PART 3

Somehow you knew more about your daughter

Than I would ever know about you, how

Could you know then about a time after

When I would hear your last prophecy now

For the first time, how little the words meant

Then but they hurt, somehow being chosen

To last, unlike time which was only lent

For a few months more. What a time, even

When I look to those days, I cannot think

About anything that was said, only

A few remembered words, a vital link

Missing, the silence after left to be.

Broken, spoken words from your utmost fear,

I was too young to listen to or hear.

22nd October 2000

How shall I summon the words to retell

Your story left marginal and unguessed,

My mind held fast in an impassable

Insomnia as though I had redressed

Only the last nearest echoes that bound

Us to another world, where the silence

Was endless, without origin, its sound

Random deliberate as its end once.

Where are the words that could describe that place,

Its lasting memory will not support

Me when I stumble, yet how can I face

Each day knowing full well I shall fall short

Of language for however hard I try,

Without truth, the past will remain a lie.

23rd October 2000

In the unfolding narrative structure

The same lines always are rehearsed again

To somehow extricate myself from her,

Trapped between the past and the brief refrain

Of my whole life.  Wherever should I go

Just leaving the rhythm of things behind

With what I have known, in the rhyme I know

Buried below the surface of my mind.

There is no way out and now no further

To go, I am lost with my own echo

In a maze of circumstance, to founder

There without the breath of my own shadow,

In a mirror’s depth my mind is aground,

The reach of silence breaking against sound.

24th October 2000

Sometimes I am led on a journey through

Language where I no longer feel afraid,

Boundaries dissolve, the old is made new

Again, a debt to experience paid

With another instalment, while knowledge

Waits along the way, unknown and descried,

Magnifying memory as I trudge

Alongside. Horizon around me wide

With time, the road before far as the wake

Of forgotten memory left behind,

Vestiges from which I must learn to make

A meaning, to dredge the fear from my mind,

From the past left unstill and forsaken,

Left to rediscover and awaken.

24th October 2000

There is nothing to go on, just a sense

Of something out of the ordinary,

Momentary as a seesaw’s balance,

An unerring matter of certainty

That cannot be denied and come what may,

Slowly gains its leasehold through possession

And a restlessness with the everyday

World, until viewed through its own reflection

As a space never seen or heard before

With a window onto the other side

Of time, sensed there without end, through a door

Open-standing always, which I have tried

To close and could not, when I am lost they

Find me, as written words I cannot say.

25th October 2000

When I write now I cannot close my eyes,

Between night and day I am another

Person that I can hardly recognise,

Divested of all I know and somewhere

In a world other than this where nothing

Lasting ever happens and love has gone

Before it has begun, yet remaining

Forever behind imprinted and alone

In my memory as something that might

Have been. Everything seems impermanent

And unresolved and rhythm spans the night

Within a time that is not evident,

Why do I put myself through this travail,

What if it has all been to no avail.

25th October 2000

So many are the scenes that cannot be

Altered or put right and they stretch out now,

Left as though the only reality

Possible behind the footlit night. How

Lasting are the echoes, from where I am

They seem to follow each other although

Far behind still familiar, a span

That sprawls the silence of night’s undertow,

Yet leaving me no rest from their future,

No certainty that anything exists

At all except as an unstill structure

That silence diminishes and resists,

Echoes that seem to have no beginning

And no primary source for their ending.

25th October 2000

I write mainly because I am helpless

To alter the direction or the force

Of things, I can only stand by tearless

And steadfast and try to alter the course

Of my own life away from the constant

Chaos that exists around me always,

And where the recent past is now extant,

Each day another corner in a maze

Of terminal pathways and departure,

Random or fixed, a place I cannot breathe

In, trapped between the past and a future

Mute and futile, a language I retrieve

Just to forge an autonomy that rings

True, and I write to take my mind off things.

26th October 2000

Why do I write in the night in this way

And always with my back against the wall,

There has never been time to speak, to say

The words out loud and I cannot recall

Anything being any different.

But poetry was there from the very

Beginning and from the start it was meant

To be, nothing before could prepare me

For the long drawn out suffering involved,

Nothing that happened after could allow

For the faltering lines to be resolved

Or alter the meaning the words endow,

Both knowledge and experience were meant

To be the metre of my argument.

27th October 2000

When everything has come to a standstill

And feeling and reason are stammered out

And meaning has ceased to exist until

Only its silence is left roundabout

Me, I remember a nearer region,

Words conducted not as in a trial,

A territory unknown to anyone

Where words mean more than just the denial

Of what they stand for, there where I am lost,

Inchoate in a world turned upside down,

The future left as a cat’s cradle crossed

And the past the jeopardy where I drown,

Only within is there any meaning

For the end drawn out to its beginning.

27th October 2000

There is a pall of darkness that comes down

Upon me obscuring every object

Leaving nothing intact, only the noun

For the unknown and left to resurrect.

And from memory I can remember

Nothing except the vacuum of things,

Enclosed within rooms that opened further

Outwards, the perspective that childhood brings,

Sudden transitory recollection

From within. Endless darkness sprawls before

Me and the world is seen as through a fire

Dissolving into smoke, as though a door

Had opened on my own funeral pyre,

My mind freefalling to extinction.

29th October 2000

At first light sometimes with a page before

Me, when I am unable to desist

From a notion that there is something more

Than just an echo I cannot resist

Going back to, silence at the heart’s core

And the mute experience of its fear,

The paralysing sound of a cry for

Recognition that nobody can hear,

Because a barrier had always been

In place and yet so securely put there

That it was not until now to be seen,

Now when there was nothing left to suffer,

When a part of me walked away without

Looking back, left to turn and turn about.

29th October 2000

I cannot keep things together any

Longer even for something left untold,

My world is breaking up and poetry

Means nothing if it cannot make things hold.

I cannot sleep at night and day by day

The life I have known is coming apart,

There is nothing left whatever I say

A sword of sorrow will pierce my heart.

What will the words mean then when I have lost

Even the nurtured illusion of love,

Awake now each night I seem to have crossed

Into another time, bearing enough

Just for the cost of a repeat journey

In a vessel that will dock at no quay.

1st November 2000

I do not know where I shall go from here,

Here is nowhere now and I must go on

Alone, for months I have held on to fear

Knowing that there is no destination

Only a journey to nowhere, seeing

Just an empty illusion of distance

Where words once written have lost their meaning,

Unheard and detached from the source that once

Inspired them and left there as an echo

After that will not reach its horizon.

In dreams the lines come and go, I follow

In their far wake and a life that has gone,

An endless scaffolding on the structure

Of the past mnemonic of the future.

1st November 2000

The flat is quiet and full of feline

Life resting, my work for the day is done

And the utmost part of the night is mine

For random lines left abandoned or won

Back from time, either way this is a space

For a while, a short-lived rapid freedom

From fear, somewhere to turn around to face

A reflection unrecognised among

Oblique and convex planes in a mirror

Across the room, seen staring back at me

Through the silent distance of another

Age, a wide open-eyed territory,

The endless span enclosed within a dream,

And utmost through glass what the trapped words mean.

2nd November 2000

For years I have written to no avail

So why should I care now that I am heard,

I wrote in a language destined to fail

While counting out its metre word by word.

Now I cannot allow myself to rest,

I cannot sleep until I have finished

Even a few more lines and so oppressed,

Yet the words still come and undiminished.

I hardly notice the passing of time

And only lines that come to nothing stay

In my mind, my life is the end rhyme

Of all I have known and rhythm the way

Of this now beyond control, a language

From experience nothing can assuage.

3rd November 2000

I know myself only through words as though

A person left unforming, and without

Anything else to hold on to I know

Of no other way to ease my self-doubt,

Or prevent an unerring faltering

Into a near and preliminary

Fear, and endless days and nights recurring

And adding up to nothing.  Poetry

Kept me going when the future had ceased

To exist, the present just an exit

Out of the dark and out of a life leased

Out and no longer mine, words slowly lit

The day enough to find myself again,

An echo after that was left in vain.

6th November 2000

The words are beginning to ebb away

And there is nothing I can do to keep

Them from fading, I’m tired before the day

Has begun, its silence is wide and deep

As the stillness leftover everything,

And time is a reach of shallows below,

Which the currents are quietly moving,

Carried enervate in an undertow

Retreating, falling back to another

Shore on the tide they came from, a region

Unknown yet familiar where after

And before have no end or origin,

All I have to go on is an echo

And a journey much further than I know.

7th November 2000

I cannot work out what fear is about

And suddenly it can overwhelm me,

Then it is as though I am falling out

Of the sky and spiralling endlessly

Downwards through the universe, the fixed reach

And disarray of indeterminate

Empty stars, left as though through a last search

Of vacuity total and innate.

Could it be the words that leave me afraid,

Their presence and trying to get it right

In time as if a burden had been laid

On me, or their absence through the long night

Alone with rhythm and dereliction,

Left there to founder when the words won’t come.

8th November 2000

I reached the halfway mark after fourteen

Years and nights and was it worth it after

All, even with the progress in between,

If I take it from what is leftover

I am left with nothing, there is nothing

There and my life just disappeared along

The way, a vacuum diminishing.

And even as the poem grew among

So many hindrances and yet so much

That was beyond my control or surmise,

In the balance of experience such

Is the counterweight that the heart descries,

Its measure is the distance and fulcrum

That trembles into imagination.

9th November 2000

What I have made is left behind me now

Yet I can no longer find the way through

Or even the way back, and words allow

No lasting foothold or time to accrue,

Enough to turn around in without fear,

Words leftover with no sure harbourage,

Here, where I am lost and nothing is near

Except experience I could not gauge,

Only an echo remains when I ask

Or answer knowledge with the verb to be.

I am no longer worthy of the task

That has from memory been laid on me,

And I unable to hear my own language

When I see it before me on the page.

17th March 2001

What brought the poems to an end all those

Months ago when a dark late October

Overflowed with far rain, only to close

Up again and left there to remember

As the only dimension where I do

Not feel afraid, when the day leftover

Converges into shadow seen then through

Distance or existence and time after,

And the near far pall of paralysing

Despair, when the mind cries out to the sky

Unheard and left as a sound echoing

Once, as though through its own silence, the why

Of utterance left there to come and go

When night is alight in dreams and shadow.

18th March 2001

I have broken free from necessity

That has bound me fast for the last decade,

Stretching in its influence over me

All the way to the early poems, made

To escape an every day choice and chance,

Surrounding and confining time on all

Sides with the force of its far circumstance

And immuring me in impassable

Walls of memory, without any hope

Or release. Only the continuing

Echo of youth enabled me to cope,

Listening to the vast space existing

In the emptiness and endless refrain

Of time, enough to answer back again.

18th March 2001

I feel a growing need to isolate

Myself in a last attempt to maintain

A brief equilibrium in a fate

Of effaced forgotten stars, seen again

For the first time as though I was a child

Once more, gathering flowers in the sun,

In a haze of dandelion and wild

White wheat, waiting for my mother among

The women returning, beheld and sure

As shadows slanting a June afternoon,

Spanning the life I have had to endure

Since then, left to pitch a song to a tune

Heard and unforgotten, its certainty

As starlight sliding angles towards me.

18th March 2001

It is Spring and the leaves are opening

And reminding me in their surety

Of a life to come, unreachable in

Green depths aligning, in the symmetry

Of a single tree reflected or held

In the foreground and horizon of my

Mind, there, where I am lost and left to weld

Knowledge and experience as I try

To forge an echo from a memory

In my heart.  Even to try to begin,

From the sudden birth-cry of poetry,

To its last echo and remembering,

I must go back to answer why and start

Again from a life that has come apart.

31st March 2001

I listen to a world turning upside

Down, becoming a place I do not know,

Everything is overturned and left wide

Open and I am a waking shadow

Of how it was, with nothing to adhere

To but a day’s slow darkening into

Endless night where I surely disappear,

With nothing left behind to hold on to,

With nothing left for anyone to find.

Is it that I speak another language,

A tongue once known in the depths of my mind,

And its effacement after in an age

Where no one is there to believe or care

Either for its triumph or its despair.

31st March 2001

When I am pushed to the furthest extreme

I remember an early beginning

From the knowledge of my own footprints seen

In snow, and seen for the first time falling

Quietly through the distance and silence

Of an unending streaming traffic roar,

And heard since then through the lasting absence

Of my mother as something missed before

I could remember.  A world seen again

For the first time alone and unafraid,

Over depths I could break and yet attain,

Walking in the prints that my shadow laid,

Transitory, isolate, an abode

Permanent as snow on Brudenel Road.

31st March 2001

When I think of that early narrative

Written in passing all those years ago,

How could I hope to survive or just live

As before in the darkness and shadow

Reaching all the way back to its own source

And to the endless echo of my youth,

Yet random as chance that altered the course

Of my whole life to a moment of truth.

Now I turn away from that early voice

Unable to listen or understand,

In the long reverberation of choice,

That night and day are beyond control and

Only through the force of mute circumstance

Can I find a voice for my silence once.

1st April 2001

Sometimes my life is opened like a fan

In an unseen hand, stretched fold over fold

All that I have known, and within its span

The measured distance of the words untold

And the simple outline of night and day

In the far out reach of their origin,

And the closed hidden depths folded away

And as though of no accord and left in

A silent shuttered room, thrown unfinished

Like a colourless seamless shadow no

Longer there yet known and undiminished,

As memory left with nothing to show

For its passing but light caught in a fold,

A song’s refrain, walking in fields of gold.

16th April 2001

These are the days when lines just come and go

And I cannot recall them in passing,

The light is further now and there is no

Sense of anything to keep me going.

The poems are left in their disarray

Unread and of so little use to me

That I seem not to belong to them, they

Lie abandoned without identity

Or name, folded away in a corner

At the edge of a Spring day. Yet I go

On listening to an echo long after

It has ceased, watching each new poem grow

Only to languish without a shadow

To lean upon and with nothing to show.

17th April 2001

I was too tired to remember the line

Lost as soon as it came into my mind,

A theft of something that was never mine

A reminder of what is left behind

Forever, yet what will become of me

As the brief days unfold and disappear

And dissolve alongside their memory,

What will be left of my own sojourn here

Beyond the lasting footfall of my pain,

Just existing watching the world turning

Upside down, falling through the air again

And again, my horizon resolving

Under the utmost levels of the sea

Upsurging and erupting over me.

18th April 2001

At times only the endless numbers keep

Me going, patterns in an abacus

That always eluded me can now seep

Through, it is myself alone and not us

Anymore. I miss the familiar,

I miss that which was always near at hand,

Reaching out nothing now can make or mar,

I have lost more than I can understand,

Existing in a world that no longer

Exists and yet how I long to be free,

The continuum following after

Is not mine, just a brief necessity

For a time until the numbers balance

In equilibrium from a life once.

18th April 2001

Poetry has become the diary

Of my life but the lines that come are from

A time I do not know, a company

Collaborating with me and among

Whom forever I am as a stranger

To myself, left to speak in an unknown

Tongue, a language known by heart, easier

And more manifest by far than the one

I know in which I stammer and falter

Before I can even begin to say

What I mean.  I’m able to remember

A silent fleeting ordinary day,

Its transitory and permanent tense

Aligning knowledge and experience.

19th April 2001

The words are now the unopened journal

Of my life, they assail with their pressure

And I write with my back against the wall,

The involuntary lines are unsure

Of where it is they are going, I know

Nothing accompanying them to their

Mute unknown and far destination. So

It is that I have no choice, no other

Way out was ever left open to me

Except to follow after, how often

Have I longed to put it down, to be free

Of my last inexorable burden,

And yet this brief stumbling makeshift journey

Was always meant to be my destiny.

19th April 2001

I have drawn away from the world and keep

My own company now, time that has gone

Before shifts its horizon in my sleep,

The only refuge is still in my own

Heart where the knowledge of my life resides

With all the darkness of the days to come,

From the passing of the light it decides

When a moment is right for a poem

And my heart contains the disparity

Which separated me from everyone

Right from the start. The day’s vacuity

Would remain when everything else had gone

And there was nothing left to go back to

But the fulcrum of language old and new.

19th April 2001

When I am filled with the sadness of things

And there is nowhere else no other place

To go, at times like this poetry brings

Such a sense of aftermath, I can face

Myself alone and in the darkness there

As though for the first time in a mirror

In the dark right to the end, the further

Arc curving backwards in the corridor

Of time, there I am trapped in my own pain

And the suffering of others who are

Left as the last surface shadow again

And again through the nights without a star.

I can weep but cannot leave this place where

I wait without hope and without despair.

20th April 2001

I want to leave something behind that will

Tell of the days and nights alone with fear,

To emerge from the inexorable

Instinct just to quietly disappear.

And I wished to retrace a narrative

From the outline of footprints on the way,

Somehow to keep going, I tried to give

Back to language and was able to say

Something of the joy that it gave to me

Beyond the chaos and the far street cry

Answering an echo and endlessly

Pursuing me demanding a reply,

Ineffaceable, insignificant

As graffiti lingering on a wall.

20th April 2001

Where is the time that I gave to people,

Shadows passing through the nights of my life,

I have listened to the impossible

Dreams and seen them laid aside with the knife-

Edge of silence always beckoning me.

Often I have returned with nothing more

To give, alone and with the currency

Of language left between us as a cure

For a short time for a spirit that will

Not live, hoping against the odds a shared

Suffering might ease my own pain, until

I saw just how casually ensnared,

My heart an open frontier, my mind

Daybreak in darkness held and left behind.

21st April 2001

Time is passing and I’m becoming tired

There’s so much more I am supposed to do

And yet can do nothing, for I have tried

Too hard to do the right thing, right through

Everything and failed, I am alone now,

Washed up far on an unknown shore with my

Own horizon, left with the question how

Am I going to get through. The days lie

Heavy on my mind, the night’s vacuum

Unvisited by memory or dreams,

Filled with the pressure of shadows that come

And go, indistinct in darkness, which seems

To mirror the endless fathoms beneath

Me and where I fall unable to breathe.

21st April 2001

My mind is a frontier overrun

And my whole existence a surrender

To another echo, another tongue,

The past left plundered and abandoned there,

The present, the far side of time to come.

I forget what I do not comprehend,

I hear my heart beating and its rhythm

Is the only thing I know of the end,

There is not enough time for my labour

And I can no longer feel my despair,

In a race against time I sense each hour

Reaching a deadline before I get there,

In the days still left I try to assuage

Time lost by bending it into language.

22nd April 2001

I cannot live my life under pressure,

Forcing my mind to its furthest extreme,

Each moment as a marathon, unsure

As the one to come, I follow a dream

That has gone before, and I am writing

To take my mind off things that cannot be

Altered or undone, yet each day trying

In vain to escape anonymity

By reaching outward to a far-off fame

And programmed only to fail on the way.

And all I am sure of is my own name

And the days still left just falling away,

And I write now in order to defy

An insistent voice urging me to die.

22nd April 2001

I alternate now between indifference

To life itself and its other extreme,

An exposed indecipherable sense

Of something far beyond what the words mean.

Only beauty carries me anywhere,

Through suffering that cannot be put right,

I cannot hold on to time and must share

A new day as though it was my last night.

Left alone now I exist in a haze

And an unalterable amnesia,

And like a distant ship too many days

Have slipped away as unfamiliar,

Waly Waly as listless leaves that fall

Or an echo answering its own call.

22nd April 2001

I have gone into a time where nothing

Can hurt me anymore, the critical

Day still breaks in the same way aligning

With my suffering, but its darkness will

Not go away and I am left behind

Wondering about a world I do not

Know and no longer recognise.  My mind

Is adrift and out on a far reach, what

Wind will take me out of this place, here, where

There is nothing left for me to do and

Nowhere to go, with nothing more to care

For in a world I cannot understand,

I keep on going however I strive,

Unable to keep another alive.

23rd April 2001

My days are filled with the sounds of people

But I am no longer able to hear

Them, for I hear the inexorable

Reality of my own foremost fear.

There seems to be nothing left to do now

But to wait or be carried along by

An interval of time that will allow

No refuge or harbourage, when I try

To imagine a different journey

In the drift of memory to and from

I feel even more a pain within me

And a solution that will never come.

I wait there unable to stay or go,

Remembering something I used to know.

24th April 2001

Years of suffering have taken their toll

And only poetry made on the way

Has any meaning for me now, my soul

Is a shadow in the darkness each day,

Too afraid and faltering for this Spring

And unable to come out of its own

Vacuum to stand in the light waning,

With night coming on and the years alone,

Ahead of me there wherever I go.

And time is the only companion

Willing to collaborate or to know

Something of our silent communion,

Or the force of feeling and its unknown

Origin where I am myself alone.

24th April 2001

There is a feeling within me before

I can begin to write, a hesitant

Expectancy somewhere inside the core

Of being, yet unresolved, inconstant

Until the moment it is written down,

Propelled by its rhythm or like a long

And overdue labour about to crown,

A simple pressure that builds up among

The chores and the history of an age,

Written or abandoned and left to wait

For the time to ripen into language,

That endless pendulum, deliberate,

Corporeal, in a race against time

Set against my own internal deadline.

25th April 2001

A fitful sleep was finally broken,

A poem struggling beginning to write

Itself in the depths of being, and when

I was awake and with the end in sight,

The passing meaning had already gone,

My mind had been used as a substitute

For the unseen page it was written on,

And known as though by heart were those first mute

Words, buried and stored and left to await

Their labour as they try to deliver

Themselves, searching for expression, too late

For any midwife or echo after,

Left with their silence I cannot contend

With their pressure hurtling towards the end.

25th April 2001

I have lived my whole life under pressure

Never allowing for the time to write,

The words were silent and awake, their lure

At its utmost at the end of the night,

I was always too tired and unable

To surrender to their sensed appearance,

To pull back from an inextricable

Dream and breathe life into their existence.

And it was poetry alone that got

Me through and a rhythm that just kept on

Coming, and over the years it did not

Forsake me, intent on its summation,

And likewise subsumed I followed the same

End, the first staking of an age old claim.

26th April 2001

In the days still left how to keep going

In spite of a life beyond my control

And a future far beyond my knowing,

And words unheard and inextricable

In the long echo of their own silence.

And in the brief time left how shall I prise

Them from their origin into a sense

Of being, and how can I recognise

Or remember them from so long ago,

Here and where I am left and in the time

To come, still existing as their shadow,

How can I give them up no longer mine,

If the words run out and I am living

In vain, how shall I finish the ending.

27th April 2001

However hard I try to keep up, my

Deadline will always defeat me, somehow

Whatever the excuse I use to lie

To myself I can never catch up now.

And the blueprint has been laid to one side

And loosened is the long drawn controlling

Harness on a poem that was left tied

As a shadow to its own existing.

The words have their head they put me in mind

Of white horses galloping in a dream

One way over horizon, left behind

And superimposed on darkness unseen,

I follow not knowing which way to go,

Remembering the hooves and their echo.

27th April 2001

The pain of living is almost more than

I can bear and waking there is no way

That I am going to get through, I can

Only pull back from an over-bright day

And the clamouring people around me

And retreat into the past to a time

Left deep within me.  A territory

More familiar than ever was mine

On this earth, but to get there I must go

Backwards to my own sleeping consciousness

And stand there in the darkest days I know,

And with night coming on in a starless

Repetition, at the full ebb and pull

Of a tide that is unnavigable.

27th April 2001

And poetry exerts its own pressure,

Sometimes I feel that I am going out

Of my mind and so beyond my own cure

That there is no going back.  Round about

Me the days are now unmanageable

Chaos, the nights are of their own making,

I live on the edge, my back to the wall

And I cannot keep up with anything.

There is no way out and nowhere to lay

My head, my sanity hangs on a thread,

I cannot forget and I cannot say,

My life is the pressure of the unsaid,

Even the words are beyond my control

They drive me before them, unstoppable

27th April 2001

And how shall I leave this place where I live

As though without end as a component

Of time itself, and how shall I forgive

Myself afterwards for the permanent

And ordinary way that the words pull

Back, leaving me there with just an echo

Of something still and ineffaceable

To which I cling as night to a shadow.

Poetry that was written in a dream

Because I was too weary to go on,

Yet I could remember what I had seen

In the rhyme and its reverberation,

The words were read aloud as though by heart

And written down unknown right from the start.

27th April 2001

I have had enough of the years of pain

And a lifetime spent just being afraid,

I want to find out who I am again

And before who I was begins to fade.

I feel the rapid lines taking over

The days where I have been buried alive,

An endless total that does not matter

Now, the lines are beyond counting. They drive

Everything else before them and nothing

Will remain untouched by fire, they have slipped

My grasp and no longer know me any

More, and it is as though the sun had dipped

Below the surface of reality

For the last time without any ending.

28th April 2001

I sit alone at the start of a day

And I do not know what my life has come

To, there is nothing more I want to say

To anyone and nothing can be done

To alter things just to keep on going.

The mental pain is more than I can bear,

This is the time a poem can go no

Further, the rhyme breaks and I am aware

Of my own mortality, an echo

That will be left unnoticed and unknown,

A closed cinema with nothing showing

When there is nothing left to call my own.

I am trapped and in a race against time,

For the unborn words are no longer mine.

29th April 2001

An unwritten rhythm keeps me alive,

Words unknown and locked and struggling to come,

Trying continually to deprive

Me of a way out, I am lost among

My own lines and left to follow without

Knowing where I am going, while the day

Breaks through time with the burden of it all.

What is permanent is forced to give way,

Swept aside by the ineffaceable

Fact of language, resembling waves breaking,

I am full of foreboding and self-doubt

Standing isolate at the wheel steering,

Borne along by a force ebbing away

With nothing before me but night and day.

1st May 2001

The structure of the poem is breaking

Down in a sudden passing reflection

Of my whole life, it is as though nothing

Can be allowed to reach a completion

In the way I have always known. I fear

Myself even more than when I was young

With nothing to go on, for I can hear

In the silence before its summation

The end of my own voice from its first source

To the final echo falling away.

Even as an unremarkable day

Turns into shadow back into the course

Of time, so the words have to learn to fend

For themselves while preparing for the end.

3rd May 2001

I set myself a task that has become

An unbearable burden, an endless

Journey through a day’s circumstance and stress,

Leaving me with no means of escape from

The night to come and left in a last stand

And listening to the pounding of far

Insomnia. I cannot understand

The erosion of the familiar

And the falling away of everything

I have known, or the time when I can go

No further, the darkness that crashes in

When I am drowning and falling, with no

One there to hear or even comprehend

An unconscious rehearsal for the end.

4th May 2001

I feel the need to write begin to wane,

Suddenly disappearing and over

Until the next time it is back again,

Waiting for an ending that will never

Come, leaving me to live my life after

As though none of it had ever happened.

Something resembling darkness is left there

An endless premonition of the end,

A mirror’s far impalpable image

Reflecting the memory of a dream,

From the broken origin of language

A time to come is waiting to be seen.

Yet there is a darkness that lingers on

Long after its inspiration has gone.

6th May 2001

As the poetry starts to ebb away,

So hours of insomnia have begun

To take their toll, an ordinary day

Is an agony of waiting for one

Last reminder of what has already

Gone, but I am set on autopilot,

My mind a last reach of a time to be,

A vacuum echoing something not

Of this world, something inextricably

Bound and yet cocooned in a time to come,

Existing there alongside memory

With the end unwritten and yet begun.

In the momentum of chance each day goes

With the rhythm of falling dominoes.

6th May 2001

Sometimes the days are crowded with people

And I have to wait until late into

The unknown darkness just to be able

To write and only then can I be true

To what I believe in and only then

Can I be myself, someone I was born

To be, someone lost to me.  How often

Have I awoken bewildered and torn

Apart by my own unreality,

Something so rehearsed that it can never

Be put right, lodging in my memory,

Left there in a fixed abode forever.

For a while I know at the night’s ending

The peace that passes all understanding.

7th May 2001

I want to bring the poem to a close

For I am tired and can go no further,

The passing ending is not what I chose

And I want to write about my mother.

I tried to keep a permanent record

Of the time left before I could begin,

Abandoning more than I could afford

To face and somehow kept the darkness in.

What a trial these last poems have been

And how impossible it was to sleep,

Unwritten lines emerged into a dream

As I tried to memorise and to keep

Them slowly fading from recognition,

Aware I would awake to find them gone.

8th May 2001

It is nineteen years since I first began

To write down a narrative of your days

But I could not face it and rather than

Force it I waited and you were always

Near in the vowels beneath the surface,

There in the rhythms of your own country.

The reality that there is no trace

And no one able to say what really

Happened has been the driving force of my

Whole life and the reason I have written,

To break into the silence and reply

To an unasked, unanswered why.  Often,

When I felt that I was out of my mind,

You gave me something more to leave behind.

8th May 2001

I do not know how to accomplish

A rewriting of Death and the Maiden

And with no way out I can only wish

For the involuntary words written

Then, for I can go no further until

Your history is finally finished.

But how to encompass yet all the shrill

Sounds of those years and still undiminished

Resounding in my ears, or how to find

Myself if I cannot hear my own voice,

And what to bring and what to leave behind,

When I reach the end I shall have no choice

For I cannot go back the way I came,

Nothing in existence will be the same.

9th May 2001

How can I tell what is the beginning,

Possessing no idea of the end,

Its silence is opening then closing

In a space in between where I pretend

To know where I am going. An echo

Continuing is my only compass

And the night is starless as I follow

In my own footsteps, pausing as I pass

By into another world left stopped there

On the clock face of a time long ago,

And resonating in vain forever

Through the vast emptiness and its hollow

Vacuum and all that is left of my

Life after the spirit’s vestigial cry.

11th May 2001

How shall I make a beginning from what

Is remaining and how should I presume

To imagine an ending that is not

Explicable, and so I must assume

The guise of an oblique whitened shadow

Veering as night wind thrown against a wall,

So that the silence speaks while I follow

An isolate unrecognisable

Echo to its first unknown and utmost

Source. How far have I come oppressed always

With the end and alone at the outpost

Of poetry through nights without sleep, days

Left with no way out and beyond counting,

Forming a beginning from an ending.

12th May 2001

I have to keep my life from just falling

Apart, keeping things within without end,

When I am propelled downwards freewheeling,

When the brakes have failed, when I can depend

Only on an instinct for survival,

That inner sense of balance left to steer

By, and faced with the last impossible

Route into the vicinity of fear,

Without abandoning reality

I can sometimes leap into the silence

Of the unknown, my own identity

As a mirror reflecting the presence

Of time hurrying towards its future,

Replicated unbroken and unsure.

20th May 2001

Why have I chosen the hours to go back

The way I came, when everything is in

Turmoil and unravelling, when I lack

The simple time in order to begin

Juggling chance or choice. It was meant to be

This way, there has never been any peace

To sit down and let the poetry

Come, every line was won back from a lease,

Its time running out and nearing the end,

From a rhythm unheard and gathering

Head, hurtling towards me, trying to bend

Time in its origin and existing,

To spread as a wide and limitless sea

From an echo forever before me.

20th May 2001

Why do I feel an overwhelming need

To begin, is it to bring the whole thing

To a final ending. Why should I heed

Something of a language still remaining,

After all the years of trying to keep

It from breaking headlong into silence

From an unceasing echoing, ringing

Always in my ears, managing to seep

Through, transforming even in its absence

Night and day waiting as a perfect storm,

Resolving into time and its future

Tense from an interstellar vacuum,

Endless confluence trapped under pressure,

Rhythm unending, ebbing and surging.

21st May 2001

Where will the words come from, I do not know

As I try to reach back into a time

So much a part of me, so long ago

And yet fading away no longer mine,

My mind is oppressed and my heart also

And a fear of emptiness engulfs me

But my spirit is desperate to go

On, to encompass its reality.

Sometimes I remember while drifting in

And out of sleep a rhythm another

Line or something to help me to begin

Again so I can close my eyes after

In relief, without end I have to write

From words unrehearsed always out of sight.

23rd May 2001

Why this sudden and inexplicable

Faltering and why am I so afraid,

I wrote a beginning impossible

Though it was and plotted a course and laid

Aside the ending, and then emptiness

Overflowed and spilled across the surface

Blurring meaning, leaving me no address

Other than endless planetary space

With nothing for the words to fix upon,

Anchorless in a void beyond this world

And the starless darkness of a neon

City where words flicker and burn untold,

The random blaze of their reality

Etching the night and its vacuity.

23rd May 2001

A sense of something relentless drives me

Now to write without sleep and without end

Or even the forgotten company

Of other people, I cannot depend

Wholly on imagination any

More, poetry is an impossible

Burden which I am compelled to carry.

Something leftover resembling the pull

Of gravity keeps my eyes open when

I can no longer go on, a standstill

That exists only in my dreams, often

Faltering, I am paralysed until

The necessary word fits into place,

Salvaged from silence beneath the surface.

24th May 2001

The poem has outgrown me and it now

Goes its own way and without looking back,

Much like a river turning or a prow

That navigates a new world where I lack

The unknown bearings, the uncharted map

To steer a course by, or just to rely

On through the fixed impenetrable trap

Of black unseen stars, left there to defy

In the charred ruins of their remaining,

Where I am alone and left beyond reach

To wonder and to wait, yet listening

For the mute distant bell of a last search,

If I should try to cry out thereafter,

Only the untongued silence would answer.

25th May 2001

How is it possible to live and yet

To be so afraid, I wake to a late

Sudden morning and tremble as I let

In the light, somehow trying to collate

The vicinity outside my window

With the unlit surface depths of my mind.

Before me lies the past I used to know,

Ungathered fragments that I failed to find

Because I could not bear to look for too

Long, just keeping what remained to one side,

Waiting for the meaning to filter through,

All the years I wasted trying to hide

Behind the future, trying to hide truth,

The ruins around me the only proof.

26th May 2001

I have come to the threshold of my whole

Life and from here there is no turning back,

The door is standing wide open and all

I have to do is go through with the lack

Of the familiar before, and yet

I take the past with me to be able

To explain its reality, and let

Time delineate impenetrable

Darkness that has remained since it began,

Without shadow and indissoluble

In locked unending silence, the closed fan

Of an existence ineluctable,

Waiting and unfolded and yet opened

Out passing fold over fold to the end.

28th May 2001

Why do I put this burden on my mind,

Trying to write in order just to stay

Sane, continually trying to find

A beginning, an end for a last day,

And the night spent always with time at my

Back looking over my shoulder waiting.

Where is there an end to it all as I

Keep up the endless relentless searching

For something now and irretrievable

With an origin beyond my reaching.

The wasted time is not redeemable,

Remaining unwritten yet existing,

I hardly know myself let alone

The life I lived and thought of as my own.

28th May 2001

When I reach a standstill and there is no

Further I can go and only silence

Lies before me with its endless shadow,

I feel a suffocation as intense

As fathoms pressing on a vacuum

Grounded on the bottom of an ocean

Floor where in fevered dreams I cannot come

Up for air, held there fast in the unshone

Depths in the darkness below the surface

Of a fleeting day.  How can I contend

With my own silence which seems to efface

Me and before I can begin or end,

There is no way out or relief from rest,

I am left there with the past unaddressed.

29th May 2001

The last slow days of May have suddenly

Become unbearable and there is no

Refuge from their blue searing obliquely

Through the white haze at the end of spring, so

Near and yet so far are all the late drawn

Worn out hours of high summer, time before

Seems to snag or catch on my tired mind torn

In two by an open sudden fissure

Reaching deep inside the core of being

And its meltdown. Time past and the future

Are shored up, bound about with scaffolding,

A building an outer shell or structure

Falling from within, without anything

To keep it standing or halt its ruin.

30th May 2001

I cannot stay here indefinitely

Where there is no safe or sure harbourage

For a mind that has in reality

Nowhere else to go. Nothing can assuage

The past or limit the experience

Or yet possibly prepare for the pain

Of a time to come, only the presence

Of my own shadow oblique with the same

Origin, locked into the same ending,

Dwindling fearless before me in the light,

There with me in the panic, the lasting

Long drawn airlessness of fear and flight,

There is no one else with me in this place

And my shadow inhabits its surface.

31st May 2001

Sometimes it is impossible to breathe

And beforehand there is little warning

Of turbulence occurring just beneath

The surface, a volcano erupting

Fragmenting far into the atmosphere

Of an awaiting and prehensile mind,

A tsunami of high engulfing fear

Leaving its seismic aftershock behind

As deep fire burning inside the heart’s core

With a flame that can never be put out,

An unquenchable unreachable shore,

Molten lava moving forward without

End, resolving leaving itself behind

Residual in layers of the mind.

3rd June 2001