I See You; or Flashes of Electric Blue

from a collection entitled "Cry Me A River"

You swirled into my coffee shop and my life last summer

Though you'd long since turned the rope for my heart to skip it's beat

Way back in the misty retreat of the heat of 2009

Esporta and Lime

My memory begs;

Lord save us! Who's that girl with the legs!?

Is she English or Asian ? Is she human? Can she be true?

I don't know her but I do

I'm at the mercy of her movements

Her flashes of electric blue

My knees give way when she looks

I daren't say 'Hi'

Maybe she's just passing by

But last year in Costa I offered a seat

And we danced out our introductions

The way tomorrows lovers greet

A light in the darkest of my days

You shone yet I couldn't see you

Later, we sat in my flat

Me on the sofa

You long-legged on the floor and we complained bitterly of our ex's

Anna this

Chris that

We stumbled heady on booze from your rickety bedsit to the Jackalope in Chorlton

We kissed and fumbled but we were troubled

Later....

Bliss!

Days on end in bed. My angel, hand on heart, I said

You declared your love and we strolled the quays, me poetic rapping. You on your knees

Cafe Rouge. Back row of the cinema. Pizza on the plaza

Long summer breeze

Us new lovers. Learning how to kiss

Yet still I couldn't see you

I hit therapy and I hit out at you

For all of the things in my past

Projecting my fears and pain onto our fragile canvas

You poor thing

And we moved apart

Then in July or August you moved in

To my block

And our chaotic boat again began to rock to the harbour-locked swell of our love

Mine that I still couldn't or wouldn't show

Yours all on your sleeve. Given freely in one go

Yet still I couldn't see you

My psychotic rage withering your love away

Burning another page in the book of our story

Of our fantastic star-crossed potential glory

Until finally you left

And found a true gent who is my world apart

I live in anger

He in The Heart

Your heart now

We are what was

What once nearly was

Goodbye my love

And all since I never manned up and saw you, held you, loved you, gave myself to you

All because

I couldn't see you

I couldn't see how happy you made me

I couldn't see how

I needed to love you right now

Delivery

from a collection entitled 'Semantic Dissonance; or The Echelon Rink' by Gary Knapton

Written words are not people
They are shapes
Resounding off the echoes of people as they once were

A one-dimensional recollection
Standing proud at their station
Fattened out by, if you're lucky,
The occasional neat articulation

Well founded and well rounded

Their resolute permanence spells 'danger'
Flag them as red (the colour)
See their impertinence!
Hanging around imploring to be re-said (only duller)

Or built upon
Galvanised afresh and let loose to multiply
Re-born and re-bred (now fuller)

Your words as I read them are what you thought
Not what you are thinking
You're asking to be lived backwards
Like first waking with the hangover and then going out drinking

There's no substitute for delivery
I haven't found one

Spoken words, not played back
Delivered live
Get scattered in the morning dew twinkle of grasses on level playing fields
Where the foolish and courageous thrive

Writers cast their lines and beckon all-comers to the bait
But it doesn't snag the darting pike
How could it?
Their baits are echoes
They are too late!

You only win the catch with open-mic

Here there is no morning dew
It long since evaporated in the searing heat
Of your incriminating tongue
Now powered on instinct

No comebacks
No undoing the damage of talking for fun

You're walking the streets with a loaded gun
Your itchy finger on the trigger spells trouble
Go figure!
Go rifling through the rubble of your blabbermouth concertos

Do they replay now in the tune you first heard ?
Or, shawn of context's melody
Do they screech and wail like a fallen bird ?

And what started out as your green four-leafed clover
Now black and white and red

All over

Victoria Park; or "The Northern Pride"

Victoria Park; homily to James Hargreaves*

from a collection by Gary Knapton entitled "Erudite Lessons in Rhyme"


Nestled on glebe in the heart of Stretford

Huddled off a humdrum street

Much like Greenwich where it borders Deptford

Grace and suburbia meet


Rise above the wails of the ice cream vendor

Afford your vision it's height

And you'll get a sense of Victorian splendour

Married to Mancunian might


Funny now to think how

Anyone whose anyone

Bought into the park life boom

Strolling to be seen

Those cotton mill men

Out of earshot of the deafening loom


Roving weavers down from Blackburn

Eyeing up the warp and weft

Soaking up the air by the crown green bowlers

Clinging to what day light's left


Shipping out 'greys' to the

Calico printers

Down on the London docks

Shoring up fuel against all their winters

Long before the railroad stocks


Work is our poetry

We're not Stratford

Wealth from industrial toil

Marble and gold in the churches of Bradford

Water is this century's oil


Spinners from Bolton

Wanderers of empire

Buying up the global rights

From new Saltaire to the Derwent valley

John Kay's Flying Shuttle climbed heights


Bankers in the City going pound to a penny

On Britain's Imperial birth

Fast flowing rivers and the new Spinning Jenny

Holding all of Lancashire's worth


When the heavy woollen men of Leeds

United with the dockers on a Liverpool wharf

Hail Manchester barons and Blackburn rovers

Pulling all the money up north


Think on when next you're walking the dog

How history leaves it mark

How the men from the hills

Paid all our bills

Then chilled out walking in the park


And never stand still because the dance goes on

Forerunners of the silicon ride

Get wised up and if you're from round here

Walk tall with the northern pride



*James Hargreaves from Oswaldtwistle Lancashire, England, invented the Spinning Jenny in 1764. Weavers could now handle 12 and soon, 128 looms at once. Inventing the factory and spurning a series of events that gave birth to real "sit-up" global trends such as the weekend, the British empire and the summer vacation, this poem is in honour of him.

Old Money, or; "The International Style"

from a collection entitled “Secrets & Lies” by Gary Knapton

Cool embalms your great metropolis

Style is the star of your show

Forget New York and the Asian wannabes

Only one place you gonna go

Money long-soaked through your dark cavities

Wealth bubbled over your bile

We call you a gimmick

We then try and mimic

Your international style

Might is a brand and it's name is London

Built on maritime ties

Rarely looking out at the rest of the UK

Wouldn’t wanna sully your eyes

Bow your heads to the landed gentry

Tailored in the Savile Row stitch

Berkeley, Grosvenor, Cadogan, Portman

The unapologetic old rich

Hedge-fund boys with their Hampstead helipads

Only count as “nouveau riche”

That’s so vile we say it in French

Old money is a water-tight niche

Russian billionaires blinged up in Belsize

Does not a pretty sight make

All the money in the world never bought class

To the un-inherited fake

On Golders Green

‘Cross Mayfair boulevards

Hidden down the cobbled street mews

The Garter and Crown owns half the island

Quietly collecting its dues

Here for the season

All the progeny

Effortless, anonymous, chic

Wrapped in the glare of their androgyny

Far from the maddening clique

Round the elegant curves of Regents Park

On the corners of your Square Mile

We doff our caps

To the capital chaps

With the international style

24/04/2014

My Old Invisible Light

from "The Nature of Thought" by Gary Knapton

The skeletons in my cupboard

Can rattle like old men’s teeth

All calm on the silent surface

All chaos and noise beneath

One out of all of my secrets

Could make your face turn white

Some little bird told me mum’s the word

I have an invisible light

From before I can remember

To the now as I sit right here

I never saw skin-tight blackness

I never got imprisoned by fear

 

I never got cornered by problems

I swam the African Nile

I never lost hope on a futile task

I ran the additional mile

I bowed to the truth and endured the pain

I stood on Everest’s peak

I knelt and prayed on the cold stone floor

To nurture my sense of meek

My body is pure

My heart is sure

I’m calm when the crowd doth jeer

I oppose the inertia of laziness

I oppose the resistance of fear

I never got blinded by anger

I beat my personal best

I rejoiced in my enemy’s triumphs

Yet I’m bigger than my boasts suggest

When everyone fumbles in darkness

Exposed to the pitch of night

That’s when I’m free

As I can see

I’m lit by invisible light

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