Month: Jan 2016

Roller-coaster

irlandesuk poetry , ,

Roller_coaster

Roller-coaster

Dandelion dust – whatever
           passing through Peckham Rye
bound for Victoria
           a flock of low-lying clouds
racing eastwards
           as I travel west
sunlight breaking through
           here and there in the gaps
hear the sound of gulls
            ducking and diving
overhead

In the streets off Northcote Road
           scores of wounded Christmas trees
lying disowned on their sides
           on the pavement
how the mighty are fallen
           a forest cut down in its prime
the ground littered with needles
           and decorations
fifty-per cent off

It all went so quickly
           barely a week
and barely remembered
           and into the New Year
the new life that awaits us
           if we want it

Dandelion dust
           caught in the wind
blown to the four corners
           gets in your eye
Life is relentless
           stopping for nothing
a rollercoaster – breakneck speed
           and either you’re on
or you’re off
           though there are little lay-bys
quiet moments of reflection
           a little love and kindness
but don’t get caught out
           it’s all over before you know it
so make the most
           dandelion dust

John Lyons

Constellations 2

irlandesuk poetry
Andromeda
Andromeda

Constellations 2

Once again that dark winter sky
           an ocean of stars
visible to the naked eye
           Walking beneath them
thoughts of eternity thicken
           We cannot live on bread alone
we need light
           everlasting light
to dream our golden dreams
           and in my dream I wake
hear the raucous chatter of foxes
           that have gathered
in a neighbour’s garden
           their shadows moving
beneath hedges or hopping
           over low wooden fences
to congregate – to be together
           celebrating the night
the hours during which
           they inherit the earth
and when all seems right
           with the world

Moon on the wane
           Andromeda where
she has always been
           She with her snow-white skin
her blue firmament eyes
           asleep in a bed far away
in some warm dreamy country
           On such a night I stumbled
many years ago and fell
            into the snares of love

John Lyons

 

Resolution

irlandesuk poetry, Uncategorized , ,

Like my poetry, I am a work in progress, as I believe we all are. We all hanker after times and places of innocence and yet we would never exchange the present for the past, go back to our childhoods. Whether or not we make resolutions at the start of a new year is immaterial: we are all constantly evolving and adapting to change. In our hearts we long for growth, for improvement, for greater understanding of ourselves, of our relationships, and of the world around us. Each day is a draft, an attempt, and maturity teaches us at least to accept that among the successes, the minor gains, there will be failures, perhaps even dead-ends that force us to rethink everything, to begin again. Setbacks. The occasional achievement. So it is with writing. There are good days, and days where the writing simply does not flow, or if it does, it flows too easily and in hindsight amounts to nothing.

Reading the letters of Samuel Beckett has been salutary and illuminating. So much of Beckett’s writing is soliloquy. In the novel, The Unnamable, in his theatre Krapp’s Last Tape, the sole soul on the stage or on the page, life’s essential drama, to be or not to be, and Beckett’s Hamlet finally responds in the novel: “. . . where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” Resolution.

 

Resolution

To avoid further calamity
         to recapture the innocence
of time and place
         that I knew as a child
there on the heath
         amid the sand dunes
and the gorse
         the sun scorching my face
breath fast and furious
         up hill and down dale on a bicycle
the yellow-brick road of youth
         innocence of the earth
of the seasons
         of the rise and fall of nature
to be finally in tune with myself
         in control of my idiom
and with some understanding
         of the enigma of my being
among all other beings
         Yes I am guilty of days
months and years
         but the rain
the fierce morning rain
         that shattered my sleep
has absolved me
         I mourn nothing
not even the passage of time
         nor the process of aging
I am the only secret
         I will take to the grave
but I am content
         and I live in hope
                  always

John Lyons

 

Constellations

irlandesuk poetry ,

Constellations

Walking home under a clear night sky
           a black canvas dotted with millions
upon millions of points of brilliant light
           Orion on the celestial equator clearly visible
the hunter frozen in pursuit of the Great Bear
           Stars the stuff of dreams : the scintillation
that brings warmth and mystery to our lives
            And we are the stuff of stars
our molecules assembled from raw light
           we are photosynthetic products
built from energies that have travelled
           further in space than any astronaut
light racing through the deep darkness
           through the cold expanses of the Milky Way
through the brimful emptiness
           of expanding time

Here in our bodies time becomes
           Time becomes events and relationships
Time becomes expression of time
           Time becomes purpose and meaning
Time reproduces time
           Time comes to an understanding
Here time becomes text

Dwarfed by the immensities of the universe
           we are its mindfulness harbouring
its infinite array of sensitivities
           Light that travelled from the very edges
of infinity to shape a rose
           that she would one day touch
with her lips – the warm red lips
           formed from waves of galactic energy
the glow of human bodies
           the lives that come together to create
conscious constellations of thoughts
           and words and feelings of love

John Lyons

History

irlandesuk poetry , , ,

History

To say that we live
           in prehistoric times
is no joke :
           what is history
if not dead time
           a past buried
in a chromatic wilderness
           in which nothing
may be reversed
           nothing achieved ?

A burnt match floating
           in a greasy pool of rainwater
a hair on a pillow case
           now lost beyond extinction
a lost lover who may be held
           in the memory for only so long
before the breath fades
           before the shifting sands
envelop every recollection

Be minimum
           with your words
economic in your actions
           resolve to move forward
to emerge from the tunnel
           into the hurly-burly
of the present
           write a new text of the world
full of warmth and affection :
           the past is a scribble
of fret and fear and fate
           that cannot be absolved

Make your world personal
           exercise the courage
of your convictions
           and adulterate nothing
Hers was a beauty
           that time could not slay
an angel of reality
           on the edge of night
my Morning Star

Be minimum
           I will say no more

John Lyons

 

Home life

irlandesuk poetry
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett

Some poems are little more than an aperçu, an observation picked up as the writer goes about his or her business. Gazing out of the train window, for example, looking for foxes in the undergrowth, or counting the foxholes in the embankment in the approaches to Lewisham station from Blackheath: there are so many! To be alive and to be aware, inwardly and outwardly. It doesn’t take that many words to hit a small nail on the head, not in poetry at least. The devil is in the detail, be it ever so small. How we construct a picture of our external world, growing it and growing into it, piece by piece, and simultaneously building up our mind, the synapses, the memories and above all, the feelings, one thing related to another, one emotion connected to another, the instinct we all have to make maps, physical and emotional. And the maps had better be true or we are lost!

And so to the lines I wrote one afternoon, interrupting my reading of the third volume of Samuel Beckett’s Letters. Writing to Mary Hutchinson on 9 April 1958 from his country retreat in Ussy, Lower Normandy, Beckett included the following observation: “The lady birds have flown. It is so cold the sparrows have interrupted their nesting. There’s hardly a leaf in the trees.” His letters are full of tender observations of the natural world around him. Quite different from the bleak prose of Imagination Dead Imagine.

These words reminded me of my own observation as I travelled by train to Victoria earlier in the week, hence the words below.

Home life
Foul day 
yesterday

incessant rain –
thought of

those tall leafless
trees alongside

the railway line
the abandoned nests

the shadowy clumps
in the highest branches

– no new build 
until the spring

Where are they
living now –

holidaying in
the warm south

or do they all have
second homes ?

John Lyons

 

 

 

Lower-case

irlandesuk poetry

Lower-case

breathe        grow        dream        love
           die not : is poetry not
the sacred flag of truth unfurled
           above anecdote though deeply
steeped in the narrative of the soul ?
           There is no school to celebrate
the niggardly politics of austerity
           beauty is not hard
nor cold nor calculating
           nor can it ever be consumed
it is a flourish of the flesh
           an all-embracing gesture
caution hurled to the wind
           it is faith and hope invested
in the redemptive energies
           of the dance of words
unleashed in the act of love
           beauty never scars
nor is deterred — beauty
           is wholesome wholeness
immune to amputation
           unique in its singularity

Take the swallow on the wing
           the ethereal grace and elegance
of its aerodynamics
           commensurate with the beauty
of its form shaped
           to and for perfection
the arabesques it traces
           in the sultry summer sky
confirm its guileless
           status among the angels
air        pride        plume
           not condemned
to the pitiful dens of darkness
           in which mere mortals wallow
Sinless swallows were
           before the fall 
series upon series of paragons
           overflying the bejewelled
pastures of paradise
           and so we look on
exhilarated and yet exiled
           banished from our own
geometric joys

Poets are not prize-fighters
           yet their noses are broken
their gums bleeding
           their tympanums burst
by the shrill cries
           of manic media merchants
a world weary of bone and brain
           a leprous Lazarus
hauled along on the slopes
           of sugared success

To the hand of fire
           we pray – spare us
from the venom
           of the corrupt kiss
from the pinnacles
           of ignominy

John Lyons

Mid-winter Blues

irlandesuk poetry

Mid-winter Blues

A sharp fall in temperature
             and for once a winter’s day
that feels like winter
             Frost on the parked cars
at first light
             a crispness in the air
and the breath I exhale
             clouding before my eyes

We are into the New Year
             and a new dispensation
hopes and dreams
             are all up for grabs
along with bold resolutions
             and the temporary ditching
of excuses as to why
             I am ever so slightly
overweight and thus
             a little less fit for purpose

Time to face the mirror
             and the bathroom scales
to have my prospects weighed
             and – no doubt – be found wanting
A scarf and a long cashmere coat
             can hide a multitude of sins
which is why I warm so much
             to the cold winter months

The majesty of meditation
             will carry me through
these hard loveless times
             I will look for the sparrow
for the robin beneath the hedge
             for spring’s first flowering
for the lambs born
             under the Morning Star
for the roses of mid-May
             amid the cityscapes mollified
by nature’s green mantle

John Lyons

 

All I want is a room

irlandesuk poetry

All I want is a room

A meditation on a line
from a poem by Frank O’Hara*

In the innocence of my childhood
             there were coal fires
and a long sloping garden
             with tall silver birches to climb
and during the winter months
             I scored countless goals
and suffered chilblains
             on my feet :
and in the summers
             I ran through the woods
collecting sweet chestnuts
             and used a bicycle to hide
within the endless
             duskless days

Education taught me
             little more than how little I knew
and love has since taught me
             how hard it is to find love
With age comes the wisdom
             to want next to nothing
but a room with you in it
             to need next to nothing tangible
because love truly is
             the only abstraction
worth grasping

There are rich almond
             and strawberry pleasures
sure enough but these
             all too soon will turn
to butterfly dust
             Age has taught me
the unparalleled urgency
             of the word now
and how living
             within the moment
of my feelings
             is the only way to survive
to go out each day
             into the world and gather
blooms from the thorny rose
             wherever I may find them

Time is a killer
             but you and I together
can outsmart it
             through the multiplication
of our kisses and caresses
             through the intensity
with which we merge our skins
              dipping constantly
into the soft succulent portals
             of eternity

In love without doubt
             we are all winners
after all we’re alive :
             what else matters ?
All I want is a room
             and for you to be in it

John Lyons

* Taken from the poem “Steps,” by Frank O’Hara, which can be accessed by following this link https://people.creighton.edu/~mlm22940/writings/ohara/steps.html.