If we were to meet

Hannover in April (SONG)

Magpie

For anyone who broke my heart

Selective Memory

Selective Memory

Poem at breakfast

Ruin

Writing in the Wilderness

An Age was Born

I wake to the grey april sky

Fukushima mon Amour

Towards a language of repatriation

taking the words home to my native land, each of them with a passport,
each of them with baggage, they are British, these words,
and as we fly over the cliffs of Dover - Mist comes into the eyes,
as the waves crash upon England, my beloved England,
then they arrive at immigration, these words do, we all feel good
to have returned, elated even, then the officer checks the dictionary,
"Well well, what have we got here? "Elated" shows her passport,
and he looks up her definition, taking pleasure as He does, and poor "Elated",
seems down in spirit, "You can stay here Miss, but you are Italian
so you should be over there", then he turns to "England"
who is so glad to be back, "I'd hate to be pendantic, but mate,
you should join "Elated" - over there, being of course German."
"German?" "Yes you are originally German" "Oh" Then
he goes through all my utterances, and each one with their
passports checked, and almost all of them are told that they
are visitors from the EU, but some like "Coffee", "Bungalow", "Ketchup",
are given the full treatment, they are taken to one side
and have their passports confiscated, "Algebra" , "Alcohol" "Alcove"
are crying, indeed when I look around, nearly all of my words
are crying in different languages ----

Loss

Loss

it is difficult to express

the loss

the loss of a loved one

whenever you try

it comes out hopeless

like a failed scone

you want to say

something with edge

and avoid the D word

just loss

but it is never the same

the sadness

curled up inside

your lonely body

nothing will budge

the grief that sticks to

your every thought

like the burr

in Shakespeare

you feel the D word

the chill of nothing

you touch her or him

and the forehead

seems of plastic or wax

where did they go?

you had tried

to get the big picture

tried to breath and relax

but it was not so

a torrent of tears

shook, the dam of denial

broke its walls

the flow of all your fears

and

loss

came

and it stayed

perched on your chest

like the nightmare

of Fuseli - instead of Mum or Dad

with the first great loss

you had lost your virginity

to Death

and you knew you would

follow - there was no one

to comfort you - except your

memory of them - and then

after the drink and wake

was over, you were no longer

the child - you were the man

or woman your Dad or Mum

were, you their legacy.

The T.S. Eliot Poem (The homeobox)
A Fishy Tale - each line has stage directions (to be read in the voice of: RIVO) . You can work out the tempo yourself.
RIVO
We will start with conkers, you must think me bonkers, ( Max Miller)
Oh not at all, I am very fond of the detail, as you know ( Noel Coward)

The memory of the stream, is naught but the dream of a trout, (Richard Burton)
Explicit sex is the implicit amplex - the very act on top of the very word (Sean Connery)

Like the repetition of the Fall, each time he reads page Three (Frankie Howerd)
I would prefer the poem not at all, to be pressurized by the past ( Sting)

Only the Pound of the Shaw, against the Kant of Shakespeare (Al Pacino)
The breaking of the law, the round of the unconventional list (Ian Paisley sans his politics)

Was I too cruel, to evoke the Sea, and like a Dane watch the TV (Sir Laurence Olivier)
As the channels of communication slush in the bottle of beer (W.C. Fields)

So the repeats commence, in come the old ladies from Elstree (Michael Caine)
studio, to do their bit behind the curtain, or the kid on the pier (Jude Law)

Sucking his lollipop, the stock vintage stuff found in poetry (Frank Sinatra)
Stabbed in the back, is the victim of the tongue, a Tom Dick n' arry, (Freddy Mercury)

Silly to think that I might apprise you of the facts of the birds & bees (Cary Grant)
Stilted like the cheese I give you as you download my file (Mae West)

So T.S. we will down the aisle , swing our incensed image (Woody Allen)
So collect the goodies, as long as we keep to the straight and farrow (Kurt Cobain)

So till our patch, pay our homage, write nothing that threatens (Winston Churchill)
Sir A, B, C, to N, to the root of the aristocrat, and land our page. (Noel Coward)