#audacityofdandelions

Your firstborn kept pigs to make a living, & an honourable man be; that is to keep home for himself & his woman. Did you know, that many pigs make /a drift/ of pigs.

Your other son is adrift, a self-made bit of plastic on a sea. The sea would want for nothing if this bit of plastic was retrieved.

Waste, of your energies & your hopes, energies that spent on him were to his brother's eyes stolen from him, though they were both children in a world they never made. The promises sung by the few shining moments of his youth that proclaimed he was his parent's son: intelligence & creativity, beauty & strength; perhaps they can be seen if they catch the light floating on the sea.

Stubbornly adrift, undecaying, not a feature at best, at worst a threat to the world around him that swam along millenia before since god summoned them into existence.

The first born brother wore himself down to bones as much as he was being worn from within by disease. An accident of a nature he never made. The former hope that gleamed in the martial arts enthusiast & modern dancer, the gleam that charmed many women (& consigned the priestly vocation to oblivion), was spent - used. No part of him a waste, fatigued from working with every slice of light within, to tend to the creatures that thrived for millennia before him, since the Lord sent the devil, in a drift of vessels, to cast itself into the sea.

No one can doubt that lean & limber brother did his bit to fulfil the curse of Adam: to till the earth, & to experience mortality. Death thrust upon him, a feature of a world he never made. Consigned to the holy darkness of Earth, remember him as beloved & have this sweetness recorded in stone, away from time's decay.

You cannot be blamed for the fragile thread that tethers a son to a mother, in this world you never made.

Adrift your living son remains, consigned to oblivion along with what the failed priestly vocations pull with it: youth, companions, & the tether to a world I never made. Stubborn in floating & forbidding time to decay.

Adrift amongst the decaying remains of a drift of pigs that once carried the devil back to hell, that birds overhead & creatures of the sea could pick to the bone, the sacrifice not wasted.

Did you know, mother, that if I could have a prayer answered, I'd wish to be more, undecaying still as time finds in plastic waste and in stone memorials, to be a millstone around the devil's neck, even if the devil is my own, & I will sink at last into the holy darkness of the depths till I find the earth once again.

Mother, be released, from the curses of this world we never made.

You're moving through the world like it's made of glass

Slowly, make sure each particle is clear of your path

Like molecules displaced, in a pattern, in a wave

And ripples still rippling even if you're standing still

How dangerous it is to be, to move, distorting space

The world populated by delicate pieces of grace

You must do no harm, must mend any damage

But is there enough time for repair

Is it too much to think you are so powerful

Or is it careless to think you're incapable

After all, you know how much a person can hurt

You've spent years in repair

A mutual care to hold your breath

And ease the burden, repeat until death

Weary hearts and anxious minds

I hadn’t planned the size or the format of Audacity of Dandelions, other than about a year ago deciding to gather them all under that name, and in the most recent of pandemic lockdowns, deciding to post them here. 

That there are 40 of them is an accident, but that was a happy one, a nice tidy number. I wonder how many there would have if all of them were kept.

These were all coming from some kind of truth or feeling at that time, and also reflect my, ahem, skill in writing poerty at that time. 

So in the sense of being a kind of honesty, I’ll call them poerty.

I see a new follower or two since posting, and some of these posts of mine getting liked. I appreciate it!

I might refine some newer old forgotten writings in the next few days.

I will continue to write and will post them here too.

Ghosts handmade, Like books of prayer. Ghosts too real, That prayers unmade.

Ghosts of martyrs Cruel hands made Ghosts of Saints In church parade

Ghosts of love & hate Intercede for the living Ghosts of hell & heaven Host this here communion

Lesser than the angels, Lesser than the animal, The general admission, Unnamed unclaimed hosts.

Ghost of wedding bands loosed Ghost of families unjoined Ghost of vows half-promised That ghosts will bind forever

Ghosts of you, Ghosts of me, Haunt forever, Living true.

Sext.

The source and the summit. the spring and the font. The earth that captures is the earth that gives forth.

Vesper.

The sun surrenders to the breakup of dawn and the night remembers to wake the forlorn

Compline.

The moon is passing over where the sun has long fled. The phases to mourn Where the spirit is dead.

Lauds.

Every morning I am disappointed, every night I had prayed for death. The stubborn of the mortal is met by the phantom of breath

house of winter, house alone linger where you've gone too soon house of summer, house full to bursting you remember and remembering aches

dust from ashes of the fire dust from forgotten things remembered moved hastily to some other file these motes of dust suspended in the light are all a beautiful scene

is it sunlight or these smudges of dust or is beauty in-between

house of autumn, house apart the cold comes in where the fire once began

the sky's a cool cool blue

the sun still shines

the sun still shines

All the town's a begging bowl a busker sings near the pigeon's hole the train is running no it's not on time there's a guitar case open and there's nought inside

A drunken lad stumbles past a cone that's been moved far from it's blocked off home the buskers sings out a higher note higher than that catcall from some bloke

There's the greatest generation mark this quote sitting broke watching all the passin' boats Folks of science and of art and an actor with no part Watch the blokes who've absconded with a shopping cart

You've got your degree well so do I We're both watching the wealthy suits go by Share a pint and bomb a smoke Hey ain't that the fella who snatched your toke

The parliament sits on the great big step Off the footpath on the cracked cement There's lights on the water and chill in the air The busker's colleagues switch out each day

All the fellas and their missus in their brand new gear looking like a spare shoe up their rear you think they're from around here? don't reckon so I don't think they've ever seen a lino floor

Hey man it's raining on your floor Your guitar case is damp now to the core Why'd you keep playing for a keep of nought None spares a penny for your thought

You could tell by what lights go on if its Christmas or a bad trip or a sing-along the fellas in the bright green pick me up there's a little bit of coke left in my cup

Now the passers-by notice the empty space Where the busker would syncopate ya pace Some say he's dead or in a padded room The parliament disbands for their moldy room

The begging bowl is full where the busker's gone Suits walk past who don't sing no song Some other young foolwith nought to their name Watches the city pass by tired of the game

All the town's a begging bowl Sing to the pigeon on the pole Sing for the wretched battered poor & this empty space on the floor

All the town's a begging bowl All the city's a rich man's hole But keep on singing loud & bold To keep us warm in the cold

Foreign land

Eulogies

Too far away a pilgrimage

Work, toil, dignity, groundedness

Mystery, unknown, awareness.

Between the nicotine stain & your quiet pain Some of the poison slipped through

Gifts from my father Newton's cradle Bike too large.

I'm sorry I only know some of your suffering now that it is in the archives, only now that a slice of the suffering is mine.

Nondescript houses on a nondescript street, Slices of plain, where the trees talk to me. There's a pîwakawaka knocking at the condemned church door. There's a gravelly path to the rocky sea shore.

This air was the first that filled my lungs, This air an age ago your cigarette smoke smudged. The circular town I don't know was the first one I saw, It is full of the ghosts of a lifetime before.

I know I should stop wandering, looking for you, past the mortal remains in a foreign soil tomb. The world has marched on where the church bells would toll. Your son walks past Gillette Park where the pram wheels would fall.

From a collection of bad and abandoned poetry from the past decade or so. These are the ones I kept. All filed under #audacityofdandelions