Winter's Arrival

Beauty speaks for itself and it is hard to define what it is in words.  So it's best I let it do its own talking.

Winter's arrival on the 25th November has been a somewhat definite affair in Kirby Underdale. These pictures are quite representative of its seemingly positive statement of intent. The forecast is for more snow over the next few days. Overnight temperatures are down to double figures or thereabouts. And my love of Jaguar cars has once again bitten me hard. Big engined rear wheel drive is pretty much useless in these conditions.

The window behind the trees is where I mostly write and Cassie is my walking companion.

A measure of my capacity to love

To impose order on the arrhythmic tick
Of our expanding metal
Or for threes and fours to fit the slick
World view you profess,
We have kindled, I have burnt much away,
Embers in the stove
Remain but order is not the order of the day.

I take pleasure if it comes in the night:
The singing edge
Of my hearing, metallic methane light
Playing in the dark,
Retinal wisps skipping at will while I listen
To strangled breath,
Until day comes and drowns the kitten.

I do love you though you are not mine
And I am not yours.
While you sleep, work or not, bring wine
Lilies, anxious fires or pets
I slip into something which may coincide
With your choosing,
Unsure of the fit and what it will hide.

Valentine's Meal

I have this brooding irritation.
Gut deep, it manifests as acid
That follows cold crawls of sweat,
Evidencing you under my skin.

Cowardly indefinite I decline
Valediction and circle you,
Elliptically erratic like dust -
I book a table despite me.

The journey allows us to vent,
For me to agree to drive home.
You'll have wine and cognac
I'll keep to a cliched whine.

Before we pick at the meagre
Degust of an oversold kitchen,
We amuse our mouths with bitterness
Exchanged like saliva or cum.

We spit olive stones into fingers
And order our parable, chosen
For morally bankrupt times:
Faux, pre-prepared and indulgent,

Over sauced, over seasoned and dull,
We eat and become under whelmed.
All the while all alone and encircling
Each other’s disappointments again.

Easy pickings for old crows
Covertly re-asserting their nests.

I Covet Perfection in all Its Forms

I hear loneliness when she saunters by
Or she’s blown with a mute’s brittle loss
Senescing gold colours autumn lets fly
Her beauty, wrought in naked perfection.

I covet perfection's myriad forms
The arc of a waist, the crossing
Of limbs athletically honed, but born
Into degeneracy I am flawed.

What questions define my purpose as man?
Those quiet Godlike ones haunting the night,
Silken spectres of a dismal lover’s hands
Or those that probe desired retribution?

These contradictions fill my heart at rest
Attenuate my world, provide respite.
And so diminished, plucked but unstressed
I am left unresolved, a hanging chord.

Where is hope when sensibility dies?
I’d rather longing than stabilised lies.