poetry

I open my eyes
No fresh glint from between the curtains.
Just the vague grey light of day
roves like smoke towards the duvet edge.
Whereupon the creases are cut in geometric shapes
As if I’d carved them with a paintbrush.

I close my eyes
Your name appeared
And rolled endlessly down the screen.
Oh let me return inside the dark world beneath my lids.

If only it was so simple.
Where before there was grey, now there is black.
But I remain.
You remain.
It...remains.

How do I go back?
Back before I was born again this morn in bed.
Back inside the cavern cast of vacuous dreams,
-the interminable galaxy of scattered consciousness.
Back to when I did not feel...
Feel the weight of you
the weight of me
the weight of ‘I’.

As the beekeeper carries his hive,
Now to the mountain pines
Now to the sea

As the shepherd brings his flock,
Over hilltop crags
Over withered pastures

So too, I carry you with me
in the little pocket of my mind.

Now through the rattling train - the morning chorus
Now through the carpeted corridors: the computer clicks, the suit which slams the hammer,
Now through the chaotic stirs, the rumbling drums, the seething streets,
Now through the oscillating blur of shapes
Which form when I close my eyes

You appear through wavering wafts of murmuring colour
as it darkens,
And with the opening of your gaze
I fall from this world to awaken elsewhere.

The Poet Builder

Chink chink chink!

Shards of poetry fly

As the rock crumbles beneath his fingers
The flash of his eyes and
The granite moulds
Like my body to his touch.

When he swings from high above
The axe upon my soul laid-bare

An image emerges on the stretched paper.
And with each cry of the waves,
With each new olive on the wrinkled tree
Another little light glows along the way
As the night comes to entangle
our tongues.

Drowning on the cliff-edge

Pines swoop
Dragonflies dart
From bush to branch
Like thoughts in my mind
Chasing waves on the eternal sea.

Little gilded chalices eclipse the sinking sun’s restful rays
A thread vibrates in song and sends its voice across the horizon.

Tuesday heartbreak

The sky is heavy, dark, white…
Lumpy, like an old polyester-stuffed pillow washed badly in the machine.
The last remaining crumbling leaves tremble fearfully on the skeletal branches while a silver squirrel hobbles across the drenched carpet of grass.

Its excessive glaucous green is sickeningly strong for the season’s palette.
Two gloomy crows huddle on the mossy edge of a crooked chimney
Where a rusty weathervane wavers hesitantly this way, then that

Revealing, as we all do, more about itself than the wind it tries to describe.

It churns

and writhes

inside me.

No

it’s not you

desire for you.

I cannot rest, for when
I lie upon the bed
limbs falling limp,
the waves within my torso rock
and billow
Crashing against each cliff of my body’s bones.

It will never end

it will never rest.

The colours swirl and swirl,
the myriad stars of light that blind all thought.

I’ll take your body, your cock,
silencing the restless cries like milk for a child…

but it won’t soothe the whirlpool’s hunger,
it’s after something else.

Awakening

My breath slides in and out
Like a gentle tide, pulling and throwing back again
Its waves against the sandy edge.
Like your skin
And body, upon my own
Lost in the gentle realms of silken love
Forms a somatic swell and lull within.

Flickers of dreams flash then fade
The last few drops of another life
Dimming into nothingness
like the screen of an old TV switched off
Like the water whirling away
as the plug is pulled from the basin.

It’s different now.
My heart is filled
Now with you, now with him, now with a peace…
But just a moment, a message from you, the mind’s convoy,
And I’m adrift again,
A drowning fish in the stormy sea,
Tossed and battered by the very thing sustaining me.
Let me go back, back to myself.
Just the knowledge of your desire is enough, yet not…
And I start to suck..to seek..to enslave
my own sweet soul,
to suffer.

I don't claim to attain the picturesque beauty of even the average Instagram food blogger in my food; although colours do guide me in my cooking and preparation I feel the aesthetic of food follows a different criterion to that of visual arts! The aesthetic is guided by what 'looks good' and 'looks tasty': perhaps rice isn't especially beautiful to look at but it can be tasty to look at... So don't expect too many symmetrical carefully arranged platters!

I rarely follow recipes, combining ingredients I happen to have, and while I do sometimes eat cheese or eggs, I strongly believe the farming industries of meat and dairy and eggs are wrong and often abhorrent, so I usually stick to the plethora of glorious vegetables available. And I have a real love for basil tofu.

Beginning with an exception: a recipe of melanzane stuffed with mozzarella on a potato and aubergine mash

Cruelty-free Christmas

yes, I admit it's been 'instagrammed': 'petit noir' chocolate terrines with caramlized nuts and crumbly crust

Finding myself in a far off French village with a curious desert wine, whisking the egg whites by hand, hours later I made a Tiramisu.
True to my point, Tiramisu is a classic example of a dish which can taste delicious while lacking any visual beauty.