Jonathan Beale- Three Poems

1984

‘Beware the savage jaw of 1984,’ from 1984 (1973) David Bowie from the album Diamond Dogs

Feel that eye

That could come to reality

Think of seeing and

that you see

as the strange change

that passes by

What they fear, they fear

Breed into 1984

fearing the door

From the love you know

You feel and must

Exorcize

Feel that eye

That could come to reality

Think of seeing and

that you see

as the strange change

that passes by

the air and airwaves

Filled with the empty

Pressure of the all seeing

All bulling all controlling 

Lives cross with meeting

A touch many lives

That we shared we existed in

That time and read that book

Those things that

The heart and soul – know

Should be free guillotined away

Feel that eye

That could come to reality

Think of seeing and

that you see

as the strange change

that passes by

Feel that eye

That could come to reality

Think of seeing and

that you see

as the strange change

that passes by

I know it’s over

Sur La Terrasse 1971 David Hockney

Oh Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
See, the sea wants to take me
The knife wants to slit me
Do you think you can help me? by The Smiths, written by Marr Morrissey

There is the anticipation of afterwards

Hanging as a spiders web

The night is cold and lonely

Cold and lonely….

The walls of finality are everywhere

Strangling the air and light

When words are more than spent

The screams and shouts

            Gone into the night air

            There is nothing

            There is nothing

Still there is nothing now

even tomorrow is not possible

but, somehow it will come

it will. It will…. 

The cigarette is smoked

Until there is only a butt

Left. Crushed under the thumb

Extinguished. Ended.  

            Gone into the night air

            There is nothing

            There is nothing

The palm trees Parnassian

Lure. The look of the fountains bring

New life: to refresh, refresh, refresh 

Watching over the balcony

Looking to the smoky mountains

The table is bare their life. Spent together.

To dive over the balcony into

the next life the next new life

            Gone into the night air

            There is nothing

            There is nothing

Bourbon Rain

Bourbon: the nectar and the poison -

The eye has no ability to define:

Good from bad: yet the eye somehow thinks

thinks it can moralise and recognise evil.

We walked into the steaming grove, among

the caustic lime green leaves – The light steps

down from the top of the trees, to the worm

sewn soil they step on to the bar to wet their whistles.