Sunday, 30 January 2011
Wednesday, 26 January 2011
geography
walking hand in hand with you around the waters edge
me leading
i made for the old Pomona docks
maybe hoping that it’s demise would reflect back on you
the state of our bond
fallen
i weaved the conversation down a grave blind alley and told you
making eye contact for the first time that day
silence boomed and the sun set as your realisation dawned
i saw the ice in your eyes
your heartbeat all over my ears like a faint bass drum
you flicker-smiled and asked for more
but there was no more
no more of a truth that ended
did you notice how they’d cut the shrubs down on the opposite
bank leaving Ordsall staring back at Hulme ?
did you notice how kids had made a rope swing on the wrought
iron of the Colgate pagoda
or the blue man on the bench with one glove ?
do you notice yet the sunsets that I love or how beauty is
everywhere, waiting for you to look ?
in summer all this will seem different even though it’s not
and what we shared will still be there
built into us
virally embedded and bitter as the cud
preparing and changing us for the new now
for there is not nor ever was a future
just joined on instances of now
like where we choose or choose not to live
was never just a question of geography
GK 26/01/11
Saturday, 22 January 2011
Thursday, 20 January 2011
No Words
way back before words man belonged here like animal
and lived with open eyes
in wonder
in failing to define he didn’t have the tools to judge
and so sat
lost in sheer appreciation
colour and shape, preceding words, became embedded as currency
seeing was feeling
every grain
to see was to be on a sensuous plane
no thoughts
for words are the meat of thoughts
and no memories
for thoughts are the water of memories
no past
for memories are the windows of past
and no future
for the past is the corollary of future
and see-saws with it away from now
shallow theft
to see a plant and think “plant”
reducing all that gracious presence to a monosyllabic noise
and never again to gape
immersed in splendour
what an opportunity missed!
to think and judge and move away unmoved
knowing that once man lived at one with the fish and the birds
until he grew dumb
with words
The House of Words
Italic Timber or “The House of Words”
for Pete. Happy Birthday!
.............
There once was a man who wrote “ I can!”
He put out the clarion call
One thousand poems
Other people’s knowings
He vowed to collect them all
They wrote and wrote
And he built a boat
That sailed on a syntax sea
With apostrophe oars
And grammatical doors
And a mast from a capital T
He rowed away, one paragraph day
On a hope and a lower case prayer
But the leaks in the ink made the poem boat sink
The dream vanished into thin rhyme air
But he wouldn’t bow down
So he rode around town
In a lyrical megaphone van
He demanded verse
The maritime curse sowed the seed of a new grand plan
With enough good rhyme
And years in time
He knocked up a tongue-tied house
With assonance eaves
And a garden full of leaves
And a pet metaphorical mouse
This was no hovel
It was built like a novel
With autobiographical glass
And the sign on the fence read
“Beware Of The Tense! Herein No Plagiarists Pass!”
He liked nothing better than a capital letter
In a tree full of alphabet birds
His home kept growing
With each new poem
He lived in a house of words
(copyright)
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Saturday, 15 January 2011
Sleepwalkers, or Media Control
from a collection by Gary Knapton entitled "Secrets and Lies"
People look young when you’ve been around a while
People can shimmer like haze
Some light up like the sun’s oblivion
Others are darker than days
People and pain get repulsed magnetically
People and pleasure get drawn
Some are like books that read energetically
Others get ripped up and torn
People are swayed like ferns in thunderstorms
People don’t know they don’t know
Feed people up with ego and vanity
Watch how far people will go
People bow down to the laws of marketing
People like lemmings get rolled
Give a man lies and he’ll make a truth of it
People got media-controlled
People are wrapped in pride and prejudice
Locked in parameter’s range
Fear is absolute
Freedom is relative
People and power don’t change
People are scared, lonely and delusional
People can see but won’t look
Self-perception all skewed as usual
Image in the mirror all crook
It's bodies, not people that die and naturally
Bodies, not people get born
People won't wake
They don’t see the tragedy
Sleepwalkers never transform
…..........
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The House of Words
built like a novel
She Travels Through Books
the green light girl