By
Joe Ogden
On
the estate
We
have Cherry Trees and Ash Groves
The
gravel drive is a mile or so - so long
and
the walls hide rose gardens
And
the children play sweetly on grassy lawns
On
our estate
We
have damaged trees and hash
Some
try to tend their gardens
but
God’s sad children smoke the grass
while
others pull down walls upon the flowers
and
the people here now play for keeps
City
Rose
When
the city arose against its repressive Leaders
police
cut them down
a
rose named Rebellion was cultivated
growing
strong here on wild estates
I
await your call – you do not ring
I await
your love – you do not reciprocate
I
wait for life to start – with you
Always
on hold – and never held
a
time to wait
I
want and ache to be with you so much
But
he no longer waits
Outside
he sees a burnt out car
through
broken window
stoned
depressed
trying
to get his ‘he’ together
A
dim monitor flickers
in
the back of my mind
as
I try to read the on screen message
power
saver kicks in and blanks the words
Someone
removed my interface
or
did I give it away
for
weed
I don’t
remember
too
much dust
Is
that some one on the line
It’s
cold with broken windows
and
there’s too much RAM to REM
and
not enough light to read
‘Sorry
can not make this connection - 401’
Maybe
it was never there –
Confused?
If
I could just reopen the file
‘I,
been here before but it sure ain’t Kansas’
So
I’ll just spark up
press
start
reload
the benefit system
He
sits at the door
come
rain come shine
Diamond
White
drunkard’s
wine
Keeps
his dogs on leads made of washing twine
Dog
Leash is blind
Yo
Here! is deaf
and
Beth his wife ‘daft bat’
does
the shop
to
and fro
Cooks
him meals
does
all that
‘Do
I shift? Do I nowt - Ney lad, be buggered
why
have dogs and bark the sen’
Lost
to the night
Out
of time
laying
inside my body
I realise
death would also come
to
me
This
thing I’m in
the
body I sleep in
will
stop
like
yours
Sharply,
I waken from my light night sleep
the
TV set is on and low
alone
You’re
not there to stop the panic
I
stagger from room to room
A night
time prison of open doors
and
fragrant funeral flowers
I
look for you the dead of night
I
fell today
and
found I’d hurt my conducting arm
I
was doing something by one of those Russian chaps
I
was in the middle of the road
It’s
upkeep, kept not by one nor t’other
No
one saw
a
claim would be hard to prove
In
broad daylight I fell to earth
and
broke my index finger
on
the hand that conducts
those
tunes by that Russian chap
Yesterday
I was with the great conductors
Today
I fall
It’s
all checks and balances
or
in my case lose my balance and check the body
It’s
man’s fate to take the bitter with the sweet
when
you cannot pick up the baton for the suite
In
the bed
lays
a stranger
See
her face in mirrored wall
Drunken
she says
You’ve changed
I thought you were so cool
when we danced below
the mirror ball
Well
one of us has changed
She
had past from youth to woman-hood
The
harshness fills her so pretty face
and
the scales fall from her eyes
And
you will never see me
for
what I was
only
for what I have become
The
history of Western Philosophy; Heraclitus; Permenides;
Socrates;
Plato; Aristotle; Epicirus; Lucretius; Poitinus;
Augutine;
Aquinas; Duns Scotus; William of Occam;
Nocholas
of Cusa; Glordano Bruno; Bacon; Hobbes;
Descartes;
Sponoza; Locke; Leibniz; Berkeley; Hume;
Rousseau;
Kent; Fichte; Hegel; Schelling; Schopenhauer; Mill;
Kierkegaard;
Pierce; Nietzsche; Husserl; Russell;
Wittgenstein;
Heidegger; Elvis; Sartre; Debore;
Merleau-Ponty;
Quine..
The
beginning was simple
a
quantum filament in a vacuum
flashes
into life
Like
a light, it was off, then on
Before
that… an anti-verse
a
more than nothing
nothing
being the ultimate state
We
have all come from this nothing
with
the belief that we are heading for something:
A
light to fill all voids
but
alas this is a mis-state of mind
‘The
unlimited poet surpasses words unto silence’
Silence:
A nothing, a void of sound or sensation
It
is true that we write the words
but
who the hell writes the spaces around them?
That’s
what I want to know!
The
universe was created less than a ‘now’ ago
It
is not there in the future
because
it does not exist in memory
‘Bull’ to those who say ‘I think therefore I am’
All thought is perception
All perception is ‘point of view’
A ‘point of view’ may not be true
Better to say ‘I perceive as I exist’
There
are as many universes as there are minds
The
universe only existing in a physical ‘now’
The
universe can be looked at like this…
Imagine
a long rope
One
end is tied to a post in the physical world
the
other end to a post in your mind
Somewhere
along that rope the physical becomes imagination
Thus
reversed the universe is created from our dreams
And
‘The difference between ideology and philosophy?’
Twenty
years of study
Know
all this and believe
SHE
HE HIM and the OTHER
The
silence lasts for a while
She
‘Do you like the Other girl then?’
He ‘No but I will not be told how to live my
life
the Other left Him months ago’
Him
Jealous, the car sped off into the night
just missing an urban fox
muttering under his breath
‘Bastard Bastard Bastard how can he want to have sex with the Other?’
Other
Staying at her friends house, awakes in the night
She
‘Do you want the Other girl?’
He ‘No she screws with men’s heads’
Him Hurt, parks the car at home
Other
Thinking of Him – wants to be alone
She
Worries about showing the world who she
is and smokes three cigarettes
He Takes three cushions and makes them into a
makeshift bed at She’s
Him Takes three pain killers and cries until
daylight
Other
Works out how to be free –
forever
She
Remembers an old rhyme, smiles and
falls asleep
He Thinking, I am only responsible for my actions,
not the way someone chooses to react to them
Him Thinks words will bring her back
Not able to blame Him, She or the Other
blames He
Other Wants to be like the catching of the wind
She Sleeps
He Sleeps with the television for company
Him He will never hear the truth
Other Craves for her freedom
How
sad that human hearts that once did love each other, part, that night, in pain
Last
Days
In
the latter days
symbolic
meanings
shown
to him
Mill
whistle blows for the last time
but
this night
Different
They
walk away not run
Low
sun
towpath
On
the bridge
He’s
crossed a thousand times before
this
night
stopped
half way
a
world unseen
below
In
nature’s world
urban
setting
Un-hatched
egg
gasping
fish
floats
upon the water
Caught
in eddies dance of death
the
egg alpha male
the
fish omega3
turning
returning
turning
returning
to the universe
in
death the same
This
disease entered his eye
it
will quell the light for a while
He
knows nothing matters
that
much in the latter days
Episode
When
the darkness in the daylight
grips
me tight
You’ll
see me grave grey
lost
in thought
voice
remote
body
taut
unstill
hands chain smoke
Head
a church of light
that
shines from my eye and ears
and
mouth and hair and chin and
nose
and hair ‘said that once –
But
you really can’t roll up the sky!’
and
tongue and lips and…
STOP!!!!
I’m
sorry I fall short of your
and
my expectations
‘god
leave me be, now’
for
a while I’ll
Sit
Sleep
Walk
Work
Going
through the motions
till
I see the way again.
Pissed
Drunk Board
You’re
drinking in the Hogshead Bradford
Mine
host ‘(blank)’ and ‘(blank)’ will be pleased to top up
your
happy hours from 5:30 til 7:00pm every weekend
Overheard
‘The boyfriend when he gets to know you will flirt and flash you.’
like
a Red Bull and Double Vodka a pox half a can
and
you are asked to please drink straight from the bottle
as
it is like liquid poetry
so refrain
from smoking at the bar
as
this is a designated no smoking area during food service times
and
all other times but the are more tables upstairs
for
tasting Stowells of Chelsea wines
Overheard
‘Yeah it’s like the SS on the phone,
crap
when working on the To-follows’
but
in an emergency use the Hogshead’s Disabled toilets
for
a place where good people meet
remembering
to tip the bar staff
‘cos
Gazza woz ere September 2003
and
Leeds are united never to be defeated
A
body was thrown out of an upper floor window
but
there was no police prosecution
as
she had died of natural causes before being thrown
There
is no law against throwing a dead body out of a window
copyright
Joe Ogden 2003