Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Jonathan Beale- Three Poems


The Winter Bouquets

After the painting by Morris Graves’

Surrounded by four dull walls
On one hung a view, a looking eye:
The glass: stemmed of thought –
The sticks brittle in the air and water.

Pieces as thoughts
Like a Japanese poem:
The parts of nature segmented
As if intended by a mischievous deity 
Looking skyward or hell bound.
Is the mind set of man.
Corrupted simple forms in a game.

A hard woody exterior
Displaying nothing
Brash edges
Forgotten by the artists
hand and eye 
And cut off from nature’s breast.

Leaving the room I looked back
At the winter to come against the summer sun.


Brighton

The old woman that lives at the end of the lane.
As she has... forever.
Eternally stamped and as dishevelled
as the sea washed seafront.
Youth subtly avoiding her. 

As she, hangs her washing on the line.
Ignoring the winds kiss.
The ceramic walls
Of her home she decorates in her evening wishes
Cheroot’s plastered over the floor.

Along with the oils and colours
Of paintings she creates.
Her time split between -
Incessant, loquaciousness, and monastic silence.
In this cul-de-sac.

Of forgotten dreams she labours.
Against times idling thumb twittering.
And as the wolf whistles
To the girls into the night
She stares blankly through the gin and cigarillos.

Within the antique décor
She lives by breathing the briny air
The turquoise and white as her eyes
Her life is slipping by, like the quayside ropes
Of the leaving ships.

Her grammar of life, now no longer understood.
Her anger, raw as the marrow, red as paprika.
Growing life pressured by the lost leaves of her life
The rickety old rocking chair goes on – rocking - just.
The world unseen through smoke stained glass.


The Rosewater dew

The rosewater dew
Falls on every diesel engine and rust smothered piece
Of man’s metallic creativity
Breathes life into and through every leaf

The Living and loving are asleep
The dreams slip in and out through the ears and eyes
The sullen poets cast their rod & line
To catch a word on a line 


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