Minutiae


Minutiae (The Poetry of the First Half of a Life) is a collection of fifty-six poems (first draft written in the Spring of 2010). The title trivialises the subject material which covers anything but trivial matters.The poems deal with the death of my mother, questions about mortality, relationships and matters of injustice and personal re-assessment.

Following are a few picks from the same.

Sleeper

“As you are now so I once was, as I am now so you shall be”

I know all my thoughts and secret loves
Will slumber with me
In a silence I shall make my own
Sleep forever, perchance to dream
The sands of time will cover me
What shall be found waiting there?

Blossom

A myriad brightly coloured deaths
Coat the curb with pink–white snow
Such beauty so transient it falls
In patterns to the soft winds blow
It reminds me of that summertime
When once the wind it caught your smile
Ran its fingers through your hair
Left behind my heart,
Like fallen cherry blossom.

I remember how I wept aloud
As if I could understand
This beauty almost too much to bear
The realisation so profound
And still I wonder what could be
As the architect he draws his bow
Will all that’s lost one day be found?
Is this all that we can ever know?

Time has passed and seasons waned
Since the raw emotion of those days
Are we but the actors, weak,
Of an omnipotent creator’s plays?
Once again nature stirs
Unlocking colour, light and life
In patterns to the soft winds blow
Reminding me of that summertime…..

Where Tandy Lives

Along life’s path illusions are lost, replaced by something at terrible cost
The hopes and dreams of youthful vigour give way to work and daily rigour
We don’t count our blessings one by one and moan and carp from dawn till dusk
Until if we’re not careful we become a withered, bitter, twisted husk.
How can we avoid this awful fate, whilst enjoying the food that’s on our plate?
Swilled down by life’s sweet wine distilled our shrink wrapped meat humanely killed?
I remember a time in a foreign land, the house of a happy hired hand
An African dwelling set in hills, no dish washer, microwave or expensive frills
Children ran to meet our car, packed with visitors from afar
As we arrived, my son he said, eyes wide bulging in his head
 “Daddy is this where Tandy lives” - I’m sure not meaning to disparage  
An extended family all crowded in - to something no bigger than a garage.

The God Imago

I am a devout Philistine I decide one day
Musing on Michael Angelo and his Sistine Chapel.

What was the man thinking?

I laugh at the absurdity of the anthropomorphic interpretation of God.

To Michael, God is a man on a cloud,
With the obligatory white beard and hair.
Blown by some wind divine
Stretching his hand to Adam
Both parties sweetly unashamed of Adam’s penis.

Where the fingers touch I picture God’s glowing like E.T’s
Perhaps were the scene to be moved a few seconds onwards
Adam would be reeling back with a mildly burned finger.

I laugh.

Then I wonder
What does God look like?

I try hard to imagine him but here encounter the first problem.
The “He” itself, being a gendered abstraction.

I wonder if God is of mixed sex, perhaps hermaphrodite with both sets of organs
Large pendulous breasts and a penis.

I reject that image also

Why should God look like any one of us at all?

In the end I imagine God to be pure energy
A pulsing, white-light-heat being
Or a “Force” of the Star Wars type

I stand back to admire my mental handy work and then the oddest thing of all strikes me:

It has been said; “If God did not exist man would have to invent him”


I’ve made the error of making God in my own image.

Schwere Arbeit

Time passes slowly in this place
All minutes are not of the same length and duration
The enjoyable ones invariably fly by more quickly

I stare at the clock as the hands start to distort
Slowly, Dali like, the clock starts to lose form
It slips down the wall leaving a snail like trail

Trial by time and torture by telephone
With its umbilical cord
Waiting to give birth to some new complaint

“I’ve been given your number to call when someone dies”

Machinery whirs, faintly humming an electronic ode to the passing day
I insulate myself like an electrical cable
Mustn’t make the mistake of listening to the

Interminable tap-tap-taping of the lesser spotted keyboard
Clicking like crickets in the long grass
Clickety-clack, clickety-clack, one mating board calls to another

Marking out its territory on the desk with its fake wooden pattern
You don’t fool me!  No tree has grains that symmetrical
Grains that fall through the ether like

Sand falling through an egg timer
The egg a symbol of life, especially at this time of year
Pregnant with promise as

The trees outside celebrate in the sunshine
Spring arriving in a vivid burst of fragrant colour
That the dark little mushrooms here can see but not feel

Pudding Lane Routine

The boiled eggs rattle, agitatedly in the sauce pan
Banging their bald little heads against the sides in frustration as
The kettle, overworked morning friend, serenades with steam
Reminiscent of a train, the blackbird perching on the gate

The garden has been awake for hours now, but the household
Wiping sleepy crusts from tired eyes, is yet to fully stir
The recently departed toaster (given decent burial in council skip)
Is sorely missed, as bread under oven grill, forgotten, now begins to smoke

The fire alarm engages in shrill refrain to animate the zombie forms
Who dash into the kitchen, swift, to avert another “Pudding Lane
Porridge is called, from substitutes bench, and scores a goal
With hungry adults, whilst magazine is wafted hard to dissipate disaster

It’s time for the checklist now, sandwiches packed, fruit dispensed
Anything healthy in evening to return (no doubt) from school.
The bikes stand ready, with tyres flat, that weren’t like that the night before
And furious pumping produces sweat, soiling showered body to inflate

Meanwhile the forgotten eggs are boiled hard and that’s tomorrow’s lunch prepared.
Time to leave, the first departs and mounted, pedals furiously to escape
Kettle boiling again, more tea needed, put your trousers on! Where’s your shoes?
And tie and bag, we’ll be late for school! As angrily the telly’s killed to gain attention.

And the cat just watches, smiling to himself, imperious, with detached disdain.


Social Elephantitis

Here I sit all club footed, deformed of thought
The elephant man, stunted pigmy man
Angry repressed, unspoken agenda boy
Twisted tree trunk human
Frustrated misshaped pretzel-person 
Want to say what I think chip removed
Defused, limp, flaccid, unexploded
All emotion safely shrink-wrapped
Like sausages in a butchers window
Nodding in the right places android
Trained not to rock the boat cadet
Reverse crashing kamikaze suicide
Socially acceptable taboo swallower
Mustn’t say that acceptance non-doer

Mustn’t complain about
The supremely underdone vegetables
The un-cleaned restaurant carpet
The dropped knife covered in human hair
The blackened pizza there
The cremated shoe leather steak
The hard-cold hot-soft chocolate brownie
The extortionate bill
The surly waiters
The un-flushed toilets
The flat, pump machine cola
The tips that go to the company
Awful re-heated mediocrity

Utterly, totally, repressed
Social Elephantitis sufferer
Smorgasbord of chemicals eater
It’ll go away if I ignore it believer
Cowardly, timid underachiever
Victorian table leg coverer
Inward facing instigator
Embryo in incubator
Socially engineered shrink-wrapped person
Glutinous deformed personality
Genetically engineered tomato eater

Don’t smoke live longer person
Don’t drink live longer person
Cut calories live longer person
Don’t have sex live longer person
It just bloody well seems like it sufferer
Thoughtless C of E box ticker
Baby’s mouth dummy sucker
Hunch-backed agreement mediator
Craven hollow ingratiatory

Plastic rubbish in the streets
Mac Donald’s never rotting feast
Sweatshop Adidas on the feet
Everything from China going cheap
Crazy person getting irater
I blame it all on the creator
Washed up choking oily birds
Gorilla hand ashtray displays
Cutting down the Amazon
No fallback plan when it’s all gone
Man’s putrid arrogance
While I sit on the fence
Primordial dwarf, pusillanimous
Not wishing to cause offence

The Flight of the Cardinal Bird

Excitement at a false projection of the anima

Part1 The Bird takes Wing

An inexpressible joy fills my heart and lungs
As I fly to you like the Cardinal Bird
Scarce can I stop my excited flight
Whatever hour that love takes wing!
Trembling like a new born fawn
Spilling energy from besotted eyes
Come fly with the Cardinal Bird
Like a lark ascending to the skies!


Part 2 Hitting the glass

When reality stubbornly refuses to fall in line with projection

Filled with joy, the cardinal bird has seen his true love’s reflection
Seen her face with those little summer freckles on her nose
Like the sweet skin of a deliciously ripe banana!
Love fills his heart and he longs to soar into the sky
To proclaim at the top of his lungs this love, this longing!

It’s the same every time he sees his mate
He never tires of studying her
The little freckle on the back of her right arm
He thirstily drinks her every detail
Cool green eyes, like a jade rock-pool

Unable to bear her cathartic beauty a moment longer
He beats his wings and rides the length of the nearest sunbeam
Her sweet smell intoxicates his nostrils, floods his senses
Her smile triggers sparks of iridescent excitement
Flashing through his innards like a bolt of lightning

Leaving glowing patterns in his eyes as if he’d stared at the sun…..

All sense is lost, all rationality subsumed in the joy of the moment
He sings his song, a melody of love spun silk
He longs to clothe her in devotion
Sip sweet honey from her navel
Spend all eternity wrapped in her charms

But there’s always the pane of glass between them

He cannot reach her…..


Dance of the Wolf Spider

My love is like a wolf spider
Defending the thought flower of her
Gloves raised on short arms
An intricate mating opus in an exotic form

Dancing around antler and stamen
Speeding across her petals
My suspicious peripheral vision is alert
Many eyes scanning for a threat

I move at incredible speed
Surely she must notice light touches
Lovingly given by my many hands
Making colourful patterns on her skin

Molten Devotion

Once upon a time I liked cold frosty things
Watched, fascinated, childlike as my breath
Condensed on the frigid air of a winter’s morning

Or a windowpane so I could write my name
Moist characters of confirmation shouting “I’m alive!”
I know I exist when I can see I breathe.

I liked leaving my footprints on the hoar frost ground
Delighting in seeing where I’d been
Wintry tracks bearing silent witness
Joyous little confirmations testifying “I was there”

Once I wanted cold things
A distant woman with frost on her eyelids
Withholding her affirmation with cool, clear, undercurrent
Pointing out my imperfections

The heat calls to me now promising perspiration, inspiration
I want more than anything to swim where fire and water meet
To feel her hot breath upon my neck as she arches to my touch
To swim in liquid ice, melted in the volcano of my veins


Meeting her moment, utterly possessing it in molten devotion.

Skipping Stones

You’re too deep she said
Trying to get to know me
Was like skipping stones on a pond surface

So to get my attention she slapped my face
And kissed me hard until my lip bled
So she could say she’d drunk a little bit of me

I could only respond by saying
That to love someone who didn't love you back
Was easier, the safer option by far

She didn't skip any more stones after that


Mark Harris has asserted his right under
Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
To be identified as the author of this work.


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