a roomful of creative ideas and brush strokes of word-paint, made of glass and perched high above the water
Monday 29 November 2010
Saturday 20 November 2010
out here
it’s cold out here
the western winter wind shudders the water across the bay
reflected harbour lights roll and sway
singing songs in the ship canal
songs of cold comfort and material expanse
how the neon ribbons dance!
it’s warm in there
back in the land of the living
the fireside glow unfolds and beckons
giving off a mood of warmth and life
denying the toil and strife
of a difficult day
being back in there!
there’s no other way
should we be bold and ride the cold
and enjoy the brash reality of feeling alive ?
look!
the night heron dive, collect and re-group
sleeping swans bob
salty tidal soup changes every hour by every light
innocuous, inviting by day
ominous by night
it’s cold out here
let’s stay a while longer
let’s watch how distant lights flicker
how a thousand November lives live out their evenings
people hugging through arrivals and kissing out leavings
see how distant townships throw out light-shows that wink in the Pennine breeze
through the immediate pain I sense ease
the ease of civility in motion
feel the freedom of exposure
of nowhere to hide
it’s cold out here
let’s go back inside
Monday 4 October 2010
Placeholder
Like the entrails of cigarette smoke zigzagging across the bustling intellectual coffee shops of old Oxford, I wrap myself around the chatter drone of Costa 2010.
Easy listening vibes can be misconstrued for more heavy weight undertones as I drift seamlessly into text.
I call it “coffee smoke” and by such means configure my belonging.
I know the Canada geese to a bird.
I recognise their eyes and walks and they reciprocate.
This town is my baseline.
Placeholder.
It’s waterways my garden gate.
Familiar sites evolve in me and I connect.
Not knowing prior that man can connect with buildings, see them like friendly faces.
And mindful of nearby places.
The stacked-up townhouse jumble of Kennedy street in the city next door.
The sheen on the water in the low sun light - a magnificent marble floor.
How long before new becomes home ?
As long as it takes the falling sun to burn the western skies over Cheshire.
As long as the winter months, watching the snow settle on the Pennines, distant to the north over Bolton and Rochdale.
As long as the 5am dawn bursts open my world in the depths of summer, devouring my dreams, pure and magical as being alive.
As long as the houseboat anchors creak, rustle and splash in the canal down below - my every evening lullaby.
As long as crowds of random strangers burst out above me in the Salford skies, conflating the whitest jet trails, gone before my eyes.
Breaking open into golden dots, at once beautiful and fading.
.........
04/10/10
GK
Copyright Protected
Easy listening vibes can be misconstrued for more heavy weight undertones as I drift seamlessly into text.
I call it “coffee smoke” and by such means configure my belonging.
I know the Canada geese to a bird.
I recognise their eyes and walks and they reciprocate.
This town is my baseline.
Placeholder.
It’s waterways my garden gate.
Familiar sites evolve in me and I connect.
Not knowing prior that man can connect with buildings, see them like friendly faces.
And mindful of nearby places.
The stacked-up townhouse jumble of Kennedy street in the city next door.
The sheen on the water in the low sun light - a magnificent marble floor.
How long before new becomes home ?
As long as it takes the falling sun to burn the western skies over Cheshire.
As long as the winter months, watching the snow settle on the Pennines, distant to the north over Bolton and Rochdale.
As long as the 5am dawn bursts open my world in the depths of summer, devouring my dreams, pure and magical as being alive.
As long as the houseboat anchors creak, rustle and splash in the canal down below - my every evening lullaby.
As long as crowds of random strangers burst out above me in the Salford skies, conflating the whitest jet trails, gone before my eyes.
Breaking open into golden dots, at once beautiful and fading.
.........
04/10/10
GK
Copyright Protected
Tuesday 15 June 2010
word hoard
he was a word-smith
collector of latent nouns
like counterpane and camber
a sifter
adjective hoover
a tense fence
by the water he would sit and read
in his head he'd built a memory palace
an upstanding rural mansion of local quarry stone
leaded windows
in the libraries hung blue silk drapes
large gold-framed mirrors
ornate carvings and artefacts
on marble floors
oak panels and a black skirt finish
and the books.......
mile on imperial mile of identical cloisters
the word hoard
he'd tend to the palace daily
and, knowing the discipline of love,
he'd eek out, re-write, update and contextualise
he'd dummy-run a few layered analogies
and dust down volumes of empirical evidence for future reference
like un-got knowledge banked
filing couldn't be chronological
just logical
colour-coded by truth and weighted for usage
louder colours flagging novelty and popularity
indexed by meaning
not word-meaning but the meaning of life
indexed by happiness
15/06/10 GK.
(copyright)
collector of latent nouns
like counterpane and camber
a sifter
adjective hoover
a tense fence
by the water he would sit and read
in his head he'd built a memory palace
an upstanding rural mansion of local quarry stone
leaded windows
in the libraries hung blue silk drapes
large gold-framed mirrors
ornate carvings and artefacts
on marble floors
oak panels and a black skirt finish
and the books.......
mile on imperial mile of identical cloisters
the word hoard
he'd tend to the palace daily
and, knowing the discipline of love,
he'd eek out, re-write, update and contextualise
he'd dummy-run a few layered analogies
and dust down volumes of empirical evidence for future reference
like un-got knowledge banked
filing couldn't be chronological
just logical
colour-coded by truth and weighted for usage
louder colours flagging novelty and popularity
indexed by meaning
not word-meaning but the meaning of life
indexed by happiness
15/06/10 GK.
(copyright)
Thursday 22 April 2010
Topaz Taz
Falling away from the shoreline
Proud on the chattering swell
I'd carve up an arc around Agecroft
Two rings of my bicycle bell
Magenta on violet, blinding
Incendiary sunlight flood
What a dazzling sight
When the noise of light
Rings out like the break of dawn should
She was there in the bleak mid winter
In the shadowless 6 am pitch
She was there at the coming of springtime
Amidst the flickers of the daylight twitch
She was most at home when all was fully grown
When the eights and the singles rowed north
Through the summertime jazz
Old Topaz Taz
Sat gleaming on the Salford wharf
copyright
22/04/10
gknapton
Proud on the chattering swell
I'd carve up an arc around Agecroft
Two rings of my bicycle bell
Magenta on violet, blinding
Incendiary sunlight flood
What a dazzling sight
When the noise of light
Rings out like the break of dawn should
She was there in the bleak mid winter
In the shadowless 6 am pitch
She was there at the coming of springtime
Amidst the flickers of the daylight twitch
She was most at home when all was fully grown
When the eights and the singles rowed north
Through the summertime jazz
Old Topaz Taz
Sat gleaming on the Salford wharf
copyright
22/04/10
gknapton
Monday 22 February 2010
What Do You Want ?
What Do You Want ?
Back when God was a boy
We lived on the earth under great skies
We played in the streets and the building sites
Demarking our territory with wooden planks and bricks
We moulded race tracks for marbles out of mud
Fashioned with our bare hands
Filthy up to our elbows
Extracting mud and meaning from life
Back before money
I would sit in the field where the street ended
And I would create whole worlds out of a pile of sand the builders left behind
And when it got dark I'd carry on
Because it wasn't about light it was about those worlds
And dark was what they got
Back before vanity and a sense of lack
I'd warm up the telly for my dad
Because tellys didn't come on straight away in 1977
But it didn't matter
We were happy because we were using what we had
Not wanting what we hadn't got
Life, then, didn't add up to what you owned and how you looked
Rather, it totalled the sum of what you did and what you sought to achieve
Whole numbers
copyright
gknapton 22 feb 1010
Thursday 11 February 2010
Spring - Part 1 (2010)
Everything's gone brighter, somehow
Everything's gone brand new
There's a smile in the evening light now
There's a glint in the morning dew
Spring is on the horizon
All but in my sight
Nudging into my consciousness
Drifting into my dreams at night
Bring the birds and the bees on
Spring sprung up from the ground
White-tooth grins without reason
Second chances all round
Spring is nearly in season
Wiping all the slates clean
Spring is coming back home at last
Painting all of earth blue and green
Cast your eyes on the future
Spring is singing her song
Like she's back for the first time
Like she's never been gone
Thursday 4 February 2010
stone acoustics
from a collection entitled "Let's Get Killed" by Gary Knapton
In our flats, at the foot of the atrium, there's a pebble garden
And at the corner of each of my weekends I like to find time to play Stone Acoustics
Dropping a coin from the sixth floor directly down onto it makes a sound like cash tills
(the old type) but no patterns
Once, I dispatched my copy of Gullivers' Travels
Besides making a hole in the pebbles the shape of Chile I got the sound of a flying kick from Paul in Tekken 2
Then, last Friday, I found a clothes horse by the chute
Introducing variables I both dropped it and later threw it up ten feet leading into the fall
The Red Sea as it approaches the Gulf of Aden smiled up at me
Though that's water, not a land mass
Does it count more or less?
But with more impact I got India from Hyderabad down to the Maldives, minus Sri Lanka
The sounds were similar on both occasions
A lively assortment of pebble-based cracks and my neighbours yelling
The energy of the human protest complemented the physics
Poetry, like science, is motion
Einstein said gravity informs mass, though in my case, a little longer and my informants would have been altogether less inanimate
This week I aim to invest in a better globe and have a think about more height
I fancy a stab at something wooden at terminal velocity
It's important to think big.
Think continental.
copyright
Netted
Netted
a milestone introspective from a collection entitled "Cry Me A River" by Gary Knapton
You'll be born in '71
On a Saturday afternoon
Just as the tannoys are blaring the tune
All through your school years you'll run with the ball
Early on match days you'll wake standing tall
This bliss isn't normal
It's bliss
It won't last forever
It won't last long
Such is the way of the things you'll miss
Life will grab you, lad
And take you on a journey
Away from freedom and towards the gurney
And love, work and families
A life of no time
For dribbling and balance and rhythm and rhyme
Then, in your thirties
Though you can't know it
The clarion call
Steve will go wide and break loose with the ball
He'll know where you'll be and you'll know where you'll go
You'll drop off the full-back and start moving in
He'll cross without looking
The time-honoured line
It sits up and hangs
You're suspended from time
Then the whip-crack and sweet dull thud
Of true contact
Of leather on proofed leather
The cleanest of drives
Will echo through the heat of a blue summer morning in May 2004
Enjoy it
This is the last goal you will ever score
copyright
Sunday 31 January 2010
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
Wednesday 27 January 2010
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)
Wednesday 20 January 2010
End of Days
End of Days
gknapton
That's what the front page of the local mart rag said.
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!
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
Thursday 7 January 2010
salford perspectives: MSC
salford perspectives;
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
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