From time to time a poem

The Owl, by Joan Crate

When our baby was just a few days old,
earth-grounded, screaming, his cranberry legs pitching,
stomach an oven of fire and stone

we took him for a drive. Wheels unwound the knot
of his new flesh. I stroked a feathery cheek
and watched as his fists loosened the world of sleep.

We parked at the bird sanctuary, eased him into a stroller
and walked under moonlight and branches,
stars like cooled tears. Then
an owl
ripped out of midnight, swooped down—
I grabbed my baby, clutched him to me.

You just laughed, said a bird couldn’t snatch
a human child, talked of proportionate weights and wingspan,
your hand hooking my shoulder.

So I didn’t tell you that owls are spirits of the unhappy dead.
Thirsty for rivers of life, another shot of mortality,
desperate refugees they strike, reaching

for that invisible cord that connects
the great blue egg of the universe
to him, to you
to me

Something I wrote a couple of months ago... And found very recently with very little remembrance of having written it.
A bit dark,

"What a fucked up world we live in
It makes me switch from laughing to crying
Financial Terrorism with the Conmen living high
Morality Poisoned with the Poor living low

The law doesn’t stop the worst
The law doesn’t protect the best
The worst work within the law
The best work with their own law

A slave obeys, a man chooses..
Where’s our choice? Where is even the question of your own freedom?
Do you really think this life that we share is what is right and just?
You are a slave of finance-
Tyranny of a subtler degree
You are a slave of education-
Hypnotism without consent

The change does not start or end
The change is now
You are the taboo
You are the awesome and terrifying- “I am”

By trying to remain the same- You stagnate
Holding onto who you are, what the world “is”
How can you see the lovely image of life if you’re gripping it so hard?
How can you be Now if you’re only paying attention to the past and fatal future?

Has the Hypothetical of what if killed us?
Rather than accepting financial and moral terrorism
I fight.
CAN YOU SCREW THE MONEY?
Ask the country to save itself
Pay for itself
All these numbers are flying over.

What is the price of a bag of shit?
How would you value it?
The price of life?
How would you value it?
We have an amazing ability to create more and less value? We value…
All this life is constantly transforming, always moving from one point of life to another!



Ruined "

The Silver Moon

The silver moon is set;
The Pleiades are gone;
Half the long night is spent, and yet
I lie alone.

-Sappho

I am a Jedi
A virtuous knight
I stand in the gap
Between darkness and light
A voice of comfort
To those who have need
And of caution to those
Who are evil in deed
A sword always ready
A pool, calm and still
I am all, I am nothing
I am Force, I am will
A shield and a balance
A servant to all
I am Jedi and One
I will stand 'til I fall.

-Jason Wilkins

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools, singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white,
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

--Sara Teasdale

Golden Gate

Tidy up
And leave the lock
To turn against it all

Return flight
You spend the night
A porter holds the door

The six-lane roar
A sign implores:
"THERE IS HOPE
MAKE THE CALL"

The Golden Gate opens,
As hopeless
We fall.


For my friend Olivia .

There is light
As there is dark
There is the bat
As lives the lark
Each with their horror
Each with their charm
Every moonrise a wonder
As each sunrise alarm
In the mystery of balance
Dwells the spirit of bliss
In the Force lay the oneness
That opens to this.

-Jason Wilkins

Something I wrote today on the train back to England...

23/01/14

I saw a tree in the shape of a chicken.
Looking closer upon said tree
I found that it was not the tree
that had caught my eye
but rather the green mistletoe
upon the main trunk of the tree
and its two large boughs
that had made it look so…
chicken-like.

Looking closer still
I found that there were several
other branches I had not taken account of.
The more I looked,
the less a chicken I saw.

Perhaps it was from my stopped train
in the country-side looking out
over the fields that shone
under the sunlight that I saw the ‘chicken’
for where do chicken’s usually abide?
On farms nearby the fields?
Perhaps I would not have seen
the chicken without the sky
fighting the earth for dominance
of colour or without my passing glance
before returning my eyes to the sight…

So what does this mean?
I see chickens in trees?
I see trees in chickens?
Could I extrapolate
deep and spiritual meaning
out of this event?
There is no chictree without the treeken?
The mind enjoys its games
of hide and seek
and pretending…

Like ‘now’… Am I trying to write a poem? A sermon? A script? A libretto? Is there any meaning to this? Is this beauty when I roam my mind onto the letters of a screen without effort? I had no rhyme nor purpose to writing. Or… did I unknowingly write with reason to come to this ever changing ever changing point? Just as you now are reading to reach this.
One.

Word? Reading to reach the end? Reaching to read the end? How much reason and choice is there in what you do?

So? What does this mean?
I see chickens in trees?
I see trees in chickens?
Should I extrapolate
deep and spiritual meaning
out of this event?
That there is no chictree without the treeken?
That the mind enjoys its games
of hide and seek
and pretending?

Probably not my dear sirs and ladies.

It’s a tree.
It reminded me of a chicken.

It's been raining.

Silver

Silver sheet slides silent
Shadow of the drummed-out rain
Spider-creeping, to touch tall trees
And drape the dewy winter's web

Silent fell the sky, at once
The rumbling, rolling waves
Now crash some other blue-black shoreline
Far distant, out past all horizons

And here keep lookout, cabined
In our little portholed patch
Wet and wept and empty

Glassed the grass and gray flood-drains
A fast last glint of day
Reflects, reacts, refracts

On tops of bins and flower pots,
Every pool a prism.

And if I still remain
Lost to this empty sea
A sea without return of wave
No foaming rush of release
I sink deeper still
Into the blackness
Of sandy tombs
Far beneath where life roams
And I hold my breath
And then release it
Letting the sea fill my lungs
And struggle for only a moment
And then float to the air
But now without the need to breathe.

Winter Blue

These winter nights are darkness
Under skies of frostbit black, rolled back;
Stars shimmer out to nothing
Through quick-lost ghosts and vapour trails;
Evaporate in evening
Vacant aeon holding all that's left as one:

Those clear blue eyes are shining
Delicate as dim-remembered daybreak;
Slim elegance of kindness
Bow-bent forms which sway and softly settle;
Under one pure colour flying,
Sailing, sinking in the still encircling oceans.

From the Agamemnon


We learn nothing save through suffering,
The pain of wisdom falls drop by drop upon the heart in sleep
Against our will comes wisdom,
The Grace of the Gods is forced on us.

~Aeschylus

Picture from
http://merlkir.deviantart.com/art/Battle-of-Troy-38399862

Translation by Wescli

The Shell

Cultivate an emptiness
Hollow out the heart
Scoop the messy substance
Leave only the shell.

Sea-sounds' slow reverberation
Air pressure and modulation

Ping and resonate when knocked
Crack and smash when hit
Collapse with every heartbeat
Every smile a split.

Sculpture

The idea which keeps me up at night
Formed from darkness, unseen feeling pressed
Against myself, to seek for clarity
To push and press and rend and crack
With rusting tools expose every slim curve
And line and hair and unseen detail dreamt.

The sculpture is open to me, more open
Than any canvas. It is for me to measure
Touch and probe and check and that is why I hesitate;
One slip, one wayward hammer blow
Could shatter all that I expose, and reduce
The slender marble form to scattered rubble.

The sculpture smiles with knowing eyes
She sees my nervous heart and knows it better
Than perhaps I ever will. But still
We spend those twilit hours locked
In mutual exploration, chisel twisting
Through gentle peals of metal meeting rock.

One day the sculpture will grow tired
Of sitting in this dusty room, her legs
When fully carved from the blank stone
Will send her out to find another sculptor,
Perhaps another novice to begin again
Another patient loving excavation.

Until then I try to make myself forget,
And fix on just these cherished sleepless
Hours of silent joyful conversation.

Up

Green giants couch a cage
Perfect prison pressed shut by thick air
Glowing footprints lead away, but
We cannot go
Blind and blank and blinking

We breathe
And then,
Up.

Up past ancient enemies
Moss-hearted, thick and furred
Up through a garden of talons and claws
Relief with every perfect stretching wingbeat
We climb, and climb.

The sky is open here
And past the clouds the sun is always out
We gaze down on emerald forests
Deserts, mountains, oceans.

In the silent grey of morning
I watched the mist surround
Where rain had once been falling
New puddles circled round
I grew to love reflections
I learned to crave the cold
For, long ago she wandered
The sun that shone so bold
Frozen here for ages
In ice encrusted fields
Loneliness there sheltered
From all the pain it yields
Numb and left alone
I finally grew tired
Surrendered to the sadness
And all that it inspired
So mourning for the sun
I set out for the stars
To seek another out
That might return to Mars
An atmosphere of wonder
Vast oceans filled with love
The lush green grasses flowing
Past earthen memories of
The days we lived here happy
The dreams we gave to light
The pleasant wish of lovers
That whispered in the night
And now the world has turned
The sun does crest the hill
The dry air fills with moisture
The basins slow do fill
I wait for perfumed grasses
For ocean sound to play
I smile anticipating
The waves that soon will sway
I close my eyes and listen
For her voice to fill my ears
And know that I will lay there
Though it take many years
I found my peace in knowing
Our city yet remains
Beneath the crust of wanting
Beyond the longing plains…

PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS

Among the later dinosaurs
Though not the largest, strongest,
PACHYCEPHALOSAURUS had
The name that was the longest.

Yet he had more than syllables,
As you may well suppose.
He had great knobs upon his cheeks
And spikes upon his nose.

Ten inches thick, atop his head,
A bump of bone projected.
By this his brain, though hardly worth
Protecting, was protected.

No claw or tooth, no tree that fell
Upon his head kerwhacky,
Could crack or crease or jar or scar
That stony part of Paky.

And so he nibbled plants in peace
And lived untroubled days.
Sometimes, in fact, as Paky proved,
To be a bonehead pays.

~ Richard Armour


I might be too old to have a favorite dinosaur.. but this one is it and I found the poem when I was about 23 or so.

In the Temple the knight kept his guard,
though this task was very hard.
He could hear the voices from the deep,
like the songs of a funeral dream.

The sirens cast their net with pride,
trying to seduce the noble knight;
there he kept to the painted walls,
never letting his voice be stalled.

Over time there was a toll
on the knights eternal soul.
He dallied with the temptations long,
listening to the evil song.

Yet there he stood without a care
in the dark where no one dared,
keeping long to the vigil's call,
the knight was not seduced to fall.

The Temple is lit over long
with the fire of the song,
the song that issues through the night
to the souls that never die.

Sages

Those dim candle-lit chambers
Within ourselves, secluded
Where the old sages sit

Ringed in darkness, meditating
They speak without words
Know without needing to see

You led me to another room
Where, gazing at the dancing flame
In silent thought I found myself.

Shadow

In my dreams we’re always alone
Hands touch, escape
Curl into shadow,
Bolt and run, and run forever
Slipped from every scene together

Back behind the world
The corners of abandoned lots and
Ghost town alleyways

I chased you to the end of the garden
Dew on our bare feet
And we stood there
Facing each other

At six paces
Morning sun not over the hedgerow
Smoke in our breath
Our hands were empty

Sometimes I wonder
When or how we died
It’s gone, and I’m glad.

In my dreams we’re always alone
Lost, unafraid
Stretched long in sunlight;
I will carry you with me
Wherever I go.