THE GLEANERS

 

Leave the grapes

on the vine

for longer than the rest

labor has been overrated

hunger says it best

workers are the construct

of fat ones strutting sated

from the farmhouse to the table

leave the wheat

in the fields

to be picked at by the birds

the ones who burn the

construct down

are those who tend the earth

ownership is rape

peace is compromised

leave the grapes

they’re yours and mine

 

the gleaners will be heard

 

8.16.18

PHOTO: Tim Tapling Contemplating eternity : Flaybrick Cemetery : Bidston : Wirral : 01:Jun:2025.

before she reaches

the end of a thought

there had been no one she could speak of

working with the dead 

as she was

the shortened firearms still daunting 

unrelated matters notwithstanding

mischievous mispronunciation 

is acceptable now

to some this is fucking unbelievable

whatever happened to 

worship of the form

a roving eye on the oncoming storm

revealing the antidotes to heartbreak are

leaves shaken from rakes

curled and ready for war

ice cubes embrace a fever sore

blistered from revealing more thinking

a quite extraordinary skill

like a mayfly alarmed by less than a breath

when the "l" in "salmon" offers regret 

pouring over ancient scrawls

hand drawn revelations

burnt and wounded innovation

stumbling through the crowded malls of excess and delusion

the builder answered her confusion

our suffocated nation

our panic in time

our forced equivocation

our memory’s rhyme

when he could never bring himself

to a semicolon

smaller than the rhyme

 

7.25.25 nyc

PHOTO: Tim Tapling 

Reprise : Millers Quay : Birkenhead : Wirral : 30:Jul:2025.

 KIND OF BLUE

 

Late at night in a field of bad dreams

I breathe like a stallion
an old one it seems

I thrash in my stall
I shoulder that awl

Late at night in a field of bad dreams

scream like a lone one

grasp the last song line
and murder the rows 
with my awl of demean
Late at night in a field of bad dreams

I am kinda blue

and you know what that means

late at night in an crazy ass stream

I swim to you

and you know that that means

 

1.23.15 nyc

Photo: Tim Tapling 

Feeding competition on the incoming tide : Blue Hour : Hoylake : Wirral : 22:Jul:2025.

 

WE WERE CREATED

 

assigned to the future

tentative like furniture 

you haven’t yet bought

for rooms that are

silent as the drones 

you have

yet to drop 

slowly for a better view

when there is a story

we hive like bees among chapters

parsing a tale to suit

we straggle at sentences

like the time I dressed naked in your poet’s shirt

drunk-filled with poems

running from doctrine

misunderstood among the hoi polloi

we grasp what matters

parsing commas for relief

reasons for all this shit

suspended in disbelief

every mistake belongs to everyone

my love for him

is all I know

I mask yet I won’t begin to follow

we were created by our own kind

children are born free

a lesson unlearned for eternity

my love for him

is drunken sometimes

I grasp what matters

I struggle for the rhyme

we are created in evolution

greet the bastards with crime

signal the masthead

bolt from the line

my love for him

I roll like the credits

over a serial killer film

And then like the lottery

it’s ours in the end

like ours in the friendship

like ours to re-friend

I grasp what matters

my love for him has been in tatters

struggling for the rhyme

created in evolution

greeting the bastards for every solution

memory loss the time-honored escape

Being here is what matters

Being here is the rake

 

10.10.20 nyc

Photograph: Tim Taplin Last light over Nth Wales : Burton Marshes : Wirral : 29:Jan:2025

Click on art for full view

Glare

 

from decision

a revision

mistaken for benevolence

 

Glare

 

when the answer

reels up

smacks the heart with insistence

 

Glare

 

at the bottom of

the blood red glass

desk lamp the focus on the ask

 

 

Glare before fall

 

Glare when it ends

 

Glare will begin

 

 

like the poet said

in underground rhyme

this brutal heart with the hole is mine

 

3.24.17 nyc

Photograph: @Tim Tapling Sunset through the trees : Pensby Cemetery : Wirral : 29:Jun:2025.

 

From your memoirist

the museum of magic

holds many treasures

among them the loss 

and loves in great measure

hours with you in

your crowded rooms

recording your life

in a cigarette brume

the evasions

confessions

the repetitive wanders

your weary return to

the love you remember

how did I not guess

the bread crumbs you saw

on the trail that she left you

her constant recall

of the life that was you

after days spent in

your hot crowded rooms

the kitchen walls

laden with antique spoons

avoiding the cat

who knew who knew

your history as plain as the devil

memory as sharp as

the gavel that sounds in your heart

you were always meant

to return to her ring

the woman who loved you

the boxer who came slowly

to the ultimate win

you were always meant to

unfurl silken bondage

she’s yours

you are hers

in the forever hereafter

you are ours

in that magical theater

a drink at the bar

a line in the sand

a strait jacket moment

you are ours when

we can

find a way out of the ropes

the box and the past to

reconnect with great love

at last

at last

to release a white dove

 

For Magic Man SK

8.19.16

Photo: nyc 1.17.13

Click for full image

 

ROTH

 

tonight I cried

prepared as I was with 

a pinot noir

and a pipe truth be told

so that I could drift afar

from a smoke-filled brain

to a wine-dressed heart

remembering what grew me

what words overthrew me

a writer had died

was he all that, I thought

or more like a builder

a plumber, a doctor,

a runner, a cyclist, a teacher,

a mobster

who raps the truth

with poetic restraint

tonight I cried like I did for Lennon

and Janis not Ian but Joplin the saint

I cried like a child who can’t

find its toy

poured a glass had a toke

with such risible joy

tonight I cried

for all I was worth

hereafter indulging in heroes

now gone

still gnawing at nerves

still proving their worth.

 

5.23.18 nyc

Photo: Author, NYC. UES 6.11.25

Jeanne Moreau likely quit drinking around the age of 57. 

 

 WINDOW

she had a window

once of beauty

elusive carousel ring

they stopped to

watch her as she passed

men who kept her

wondering

why they never

prized her thoughts

why her opinions

never asked

they sought to own her

own her laugh

she sometimes lost

sometimes gave in

stayed on the horse

‘til night’s upswing

she looked around her

growing older

leaving beauty to the past

what grew in beauty

grew inside her

the window opened

learned to fly

a mirror is

a useless map

 

8.24.12 nyc
PHOTO: nyc 5.13.2023

I don’t feel like being

not remembered

she said and sighed

the past lies dead

and expertly dismembered

the lies are the realm

of the effortlessly bleeding

my eyes see the new

and are no longer pleading

I don’t feel like being

not remembered

music comes dressed

in my new mirror

where I choose

what I wear

and what notes are the bearer

of me in the now

a surprising ascender

I don’t feel like being

not remembered

nyc 12.7.2020

 

MY FATHER’S BIRTHDAY

 

my father’s birthday

I didn’t know for the longest time

I didn’t care or I preferred not to care

who was he

unloved as I was

unfound as I was

my father’s birthday

I sleepwalked for the longest time

when he died the world was dismantling

who he was

how he softened

amongst the most frightening

I didn’t know it for the longest time

caring and sharing had no sweet reprieve

who he was

who I loved

was mine for the undertaking

I sleepwalked for the longest time

my father’s birthday

like butter now melted

still had the source

from which it is was drawn

I am clarified now in the house 

I have crawled from

a rarified mouse in a kindly rat kingdom

I sleepwalk from birth

hate the markers of age

the memory of worth the scent of the rage

my father’s birthday

has a name has a date

the second of February

am I too late?

 

6.26.15

Woodcut "Tormented Man" Author

 

THE QUALITY OF MERCY

a cat on its haunches
sits quiet and sweet

what are the chances
a tail curls in defeat
leaves a bird’s nest un-looted

when the hungry line up
on a street paved with patience
in the slow build up 
to ignorant resistance
great whites have been gathering
on everyman’s shore

what food there is

has a possible score
and the music plays on
while sharks 
keep on hammering

and I in my wet suit
and you in your poem
shall we leave the room empty

or dive for the song

who will break bread
on a natural farm
who will learn to defend

nature’s loss with alarm
I am old and disgusted
I am young and in place
I am ready and willing
I am drunk with disgrace
I have fallen not broken
into endless repast

this season ain’t over

this cat learns real fast.

 

7.18.14 nyc

Photo: Author NYC 5.25.25