The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling.
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

-W.Shakespeare

Tuesday 13 June 2017

On a Cloudy Day


To describe a cloudy day;
there’s no more magnificent a display
to observe the evaporial ballet
in our human condition (than say),
on a cloudy day

There’s no better received rendition
to imagine our vaporous visions
than on a cloudy day
to paint our impressions
on that billowing mountainous canvas
a smoky kaleidoscope only thus
Comes on a cloudy day

A simple show on a cloudy day
of abstract’s airflows
retracts and goes
clustered ideas
subjective applied meaning
nobody knows

A cloudy day’s forced feeling
manipulated moods
under a foggy veil broods
sunshine hides behind, dead,
the rested head put to bed,
wake of wind and water,
wrestling pictures
from imagination’s stead

Fog and clouded vision,
myth lies in the skies
Heavens touchdown
Celestials celebration
misty mysteries
floating in the trees

Contemplating curious cumulus conceptions,
meditating misleading meteorologists’ madness,
a shared address, a thought experiment at best.

Saturday 15 April 2017

The Beauty in Catastrophe

There's too much world to see
A vast collage of deserts, plains,
 forests, mountains, and sea
A gallery cannot hang a tsunami
 or a hurricane quite properly
Nor does National Geographic adequately
Capture the roar and fear soaking
 feeling of a lion's natural royalty
The world is too much to see
A shower of volcanic love is not
 an experience for you or me
A fault line dance shakes
the mood with rock too precariously
Never can we truly be
 as deep as the depths of the sea
There's too much pressure to see
 the beauty in catastrophe.

Thursday 24 September 2015

Constellation

A dream of amusement
in the terrace on top of the world.
Behold the giant ape King
climbing lady Liberty
riding a windmill of emotion
to the height of constellation.

A dream of amusement
in the Big Dipper round her finger.
Celestials as beautiful statues
with preference for frozen star light,
Heaven brought down to Earth
lo’ the mad man’s moon tonight.

Saturday 17 January 2015

Prompt and Paint Collaboration: Julia Boothroyd & Daniel Biggin

To Think and Feel 

ponder and probe
puzzle and place
we da 
we do 
we die
we die
and ooo
and aww
the thought and touch
our forethought feelings
imagined and real
our careless caress

(DB's first prompt)


"To Think And Feel" watercolour by Julia Boothroyd


(JB's response to D.B's poem To Think and Feel

"Flourish of Fall" watercolour by Julia Boothroyd



(JB's first prompt)


Flourish of Fall

You’re 20 autumn’s of beauty.
You’ve changed 20 different ways.
Your flourish will never finish
     and go on and on and on for days 
-and I’d cut down
the entire canopy of fading leaves,
while those colors of autumn cry,
-and leave the earth bare
as your canvas there,
where the beauty 
of fall flourished fair.
Just to give you mountains
     of paper to paint
     its fallen beauty 
     back to me.
Just to see
     you bring the trees back 
     to life again,
and watch,
     your flourish fill 
     a forest once again.

(DB's response to JB's watercolour "Flourish of Fall")


Buddha Nature

See here, what’s hidden in the forest groves,
Obscured with mossy beard, and timber bones.
Unrooted from the earthy floor it grows, 
Floating cross-legged on a throne of stones. 

Look upon the three jewels, brightly a light
Around the one, three monks with blazing eyes
Sit, trying to find refuge beneath his sight.
Yet, under the statue’s gaze fire plays and dies. 

Burning men reaching out for the flowers, 
The petals burn, that grow between his toes. 
They do not suffer in their final hours,
Yet the Buddha’s tears fall on their death throes. 

As immolation, each their own personal pyre, 
As reincarnation cries for the extinction of fire. 

(DB's second prompt)

Friday 14 November 2014

Woodsview

I spent days without spending
in a cell full of elephants
and two brothers who meowed
      at themselves.
We shared a home not our own,
of our own choosing,
only escaping
to suck in the smoke of the streets
I had the English key
at my disposal,
and what did I dispose?
Life is waiting for periods
a structure to hide in,
a circle drawn around us,
an obsession with things larger
      than us,
the elephants, circle of time, 
unending returning hunger,
an expanding universe
trapped within the mind.

Cosmic Perspective

The entire universe 
can fit into our skulls.
We see through light and time.
We are 13 billion years old, 
      I’m told.
We’re as old as the star dust
in our bones.
We’re small-
smaller than the invisible things
that crawl upon our skin.
We don’t see them, 
they matter not.
Does the universe see 
the little things?
      Oh! but they must!
            They do!
the little things,
the kind acts
of miniature beings.
Do we matter not,
are we not matter?

Primordial Traveller

Life started with the leaving footprint
of a man treading across the stars.
He jumped from planet to planet
leaving life in his footsteps,
the mud on his boot from his
primordial world. 
He leaps from planet to planet
and life echoes in his wake, 
and death too,
death was his gift, 
the crushing force of his foot pressed,
so we do not have to wander
and leap forever through eternity,
but merely exist, 
and know that we live 
because of those primordial footsteps
and will one day follow
onward, into the cosmic abyss. 

Parrots of Men

I speak because I was spoken to
An echo of an original thought
Like the endless asking 
of a child “Why?” 
A pattern of sounds,
woven pictures,
and guiding scriptures.
The squelch of mud men
shuffling our feet in the Earth
to spell out an S.O.S in the sand.
The squawking parrots' speech
to the sky.
“Language is a bird,” 
floating on air.
Silence is truth, 
and every word a lie.
Talking to hear ourselves, 
talking to find our way, 
talking our way into existence.
The parrot is a “parrot” 
because we said so, 
but it would be so 
by any other name. 
Language,
the ultimate act of plagiarism.
Talking to fill space
shouting from mountain tops
the voice creating chasms 
an echo on the precipice
of difference and dissidents. 

The Good Ol' Devil Made Me Say

If you say that “Man is good,” 
the Devil’s Advocate would have me
say that “Man is evil.”

I need only speak of our 
nightmares,
our dreams in the dark, those
fears and demons
behind our sleeping eyes.

I need only read the headlines,
words printed in a black ink
tattoo, perpetually changing
upon the page.

I need only remember 
words branded in our history books
(that we are the sons and heirs to)
“War, murder, bombings, 
shootings, massacres and mutilations.
Those evil words,
those words we live with.


Thursday 16 October 2014

A Look Inside Life

There’s a fire in my soul,
if there’s a thing inside I know.
Sweet internal strife,
well that’s just fucking life.

There’s something that I stole,
in every breathe I owe.
My wheezing whistling fife, 
well that’s just fucking life.

There’s a feeling in this hole,
it was empty, I let it grow.
Black roses inside so rife, 
well that’s just fucking life.

Monday 25 August 2014

Madness of Making

It starts at the fountain of white liquid gold.
Brick walls the closest thing to sky blue you’ll ever see.
Orange brick floor a shade off the flicker of flame- 
      a wet death trap, the ground that gives way
      to the fall to hell.
It is a wheel of innumerable locks with dates.
An electric sensorium, stretched over the line-
      wheels turning, jaws snapping and grinding teeth.
      A plastic river that breaks and stops and goes.
Men in white uniforms like orderlies- 
      keep the crazy process moving,
      we are explorers
      into the madness of making.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

A Lie in the Sky

     We flew up into the sky.
There was a thunder storm that night, dark clouds like anvils while thunder boomed all around and the lighting came down in fierce sheets across the sky.
And we flew up, past dancing lightning strikes and the roar of thunder into the black billowing roof over the world. 
It was wet and cold and the air was electric with the loudest sound pounding your ears, but the taste, the taste and smell now that was something more peculiar. 
The mind is a storm, my neurons franticly flashed in my brain like the lighting strikes in the clouds, the words to understand it all came like the sound of thunder in my skull, words so loud in the mind they terrified and amazed me to my very core. 
     We flew faster, and plunged head first into the clouds.
We hurtled through the misty darkness with light flashing everywhere. 
I felt the mist in my eyes, I truly felt what I saw. 
Up and up we went, until the clouds themselves began to glow, like a fire beginning to grow in the sky above. 
Still there was the thunder pounding but as we broke the surface of the cloud cold and wet we were no more.
     There was still the sound of thunder pounding, and the peculiar smell there in the air. 
I thought I saw angels, I thought my flying escort an angel here in disguise, for there were many people with golden sun kissed skin dancing and music was in the very air. 
Those heavenly bodies they moved just like angels I tell you, I swear. 

Tuesday 27 May 2014

My Own God, the Sun

I want the Sun
           the life that it grows
           the star living deep in our bones.
I want the Sun
           the world that it shows
           the world’s warmth shining in our homes.
I want the Sun
           the explosion of cosmic flows
           the stars exploding out of our souls.

Naturally

There’s something about this greenery,
this ever-changing scenery,
that caught me sitting serenely,
then thinking about the Sun’s energy,
though feeling apart completely.

Tuesday 13 May 2014

Global Glob

Somewhere there is a million people
kissing all at once, 
somewhere there is a million people 
spitting simultaneously, 
this mass exchange of saliva, 
this mass collection on the ground.

      I know this because 
there is an aged couple, 
a foot away from me, 
in tender embrace exchanging a kiss,
as I spit to the ground, 
trying not to corrupt their kiss. 
     I’ve made this number, 
a million times in my head, 
from a fanciful equation, 
from the prediction 
of the eternal exchange 
of water, 
of the source we all come from, 
of the contradicting ways
which our waters are used. 

One makes a million, 
a pool of numberless droplets 
of unthinkable shape and size. 

A kiss can lead to a million seeds 
either captured, or released 
onto the ground. 

                                 Seeds, 
grown from spitting skies, 
mingling beside the 
couple where my spit lies.

Kiss goodbye, leaving spit. 

Black lung death kiss, yet, 
Flowers lips opening to Apollo’s shaft.

Eskimo brothers, all spitting and 
kissing into the same flowerpot.

Drooling, who are we fooling, 
it’s stimulated saliva, 
drooling, who are we fooling,
it’s the marriage of kiss and spit.

Wednesday 19 March 2014

An Argument for Love

I met the Warrior of love
the other night,
he challenged my cynicism 
to a fight.
Fearless French lessons,
of “rape and atomic bombs”, 
in love’s language,
“touching spiders
just to get close to them”-
to love them.
Finding meaning in the meaningless
“circles that bring us closer”,
and further away.

I met the Lecturer of love
dressed in armour,
(wine, a weapon)
harassed in amour. 
The drunk philosopher
teaching drunk pupils 
about the “ripples 
of the water,
circles of wisdom” 
coming to teach 
you about love.

I met the Lover of love, 
I said “love” is just a “word”
He said “No! 
You must have misheard;
it’s a feeling,
it’s spiritual, 
it’s the excited chemicals
within that make you scream
EYYAAHHH”!


Monday 10 February 2014

Immortalitree

We are the Earth.
From dust to dust, 
As we must.

Still earth is alive with you.
Wooden coffin holds a tree,
With seeds above, dying to be free.

Bones buried, will rise again.
We grow with our demise,
With the leaves up to the skies.

Thursday 6 February 2014

Soul of the Sol

Set with a moving
     painting in the sky,
     white canvas with
     endless borders blue.
     Apollo’s Picasso in the cloud.
          Atlas smoking
          pomegranate puffs.
-don’t mention the lighter
that ends the world,
     He may take it
     as his paintbrush
     for his final master piece.
Same old Sun set, 
yet lights anew for few
-don’t fear the dying sun

Look to fire in the sky,
Kindling for the Artist’s eye.

Wednesday 15 January 2014

A Poem for Chester

A new aged man,
     touching ancient mossy stone,
walking alone, but not as one,
with ghosts of Romans. 
     Our conquerors and conquests,
     are our own. 
Walls, bridges, and fortifications
     of old. 
What are we trying to keep out-
What we are trying to connect to.

One Walks

To be one in a crowd, 
the solitude, the shroud. 
The mind begging
to scream out loud.

Hello, hello, echo, 
smile and echo away.
To move and not be moved.
I’m still here, I’m here still.