CLOUDS

clouds are fatty

clouds are lean

clouds get mouthy

sometimes grin

rolling across answers

like mealy-mouthed transfers

clouds lie cunning

clouds lay low

clouds know secrets

often sins

when shit reveals sacred

when silence grows greater

clouds are honest

clouds are thieves

clouds live den-like

sometimes leave

miraculous letters

when whiskered is fail-safe

clouds are trusted

clouds stay banned

clouds are silent

underhand

in penance for nothing

for no ruined landscape

clouds are bone-free

clouds of the wand

clouds hallelujiah

undermined

what’s happening this time

when we refused the sign

5.25.21 nyc

PHOTO: Tim Tapling Reprise : It's not unusual : Meols : Wirral : December 2023.

 

THE NEW

 

How grateful I am

For what I have lost

Things

That every sad stranger

Who knew bitter beauty

In the time of their lives

And the life of their time

Refuse to console me

 

What comfort I get

From what I have lost

Gravity

Light weight of memory

Breadcrumbs now blown

Halts a bitter return

To the time of my life closer to empathy

 

A free-range emotion

An organic heart

Clarity

Lies just out of my reach

Far but not futile

The antidote to speed

Toward the time of my life

Defuse melancholy

 

These moments of pleasure

Rip through the pain

This triumph of measure

For all things gained

Are mine for the taking

Mine to be strained into

Clear water basins

And lead me to ransom again and again                       

nyc 6.25.15

Photo:

Homemade elderberries

Are the best kind

Trust the elders who challenge the worried

Who question the juice of manufactured berries

Squashed like bugs

And tagged unrelenting

We can hardly lose to the ignorant

Coughs are the rugged cries of the resistance

Temperatures rise inflated by insistence

This is not a time for blind obedience

This is a time for ripened romance

The lure of the anarchist

Not so frightening in a handshake

Among the resistance

This is the time for brave berry picking

Noting the ripe and the bruised from living

Gathering for the inevitable 

The common great listening

It will come slowly free of insistence

When the hearts and the minds 

Coalesce in an earthquake

The planet gives up its right to tsunami

When the people wake up

When they are armed with

The love of themselves who speak with disarming

Of peace and enclosure

Respect and the disposal of war

Plant an elderberry or ten

Become human again.

Stop coughing. Note the scars

Bring nothing but change.

Pick elderberries and be brave again.

Be ready for the strange.

Go forth and bleed. Again and again.

It’s a star we possess in the end.

3.13.20

Photo: nyc UES 12.2.24

 

 DRUNK

I don’t sleep until I’ve drunk

all the wine to sea level

until I’ve come down

from the mountain 

alighted on a limb

I don’t sleep easily when

I refuse to give in 

secret lives make me hunger

for rare is the time

a story is realized

without the wine

when it comes, this sleep

this battle I’ve waged

silence reacts like

a dream uncaged

sober, I wake to what

the muse demands

sober, I write while

the cats eye the day

we miss you, they whine

in the creeping night

your drunken unburdening

your nail-biting ride

to a story you’ve

unearthed at the bottom of a glass 

while we sleep in the daylight

and you are free at last

a paw needs licking

a head needs kissing

the rule book’s in place

and as she ages

they give her the floor

write a story, they say

until you can’t anymore

we’ll carry on leaping in

late night intent

while you carry on making

your way to repent

tomorrow is always a fickle thing

bravado or Zen is challenging

the secret of life

are cows not so far 

from the writer

we trust or we don’t anymore

it’s the path we’d rather

a sober collective or

a bloody bother

I don’t sleep until 

I contact the courier

I don’t sleep until 

I drink the blood of the warrior

 

1.31.18 nyc

PHOTO: Tim Tapling Walkin' the humans : Macdona Drive : West Kirby : Wirral : 20:Nov:2024.

 

AMONG US

what was less then

what was lost

what was found in

in our round table

was mostly future

among the cats and the wine

what we failed was the nurture

we traveled away

from the canvas the studio

we huddled too close

to the answer the obvious

I shed you

I did

for my own self worth

Sacrificed you for me

Still undecided

You touched the bottle

a reprimand to my flight

I understood

too late

too angry to fight

Amsterdam pulled the plug

Amsterdam was the flood

that lifted me over redeeming waters

I was young then and mostly drunk

I was young then

and mostly alone

you tracked how I flew

my singular path

Breakfast in Amsterdam

Breakfast was a drag

And I made a picture

of us in the round

Of us as artists underground

the basement the studio

I have never recovered

your sly criticisms

your tiny canvases of mirth

I am still here

That’s my singular birth

nyc

11.23.17

The Studio on East 85th Street. Early 70s. When we artists were a dedicated group of friends. Nothing lasts forever.

 I think of you

In the low moments

The space between torment.

I think of you

Like a list for the market.

I have that. Don’t need that

I must stock that soon.

I think of you

Eyeing that bloodline of

The red, red wine.

The glass like a broken marker

Of unsaid regret.

Coffee beans in Sambuca

Dark and perfect.

 

I think of you

I think of you

Fingers crippled into caves

Of unsure revenge

Covering the keyboard

Folded, dilated, saved.

Crossing the Rubicon.

Wearing the wrong shoes

For a miscalculation.

Does it count

When I am up late

Betraying those decisions

I made to choose.

 

I think of you in revisions.

I think of you

In stories once written.

The page like a nightmare

On its gentler way

Flying down slowly

To save a dark day.

Who makes the incisions

When friendship is torn

You think I’m wrong

I know

I know.

 

Does it matter

This blue unintentional

This sudden redeemable 

This this uneventual

Collision of disregard.

 

I think of you even now

Conniving inspiring rewiring

Despairing on cue.

Foolish me foolish you

I know

I know

It’s battle fatigue.

 

Embraced at the airport

Like long lost friends.

You left me no choice but

To choose in the end

The history of one over

Small angers of another.

I thought you were bigger.

I thought you were tougher.

 

I’ll miss you for now

Never forget your voice.

It’s stuck in our song.

You have no choice.

Make the most of your secrets

skulls piled under lampshades

Rugs pulled from the eaves

of regrettable he-said—she-said

Another conquest will come

In a while.

 

Be safe little monkey

Think longer and harder. 

Beware the pedestal

Reject the martyr.

Beware of the longing.

Remember the embrace.

Love yourself try harder or

You will lose the race.

 

I think of you often.

That will not be erased.

 

For Carmen, in space.

1.26.19

Can’t go to sleep

The bottle’s not empty

Yellow jackets

Sneak in

Through cracks in the window

Like drunks thrown to the curb

Begging forgiveness

In the dead of night

while the living write blurbs

for the apocalypse

10.25.18

Cons.Gardens.

 

EASTER

She traces her skull under the skin

This is the cage or the home

She was born to live in

Her instincts are buffering

In an aged moment

She’s just waves rolling over

A storm ravaged torment

Beach-side she’s planted

Before a horizon

You know who you are

Screams the gull overhead

She does and she doesn’t

While her feathered friend grins

Like a bird in the know

Like a strong undertow

This is gorgeous she says

This captured existence

Collecting clues in a literary manner

Hedging her bets

Getting ready the spanner

She picks up smooth stones

Slides them into a pocket

Saved for the day when

She needs to unlock it

This life this lesson

This something missing

Graves are an insult

For whatever that’s worth

The dead should never pollute the earth

Quick as she can

She skips over the sand

Quick as she can she

Reboots life now stalled

This ongoing lesson

Of who are the ones to

Tear down the walls

It is gorgeous she says

This wounded existence

Gate crashing it seems

Never ends with the wishing

I’m here now she cries

I don’t need permission

I’m here now she whispers

I have got a mission.

4.21.19

nyc

Photo: Tim Tapling

Promenaders : West Kirby : Wirral : 31:May:2024.

 

loving caregivers thrived

not in her lifetime no

they conspired against her

autonomous tribes

seeking redress in the here and now

she wanted revenge

that simpering weapon

the thing in her holster was wide-eyed

and then some

hovering underage gloves

gorm-free of his undertow

how the river defends her

blatant-filled rides

making her way through a field of cows

she wanted return

her heart fully open

rivers of lust bled the big sky

and then some

shout-worthy jokes undermined

requests for a bleaker unknown

are we ancient or grounded

surrounded by lies

stomping on things under perfect duress

there is no regress

herself well unspoken

trust although token exemplified

and then some

nyc ues 10.31.24

Man Ray

wrapped tonight in

autumnal luster

vulgar notions of

aging creep ever closer

soft urgent crossings

in the tide below

cars full of waves

wet the road with laughter

imagine the poet

that outruns danger

the glare of the laptop

a green-shaded lamp

books stacked with abandon

daring Sisyphus to climb

the cat’s cry distracts from

a weighty mantle

night bus below

dusts off an urge to travel

the cat pulls himself

into protective sleep

whatever his night fears

the mourning dove’s keep

on the back fire escape

will return him to gentle

whatever his night fears

he’ll reject sentimental

laughter below

is it mad or cruel

the mantle slips from my

shoulders as usual

I write like the tide

it knows no refusal

no excuse

no regret

no answers

no muscle

whatever my fears

I reject sentimental

unwrapped tonight from

autumnal luster

9.28.16

nyc

CLICK ON PHOTO FOR BETTER VIEWING

Photo: Tim Tapling Autumn [ in one shot ] : Egerton Dock : Birkenhead : Wirral : 26:Oct:2024.

 

 

KEROUAC

I am on that road again
the one that was sure
he was wrong
that he was fake crazy and
masculine magic
and everything that is
anathema to a woman
like me
So, I buy the book at Strand
in a worldy questioning way
it was on the pile
under the sign
classics it said
and I was ready to
throw down the gauntlet
narrow the writer
into the stuff that
is easily dismissed
until it is not
when the crucial insanity
is not male or female
when it gets all bogged
into a bisexual damn
that the beavers of life
keep building and destroying
when the childy sorrow
of a hundred past thieves
steal the memory
of yourself
and refuse to deceive
what and who you are
why you see that far
and never regret
what you have to forget
to write what you know
in patience and anger
in still and sparkling
in lightness that darkens
he roared through me
and splintered the rickety
he wrote what I hated
he wrote what I loved
the argument endures
the hand fits the glove

9.17.14

New Mexico early 70s