Jonathan Beale- Two Poems

Berryman and after

I don’t like what the world has become,

At night, the sprinklers sound like rain

But I am neither fooled or consoled.  Chase Twichell

… On a wet night in Charing Cross, Soho –ro

A Greek tragedy: Aeschylus or O’Neill, to counter too much reality.

Finding on a ‘pile’m-high’ for a £1.00 ‘Dream Songs’ – like a monument -  

His face stared out from the cover: as if some Roman Emperor or God.am

The words permeated through as a bat seeking its infant in the dark.

The way, not standard light; the dark with another kind of darkness.

The ‘confessional’; intersilent, finding both backward and backward in forward.

His glasses saw through too, too far – like looking straight into the sun.

There would a consequence – as when humankind live the live of god.

Henry had a heart – that was apparent –how could he not.

Here high lyricism married with black chaos of the unravelable.

The syntax of the strange path that picks it travellers.

There is no peace, no stillness, no sanctuary, November’s lightlessness. 

The muse picked the right one. just with a too larger dream to sing. 

First published Danse Macabre  Nov 13

That night – we sat - we

We sat on the bank although it was freezing

I smoked my cheap cigarettes Camels you hated.

The words came in fits and starts – I felt the ravine –

Your blonde hair – almost so thin it dissolved  away.

You grin and laugh fuelled me inside like a torch.

I thought of ‘forever’ ‘eternal’ and all those infinites -

Like you do - and so the nights grew on-one-into-the-other.

And we learned to see – this place what became our life. Here

Stepping on – and to the sentence, the charm and wit.

I rolled on my back and took a draw on the cigarette.

Humour (I thought would make us) - it would fail

The gag disguised the meaning - the serpent is the serpent.

The pregnant night grew on the light we almost grew to fear

Like an iterant do-gooding-parent - still there was time.

Down by the tracks the light reflected around and off the metal

Showing the rails like swords in some magnificent battle

The night “as I recited ‘we’ll go no more a roving.’

How good: Fhow tedious, how did Byron, how did he?es

Hesperus and phosphorus the two sides of the same coin

Neither both sides seen together the night as claret

Deep dark and full I’d drink it in outside of other peoples

Law and other peoples worlds other worlds.

Our world like all worlds grows old and dies - the graveyard

Littered with alibi’s epitaphs and monologues of “what-if’s”

Once you stood up and took a deep breath smiling and waved

The train that we sat for and waited patiently for never did arrive.