My death
Culture
Solidarity
I took a trip to Zhengzhou yesterday, the capital city of Henan Province….I took in some sights and a slice of history. Then I wrote a poem.
Now faintly sounds a drumming,
down the broken trail.
The little men and women
reaching for each other, stir the empty clearing.
A chorused sound and screams of dying pain,
forward….. without forgetting.
Not cold enough
My pictures taken along the River Wei.
A skyline I could trace.
River coloured memories,
waving in the breeze.
All those long walks
now looking backwards
….. the river.
Walking by the river
My drawing.
That’s how it starts, a walk by the River Wei.
Tree branches reaching for the sky,
catching the breeze.
A single Red-crowned Crane flits by,
making its way back home….. the last time.
Then it starts, conversations grinding away
drifting on the unseen currents.
How I wish I could fly…..
Talking to the dying
My drawing.
Just by the hospital,
I met a man
who told me he talks to the dying.
Those sleepless souls
who have lost their shape.
“You feel deeply” he said.
“Just fragments” said I.
As I left, I thought
time and future have meaning.
And watched,
as the others lined-up
to talk with the man
….. trying to act casual.
Hard Times
My drawing this evening
I read some lines
“agony, always agony”
Some people think this
trying to face the sun
in the morning.
Others, when I ask them for help.
For some, just being dead
would be fair enough.
Words like ‘poetry’ and ‘rigor’
are very tiresome, in the wrong hands.
So, while the universe
tries to swallow us all….
I shut away nothing.
And listen for the birds singing.
Death wants more
Mt drawing.
I do not intend to stop for death.
To wait silently,
as a spider in a dank hole.
Not really knowing,
and at the end…. knowing.
No kneeling down,
filled with tears for me…..
Perhaps death is kind,
and will wait….. for a while.
But, I will dispute
my rendezvous with death
for as long as possible.
Or at least until spring returns,
with rustling shade.
And brings back those bright blue days.
Clouds of pain
My picture.
Tell me of pain,
what do you know?
I can recollect
when the shadows
of the night came out.
I have never killed,
only ever loved.
Yet, there has been
so much pain…..
with passion
and prolonged silence….
Tell me what you know,
about pain?
Enough
My picture
Not just a pastime, to me
An invigorating swing
of medical English.
Wrapped around
the humanity of
William Carlos Williams
and Cicely Saunders.
Tailing with high gratitude…
and silver lamps of light…
always helping…for no reward.
Yet…alone
how lonely I feel
in the battlefield here.
But new writes spark,
old echoes
from days on the hospital wards
of Manchester.
Drop-dead rains of patient care,
here come the part
a poignant character study…
Returning years
My pictures
7 hours of marking, a matter of choice.
Neurotransmitters
unfathomable, vast and empty.
Apoptosis and the death of cancer
always on a journey, ill
DNA and a cause for everything,
a mutation here
and a blue-eyed wonder boy there.
A Wandering Poet 