliefs
Spun from Ancient scripts
written by well meaning hands and minds
yet locked in the mire of language.
Zealots of every shade and hue
Decrying the other brother.
'Believe what I believe or die!'
No roses here
Nor the sweet smell of heaven
Just death and gore and the
Stench of ignorance.
The Fearsome Eye
Sonnet 4 March 06
At times methinks the sun too brightly shines
And scorches up the vapours of my soul
Till all my thoughts are buried and confined
To icy realms where wintry breezes blow.
The fearsome eye from which no breathe can hide
And every spiteful act in fullness glares
So all the Gods may see and gently chide
Till in the balance we must pay the fare.
And so to shady shores I steer my ship?
Or loose the canons let the battle roar?
Upon such tiny threads a life can trip
And fall from heaven's crest down to the floor.
To feed on life's rich banquet or be ate?
The fearsome eye scorns all such worn debate.
The Flicker of an Eyelid
August 2011
It's a joy life.
Isn't it?
An unadulterated joy.
Like honey drips of molten suuculence
dropped into the mouth whilst
lying prostrate on some sultry shore.
Yes it is. And you're
Fanned by some Nubian beauty
who has fallen desperately in love with you.
And you simply don't deserve it but
She/ He looks down with huge soft brown adoring eyes,
attentive to the flicker of an eyelid.
Soft now shhh now they say
The susserating shore, palm fringed
and golden, soothes the sickening jar of the city
where the money keeps rolling in.
Portfolio this investment bond that.
A Porsche and a Ferrari on the
drive of the country house
that overlooks the swan flecked lake.
The walled garden and the
labyrinth and this years vintage from the grapes
grown on the Estate.
mmmmmmm...
The Grit Beneath Your Shoe
2009
I cannot recall my birth
Those blinking transformational moments.
That early slim shouldered
Squelching plunge into the light.
That journey from being One
to join the many
all sucking greedily at the precious air.
That early fall from Grace
From all powerful divinity
Commanding the very stars of heaven.
To the helpless squalor
Between a mother's thighs.
Shat out to be mopped and flopped
Into the arms and onto the ready or not so ready breast.
Into what rough and ready circumstance
Chance may bestow.
And then?
What then, tiny blob of life?
Speck! Drop! Shard!
Grit beneath the world's shoe?
Or fledgling king?
The Hidden Tremor
04/09/11
Knowledge beyond words sits on my shoulder
It whispers but so quietly, that I cannot hear.
And yet I sense its presence. It is a
Vacuum packed hermetically sealed
Cornucopia world that has been silenced, it is a realm
that is beyond sense and senses
beyond the brains recall... beyond.
The tight shut door is ajar for the tiniest moment, something;
sensitive to the touch of light, to the merest breath of wind
To a millisecond of thought... hovers. Not fearfully but
Expectantly, a deep pool dipping down and back to the dawn of time.
And yet words slowly gather up the detritus
Scoop up the dregs of sense and drop it here on this page.
Knowledge of ALL is just beyond our grasp
It is there tantalisingly close and yet lost in
that vastness of space, lost
In that as yet undiscovered country.
The Light Beyond
Beat back the sight of death in every mirrors eye
I can't face the door nor the light beyond
I can't bear the rhythm of the rolling train
Can't bear the ticking of the clock
The beating of my heart
The rising sun, nor the crescent moon
Don't ask me to dance.
I won't dance
I won't dance.
Beat back the fever, mop that sweated brow
You don't have a future, never did no how.
I'll close the door turn out the light
No point in going home tonight.
Can't bear the ticking of the clock
The beating of my heart
The rising sun nor the crescent moon
Don't ask me to dance
I won't dance
I won't dance.
Beat back the heart seal up the senses,
Embrace the deadly shade
Don't ask me to dance
I won't dance
I won't dance.
The Paper and The Page
(Something)
Something, somewhere, the deep quiet waters of the soul
Begin to stir,
Like an autumnal leaf tugged by the breeze,
Like a pan about to simmer,
Like a knot about to unravel,
Like a boil about to burst.
What will it be?
What will it become?
What shape?
What sound?
What form?
Maybe this is it?
Those questions,
A faltering start.
A leap of faith that falls and folds in upon itself,
And then dies.
I pick up the pen and words form of themselves,
They bubble, popping to the surface,
Falling through the net,
Slipping from somewhere,
Trying to be something.
Is this it?
The Shape You Make
2012
The shape you make; in space, on the earth.
The shadow of your footstep as your footstep falls.
Your momentary handprint
on the post office counter.
The waves you make
As you point an accusative finger,
At the end of your feeble arms.
The breath you take.
All evidence of existence?
Make a laughing noise in your mouth
Plaster the shape of a smile on your face
Only the kid himself can win this race.
​The Roaring
There's a roaring inside my head
That leaps unbidden in quiet unguarded moments
To screaming pitch.
I hear it..... Like 'Noises off' from the 'Onstage action'
It is unreleased and not given voice
The quaking vibrational hum rumbles, burns
Rips and scalds and must lay waste to ....something?
It cannot be nor come to any good,
I am locked inside this Alien space.
And no one can hear my screams
No one can know what they mean
No one not one not even me..
And yet it roars.
The child within? Locked away these 50 years.
The life unlived still chasing the jailer's keys,
My gayness my lady-shaving- side,
My evil 'Id' no longer willing to abide,
My alter ego straining at his chains
My lost and tortured soul still striving for the mains
Plug me in plug me in before it is too late
For death is final so some say with St Peter at the gate
I'd probably fuckin deck 'im ....
Seasonally Effected
June 2014
Though all these poets have their lines well-wrought
Yet nature hangs by threads the meaning plain
So we won't hear or glimpse the truth of aught
For meaning is but jaundiced by the brain.
​
And though we strive to stick the sense by heat
Of passion, dripping thru each word imbued
This quickly cools, the driving passions beat
And in the telling all our sense is fooled.
​
So where lies truth? Do we but joust in vain?
Can any sense be gleaned or meaning found
Or is the reach of words beyond their frame
And all our efforts fall on fallow ground.
​
And yet we're here to try our hands once more
To look from hands to hands to hear applause?
​
The Weight Of Words
Blackwall Hotel Sedlescombe
Nov 07
If I could capture every golden thought
That dances through to tantalize my brain,
The weight of words would crush my soul to naught
Compress the sense to some small lost refrain.
​
A memory of how things ought to be?
Some precious time that's now beyond recall
When love and joy and peace enraptured all
And words themselves could set the spirit free.
​
Not tie it to the earth so gagged and bound
We can't look up to see the azure sky
Nor capture any light nor make a sound
That may enable human souls to fly.
​
The words we have confine, confound, and trap
Our minds, the surgeon and the knife enwrapped.
The Whirling Gate
The whirling gate of consciousness is grinningly insane
With one harlequined suited juggler
Of the teeming heaving brain, attendant.
And the tic tic toc of the ticking of the clock
Beats on
​
The winding cloth of life's thin thread is choking me so tight
The juggler has my jugular and is fixed to end the fight
And the tic tic toc of the ticking of the clock
Beats on
​
The very breath of life is fumed with death
As the darkening shadows crawl
It creeps imperceptibly onward
And holds me in its thrall
And the beating of the wings of time is roaring in my head
and I look within without and my heart is filled with dread
and then pale ghosts that haunt that realm of shadows beyond sight
gape wide their jaws their alien jaws of drooling hideous might
and swallow me swallow me swallow me
in one swift and callous bite.
​