#poem #poetry #amwriting #beehive #bradford beehivepoets digest compilation

Don't mind me...

 I'm just putting some poems together for my trip to the Beehive tonight....

.....

Love Letters to a Cousin

Let memory speak of time without stars

bathed in the sunlight of gardens remembered.

Beauty still remains, amid the brassy dream

unsentimental as this skyline picked by cranes.

Everywhere is elsewhere here, to be copied

or mocked, left to blacken or rot or built

gelded beyond the height of gilded arcades.

But wait. Do I come to pander or to praise

those conservations, to the pretensions of this town.

Or to find in refraction of refracted memory

my genuine affection, for a place I rather like.

I want to say slag heap.

I want to say concrete.

I want to ridicule the chavs on bikes

and the dreary view on grey Sunday mornings

as the 16a rounds Armley gaol

and all the world tumbles down the dog-shit slope

to the pebble-dash and double-glazed.

But that is not me. Nor does it reflect how I feel.

Or why I began in memory of that garden on the Selby Road:

looking out, through the hedge, to fields.

.....

Kitsch

Love, it is love, once again love.
Sorry I didn't mean... if you're busy
I was just saying how frustrating it is
to read. The moon blazes fire, burns
in yearning majesty of love's lost return:
in turning, burns, the returning still.

She cuts the conversation. Lights a cigarette
with Vesta, The phosphor somehow suits
her nature. Everything she says
is fashionable beyond the sake of comfort
and nowhere, to her disappointment, can be found
a single reference in the bible, to a single shit.

Sorry I didn't mean... I was just saying
its frustrating if you're busy, to read;
just saying. And why, why hang your hat 
upon reflection, the burning face returning 
of what we thought was loved and lost.
Once again love, love, it is love.

Does what we see in the mirror shit?
Shit, shit, shit, there I said it.
You said I wouldn't.
Said I couldn't.
Shit, shit, shit, there it is again,
wearing a crucifix, with crossed fingers.
You said I shouldn't.
Again.

Again we apologise, again and again:
for those excursions of understanding
again.

I'm sorry, but it is a serious point
made smooth:
why make love when it mostly shit
and madness;
in glaring reflection of a shitless future.

Sorry I didn't mean... if you're busy
I was just saying how frustrating it is
to read. Again. I didn't mean sorry...
how frustrating if you're busy. I say
I was just reading again, I say sorry
again, again, sorry again.

Again, I didn't mean sorry: again.

....

C'est une Pipe

La feu c'est margin des lune entente
concord la lune un feu.
Mes tout; sept pas; mon encore
la lune.
Que quelle fille, appel mon coeur,
c'est feu, je jure la lune.
Avec mon coeur, mon feu, mon lune:
mon coeur, pas lune, mon feu.

....

Letters Found
You, like Sylvia, only knew two words,
always and never: which you carried caged
like linnets of a stolen song.

How nice to take a knife to you,
your watermarks, your curling hand,
to read afresh your streaming thought
before that well ran dry.

Or so I thought; and thought now,
appreciating these love letters
to one hundred petty brightnesses:
as luminant as rain.

....

Between Stations

intemperate frigid loved unlovely love
grasping with the sweating palms
sweating hard in chasing time
in reaching for the well kept wine
we crush the glass before we drink

what line may bind the larking flite
or ken to understand in song
scrolled litany unwind of those done wrong
by us - or others unappeased
frigid loved unlovely does not love nor care

unlovely let all be mud toed between the parts
of childhood we lived and forgot
when debonair was but gauche glanced
consequential free from following event
without the tape nor starting gun

or there beneath the arching shadow
bedded with untraveled tramp
unloved frozen by chilled fingers
of illuminate always lightened night
we may cling still unless we push

we might wake surprised to found
what yesterday blocked unkind
within us has within ourself out drunk
not applied the metaphor or smile
illiterate of all we fear to feel of dust

....

for the workshop....

Eden's Loss

Where yesterday, they lay unbound within
that pit of joy: skipping pleasure's eye shone:
processing o'er the virgin stars of night.
Uncleaved, the fruit, no cloven star reveals
but split between it's equal parts, seen
in critical comprehension; what perfect
in created form: forms patterns accidental.
As the bud yields to the bee, craving the light
it opens fully in it's natural innocence: so they,
there, entangled of their duty reach for that
reflected: reflected in the surging of the heart.
And thus they fall in generation. In expression;
in the turning of the lamp-light low, they dim
to shine with brighter swelling fire; but fall:
not from grace, or lost desire, or shame.
Just the ticking hands of time. And the space
which hourly grows, where before it pruned
in constant of those dreams not present.
When they might, in the sin of adultery, reflect
upon their lesser self: and that they did not know

...

starts at 8 for 8.30, at the Beehive on Westgate... do come along....