Saturday, 25 September 2010
The Human Condition
The human condition is not a position
I can with clear conscience commend.
If I could think of another, one much less bother,
I’d take it and tell you my friend.
Now I’ve not heard high praise, in all of my days,
for the unattractive alternative; death.
So I’ll just keep on going, still rowing and growing
and value the worth of each breath.
It may sound quite funny but it is the journey
that matters and that has no end.
It’s the path that you lead and the love that you seed
that echoes down ages will send.
(Repeat)
Friday, 21 May 2010
Friday, 2 April 2010
The Best Drug in Town
It ain’t the weed that I need
And booze just brings me down.
You can keep your coke
And all your dope
Cause I ain’t fooling around.
My hands a shaking,
My legs a quaking,
I smile when I should frown.
Love and lust,
Boom or bust,
Darling you’re the best drug in town.
You’re what I crave as I rave,
Misbehaving like a clown
But your sweet face and gentle grace
Is what keeps me hanging round.
It ain’t the weed that I need
And booze just brings me down.
You can keep your coke
And all your dope
Cause I ain’t fooling around.
My hands a shaking,
My legs a quaking,
I smile when I should frown.
Love and lust,
Boom or bust,
Darling you’re the best drug in town.
Going cold turkey, as your eyes work me
From far across the room.
I’ve got to tell you, try and sell you
My heart in this small tune.
It ain’t the weed that I need
And booze just brings me down.
You can keep your coke
And all your dope
Cause I ain’t fooling around.
My hands a shaking,
My legs a quaking,
I smile when I should frown.
Love and lust,
Boom or bust,
Darling you’re the best drug in town.
Gibbous moon
We snuck in
the still deserted park
late one night
on the way home.
Sat silent
on the dark sandy bank
staring up
at the starry stripe
of the milky way.
Wordlessly stripping off,
I remember
your beautiful
young body
glowing ghostly
in the blurry bluey
white moonlight.
Tentative feet
feeling forward into
the cool black water,
slowly softly splashing,
shushed, gasping
wading deeper.
Launching ourselves gently,
caringly breast stroking
to the deep pool middle
and embracing tenderly
treading water under
the gracious gaze
of a gibbous moon.
The copper beech
Massive, mighty shimmering dark burgundy
canopy reaching high into the bright blue sky,
the great girth of the verdigris trunk hindered
easy climbing so, ignoring the big badly
banged in rusty nails, I leapt, grabbed and
shimmied up and along a low dangling limb,
the hard way, to the crotch of the old tree
where the spreading branches formed
a comforting musky pit.
There I sat, reclining on the warm wood
between the twitching burnished leaves,
nestling carefree on the mould dusted bark,
still, silently observing life below scurry by
listening to the quiet rhythmic rustling of foliage
in a soft wind and the sure beat of my own young heart
steady, secure, high above in the copper beech.
Pablo Picasso
His life line goes where it must in primal perfection, consciously unconsidered but exact, precisely put with passion, praising, appraising, observing and informing yet stating nothing, giving freedom to choose.
Thoughtless genius, transcending Zen, mastering original artists, shaman, so particularly primitive seeing it feelingly, expressing above, below and beyond words; dumb wisdom, timeless truth, living lusty lines, bestial beauty, Pablo Picasso.
Ladhar Bheinn, my sixteenth summer
Walking in from the tarmac head of the loch past the island and narrows at Runival, ever up and down we went along the banks on a foot worn perfect path as the firth widens then closes a last time before opening, heading for the sea.
We headed for Knoydart, high rough bounds between the deeps of heaven and hell and turned the tight corner under the bulk of Carn Mairi suddenly seeing the mighty mass of Ladhar Bheinn, the mountain towering above flat sands of Barrisdale Bay, purpled stoney grey, splashed with lush green on that wet June afternoon.
Stopping at the foot of the first ridge, rising rocky at our backs, we faced out over clear blue green Loch Hourn, watching the seals below sunning themselves on the dotted islets and looking down on the rubble outlines of the old crofts of the cleared clans among the bracken, silently imagining that lost time.
So we climbed, too slow, the hard way up the sharp edge, clambering until our path led up onto a grassy coll, scree tumbling down from the rim into the corrie below, the three peaks of the steep sided mount soaring before us, verdigris vertigo cliffs falling down to the nameless silver lochin below.
Reached the triple crown late and eyes drawn skyward by a reeling raven’s loud caws and saw a looming storm away over the misty small isles beyond the Sound of Sleat rapidly rolling our way, wet, dark and menacing.
Mist engulfed us, wrapping the escarpment making us decide to stay put, out of harm’s way above the crags as squalls pushed us around. In the low lee of the parapet we cut turf and moss building a platform for our too small tent and made a low drystane horseshoe dyke to protect our canvas against the wild west wind.
We crowded into our bivouac as summer night fell, soaked heads to sweaty toes, as the wind ripped at the fabric, whistling through the guy lines securing our flapping full sky scraping shelter, sporadically sleeping, until the grim gale stilled.
Silence woke me and emerging from the crammed cover I scrambled up the damp mossy rocks again to the crest as the sun’s golden glow silhouetted far Ben More, its bright rays touching my squinting face, warming my skin.
I filled my fresh lungs with pure Atlantic air on that magnificent morning, the dawning of my own sixteenth summer, oddly serene, standing alone at one with all existence, a wiser survivor so secure on the lofty summit of Ladhar Bheinn.
(NB; Ladhar Bheinn is pronounced something like Laarven in English.)
On Joppa Rocks
Down between stripes of stiff strata,
tilted by time and tectonics, serrated sides
sawing skywards, sit small stranded stretches
of still glassy seawater.
Picking our way care free among
the strewn seaweed matted boulders,
care full on young old-plimsolled feet,
prising up a slippery stone, a rapid flip
suddenly sunning the watery underworld
and us searching for movement, probing,
squinting eyes peeled for that perfect partan.
The long narrow strip pools,
slowly trickling back to the source,
rich briny furrows in the encrusted ridges
hiding an accidental harvest.
Amongst the half shells, coarse sand and
interesting rusty lumps; a slow stretching
starfish, darting translucent shrimplets,
a too small green crab twitching, pincers poised,
as we scrambled over the rough rock rows,
tender calf’s brushing cheese grater barnacles.
Playfully poking glistening anemone globs,
pressing huge old snails stickily together,
laughing interlopers amid spitting beds of
bearded mussels as the sun arced over us
in the patchy blue sky, gulls reeling, lost in time,
an endless summer down on Joppa rocks.
Transdimensional Hyper Being
A transdimensional hyper being,
for that is what she is,
exists on many planes at once,
in a state of bliss.
Sometimes she's on Venus
other times it's Mars,
or crossing interstellar space,
the span between the stars.
She invented rhythm,
is responsible for rhyme,
says she thought up music
back in the mists of time.
On earth she looks quite human,
or at least, so she tries,
but you see something hiding
there, behind her eyes.
She's an eternal entity,
the wisdom that she's got
grasps all life's secrets-
what is, and what is not.
A transcendental dancer,
whirling as she goes,
the stuff of many planets
in between her toes.
She observes us all with care,
making mental notes,
now and then she’ll burble
a beautiful Buddhist quote.
The point of her existence
she doesn't know or care,
she's just always been here
and, of course, also there.
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