The last alley

An alley still echoes the moor the heath the poor and the thief

Rich with blackberries, gorse, mountain ash and wild cherry

The longest season this year, eight weeks while

Elsewhere a profusion of plums

Apples galore

White currants still sweet

A moment of thought

Thoughtlessness

And if this was the last year and next year the year to recall the last year?

There were words

Here they are.

Sour Dough

Ordering bread and coffee

Baked by desire

It’s grinding repetition

Skin not an echo

But that glistening same

The bitter Buddha kneaded here

Could not be loved

Without lust

Wisdom’s yeast

Force fatale

Yes Yes

Concentration short

Yes

Pain overwhelms

Yet where no excess and

Eager expectation ends

So ?

It is imagination that arises.

Charles

Charles

There is no time.
There is not enough time
to know what I know I could have known about you.
We all know what we know
and that is today
nothing more than that we love you.

What we wonder is not even where you have gone
but how you can have gone
anywhere
other than here
with us
right now

which you are Charles
standing in a blues club you are right now
or maybe shouting at me for something stupid I’ve done

or asking me to rub your shoulders

I’ll do that. Like I did before.
And you will sleep. Like you did before.

You dropped a tear
and you shook your rattle
like so many before you
and
God willing
so many to come

Sleep well Charles.

When we don’t share the cheese…

The other one smells bad

Breathe

That’s the advice of the sanity chef

But… Don’t forget that you’re cheesed off for a reason

There is so much more to eat and your own

Breathe

Is neither sweet nor sour

I heard a voice say: without the dark you can’t find the light

They spoke of Sibelius

Of Serious

But left a caveat (no one wants war)

(of course)

Breathe

It’s here and always was and it will take the cheese

And I’ve indigestion anyway

And need to clean the kitchen

Ready for the next…

Perhaps the last

Mine

Gone