A Dozen Moons Ago

A thick silence falls like weather on copious tables. Knives are out for culinary butchery and the forks sing like daisies in a maiden’s hair. Glints of fine luminescence fail to glamorise the awkward tension, like a barn door swinging in the heat of a fetid summer afternoon. It’s a horn of plenty, or a banished soul wandering in the fumes forever, flying never, constant ever, in the go-over. 

It’s a choice. I am the latter.

I saw you there, I had been waiting. Under the dome of the stars, you never once glanced at me. I framed you in the oblong silence but you did not turn. I saw you with that crazy ice-cream hair and the faceless men surrounding you like flies on a popsicle --- but you never looked. Trauma on drama to be so studiously ignored.

No warm unity or hot delights within or without or between us can say what could be wet or dead or silent in this atomised darkness. It’s of your own {cold} making. One-sided relationships always arrive with a full set of catastrophic punctures.

It’s all about the mighty dollar, see. It’s all a bloody purpose of strange delights to hammer the day with weasel words and squirrelled platitudes. But you don’t see that in your glitzed up champagne world of foul delights, do you? Make the cash and splash the headlines. That’s you in your timely dance.

Wrapped up or spat out. It makes no difference. It never does. It will end in tears. But in my reprehensible defence, I told you this a dozen moons ago.

Steve Wheeler © 30 September, 2021

Photo © Steve Wheeler

High as a kite

When you burn like a flame 

you’re as high as a kite 

and you shine like the sun 

in the dead of the night 

and the reason and rhyme 

of your mischievous grin 

sets the rhythm and pace 

of the mood that you’re in

When you dance the flamenco 

you reveal all your flair 

and the moonlight reflects 

in the blonde of your hair 

and your skirt flows around 

you like waves on the shore 

There’s so much within 

I’m compelled to adore 

When you weep like an angel 

or you sing like a bird 

there’s more sensitivity 

than I’ve ever heard 

It’s a natural wonder 

how you capture the light 

when you burn like a flame 

and you’re high as a kite

Steve Wheeler © 20 September, 2021

image source

Long way down

It’s a long way down 

when finally you are detached 

from everything you have ever known. 

There’s quite a distance to fall 

when first you hear that snap 

of disconnection and you feel 

the world rush up to meet you. 

When suddenly you are divorced 

from all familiarity and thrust outwards 

downwards, into gravity, tumbling 

headover, headunder, headlong 

down, down, down .... 

Inevitably you will reach the ground 

floating softly to the earth like so many 

others of your kind. You will lay there 

helpless, lifeless in a dishevelled heap 

until the east wind blows to send you 

spiralling out into the void once more. 

Or maybe it will be the gardener’s rake 

that seals your fate.

Steve Wheeler © 18 September, 2021 

image source: Bernard Spragg

Tempestuous soul

The chords 

she hoards 

within her febrile mind 

are rich 

in pitch 

much like the ties that bind. 

Her words 

are swords 

and all that's left unsaid 

is worth 

the earth 

hatched in her fertile head. 

The wise 

with eyes 

to see and ears to hear, 

will know 

she'll sew 

with that she holds most dear. 

And in 

the grin 

of her tempestuous soul 

the balm 

of calm 

will be her final goal. 

Steve Wheeler © 18 September, 2021

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Hall of mirrors

I once dated an anaesthetist 

but she couldn’t stay awake 

I tried the horn of plenty 

it was more than I could take 

A radiologist once asked me 

if I would like to kiss her 

but her x-ray eyes saw through me 

even though I didn’t resist her 

I went on the town with Dali 

we drank whiskey on the rocks 

We spent the evening painting 

crazy eyes and melting clocks 

I encountered David Hemery 

 on platform eight at Reading 

He was running late, so I can’t say 

which direction he was heading

On my next available birthday 

 I’m the age of sixty-five 

I really can’t explain to you 

why I am still alive 

The crazy things I did at school 

continued all through college 

If anything they intensified 

because I had more knowledge

I’ve stepped on stage a thousand times 

to play my axe and sing 

and once I even fell right through 

on a prayer, not on a wing 

When I shared the bill with Wozniak 

we talked of Apple pies 

Took selfies with my Samsung 

and he didn’t roll his eyes

McCartney knocked upon my door 

Said he had the wrong post code 

He’d travelled quite a distance 

on a long and winding road

Ringo did the same next day 

so this must be quite some house 

All I need now’s Jimmy Tarbuck 

and I’ll be speaking Scouse

I once got on the wrong train 

and I ended up in Dover 

The white cliffs were a lovely sight 

but I wished my trip was over 

Being lost I guess has been 

for me, an old familiar rhyme 

But as my life’s so boring 

it just helps to pass the time 

Steve Wheeler © 15 September, 2021

image source: Mike Pennington

It's then you realise ....

When all of the darkness in the forest 

comes at you suddenly in a rush …. 

and all of your restricted movement 

is a constant reminder that you are 

in a nightmare dream …. 

When everything you say is rebutted 

by the others in the room, and a perfect 

storm is brewing down in the city just

beyond your window panes ….

When every little thing she does is magic 

but the magic she does is never for you …. 

When you are ignored and passed over 

continually and your talents are disregarded 

as anything significant or special …. 

When nothing else remains except four dots 

at the end of your sentence …. 

it’s then you realise …. 

this poem is about you

Steve Wheeler © 14 September, 2021

image source

Flame

I could stare at flickering flames all night

when I should be wandering in my dreams

I could gaze at a candle as it dances bright

but the minutes fly and so must I, it seems

Flames have a strange power to captivate

despite their cruel destructive capabilities 

The heat and light they furiously radiate

holds the promise to harm, or put at ease

Flames, consuming all, voraciously to eat 

everything that falls within their hungry path 

Fire that immolates with unforgiving heat 

and razes all to ashes with its fiery wrath

Flames that warm and thaw the harshest cold 

or offer radiant energy to cleanse the soul 

Eternal flame saluting all the brave and bold 

I could forever gaze upon your healing glow

Steve Wheeler © 6 September, 2021

Image source: Marco Verch

I burn my candle at both ends

I burn my candle at both ends. 

This is not what I 

would choose to do, 

but in its own way 

perhaps it chooses me.

To put my mind at rest 

is not a natural thing for me to do.

My body rests but my mind 

rages on, plagued and plucked at 

by vivid imagery and thoughts, 

dichotomies and similes, 

comparisons and homilies, 

fast flowing lists of trivia 

and entire vast coastal plains 

of raw poetry.

Tell me this, 

what would you rather 

have me be; a mind that sleeps 

and vegetates, or a mind that 

continues to create, to mould, 

to cogitate on worlds 

imagined and unreal?

Many questions hover 

here inside these restless, 

ranging hemispheres. 

Whether the enamelled nails 

adorning hands, or 

iron nails that scar them? 

Is there intelligent life 

on this blue planet, and if so 

then where may it be found? 

How can you tell one politician 

from the next, except by 

the colour of their lies?

Yes, I burn the candle at both ends. 

And yes, the wick has finite qualities. 

I may not last another night, 

I may be found at the foot 

of someone else’s bed.

You may yet discover me 

abandoned in some foreign wasteland.

I will not burn forever, and who knows 

where and when my two flames meet? 

But when they do, oh what 

glorious conflagration they will make!

Steve Wheeler © 4 September, 2021

image source: Patrick Feller

Mirror pond

You’ll find the poets everywhere 

(please take a look, try not to stare) 

and each year many more appear 

there’s more to read, so much to hear 

There are poets in every shape and size 

so many styles, they’re on the rise 

But do their words extend beyond

each poet's emotional mirror pond?

And oh, there are so many bards 

sat picking through the rusty shards 

of broken words in breakers’ yards 

There’s painful heartache on the cards 

(by cards, I mean those small cue cards 

the cards by annotations marred 

with notes revealing mental scars 

all scribbled down in late night bars)

If you listen to a poet recite 

their life through stanzas, then you might 

intuitively gain some small insight 

into what drives that artist to write 

of personal turmoil, dark and light 

and broken hearts lost in the night 

details of every private fight 

in public acts of black and white 

See, poetry is no mirror pond 

it starts like this, but soon moves on 

The words a poet pens take flight 

if others read them with insight 

and if those verses so inspire 

then other words will soon transpire, 

as self-expression, like wild fire 

provokes our literary desire

Steve Wheeler © 3 September, 2021

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