Revised Poetry - Limited Palette
I revisited some older poems recently and after some deliberation, revised some of the stanzas, flow and syntax. I do this very rarely. Nevertheless, here they are in what I feel is in better order. I suppose by adding them to this blog, this counts as a first published; I will however, be putting them into some kind of book form with related artworks in the not too distant future.
Eight Sisters 2021
Limited Palette
By
David Glyn Davies
Revised Poems
Order of Poems
Eight Sisters
When Children Dream
When Teenagers Dream
Loving Cup
Overgrown
If My Memory Serves Me Correctly
Waterfall
Rachael And Leah
Quadripartite
Lunar I
Lunar II
Lunar III
Lunar IV
Lunar V
Night Sky I
Night Sky II
Night Sky III
Big Bang
Whoops Butter Fingers!
Eight Sisters
Eight sisters look ahead,
Through leaves, fruit and vines,
Floral chlorophyll green,
Eyes constant and unblinking,
Their gaze a reminder,
Of conscience prick responsibility.
Apple green turns to brown,
As leaves fade and drop,
For their earthly rebirth,
Fruit falls softly on gilded veins,
Whose golden leaves turn from silver to bronze,
Their veins carry blue blood.
They meander and drape around stony barley,
The sisters make an octagonal turn in ochre,
A movement to replace one for another,
The see a stony boss so jaundiced like their faces,
And reach out to press fingers into foliage,
They see buttercups lurking quietly.
Stony berries whose purple lustre,
Belies the truth of who they are,
As poisonous as their dark umber skin will allow,
They cast a shadow over bronze leaves of strength,
Silver leaves of want and desire and gold leaves of purity,
Inside their limited palette, the eight find octagonal harmony.
A balance of a sort that counters its opposite,
Like a truth waiting to be discovered by Euclid,
Seeing the light and drawing a first proposition,
The rays of the sun shine on absolute truth,
A worldly truth waiting to be discovered,
That balances harmony and function.
When Children Dream
If I could be me,
For one brief moment,
What would I see?
A case for atonement?
If you could be me,
For a few moments more,
What would you hide?
Your guilt so sure?
If we could be us,
For an hour of the day,
What would we show?
Our souls at play?
If I could be me,
And you could be you,
We’d get on with life,
Without further ado.
When Teenagers Dream
More than this agony,
She dances with another,
But really, honestly,
I’m dancing for you;
Kiss me later,
Lips to lips,
If you do,
I’ll kiss you too.
He wonders about,
So many things,
Dark and light,
Wake and sleep,
She calls out again,
Sometimes in fright,
Her mind unfolds,
From night to night.
It was a night of conjugation,
When they marched,
And expressed their vitriol,
With placards and banners,
Raised against the ugliness of humanity,
Of adulthood and political guidance,
And gave their love freely later,
Just like their parents.
Loving Cup
It is your love,
That takes the flight of birds,
In fact,
Your particular love,
To take away my words.
Overgrown
A head among flowers and cherries,
Looking somewhat sad and thoughtful,
Look at her in her leafy realm,
It is a three-dimensional void of a sort;
That brings with it,
Tone and colour,
Architectural lumps become,
A body of form and shape,
To make a structure from which,
All other beautiful elements spring.
Yes, that’s right, It has a very nice ring,
For a cliché, as leaves like flames rise,
From smoke to cloud a scene,
Unlike a morning fog, moody and beautiful;
And rising from the fog is pink blossom,
Bursting out, ready for life,
From its core it springs, it uncoils,
From one state to another,
Pinkness is the blossom’s lot,
Not forget-me-not and that romantic rot.
If My memory Serves Me Correctly
I do not know this man,
He smiles and for no apparent reason,
I feel unsettled paranoia,
In recognition he shares it.
At this moment,
There is split second,
Where our minds become one,
We see the emotion,
It could be the invisible infection,
Of a collective unconsciousness,
A joining of heads.
There are hordes of people on this train,
It is a winter morning,
All the carriage windows are steamed up,
Beneath skin, tempers wear thin.
People dislike each other,
For no good reason,
Minds become one,
A joining of heads,
And there is always someone,
Who adds to this air of disinclination,
Prattling on about nothing.
Waterfall
Lying on rocks,
Craggy and shimmering,
Under olive green,
Silver and blue,
Rolling ripples.
Contracting forms,
Elongating, mass and volume,
Shiny, eroded and worn.
Water clear falling clean and free,
For tongues to lap and taste,
A duality of thought to see,
But then, water falling,
Clear a gleam,
A shaft of sunlight,
Over glistening stone,
Worn smooth and cold,
As polished marble,
Or the cold skin of the corps.
Fish propelling,
Through icy slipstreams,
Where granite rocks,
And icy barnacles,
Cling and yet, ripple together.
Rachael and Leah
We two sit and wonder,
At the choice a man will make,
To suit paternal love and yet,
Rage against our fate.
There is nothing left.
Except bitterness and anguish,
Bound by our blood,
And what it would give us,
A tragic unloved life.
Quadripartite
Mr. Blake,
Dreamer of the best dreams,
Floated to the centre of a quatrefoil,
And became one with its body,
He turned to stone, in fact.
He decided there and then,
To cross his eyes and stay like that forever,
Dreamer of the best dreams,
Who rests amid inner city chaos.
He floated between the clouds,
And looked down upon his Albion,
With its Tyger lurking here and there,
Among the city’s streets so dark and arcane.
Lunar I
William, dreamer of the best dreams,
Gazed upon an imaginary moon,
Asked a question and wondered.
__
Albion’s expanse of nothingness,
Is a dream over the divide of chances,
Lost to the aching dullness,
Of banal existence.
“Where is the Man In The Moon?
He hasn’t come down yet,
The Man In The Moon is far away,
Lost in perpetual darkness.”
“The Man In The Moon,
Is nowhere to be seen,
The streets of Norwich,
Are squeaky clean.”
“He will not splash those tygers,
Whose minds are free from childish inquiry,
In the puddle that is an ocean,
They, like William, will never return.
Lunar 2
To the night sky,
There could be a reason,
For believing in chance.
As opposed to intent,
Between people,
There it is then, a pretty dance.
That sight of her,
And his longing,
So secret and furtive.
His jealousy,
Enraging and pure,
His head too assertive.
Lunacy it is,
That has overtaken,
His tortured soul.
His immature angst from wracked mania,
His averted eyes are his betrayal,
His singular goal.
Lunar 3
At night time,
Reason disappeared,
It left her bereft.
Isolated and infirm,
Made frail by moments,
Of her mind no longer deft.
Life changing and rapid.
Her being and its horrid path,
Unseeing, blinded, sightless.
Rickety on failing pins,
A slow stumble at first,
Then anguish and tightness.
At the frustration of failure,
She would scream,
If she wished.
Her pitiable gesture,
Is aimed at herself,
And dished.
Lunar 4
It is a sadness,
All too recognisable,
As the lunar cycle begins again.
Knowing the outcome,
Of selfish indulgence,
Crippling in the main.
And that is his account,
Not called,
As he does the calling.
Excuses and damnation,
For his heart’s contradiction,
Pulling and shoving.
Crying for the moment,
A tear for his needs,
Smeared red lipstick is his loving.
Lunar 5
As a feeling of lunacy,
It makes her sick,
The worst of all.
Its uncontrollable height,
Is her soul’s irrepressible torment,
Her self-inflicted persecution: her fall.
Damned then by herself,
She knows the difference,
Between tranquility and anger.
With experience,
She may see misery,
From a distance.
Look at it clearly,
With no vanity,
Wisdom and insistence.
Night Sky 1
The night sky is a sea,
Blue, black, turquoise, submerged and swaying,
A hymn to the diver swimming in the middle of it all,
Static, rippling, choral voices ascend,
Raised up high and glowing,
The float of his rippling current defends,
Buffing stars whose twinkle is but a tiny bluster,
Against such dark colour.
Glass, fast and yet, reflected in a floating leaf,
See by the diver from below the stars lie on rocks,
Underwater and yet skyward,
An elongation of mass and volume,
That this sea will soon renew,
Waiting for the late bus,
A reflected deep ravine,
Cut into by reflected moving windows,
Hissing breaks and the smell of diesel,
Rolling ripples contracting form as stars disappear,
Into the colourless surface of the bust stop glass.
Night Sky 2
The night sky is an ocean,
Toil among the flowers for hours and hours,
Turning and mulling over and over,
Under its vast cover sometimes sparkly,
The stars come down and help us dig,
Through soil to uncover our truth,
Of our ardent love of the heavens,
So darkly.
Night Sky 3
Sparkly,
Is black and white snow flickering,
Those stars are lost and soulless,
No sign of life at all,
As well we know that coldness
Behind the screen,
Darkly.
There is nothing finer,
Flickering shadows on our loungeroom wall,
It is snowing inside the television,
With its stars mourning,
Our little maps change from year to year,
Made different by melting water,
Sparkly.
In the tidal rain of stars above,
The ocean with its islands is no more,
The screen flickers and dies,
The sky above turns black,
Stars fade in the morning sunshine,
Yellow and blue at the same time,
The television flickers: darkly.
Big Bang
It was something to do with it having a starting point,
Born from nothing so to speak,
Antenatal could not be right,
Oh no!
There was no predisposition,
Or was there a wallop?
The sound of a baby’s buttock slapped,
A first intake of breath,
Oh no!
There was definitely no buttock slap,
For it to make its howling, buttock slapped entrance,
And here we are.
