Friday 13 December 2019
Wednesday 11 December 2019
Palimpsest
Living on a surface
scraped clean by time,
the geology of generations,
the faint striations of what was
once perfected and worn away
to nuance and supposition;
not one scratch, a truth,
an approximation
of the silence
of a ghost.
Sunday 8 December 2019
Wednesday 4 December 2019
Droplet
Falling, in the bleak rain,
this uncertain weather,
under a barometer of sky
where altitude pressures air
where clouds in turmoil
twist fog around the sun,
an arc as fluid as time’s days,
time’s years as rounded
as the planet’s shoulder,
the empty horizon a shrug,
disquiet and disinterest
hunched beneath it.
Wednesday 27 November 2019
Bodger
I never was a joiner;
I hacked my way ahead
in a mockery of carpentry
time running out,
my repairs merely running;
Tuesday 26 November 2019
forest fire
and rain no longer falls
a broad sweep of machinery screams
its half-track creak cries out ‘timber’
jibes jibs at trees older than breathing
it lurches and dives
a predatory steel bird
spawn of dinosaurs
a descendant lizard
extinction in every rusted scoop
Thursday 14 November 2019
tides
more water
in the dark-channeled sea
as the tide-race shifts
parallel to the shore
the flood’s convergence
clasps the beach-head
scours its precious stone
tearing it like an appetite
and in the ebb
everything is laid bare
laid drenched and dead
mudflats
kelp beds wrack fronds
seaweed limp with exhaustion
and water’s absence
passive and patient
for change
more water
drains from hidden places
while blue sky
slack in the shallows
darkens the gullies
where sea must return
more water
swells low to high
more water
under gravity
and the pull of moon
or sun
or the drag of bedrock
all the inertias of earth
in waves of change
perpetual
in their rising
and their falling
repeat these hours until
tomorrow’s new sea runs
and brings its reckoning
its wet accounting
its tides
© BH, 2019
I read a book about tides on my own very special Scottish island (where tides are important): Tide: The Science and Lore of the Greatest Force on Earth by Hugh Aldersley-Williams. Very informative. Made me think about the volumes of water heaving across the surface of the planet, We have, at most 5 metres, here. Elsewhere, anything goes; influenced by seabed topography, oceanic currents, landmass… And not even as regular as we think. Still, regular enough for me, its rise and fall organises life there - shopping, visits to the pub, scrabbling visits to the foreshore.
Rising ever higher and scouring the margins of ground never before reached, I wonder at its relentlessness. More water, that's for sure. How could anyone deny it?
Thursday 7 November 2019
Tuesday 5 November 2019
Wednesday 23 October 2019
whirl
tomorrow
money will rain
on the dispossessed…
after the rich
are awash with it
a trickle will come down
from the favoured
to the rest…
Saturday 12 October 2019
volatiles
this room
this office room
where droplets in the air condense
like vague ideas and run down walls
where obedience and protocol perspire
vaporous guilt complicit mist settling
on the hard-worked bent-headed
lower orders desk-bound slaves
breathing for want of anything
else to do
Friday 11 October 2019
turtle
the turtle swims among debris
in a deep and poisonous murky sea
and it’s so unfortunate that the turtle
turns out like humans to be mortal
Saturday 5 October 2019
First the Sharpened Blade
Thursday 3 October 2019
this morning
this morning
I saw the sun filtered through trees
in the hour before its light touched
the white walls of my house
Sunday 29 September 2019
precipitations
rain falls
threaded from heaven
a heavy mist on the eyes
rough ropes binding sky
to a promise of weather
no climate can keep
narrative
there is
a narrative in rock
erosions of history in lines
striated faces at the wild world’s edge
lines seldom spoken
not a word for
anything
alive
Thursday 22 August 2019
not cloud
not cloud
but a heaven of suns
where
rise or set
some saint walked
some fiddle-player stroked
bow over string
a bright hollow melody
turned the blue of sky
white with vapour
on a reel of heaven
a dance of sunrise
an air of air
© BH, 2019
Duncan Chisholm, the fiddle player, posted a sky over Galicia (with hashtag #SantiagoDe Compostella). I thought about skies, fiddle-players and saints walking. I wrote this in reply.
Monday 19 August 2019
Slugabed Binion
Tuesday 30 July 2019
Ozymandias Recycled
beside the sand
round which cold passions
command decay
and said,
‘Frown away,
sneer, half despair,
look on the desert sands,
sunk and level;
bare the lip,
read these lifeless words
far from those stone remains
that met the wreck of things.
Monday 22 July 2019
Wednesday 17 July 2019
Faces
Faces,
white as cumulus,
people the clouds;
expressions drift
with the weather;
a dark nimbus
shadows their eyes.
Sunday 14 July 2019
Sunday 16 June 2019
crocodile frack
deep in the mantle and, still, nobody gains,
except those whose need for treasure
is no natural force: liquid under pressure,
breaking surface like a sweat of fear….
Nothing, but nothing, to be seen here…
Thursday 13 June 2019
back-en
throu the fog a bou-hocht carl an his bull
gang slow in the back-en dag ‘at haps
the sair-aff black-affrontit cottar-touns
an gangin doon the orraman sings
a luv-sang o illtricket luv
‘at spiks o a ring an the hairt it braks
och, the year’s back has struck the simmer deid
an the haar rowes up but twa grim shaddas passin
From ‘Automne' (1913) by Guillaume Apollinaire. after a translation into Scots by Paul Malgrati – see over
© BH, 2019
Paul Malgrati offered a translation into Scots of the above. I couldn’t resist an attempt at translation. Like before, the result is different again. That’s the way with language, minds and poetic form in general.I got the thumbs up on it from Paul, so all’s well. Plenty room for expression.
You can read Paul’s original (and Apollinaire’s) here…
Thursday 30 May 2019
Last on Poetry24
I had nineteen poems published by Martin at Poetry24 in 2018. Nine more in 2019 — the latest, and last (because Poetry24 is closing for submissions) is: I read the news today. It was also the last submission Martin at Poetry24 put up. I'm honoured.
I read the news today - news and news and news… the news never sleeps
I read the news today - news and news and news… the news never sleeps
"…the whole world weeps, sheds water from its fractured veins,
finds its bedrock shattered or under pressure, under duress,
it oozes blood, a blood-like fluid, a thin extraction,
the Earth’s crust sobbing, mortally wounded by stabs of greed"
finds its bedrock shattered or under pressure, under duress,
it oozes blood, a blood-like fluid, a thin extraction,
the Earth’s crust sobbing, mortally wounded by stabs of greed"
Tuesday 30 April 2019
Sunday 28 April 2019
Brandit
The names for far we bade, pauchled,
syne they sealed oor mous wi saicrets,
made us sweer an, throu oor ain obedience,
thirlt us tae their schemes.
Wednesday 24 April 2019
Sunday 21 April 2019
Bang, Bang
Bang, bang, you’re dead, the children said;
it‘s just a toy, says a boy to the policeman;
but whatever he saw, it was against the law.
Tuesday 16 April 2019
yamazakura
above the clouds
warrior rain gathers
and waits to soak winter’s bones
with heaven’s blood falling
on cold hard ground
a life for a life
returned
sakura
clouds of springtime
unfold their petals as vapour
a bloom-like mist on once-bare trees
and the turn of a year passes
its one moment of being
as yet uncommitted
to memory
Wednesday 10 April 2019
Poetry24 April
I had nineteen poems published by Martin at Poetry24 in 2018. Eight more so far in 2019 — the latest, published on 18th April, is: not even the captain.
not even the captain - I couldn't keep quiet about Brexit any longer…
not even the captain - I couldn't keep quiet about Brexit any longer…
"lost souls on a heaving swell where an incidental tidedrags us drifting between land and open seanot even the captain — going down ship and all"
Tuesday 19 March 2019
Love Dare Not
there is no good news
for the rhapsodised
nor for their lovers nor ourselves
who are also artists and buy love
like cheap concrete
cumbersome stone
to build our phantasms with
Monday 11 March 2019
return to earth
in the place where
blue turns black where
sharp stars stab the night where
haze on the horizon curves where
the planet bends beneath inscrutable heaven
Poetry24 March
I had nineteen poems published by Martin at Poetry24 in 2018. Seven more so far in 2019 — the latest, in March for International Women's Day, is: Invisible Woman.
Invisible Woman - the gender data gap - the world measured by geeks (mostly men)
Invisible Woman - the gender data gap - the world measured by geeks (mostly men)
Wednesday 27 February 2019
For the Journeyman
The road’s black business runs thick with the hoarseness of tyres,
with the rattle of high-sided vehicles, the lull of household names,
storage, haulage, shopping malls, cheap components, chain-store
halls, white goods, car parts, sofas, beds, special moments, turn out
the light, sleep-well-my-darling, just one more night’s breakneck
hurtling through this two-lane highways’ sun-set drawn-out dusk.
Monday 25 February 2019
Poetry24 February
I had nineteen poems published by Martin at Poetry24 in 2018. Six more so far in 2019 — the latest, in February, are: Eschaton, priceless love and Underclass. Coming soon (I hope) - jihadi bride.
jihadi bride - grooming, radicalisation - call it what you like…
Eschaton - part of Poems for the Planet. Doom and gloom and the end of days…
jihadi bride - grooming, radicalisation - call it what you like…
Eschaton - part of Poems for the Planet. Doom and gloom and the end of days…
Sunday 17 February 2019
Plinth
Yes, I remember Grantham—
The name and the association—
Because one day in the autumn
Of a year, my train connected.
Shunted on some railway triangle
This way, that way, forwards and back,
Till I ran across bridges to travel
North away from Thatcher’s England.
Saturday 16 February 2019
Friday 15 February 2019
Undying Art
Poetry was never dying:
always alive, it lay sleeping
in doorways, stepped over
by people looking somewhere else.
Tuesday 12 February 2019
spark
the truth
has finally dawned
no-one calculated
the cost of the wind
as we should have
building for
tomorrow
Saturday 2 February 2019
JFMAMJJASOND
January cold taxes the purse.
February remembers love for a time
While winter deals its worst.
March gives us reason
For changing the season
As wind blows through like a curse.
Thursday 31 January 2019
Poetry24 2019
I had nineteen poems published by Martin at Poetry24 in 2018. Here's the first of 2019 — Perihelion — and the second – Artifices of Intelligence on the Poetry24 website. A third – Tanks 1919 – on the 31st January.
Monday 21 January 2019
Art Poisons the Artist
shells in shards, shaped like striated musculature
she carved them from the flesh of beaches
with husked sand, carapaces and skull segments
tied and strung into Adam’s bones
with the dust of grinding suspended in the air
and chipped flakes of cartilage silting her worktops
she breathed life into her work while particulates
drained her own life to an ebb like a quicksand
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