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

Everything is illuminated: Salford wharf

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)

Indigo

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

…..........

Hot Shot; Grain Wharf across 8 Dock

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