Poetry Corner

An Anthology of Verse - Poems by the Marlow Poets

"Imagination is more important than knowledge,
for knowledge is limited, while imagination embraces the entire world"
- Albert Einstein -

The Marlow Poets

Cecelia Anne
Alan Halstead
Tony Turner
Chris North
Theresa Southby
Tony Buzan
AnnMarie Eldon

Poems by Cecelia Anne

Colours

'White, the colour of hope etched
across a blackboard of silence.

'Colour my mind with colours of light
From the universe of inward sight.

Speak to me in shades of blue,
Blue sky take me away with you.
Lift my soul in waves of white
And bury the mass of black eyed night.

Shut my eyelids on distant grey
Neither here nor there; my carefree day.
Drown my purple thoughts till they sink
Into lazy whispers of sunset pink.

Fire my spirit with sunburnt red,
Pour silver silence over my head,
Breathe into my heart rose-white care
With invisible tones of colourless air.

Awake bright orange sunkissed morn
Dust all hopes with apricot dawn.
Teach me the colours of spring each year
And whisper their fragrance in my ear.
Paint colourful words of poetry
On a velvet scented indigo sea.

Entwine my adult green-leaf days
With childhood yellow careless ways
Dancing in veins of silver light,
Innocent born with golden delight.
And tiptoe into my cloudy dreams
Rainbow moments with rainbow beams.

'Black, the colour of words engraved on a
canvass of dormant sound.'


Something In The Distance

Poems by Alan Halstead

THE WORM - HOLE

T`was Christmas day in the worm-hole,
And the space-craft was coming through fast,
And the capsule crew chewed on tablet stew,
Before disappearing at midnight mass.

Time was warped to blazes,
Negating each rolex guarantee.
Elongated, every body –
But not yet to infinitee.

Captain Quill was dressed as Santa,
And he munched on a mince-pie pill,
His crew drank distilled urine,
It`s a wonder none were ill.

They had never known blackness like it,
Every astronaut had his fears,
It made the black hole of Calcutta –
As the shop of a thousand chandelliers.

Washing in a globule of water.
Bodily functions – far from free,
Trying to discharge anti-matter,
Weeing at forty-five g.

They drank a toast to Christmas –
Christmas, twenty - forty eight,
But the year 2000 re-flashed past,
As they cruised on a curve of light.

And something worse was to happen,
They all got another shock,
They found every appendage elongating,
From cracker-hat down to c...co...sock.

All out of sync, were the cyborgs,
As ` Odysseus` was coming through,
Leaving the expanding Universe,
To enter the contracting Esrevinu.

T`was Christmas Day in the wormhole,
And the space-craft was coming through fast.
And the crew weren`t keen on the future,
Suspecting it may be their last.
Like four blokes hung on a scaffold,
Seeing their past flash passed.


FORK FACTS

1
Eating with a fork alone
Is as futile as the blade of a knife,
For both will bend to the bone,
And lead to a nag from the wife.

2
There is a tripe in the affairs of meals
Which if taken at the fork,
Leads on to obesity.

3
Yuri Geller ?
With your Mensa obliquity,
Bending tableware is not clever,
It`s silly.

4
Guy Forks, and Catesby,
On one November eve, whipped
Up a bombe surpris.

5
" A fork! a fork! - my condiment for a fork. "
Sang the salt-cellar, a tad out of tune.
" Shut up, you twit ", said the pepper pot,
" You`ll have to make do with a spoon."

MR LISTER

Mr Lister
Was our History Teacher.
He also took the choir,
And he taught a bit of scripture.
He wasn`t bad at harmony,
Though not much of a preacher.
But when it came to History
He made it sing.

Quarry Mount – grim and gray,
Even on the brightest day.
At nine o` clock we went to pray,
"Save us from the cane, today."
The walls outside, drab and drear,
Our walls, inside, filled with fear,
But in our class, the walls arrayed,
They were clothed in History.

Black the Mount
And gray the Quarry,
Gray the maths, and black the chemistry.
Blacker still, biology.
Red the map – Dundee to Delhi,
Red the hands for being silly,
Redder still for goofing geography,
But Gold the History.

Mr Lister, our History teacher,
Forgot the dates and taught by colour.
He introduced us to the Duke of Gloucester,
No imposter!
He then brought in bold Wat Tyler,
A hero to many a peasent fella.
Kitchener, Caractacus, and Boadecia ...
They all knew Harry Lister.

Mr Lister, the History teacher,
Had a cane he could whistle faster,
Even than that of the Bible-Studies master.
And it was no use sticking on a plaster
To avoid disaster,
For `midst laughter, he would mutter,
"So fall Caesar ...
Et tu, Lister."

Mr Lister, our old Master,
Went last week, to join History,
God go with him on his journey,
Make it easy.
For he made the past a magic mystery.
And if he wasn`t much at scripture,
He ignored the bloody dismal future,
And he made History, sing.

THE STILE

Life is not a load of laughs,
When you step over the stile
At the end of the field,
That makes looking forward
Less well thought of
Than looking, longingly, back.

The occlusion that separates
Never - setting sun, and ever - lasting cloud.
When the path you`ve left
Was the route of hope and love,
And the ruts ahead,
Mud filled.

BRIDESMAID REVISITED

Turn the pages of the photo album,
José . When we were young. When we were young.
And God in heaven, you were beautiful
My love. So the wind , the clouds, and even the
Wild, wild, sea, and the serene sun there, envy me
The girl with the smile in the love album.
And all smiled in unison on that wedding day,
When the World was wild joy and we were young,
As I danced with the bridesmaid and laughed
And sang. Then everyone agreed, `A lucky guy`.
And so indeed, on that flowering day,
Danced and sang as on the blossom-strewn floor
Of the years. They were right – a fortunate man,
And the well-thumbed album agrees with them.


THE PAUPER`S SONG

Oh I am a pauper, bald and bold,
I have a car that`s bloody old.
I have a mortgage getting bigger,
My jacket would make a miser snigger.
My gas bill is very red,
The duvet`s holey on the bed.
The electric bill is even redder,
Radio expunged, and TV deader.
I`ve lost m` tummy,
And m` bum is thinner,
I woof crisp butties,
For an á la cart dinner.

The hi-fi is on the blink,
Cabbage leaves block the sink,
The lavatory has an odiferous pong,
Weeds in the garden are long and strong.
BT have got the phone,
The missus is croaking like a crone.
The silver`s sold, and may be molten,
We take our hols in Butlins, Bolton.
For here I am, a retiree,
No longer an omnipotent, plump, MD.
Or even a sycophantic employee
But at least, I know, I do feel free.

So I must borrow,
And I must beg,
But I`ll say with gusto,
What the heck,
And I`ll never fling m`self into any old beck,
Fishin` for supper there, on the rec.
And I`ll say to any passer-by,
Looking him proudly in the eye,
If you don`t want to see a good man die,
From hunger, atrophy, shame, or cold,
Lend us a quid for a crust of bread.
For I am a pauper, bald and bold...

This collection © Alan Halstead 2003


Poems by Tony Turner

SEARCHING FOR THE SOUTHERN CROSS

As night brings darkening skies, I realise
that I can see the stars undimmed down here
sleep-walking in this southern paradise
away from city lights. The air's so clear.
Slumped on its shaft, blade crazily awry,
The Plough's* a victim of some farmyard crash,
Orion's mirror image guards the sky
and high above the Milky Way's awash

and then - as now - I know no Pole Star shone
on sailors battling storms and sheets and spars,
no star to guide them, tossed on friendless foam
lost in this watery waste, but driven on
seeking new lands, new lives, new hope, new stars
on southern seas and far away from home.

* I am no astronomer. The Plough's not visible in the Southern Hemi-sphere, but I thought I saw it, as perhaps the explorers did centuries ago.


THE SHOP

This is Jim
who's up before dawn
to mark up the papers
we'll read in the morn.
This is Jim
who works all day
to stock up his shop
with things we might buy
who opens early
and closes late
who's never too busy
to chat if you'll wait
whose holidays happen
when seven follows eight
who lives in the shop
that he built.

These are the thieves
who came in the night
whose faces were hidden
and fingers were light
who cut the hole
that let in the glove
that opened the lock
and the door with a shove
who raped the till
and buggered the stock
and pillaged the shop
that Jim built.

This is the night
after the theft,
Jim's doing the rounds
of all that's left,
doing his best
to bolt the door
and wondering if
they'll return for more,
wondering whether
they'll come when it's black
or wait a few days
and then be back
to shatter his shutters
and laugh at his locks
and give his insurers
such terrible knocks
that they won't insure
the work of his life,
the business he's built
and runs with his wife
and they'll kill it stone dead
as sure as a knife -
they'll close the shop
that Jim built.


A PEAR

The knife slices into flesh,
clear juice oozes over fingers, drips
on to the plate. Scent hits nostrils
with muddled thoughts
of tall sweet jars in corner shops,
pear drops and a time
when every new sensation was
a dive into the pool of life.

The smell lingers, carrying me forward
to a long, low laboratory at the edge
of a school quadrangle. Organic chemistry.
Making exhibits for Open Day,
stewing acids with alcohols under reflux
before pouring into water to release,
each time, a new nasal experience:
the fragrance of an ester, conjuring up
apple or cherry, banana or strawberry, rum
or pear. Chemistry the world used
for flavourings, an art so skilled
nine esters must be blended with five
other things to make just raspberry. Or pear.

That smell returns and I'm mounting stairs
to my first lab job, in a factory which once
handled guncotton at the edge of town
where the church spire was blown crooked
as all went up in 1871. Now it makes paints
from tamed collodion cotton
and solvents, the best of which are
esters. Ethyl and butyl acetates.
Amyl acetate. Pear drops. The smell of pear.

The round, ripe, soft juiciness
of a pear.

A TEST MATCH AT LORD'S
after George Mackay Brown

Farquhar-Brown spent the morning in the bar
lunch with friends in the Memorial Garden
and the afternoon riding the high sierras.

Simpkinson brought his scorebook
clamped TV to railings, heard commentary
through headphones, didn't miss a ball.

Foster brought his girl friend
a dark-haired, brown-shouldered beauty,
didn't know what the score was.

Jones and Brasher held their annual meeting
were transported back twenty years
lived through matches long ago.

Faulkes and Clunes had three cool boxes
two hampers and a corkscrew:
the grass got rosier and rosier.

They all met at the Tavern after,
except for Foster
playing his own game to rules much older.

This collection © Tony Turner 2003


Poems by Christopher North

La Traca: Plaza El Caudillo

Flame zaps up a vein
and out of atoms between walls
a diablo ramps into the vital. Unleashed,
its gut thrash triggers a panic flight;
figures scampering from an eruption.
A tail lash thrust sends it forward
devouring its string of fire, into the Plaza.
Backs press against expressionless fachadas
as it hisses and splutters above them
passing a manic eye over huddled forms
that gaze up from a sudden terror zone.

Then snorting it crashes up Calle del Sol
machine gunning pediments, plane trees
and the memorial statue to Los Caídos,
throwing off flares, bombs and cannonades
in a rage of flame and gobby, bouncing sparks.

Another pause, faces peer from doorways;
all they can hear is children's cries
and fierce, bubbling, dried lung breaths.
Then it thunders back to the Plaza to scream
a long, shrill agony screech that seems endless
but ends in a last chest punching orgy
of explosions faster than heart-beats.

The echoes travel every street like mad news.
Then flail out to every tree and roof of the campo
to crackle on mountain faces, ravines, valleys
and somewhere else beyond.

In the Plaza survivors emerge through the cordite
and yellow smoke. They are laughing with ears clanging.
They are dusty. Relieved. Embracing.

On the M40 listening to Rachmaninov

Through the cutting at Lewknor listening to Rach 3,
the first movement making ethereal a rambler on a contour,
allowing him no past or future, just a blink of glorious moment.

Before leaving Marisa told me that Bill was now in prison,
something to do with drugs. It surprised like a mucky douche.
The real surprise though was when I remembered

meeting Jim in the library car park a week before.
He'd tailed into vagueness when I'd asked 'How's Bill?'
then changed the subject with a sudden brightness.

The car in front has one wheel on a mad wobble
It reminds me of Ezekiel and Yahweh's chariot
in mighty clouds, each wheel moving in a different direction;

the biblical way of describing the indescribable
'Lord Over All' and demonstrating his omnipotence.
Rach 3 some say is impossible to play.

As I break out into the vale this fellow seems to manage
but how do I know he is playing the notes written;
not fudging, not avoiding contact, not kinking the path

and declining a contour to by-pass an impenetrable thicket?


Sacramonte 1965

'You capitalist?'
His teeth pegs of horn,
a swarming Sacramonte street,
bats flicking about the single light
as he leaned in close.

'Soy estudiante' I said.
He clutched my sleeve fiercely.
His mother, face shapeless dough,
rasped at the vulpine men
on their doorway chairs.

'Come, you see flamenco my friend'.
His sister drummed her feet on the step.
She chewed gum and lit
a very white cigarette
allowing me one searing glance.

Our Romany friend from Essex
later said we could've had her for a thousand.
I could just hear the tinkling
of some goatherd's flock
in the dark pastures above.

'No tengo dinero' I said.
He shrugged, then came forward,
shook my hand before turning abruptly away.
From where the goatherd was
Granada must have seemed a bowl of stars.

Just Before Sarah Left for Shanghai

Hadn't seen her for six years.
I thought of her as essence of Sidcup
(quiet beep of a passing car, a twitter of sparrows)
but now she leaves for Shanghai in three days
to assist in the growing Sino craze for horse racing.
'Didn't you know that I love riding - the turf, all that?
For them it's early days - they have a sort of tote
but it's rudimentary. Superb stables though - just need management.'
She shows me her quick reference guide to Mandarin.
'Just for three months anyway, then Beijing to see the sights,
and on to Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney-
all the usual airports - I'll be in California by May'

Then I was talking to David back from Barcelona
where finally he'd cleared up that complicated fraud case.
He recounted the story of a man, very old school and credible,
notorious alumnus of his son's private school in Scotland,
who ended a chequered career forging ancient
Chinese manuscripts in a tiny flat in what was then Peking,
for collectors in the West. Fooled them for years.
'Very Hitler's diaries' opined David
'but he'd eked out a life. Its not known what he was escaping from.'

Only eight hours later I picked up the Australian poet
who arrived at Heathrow before dawn ('to Singapore great
but after that it was cattle class') who'd just watched
an in-flight film about Elizabeth the First - he needed
to download this imagery in the car back to Chalfont.
'I think they got her about right' and then over coffee
we discussed geese (this house was a goose farm once).
'In a way I was raised by geese' he murmured finally
before going off for a long sleep in the back-room
with its view of the cherry trees and February primroses.

I can see her on a gallop - her lop-sided smile,
but I can't make out the buildings behind.
I can see her arrival in Los Angeles,
she'll be well traveled by then - it won't surprise.
I can see her outside hailing a cab, the cabby
laughing as he loads the boot - then they drive away,
me seeing it as clearly as the desk in the other room
where I need to work on a budget. I know once I start
I will have its very edge and flavour by the end of the day.

The Visitation

In the swarm of words
that was our
conversation,

the red wheelbarrow
had taken form;
so that Judy,

who was writing a novel
at present
blocked

and Glyn,
who apologized
for his hyperbole

and Michael,
who was bewildered
by his sudden sense

of metaphor
and Eva and Sweeney
and all

encircled
the red
wheelbarrow

and the place
it occupied
in the London bar

where we had gathered
on National
Poetry Day.

Who would
grasp the handles
and wheel it away?

'It speaks for all of us.'
said Sweeney
finally.

*

Across the Square,
as I walked
to the train,

milling people
everywhere
talked to

each other
and pushed
red wheelbarrows

in the
quickening
rain,

through
populations
of white chickens.

We Are Stardust We are Golden -
South Bank 2000

'My Lust is an Asteroid'
it said on the tee-shirt
and everything burst into simple blossom
like daphne's pink flowers on a stick
with their scent from the ice-age,
the contentment of ancient bees
and a whiff of steam off a lake.

'A Galaxy of Hugs'
said another and the petals shook off
to form thick drifts on the pavement sides,
the ferris circled and all along the banks
the world opened into further and gaudier flowers;
the swarming people touchable
with their 'Meteors of Love'.

This collection © Christopher North 2003


Poems by Theresa Southby

Ancient Woods of Buckinghamshire

Shaped by nature and the vicissitudes of time
Ancient and magnificent, carrying your wounds
proudly like soldiers, heroes of the battle
You have fought for your survival.

Druid Oaks of Burnham Beeches, passing through
the centuries. Pre-historic brambles, dog's mercury,
bluebell, wood anenome, Anglo-Saxons called you 'wudu'
You stand the tests of time.

Ancient common with your oak and silver birch
evolving silently through this century,
holding your history like poetry within the beauty
of this, your garden earth.

Encased within the ancient oaks and hornbeam
I feel at home, beside nature my senses return,
Resting within your silvery-green canopy
Rejuvenated and alive once more.

Following your contours, reaching your peaks
standing in admiration of your beauty and heights,
viewing the century in rings and scars
of your battles and your silent majesty.

Native beech and yews, ancient hornbeam, ash and
chestnut, you are like friends to me, survivors of
the Great Storm, let trees be trees, separate
individual species, with lives of their own.

Virtuous in age and meaning, time has changed you
torn and uprooted you, the oak dies slowly standing up
beside the elm which falls to pieces branch by branch,
Skeletons of time, we only notice you when you are gone.

For Justin
1st September 2000

Blue Day

Blue day, still life, silent
And deep as the ocean,
The currents and tides play me
Like the strings of your guitar
Silently, standing in the corner.

His silence has taken me deep inside,
Safe from pain, a chrysalis,
Sleeping but awake and aware of
My existence before and after
Everything has changed.

Cactus seeds struggle and flower too soon
Taken from familiarity and put somewhere else
Not expecting this sudden change,
They flower like there is no tomorrow.

Seeds are still growing and the garden is
Potent pink with deep crimson velvet tones
Mingling with midnight blue,
Moon flowers stretching up to the moonlight
Close in the light of day.

Cybele, goddess of nature, ancient worshipping spirit,
I feel you in this place,
Beside Moly's milk white flowers
Of black herbal roots that Hermes
Gave to Odysseus for his protection.

In your reflection my mind wanders back
Through palatial parks
And luscious gardens of Eden,
To the plans we made,
And the unfinished jigsaw of our lives.

We sailed together through sunny projections,
Sliding amidst the overhanging branches,
An ocean of difference to cross
Until the tide turned in our favour.

Scottish highlands make me sad
To think we climbed so high,
To be broken down like angels
Before we could take flight.

Quiet solitude is all I need,
The world can go on without me,
Lost in my own reflections,
As I watch the rain fall down.

Like Teocalli, the truncated Aztec pyramid,
I am standing with pieces missing,
Cut away from the whole
Construction of my being,
Not falling, just swaying in the breeze.

Thinking in pictures, I'll stay here in darkness.
Sciamacy with the daylight fading away,
I'll stay here in the darkness,
Until the light of day arrives.

Ghostly

Walking with ghosts, the threads of spider webs break,
The world has stopped and turned over
And I'm walking backwards
To the beginning of life.

Cold chill air cuts through all life,
Mortality and immortality join.
Alone with voices echoing in the air
Searching their sound to find you,
And losing you to the night.

Alone, lost, scared of the journey back,
Silent cool alabaster stone
Marking the place where you sleep
The silent dreams, unspoken beneath
Ebony skies where bats circle and
Crows fly and cries go unheard.

Icy air circulates and penetrates
Those vulnerable places, where exposed
Open wounds, sting with pain
Into numb surrender and
A haunting song chants the trance of death.

Silent footsteps cross the woodlands,
Shadows fall across the path,
Feelings and echoes calling
With every torn thread exposed,
Those forgotten moments like lost time
Remembering, when you were truly alive.

Dreamy reminiscent feelings suffocate,
Trapped without possibilities of life.
A desert island cut off from the sea
Of resurrection and realisation,
Life flowing in a slip-stream.

Too painful to remember, too precious to forget,
The tune we played with our own chords,
Emphasis and rhythm, major and minor chords,
The tune that never sounds the same any more,
The final note, a sad lament the echoes on.

This collection © Theresa Southby 2003


Poems by Tony Buzan

STRUCTURE IN HYPERSPACE
A POEM FOR THE 21ST CENTURY in 24 stanzas


I

As plasma loops bulge and snap
from the sun's sheath, writhe out
into the System's Cold and are sucked
back into their part of Eternal Heat, so Man,
Not Adam, strives away from what is
to what is not and is dragged, or falls, back.

II

Sound Beats over Time
ranges Solidity's Scale sined to a moving whip of rainbow
on which I, roller-coaster colour bead, travel,
lashed to whip's tipped extremity, off dropped
exploded up into Everything

III

shot as a grain of the spray,
laser of light, rainbow gunned
funnel spectrummed; hung like
Christ Season Spheres for trees,
rain bow balled into floatingness
brain-stroked on a Vista of Sound.

IV

Music, Microcosma's Rainbow Beads,
jostles down prism rivers,
bombards the receiver brain;
taps me, I drum skin, my Space hollow,
scolded for even thinking of thinking
about Music when the Great Children Play -

V

stick-hit cymbal hits colour bead hits
colour bead hits colour bead hits
my drum my tympani and I play
Music I play:

VI

Molecule is Sound's Drumstick
Ear Drum Sound's Drum Skin;
Music is the projected Solidity of Sound
Silence is the absence of Motion
Sound is Silence Moved.

VII

The Great Children.
Infinite Gambolling!
Sound rolls and spreads, rises and falls,
is sharp,
tough breaks, blends, molds, enfolds, jumps, leaps, laughs
Force heaves drives tunnels pierces shakes lifts tugs blows
shrugs sucks whirls drops stretches hones breaks combines burns laughs
Space-Time spreads, drifts, fades, compresses, thins, rolls, wafts, enfolds
Energy changes, shuffles, heats beams heaves radiates explodes

VIII

Their Toys! Their Fields!
Limitless limbs to drop rise kick hit and play!
jewel clusters to glee over, spin, rotate; fibreballs to form,
heat, condense rocks around, paint with gamut's brush, freeze,
explode; ball as sun, planet, molecule or atom to dribble, carry,
bowl, throw, kick, or spin, All to hurl, skip, swing,
rollick, clown, play pranks on, laugh, dally, romp through:
X-Ray gardens, gamma greenness, ultra, infra realities; Great Wastes
Galactic clouds to peep from, blind man's buff in
Rorschach horses to mount and ride.

IX

Around and around and through our straight circled speed yoked universe!
riding on flame tailed iceballs, looking to rings looming
from Titan's only blue horizon, seeing filigree
of star-dust spectra tantalizing to us, laughing at: winged helmet;
slit symbolized; sphere crossed; war arrowed prick head; bolt;
Kronos; his spawner; trident; infernal god; and dust; our spinning stones;
kicking about blue stars full circling red is heat to blue is cold,
tampering with Cluster, Nebula, shackled suns, tandem
travellers, and Supergiant, absorbing all colours, seeing Monster
exploded into Crab, Light dust-belted, Supernova shattered, and the
Cosmos Red shift and Blue shifting us into cube into cube into cube
into nothingness in Everything.

X

Infinitely Energetic, Boundless, Unchained!
all days and the seventh the same into One; Free, playing,
playing through us, lasers, heat, fire, bounce, penetrate, mould
form, all these are Theirs: Eternity, Infinite Dark, Light, Create, Destroy,
Never grow old!

XI

Change consumes to Changed: movement uniform, speed constant, noise none;
They rest in Single Tones.

XII

Beat as a is a rubber ball between bats
is Centre undulated
is tsunami shunted by low sea earth
is slow shudder on Psyche's Harp
is her soma swaying jellyfish on tide arms
is a bird's balled body slung on curved wings, unsung note held
by limb to Nature's Stave
Energy is Wave.

XIII

Colourless colour bundle pierces glass sphere
and sprays free
Microcosma's Sun with Wanderers surges Energy into
Movement into Heat into Light into limbs metal
filament inanimates
The flattened disc cone spins to the balled point
stuffs the tiny head, traces the wire beads the code
beats the ear shell feeds the path ways
funnels
Free

XIV

rung with the Coils of Ecstasy
Size shrinks through smallness to Great.

XV

Everything is Solid is a tautology not yet known
solidity is Frozen
Solidity is not Immovable
is Fluidity, is Energetic, Can be moved in
Nothing is the Absence of
Everything is
Solidity is Everything Flows
is
Reality is non-particular
Are Truth
Everything is One
(Truth is One or Nothing)

XVI

'Can be moved in.' 'tangible' cannot:
touch is barriers, needless impediment
implement, is senseless,
cannot go through
eyes turn it on and do not See;
logic is particular
is touch reality
semantic's slave
physic's tool
is barriers
is not
Flow.

XVII

Intuition is particular bridged
leads through to Know

XVIII

Dimension holds Plane apart
magnet shunts antipode
Light shines through glass
God lives through me
receiver is other than Wave.

XIX

Definition or Force
is the Space between the stuff of Spaces.

XX

Laughing in his Space
Zeno dipped into touch, halved
and halved our sensibilities,
aeon-fooled us, plumped slow
forever faster; cracked, impossibly,
Time

XXI

becomes concept, mental become physical
movement becomes motion, flow becomes wave
beat becomes chroma, colour becomes experience
we
experience
colour
visual becomes touch, feel pulse, rhythm taste,
hearing worlds music surge essense savour ease
rhythm Flows ...................

XXII

we can
funnel in to us Girth's Immensity
strap Reality's Size to convenience
shrink the Immense to the conceptual
encapsulate Magnitude in Microcosma;

XXIII

we are the glass sphere
the touch reality,
the ear shell,
the instruments,
the inanimates,
the receivers,
the transmitters,
the symbol,
the drum.

XXIV

we have yet
to Live.

This collection © Tony Buzan 2003


Poems by AnnMarie Eldon

For Stef (b1982)

You lay over my left shoulder
your body waiting there for sleep
resting in a sanctuary

hair soft like somehow dew
touching my face
from where I smelt

morning stretched out like a cobweb and an old man's smile
falling snow and the sound of Christmas seeping

a child's fingers run through wet grass
a lover's kiss as sweet as day

a grain of sand on salty skin stuck-over from a
turning tide

the warmth of velvet in closed rooms
the white of starch on lace

a school satchel at the start of term, rediscovered
fallen petals under a wishing tree

a new book, unturned, unread
and in all this I smelt

your head
fresh as sunrise
cupped against my cheek


May Moon

I pull my children from their TV
and show them an early-evening
full moon harvesting sky across the field

My boy thinks he's seen bigger and flies

My girl suggests
blanket and chair outside
so I can write a poem
after dark

As night draws its curtain
across her window she says
Oh we didn't have time
for the rug and your writing

Her nascent nipples out-
lined by lunar-big light
she is past girl now
her cycle about to come

It seems I have had precious little
or no chance to yield
all the mother that I could be

although I gather all the mother
that I am from the turning
of her strong pale head

My daughter who shelters
pearl drops in her bed
is woman

to whom
I give these words
instead

This collection © AnnMarie Eldon 2003

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