xxviii (’20)

she’s arrived bent at this snapshot of her golden hour
her flame still whispering to the loves she flowers
captured for a moment as only what she represents
not the meanings she carries gold in heart
another grandmother from the fringes
. . .

update

blog update after taking it down for a while

green shoots and heart beats on a turn around my blog

When I tidied up this website to become a way for people to learn about my poems I decided to take a turn at blogging. I think it’s been a good thing for me. But in doing so I was keen to avoid working too hard at it to make it too smooth, to seem too pushy in a way. My ‘about’ page links this to Wabi Sabi. Maybe. Or maybe really that is a way of saying it after the fact . . .
read on here

Poem included ‘We are the Change-Makers’ anthology

Another of my poems has been published. It’s called ‘They Think’. It’s published in We are the Change-Makers: Poems Supporting Drop the Disorder edited by Jo Watson in PCCS books, an anthology.
. . . read on here . . .

Poems Published in Poetry Express

Survivors’ Poetry’s newsletter Poetry Express has published three more of my poems in the latest issue (#61). The poems have been published here previously and are:

(read on here)

grey summer day

there are days the sky just weeps
north by north west prevailing
Manchester, lakes, Portland, Seattle

clouds weep their bodies out to nothing
to be reborn on the word of the sun
tickled into a new shape of pain

to rain a world’s tears and water hope
zero sum non zero sum give and take
vapour of vapours alembic distilled

whisper on the breath of a sun aethereal
they know the golden light unsustainable
and fall towards the garden of their shadows

around the grain of imperfection

A. H / K. H-H (27th July 2020)

terms

they’re not bothered with
instead just insist you dance
to their call of the tune

A. H / K. H-H (27th July 2020)

rose

thorn bush needle tree bare
air spiked striker at the year
dying back head deaded pruned
your sap gathers toward growth
a summation of all your points
all it’s left to you to be
delicate, silk petal fragrant flesh
concentrate of beauty’s hope
the natural conclusion
to your briar scratch upon the world

A. H / K. H-H (20th July 2020)

try two of my other poems about roses –

albertine

and more recently:

some tide has moved the season of a heart

growing

what is this dry season
fed, watered
hesitant

A. H / K. H-H (14th July 2020)

i don’t usually say anything about poems, sometimes think they explain themselves, and i guess they don’t always. the dry season here has been a very long one, unsure where to go, maybe it is a trans thing in a cis world, or that is a part of it — it also may relate back to a poem like observations – a bit of a poet thing, or a holistic view thing, in a world that offers compartments, or even a world that i picture as offering them and a need to fit to them, or else little idea of how to make a world in which i have made my own infinitely flexible one

i’ve been attending the wonderful webinars with poet David Whyte in April May and now July that look at this journey we’re on in ourselves this year — relevant to me now through lockdown and yet broader, like this, in my life – i keep setting out on roads already made, a source of so much trouble – and we all need maybe to be flexible between fitting in and our own vision . . . maybe it could be an exciting time, but sometimes of a morning with a meds hangover it just seems barren, where do i start, no matter where i got to yesterday . . .

maybe its my own craziness too . . . and maybe is a lot more material than this short poem gets at . . .

it’s like one view – another may be verdant in fact – close my eyes and try and open them on that – but part of this view comes from how i measure where i am — i think of that writer’s tip when writing do not write all of what you have on your mind, leave the writing for the day and the next day it’s easier to pick up at that point, you already have more to say . . . maybe its the meds, maybe i’ve often done it, started as though at the very beginning again, or counted it as such as the end is not reached . . . but should just keep playing, i’m not nowhere just because no one else sees where i am . . . i know this , i forget it, writing this discovers it again . . . and of course in the world of jobs and product or direction it can suddenly seem like this again, be it maybe that world of jobs is particularly regimented it seems to say what has value has to be certain ways . . . or maybe that is just how some have made it . . . or maybe this is in a time of change

for another

my heart is locked
by such a combination
until you dial it true

A. H / K. H-H (6th July 2020)

girlhood, politics

getting her hair done
highlighted liberation
another prison

A. H / K. H-H (6th July 2020)

coma

long summers’ sleep
to wake for a harvest
gather what’s good
starts to clear rot

A. H / K. H-H (25th & 26th June 2020)

xxvii (2020)

threads a mess
spindle unfurled
fatally out of control
we spool we spool we spool
like spooning ocean
out of a rowing boat

A. H/ K. H-H (15th June 2020)

xxvi (2020)

tried to live a shadowless life
– what a joke
had all the natural shadow
and when the shadowlessness was poked
atomic darkness exploded
cracked all the mirrors in the west
trapped shady exit
left to diffuse
he tried she tried he tried to suck it back
and in the end the light
will triumph over vapour

A. H / K. H-H (15th June 2020)

brook – a new poem and intro

it must be a dream
to wake in a golden light
and run downstream in changes

A. H / K. H-H (25 & 26th June 2020)

– with intro . . .

poem xxv (2020)

and so mute swan your glide was lost
frantic in the wreckage of your nest
all nests blown anti-cyclone
storm seeded hurricane breath
flattened trees, rooves blown off
locked into a comic swim
swan tutu’d mute, another thing

A. H / K. H-H (22 & 24th June 2020)

xxiv (2020)

shadow conquistador, golden heart
your safe coronation shared danger
the dark angel of angels tickled your tongue
a world on the whim of your butterfly wing
was lost

A. H / K. H-H (22 & 24 June 2020)

another day on the rocks

trolls roll barrels
of Diogenic cynics
naked, pure, virgins
of the quarried world
the Trolldom can’t abide
must make collide
with the rocks at the bottom
of their 1 in 2 slope
gradiant of dissidence
in the Stone Kingdom

A. H / K. H-H (15th June 2020)

failure

i didn’t understand
but insisted i did
that they don’t understand
but act on it

i’ll never get to show
my missing pieces
the golden dismissal
of black heart eclipses

A. H / K. H-H (24th June 2020)

the quest for fusion

poem from a workshop in response to Moniza Alvi’s’ beautiful poem ‘How the World Split in Two’

xxiii (2020)

he played a game of no surrender
always at his edge
frightened he’d defeat himself
blind to how we must
he only made loss worse

A. H / K. H-H (10th June 2020)

xxi (2020)

it is June
the sun mounts toward its height
the holly listens to the lesson

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)

ordinary level

confident I wrote a note of everything
such a mistake when I came to revise
I could not face this further lens
massive limited imagination
between wells of infinity

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)

our weather changes

our weather changes
blown cloud-grey drizzle-rain fresh
we are grass drunk and green

A. H / K. H-H (8th June 2020)