POETRY
Poetry by Neil Wood
The Rat’s Nose Twitches
N R Wood | Oct 09
All action is inaction and has
An equal and opposite reaction.
Like the tail of a dog
Disappearing from the scene at
A point where no one had made a point.
Making the whole thing
pretty pointless.
And pity was thin
Like a gaunt stranger with slit- like eyes.
Two knife cuts in a dark alley,
Where fear lurks and
The rat’s nose twitches.
​
A Dancing Song
Neil Roger Wood | 11 Sept
A dancing song with a heavy beat
trickling down to your dancing feet.
To sing and dance and kiss the sun
and end the day with a hot crossed bun !
Could those lines be very much worse?
I think 'Poets?' who write this kind of verse
Should be outlawed flayed and then soundly thrashed
So that their bones shiver then crash
leaving them tired on the edge of their lives
The versemakers cosmogrifrygenocide ...
They should be put on toast with tartar sauce
and then with all haste and residual force
an end should be put to all of their species
they should be forced to eat their own slimy faeces !
And if this doesn't seem to stop the rot
they should be gagged and bound and then finally shot.
A Flock of Birds
Neil R Wood | 11 Aug
A flock of birds skit and flit fitfully across the greying sky
A mere handful.
Darting and dancing and mourning the disappearing blue.
Impending gloom creeps into every pore
into every microbe.
Suddenly they make one particular skipping shift
and they are gone.
The clouds gather frowningly
the whole sky knit into one brow of sorrow.
Does Gaia weep as we weep?
Do her wounds seep as ours seep?
Does she storm as we storm?
Or is this another anthropomorphic delusion?
We distort the world through a human lens
we can do no other.
The fixer fixed
The gazing eye sunk in its own socket seeing
all or naught.
Or too much or too little.
We are all blind through these all seeing eyes.
What do you see Mother?
Bank Holiday Morrisons
Neil R Wood | 26 Aug 2011
Rag tag and battered bobtail !
What a gay menagerie in a Bank Holiday Morrisons
Along the aisle was
A hugely forearmed-tattooed father
with desperate daughters crying and looking up adoringly saying
'Daddy daddy this is what I want for my
birthday' whilst struggling to hold,
so it could be seen, a nightmarish yellow cake faced cake.
And peripherally attached a sullen one armed sallow faced mother.
She seemed to stare and scowl accusingly ahead.
As if it was the worlds fault that she had lost her arm
prompting me to say in my head.
'It's not my fault you lost your arm luv'
or at least the arm up to the stubby- elbow- end,
with a worm like piece of flesh dangling.
Not that I was noticing, you notice.
It was bank holiday scramble with squalling kids
and parents with raggy arsed jeans
and garden shear haircuts and broken teeth and beer guts.
'I'm sure Italians don't dress like this'
Do they?
'Alright Jim?'
'Yeah mate what about it? Haw haw !'
There were at least three bleached blondes dressed in black
bustily bursting out of too tight tops
All jiggerly bobberly!
Not that I was looking mind you !
There is a huge difference between
noticing and looking. You notice?
And the gap toothed check out girl
with thinning hair and ghost like pale blue eyes
direct from the set a Zombie Face Eater 3 was a topping filler.
And me with my appetite gorged to the gunnels
Ran quickly to the exit with a barely contained scream.
Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah
Neil R Wood | Aug 2011
Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah
I spin the world on my finger tips,
I flip it like a coin,
I balance it on forefinger and thumb
and peruse it casually,
as if it were an unexpected speck
of matter that has appeared on my
glorious form.
I float it like a mote in sunlight
dancing there for my pleasure for my diversion.
I flick it away like an unwanted fat meat fly
shitty little thing!
Compendious and huge am I
a towering form reaching out to the deepest
parts of the vastness of all matter.
I am all things and all things are me.
How could it possibly be otherwise?
Goose Down Pillows
Neil R Wood
Your hands are up to their elbows
in blood and gore.
As were my own.
The entrails and viscera and stomach linings and
spits and gobs of the carcasses
of a thousand fleshy beings, is lain at our feet.
Each one of these beings with a family of its own.
Sucking at the teat
Meeting a glance with a loving glance.
Nestling snuggling nurturing.
We are knee deep in a bloody flood
of death that feeds us.
The flesh that's torn? A jacket, a pair of shoes, a sofa!
And stuffed with the miracle that is a feather?
Goose Down pillows. How dare we!
What a piece of work is man,
claiming to maime humanely.
Such sophistry.
Meat is murder
And that's the truth.
He Was and He Was Not
Neil R Wood
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.
Shrinkage
Neil R Wood
Shrink yourself down to the hindermost part
Clutter up your way with Do’s and don’ts
and destructive self -doubt.
Shrink shrink shrink and slink away.
Comfort yourself with naught
But the shadows of all you could be.
Feed the hungry all- consuming heart on scraps
Shrink it keep it quiet keep it lonely and in the dark
Keep it distant so that the wailing is
Just a distant roar
A quiet reminder of all you could be.
A shoulder shrug of a quiet deathly resignation.
It’s only life ! It’s only this moment and yes yes
This moment is all that we have.
Silence
Neil R Wood
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.
Who will but this wonderful morning?
Terror in a Quiet Room
Neil R Wood
I sit in the quiet room
and listen to the ticking of the clock
beating away the seconds of my heart
tick tock tick tock.
Such a quietly heavy sound.
Quiet as the grave that beckons
A death knell in each heartbeat
Each beat a microdot of the whole.
Suspend me from those Tarpian Heights
string out my entrails on the butchers block.
Pin me by my fingers to a wall of stone
beat me with a flagelette right to the bone
You could kill me in a thousand ways
but spare me please
from,
The tick tick tocking
the tick tock ticking
the tick tock tick tock ticking of the clock.
The Darkening
Neil R Wood | Sept 2011
This town, all cramped ambition and
Low key thuggery, bustles belligerently.
I am choked.
Spiritless.
And defeated.
A mirror and a sponge.
The pulse of winter is in the trees
And hanging from their boughs is that stern teacher
Inky black and bat like and waiting
To administer another harsh and unremitting lesson.
When will the spark of life return ?
A light a light to glimmer in this darkness that is
Surrounding and crowding and driving me in and down.
Stubborn resistance is all I am left with
And a will, wavering and flitting like a spent
Autumn leaf in the wind.
The Hidden Tremor
Neil R Wood | Sept 2011
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 Storm
Neil R Wood
To stay to stay to stay! To bind myself to the mast
No matter how wild the wind.
To hold steady in the lashing rain to withstand the storm.
The buffeted bark on and in which I sail,
Its sleek lines besmirched by a thousand trips
Still cuts the cresting wave, still rises and falls
To the beat of my heart.
Still deeply desires in tooth and claw all that should be mine.
But the wind has dropped and
Turns to thwart me
I am stalled without chart compass nor any guide,
My work torn hands betray me.
I must stay stay stay .
Bind myself to the mast
To the lashing rain
To the storm.
The Velvet Glove and the Skewered Heart
Neil R Wood
A tray of part made thoughts
constructed in another realm
cocooned and wrapped in ill conceived delights
delights not me.
The velvet glove and the skewered heart of familiar comforts,
is a shattering shard of light that scorches as it shears.
So much pain and hurt from so close a source
so close to this searching soul of man
Make mine a double, anaesthetise the wound.
Make mine a bed of roses, a vision
beyond perception beyond proper things
beyond the razor’s edge
Still yet beyond my reach.
Times Cruel Deceit
Neil R Wood
The day has run the night unto the dawn
Who sits atop the hills awash with grief.
Her lover like a thief has pricked with thorns
Their new found love and so she weeps.
The fragile heart with tears so thickly shed
With double weight enshrouds the clouds with grey
And so each one deceives each two and threads
Times cruel deceit lost in the lovers play.
Raw nature has the world so cruelly joined
Enwrapped enmeshed and trapped beyond all power
The human mind cannot untie what’s bound
And in its thrall we dance our ragged hours.
Till sobering day has settled all our hearts
‘til night creeps in and then the dance restarts.
To Rise Again Like the Tide
Neil R Wood | Sept 2008
The lick of flame
From the torching sun
The liquid moon with
its dance of light.
This is the cut of time, as
We fall,
To rise again
Like the tide.
The touch of silk and
The perfumed rose
The sibilant swell
as the waters rise
The tongue of life
The cruel words lash.
And we fall,
To rise again
Like the tide.
The dancing thought
And its dying breath
The pulsing core of
Our beating heart
this slender thread
‘tween our rise and fall.
As we fall,
To rise again
Like the tide.
The villain’s bray
The braggart’s stance
The Vicar’s pious
Pointed dance
The bitter taste
Of a traitor’s kiss
The wounded heart
Still seeking bliss
As we fall,
To rise again
Like the tide.