Escape artist, you’ve been in that straight
Jacket for a while, hanging upside down
With gravity kind of cramping your style.
In your own mind you keep regurgitating
Keys that have got you out of that tight
Squeeze, you’ve doused yourself in petrol
And set yourself alight and looked back
At yourself like an old costume, like an old kite
In the mud you feel the new tug, a new thread
In a new wind and voices calling in your head.
I’ve engaged silently, imaginatively with
My own truth and gone on, on my own,
Gone on a bit too much, a bit too far,
Maybe, regenerated forest and gone on;
Got lost in it, a cervine spirit now with
The run of the woods as endless as wits,
Honing recognition, growing horns like branches,
Like arrows in tension, like antenna
Listening and grazing, looking for the next leaves
And new shoots aimed from ancient ground,
Clearings and openings to roll me out, find
Fertile space; a state of grace, and I will go on
For as long as I can get away with that exit always
Stalking-I’m always ready to take off to keep going
At the sound of a snap, at the drop of the hunters hat.
Tap, you turn and keep turning,
A little twirling savage drawing
On delight, on mains refilling; you
Bound around on boundlessness,
As buoyant as a breath of fresh air,
Opening all valves fully always ,
You expect it, as you babble forwards
Always, all eyes, all ears, lapping it up,
Used to it; the taut keenness of kindness,
Feeding direct from courses of pipes;
Glowing nerves, swelling glands, ever offering;
Supplying and addressing your demands.
Your heart was running down when I met you,
Your glasses were like low-lit headlamps
With eyes like twinkling bulbs stuck
On a headstock of white whiskers that curled
Around a smiling mouth and a slackened
Voice, soft and suave above a cravat,
Under a Cuban hat, padding out a last stand
Teaching; a hearer, a mystic, an outsider
Sharing your ripeness, brazil nuts of wisdom
And anything in the universe one had to discuss.
But your hefty pile was flaking away, like sheet music
Depleting day by day, fluttering, you had to let so much go,
Professional circles, a marital symphony, property;
You settled for silence in the end, a little house north
Of nowhere and a gift of a daughter, so late in life
And then I heard you’d lost the Earth when they’d
Drained you and those last scraps had scattered
All reserves and that was the unfinished end of you;
The musician expires. Fine. No repeat. You never
Knew how much you meant to me but I kept your
Encouragement in my heart and held it.
It is in every sound I’m allowed to make.
Half cut, in a queue of men of needs
Shunted to the front, our prepared quarry
Hunted and protected by triangular
Bars that mark our territory on the belt.
We teatimers have delayed tea to slip
Through the turnstile to merge work
With play and escape early doors, now
We’ve remerged, revolved by hunger.
We’ve had our lull, a modest skin full,
All professions and trades all men
Some white collar extra wine, effervescent,
Blue collar dour, extra spirits-still fluorescent.
Good job the shops never shut, for us
That feed when we feel like it, in
A world of convenience half cut with hunger.
I’ve been on your trail. So bring on the trial.
I am reaching out, one way to one in twelve
Of you. Where was I on the night of the days
Of my life so far? I wasn’t there. It wasn’t me.
So take me as you find me. I am in the dock,
Taking a stand but this is a temporary remand
For love’s sake, muse, musing, absorbing the facts,
Using your head to block my appeals to your heart.
I called and the universe sent this summons
And here you are doing your woman’s duty,
Like a reluctant angel, a visitor, hearing me out,
My babbled defence; bringing more words out of me
That always renew me, maintain my innocence.
Dog walkers like ships passing-
Back out in their own back yard
For exercise, existence, freedom,
Fresh air of a Yorkshire haven within
Shaven heads of hills and peaks;
Harsh ancient edges of shadow, now snow.
They slop out; live on, in the loop.
My Deerboy 