perception deficit

Perception Deficit

gknapton 31/01/10

Planet Earth I take it all back

 

Your blue skies are the hope in my blue eyes reflected back

When you shine from your sun

I shine

 

All that I see, you've shown me now, is me

My take on life

Is life

The glow in my lover's eyes is my own need of love reflected

My love of others is that need serviced

Their love of me is only what I perceive it to be, in earnest

My fears are but the pain of being rejected

Planet Earth

You are the canvas onto which I project my map

I am the brush and I stroke out through the inks of my experiences

While I look in the mirror I'll never see what they see

Nor should it be that I can

Embracing life, I accept that

There's a mile between the way I see me and the way I am

copyright

Verdana Ten

Verdana Ten

Days weeks months never used to pass this quick. What have we done? Whole seasons slipping by. Years even.

Professional time wasters. All talk. Not much action. Are we wasting our lives away or are we enjoying them ? Was it always thus ? 

How many more songs and dances ? Who has the book with the answers ?

How do you construct a turning point ? I hear you start with the smallest things and work upwards.

You go from the part to the whole and in this way climb yourself out of the hole you dug. So jump the fence, stand tall and let's commence. Before the pubs open and we get roped into dispensing with all such common sense.

To get the ball rolling you're allowed to change anything you want. So I'm starting with my font. You shouldn't underestimate your typeface. Allowing it to stagnate is the slippery slope to disgrace.

No change is too trivial. Too insignificant. Any positive action, pushing out however slow, amounts to you standing up and having a go. Great oaks from little acorns grow.

It's time to separate the boys from the men. I'm opting for Verdana Ten.

Times New Roman Twelve was good for a time. But I've spent the last six months delving through the annals of my free roaming mind and for what ? For the dust to settle and the truth to emerge that I'm stuck in a rut. I'm behind with the bills and my hair needs a cut.

Tomorrow I will etch the campaign a little further forward. I'll clean my shoes and launder some clothes and post letters to the people I love most. And I really should look for work and earn some money. Life's a game but losing never feels funny.

But tomorrow's tomorrow. Tonight I am safe in the knowledge that I made a start. I've put the horse back in front of the cart. You may laugh and that's fine. But there come's a time in the affairs of men. I have thrown down my sword and picked up my pen.

I've opted for Verdana Ten.

12/05/04

gknapton 

copyright

Nothing Around Got Dark

Nothing Around Got Dark

g knapton

On Easter Day I kneel and pray

Before the church’s clerk

And afterwards collect my thoughts

Whilst idling through the park

The sun fell through the western skies

Off shore the gulls did lark

The night came back

The sky turned black

But nothing around got dark

The headland lights of Shoreham bay

Weave round me in an arc

And through the streets the Bedlam beats

Of Whitehawk dogs do bark

Not one ship set a-sail

At least, no sea-bound lights did spark

My vision fell

And night did dwell

But nothing around got dark

I searched for coins between the groynes

Where smugglers disembark

Where untold wealth awaited men

More stealthy than the shark

I strolled the Palace gardens

Where the King’s men once did hark

I heard a clock strike midnight’s hour

But nothing around got dark

I skimmed ten pebbles off Hove beach

As if to make my mark

Each aim – to clear the old West Pier’s wrought iron

Standing stark

I made for home still all alone

As nascent dawn did nark

Today becoming yesterday

When nothing around got dark*

*Easter is on the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, lighting the sky for Christians to pilgrimage at night. It moves for Jesus. Easter is the moveable feast. Nothing around gets dark.

(copyright)

Idolater

Idolater

gknapton

His totem self.  He stood. Revolving.

Me, non-glib. The ictus plain.

Dark spells cast. Defences folding.

Me feeling more again.

His saurian stealth. Pure blood. Involving.

Base emotion-paths get lain

Bark fells mastered. Sawyers scolding.

Running from the woods in pain.

His youth-swept health. Resounding. Solving.

Destination: runaway train.

In love fast. And tightly holding

Onto the dream in vain.

(copyright)

End of Days

End of Days

gknapton

Hundreds of lives have been saved, the TV said.

The newsreader was talking about blood donors but later firemen and after that new speed cameras on the M20.

Hundreds of lives, I thought.

All milling around having just been saved.

Not knowing they shouldn't be here now.

Wow! What a saving.

Save fifty percent on your next car insurance premium and home contents too, the radio said.

All these extra incentives for new customers.

All those Dolby stereos and bass bins and windscreens and handbags in the glove box.

All those Wii's and HDTV's and pictures of gran before the accident.

Previously sitting targets. Now sitting to be saved.

It said so on the radio.

Incredible best-ever savings now available on cars with new plates from the first day of next month.

See your local dealer now!

That's what the front page of the local mart rag said.

I saw it when I went for milk at the Asian man's shop downstairs.

Unreal, I thought, as I passed over the money. 

All that free road tax and air con and heated seats and sat nav so nobody ever gets lost again.

Alloys too probably.

Save save save.

Save one month's rental and get unlimited texts and fifty pounds cold hard cash back on the N97 and other selected Nokias.

This is what the billboard really said. It really did say this.

Throwing savings indiscriminately at the all and sundry who pass by as they go about their days.

The temptation to save like it was the end of days.

There is no tomorrow. 

Get your savings in now.

But what happens to all these savings ? I got to thinking.

And why can't you round them all up ?

Get all those hundreds of saved lives and put them safely inside their fully comp homes so they can chat away safely on all the years of free call time that I just saw being given away twenty feet above the entrance to Tesco.

The saved now the savers.

Never again relying on speed cameras and failing that, firemen and paramedics and blood donors.

Forget the M20 and your car's top speed of 140 and the temptation to text back before pulling over.

Just staying in and saving ourselves.

Saving all of our lives.

Because that's what it says everywhere these days isn't it ?

Save save save ?

Actually, no.

Save is a con. It means spend and besides I saw another message today.

On the back of GQ.

For skin cream and shampoo. Or jeans.

It's hard to tell.

It said "life is for living".

And live it we will.

Until the end of days.

(copyright)

Panjandrum

Panjandrum

I dig the light that dies for later

Felled at last for night time's stack

Equalising alma maters 

Enemies look back

I dig how unknown levels bait us

Filling the bread-less bred-well gap

Demonising those that hate us

Laying the fear-fresh trap

I dig panjandrum's swelled hiatus

Mocking the makeshift classless fact

Revenge is sweet as sweet potatoes

Keep all my wars in tact

gknapton copyright 

salford perspectives: MSC

salford perspectives;

Down by the Manchester Ship Canal 

Where Heron's wade and tyres splayed and bob and old graffiti's fade 

We crossed through gates and slowly made our way to where the waters bade

And felt the ghosts of men who made a kingdom from the cotton trade

And almost heard again the dins of hulls awash with fears allayed 

Salfordian men and women paid

A million tonnes of fresh Canadian wools and grains and riches

All laid out

Oh how Mancunians played 

The coming of the age relayed yet here I stand on wharfs decayed

Weeds trampled where wild dogs have strayed

Pollution slicks, a litter glade where mills once stood

Where things got made

Now, lock and swing bridge unobeyed

All left to die and sink and fade

A silent water palace 

Like an empty church where once they prayed

A massive man-made icon left unburied

Did a midnight raid rob life and limb from all displayed ?

I walked home with a heavy heart

On promenades of moss-strewn jade

A member of a race in shame

A race that didn't make the grade

..............

26/05/09

G Knapton