White-washed Winter Mornings

 

White washed winter mornings

Crisp eternal state

Icicles on awnings

Summer's out of date

 

Cold north wind is biting

Clear clean air feels fresh

Round-the-clock street lighting

Cloudy skyline mesh

Cool inviting darkness

The whistling breeze doth sing

Brisk uplifting starkness

Alas the days of spring

 

 

(a poem from Life Without Buildings)

The Arcades of Philosophy Hall

The veil of snowfall's cold thin silence

Mutes what memory leaves

Golden temples, proud like violence

Crouch under watery eaves


Men with Zen in a timeless ritual

Follow what the third eye sees

Carving up streets in the old habitual

Humming like a drone of bees


Parvenu monks in a portico slumber

Merge in the mists of night

Man-made constructs

Love will put asunder

Here in the Valleys of Light


Lose yourself in the murmuring kingdom

Give to the mantra-laced din

Find your life in the flame-licked truth, that

Shimmers as the prayer wheels spin


Come take flight with the Dalai Lama

Dance through infinity's haze

Om Mani padme hum

Wise cities of the white walled maze

The Cheap Catcalls of Winter

White skies over the harbour

A chill in the morning air

A coat from the back of the wardrobe

Hands rubbing as I cross the stair

Traceable ghosts of the air I breathe

My pointed ears hold sway

To the cheap catcalls of winter

From the edge of a summer long day

Ripples on the bay get purchase

Pimples on my skin play host

This is not real

Tis a warning

There's a long cold longing in the post

Whorls of an Arctic Tundra

Just winked at our lonely isle

Woden blights under Northern Lights

He paid us a visit erstwhile

It's only early September

The petition for Autumn just filed

These cheap catcalls of winter

Are the cries of a premature child

I can hardly wait!

It's my favourite state

If only it were all year long

When the cheap catcalls of winter

Burst out into deafening song

Down On Therapy Road

from Another Man's Shoes


Count my tears

Diffuse my fury

Show me my abode

Set me free from the kangaroo jury

Scattering the seeds I sowed

Listen to me

Love me

Never ever judge me

Constantly decipher my code

Walk me down to His reality

Down on Therapy Road


Expose the flaws in my perception

Help me carry my load

With you I'm free from interjection

Leaving only me to goad

Making me see that Jesus loves me

Paying off the debts I owed

Unwrap me with your cool inflection

Down on Therapy Road


Change my mind

Befriend my fugitive

Many of my myths explode

Embrace my fears

Resolve my conflict

Analyse the steps I strode

Empower me

Nudge me

Never ever judge me

Even when my thoughts corrode

Make smooth my entry to His kingdom

Down on Therapy Road


All my paths got lit with darkness

Most of my dreams got towed

Expose me

Floor me

Stand me in the middle

Make my whole purpose implode

Nurture me

Budge me

Never ever judge me

Slam me into red light mode

Build me up to all I can be

Down on Therapy Road


Kill me

Bury me

Wipe my existence

Erase all the journeys I rode

Hear my end game

No cutting corners

Dredge all the rivers I rowed

Endorse my fragility

Never ever judge

Incessantly unravel my code

Pull me up to where you're standing

Down on Therapy Road


Introduce kindness

Legitimise anger

Quiver all the arrows I bowed

Please don't stop

I don't know how you're doing this

Outing all the secrets I stowed

My crisis in your heart

And you never ever judge

Laid bare on your commode

Holding my hand

I'm the child I never was

Down on Therapy Road

My Invention of Love

Your smile gets lost in the winter white frost

Your laugh puts the blue in my day

When you walk into the room

My heart goes boom

There's something I just really wanna say


You're hot

You're cool

You're another man's fool

You fell to me from heaven above

You're just so fine

You're wanting to be mine

You're my invention of love


You nurture your cares

You're the answer to my prayers

You fit me like a hand in glove

You're sharper than a knife

You lit my life

You're my invention of love


You're wicked

You're fly

You're an angel on high

You're everything I ever dreamed of

Your name across my ears

Diminishes fears

You're my invention of love


You're lost in time

You're the dollar to my dime

You're sailing on the wings of a dove

You're clever

You're smart

You're tearing me apart

You're my invention of love


You are so very bold

You're compassionate gold

You are ripping up my world dear bruv

You're here in my heart

We'll never be apart

You're my invention of love


You're all I wanna be

You are setting me free

You are giving me a gentle shove

You write my dreams

You are really what it seems

You're my invention of love

Unconditional Love

He bathed his soul in the morning light's first wink at the waning moon

He 'scaped the house with the last dormouse 

And never got back too soon


He crooned his heart by the local mart

As shoppers did push and shove

Wrapped in a shawl as the winds did bawl

Singing unconditional love


His smile long played

Like an intimate raid of an infinitesimal day

Sharp frowns did knife

Like a cheated wife 

Goes wishing you on your way


And amidst all that in a weather-worn hat

He listened to his God above

And painted a lean hazy afternoon scene

Singing unconditional love


The crowds long 'spersed and the skyline cursed

With a heavyweight bar of rain

Spent shops got closed

But the busker still posed

Low leaning on a window pane


All withered and cold

He'd a heart strong bold

With strings on the wings of a dove

He'll be there tonight

With his eyes shut tight

Singing unconditional love


He's a voice so fine

Wanna make it mine

What a dream-spun dazzling gift!

Like a low bass drum his throat would hum

Fast shooting up the octave rift


He warmed our loins for collected coins

That he kept in a purple glove

As the rain swept down on a fallen town

Singing unconditional love

Hold The Front Page

or, "a legacy of love gone wrong"

a poem by gary knapton from a collection entitled Cry Me A River

..........

Demons dance in dreams that riddle me

Plausible sleep has gone amiss

Respite ? 

Hardly 

Daylight is an enemy

Waking up on mornings like this


Cold is my new life

Spent is my energy

How can I feel so blue ?

Friends console, saying it will get better

But the better me was built around you


Harpies snigger like the Devil’s own cacophony

Robbing me of all God’s peace

Hold the front page: I just met my assassin

And his barrel-spun bullets don’t cease


Once, not long ago, everything was beautiful

I’d never been so happy and true

Wake up Gary! Your delusion is paramount

Everybody’s laughing at you


Hear them cry in a tuneless mockery

An echo of a dream shot long

The rust belt miles of emotional Apocalypse

My legacy of love gone wrong

Perception Deficit

Planet Earth

I take it all back

Your blue skies are the hope in my blue eyes reflected

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

Write Night

Building worlds is a bleak compulsion

Many a sleepless night

Novelists grovel in black revulsion

Poets chisel in white


No one finishes what they started

Nobody smiles and types

Write Night beckons the broken-hearted

Neck-deep in demons and gripes


Midnight oil is a fuel tormented

Scriveners walk alone

None of us win

We’re all demented

None of us ever got shown


Couldn't care less what rubbish you're dumping

Literary circus clown

Colours arrive and the beat starts thumping

Better start getting this down


Paper or iPad

Makes no difference

Slip on the idiot chain

Lock yourself into your deliverance

Write Night’s here again

The Amber Road

or; The Fruits of Abrene


Follow me south from Kaup and Truso

Travel the treasure-trove spate

Weave like a snake through Baltic Peoples

Jump the Moravian Gate


Tree-tears flow like sun-flecked lava

Lighting up the Rhone and Rhine

Branch off west into France and Belgium

Follow the Amber Road spine


Saunter by sail on the silent Dnieper

Men with medicinal things

Climb from Bern on the Alpine creeper

Beckon the Egyptian Kings


Traders running through the heart of Riga

Fortunes bought and sold

Cultural blessings on the wings of a diva

Rainstorms of Latvian gold


Onward now to Venetian palaces

Mediterranean muse

The old Amber Road is diminishing Europe

Fresh-laced immigrant shoes


Spreading like fire from iced north beaches

Jewels in the crowns of Tsars

Time-spun milk of the Baltic reaches

Reminiscing Soviet scars


Blaze a trail on the decadent camber

European unity style

Follow the yellow-brick road of amber

Paved with a Latvian smile

The Bells of the Old North Wind

Stroll through the church of the Pennine foothills

All ye who hath sinned

Dance to the chimes of the Devil’s music

The bells of the old north wind


Knife your heart in the icicle chamber

All your prayers got binned

Each dead toll will slice you through

The bells of the old north wind


Rest ye a while at the upland altar

Keep your neck scarf pinned

Nowhere to run when they ring out

The bells of the old north wind


Hardened men of Lancastrian backbone

Campanile mischief skinned

They’re rolling over the moors again

The bells of the old north wind


Southerners scarper whence ye came

Your spirits kicked and shinned

Our winter nights be your last rites

The bells of the old north wind