5-7-5 (take forty)

my breath runs away
escaping to thoughts of you
it will not be caught

The Pareidoliac Diaries

I spied a cloudy hippo
strumming his guitar
it could have been a mandolin
but I saw it from afar
he drifted by
and changed his mind
so blew a little tune
upon a passing jumbo jet
on a heading to the moon

Next up charged young Cary Grant
with an extra leg to boot
his middle limb got in the way
when it came time to shoot
the crop dust scene from Hitchcock
didn’t turn out for the best
as the clouds soon blew the other way
with the winds from the south west.

Storage

How many boxes do we need
to keep our ideas in
or sacks or wraps or sleeping bags
to keep the thinking clean
and should I rent some attic space
or cover them with earth
or leave them out to gather dust
to measure out their worth

The Devil’s In The Detail

In chasing heaven’s gate
should we lose
temptation’s promises
and with them
the denial of our humanity?

Virgil, take my hand
we’ll share the journey
into the as yet
undiscovered,
as our natures dictate

23° 26′ 13.9″

The equator’s still waters
belie the tropical storms
that north and south
the passionate oceans form.

Little Ditty

I have nothing to do
and nowhere to be
but having nothing to do
and having nowhere to be
when I’m with you
and you’re with me
is the adventure
I was seeking.

The First Smile

I yearn to see you wake
to watch that point
upon which dreams
are let out as sighs
from your lips
and into the day
ephemeral thoughts
to be captured again,
that moment when
your eyes open slowly
and I’m mirrored
in their glow.
I yearn to see you wake
and kiss me
with the day’s first smile.

5-7-5 (take thirty-nine)

when my pen dries out
and the page can take no more
then the words will end

Highlander

Razzle dazzle rainclouds
lead me down the lane
and I can’t learn the bagpipes
till the sun comes out again

In German, bagpipe’s doodle sack
or at least that’s how it sounds
and objectively I like that
on purely aesthetic grounds.

But now it’s still a raining
dogs and cats and stuff
so to start my sack a doodling
seems rather much too much.

Early Scrawlings Of The Geographically Questionable Mersey Poet

I went down to Morpeth Dock
to hear the gun greet one o’clock
the cannon balls whizzed overhead
and landed deep in Birkenhead
they knocked the head off old man Laird
which shocked a watching Liverbird
who’d fell asleep upon his train
and ended up in old Green Lane
so resigned to use the tunnel bus
he’d stuck around to see the fuss
of statues being blown asunder
with shock and awe and sense of wonder
before he took the Kingsway home
and back up upon his perch alone
as his judy was out on the lash
with a diddy man from Knotty Ash
who wasn’t all that small at all
as she’d found out at old Speke Hall.
Anyhow I do digress
and apologise now for all this mess
of song and rhyme and disconnection
It just came out upon reflection.