Dave Waddell

I have been published in 4 or 5 anthologies (Hidden Brook Press), at least one literary-entertainment newsletter/broadsheet (Mosaic), a few internet poetry websites(PoetrySuperHighway and a few others that are now defunct), 30 or 40 times in a local newspaper publishing group.

When you read these poems, it is what you feel as you read them that counts to me. So I hope you enjoy them as much as I did laying down the words.

"The Green, The Ancient Hill"

Your face alone my heart enkindles
Where would I, but be alone
But you with detonations in your eyes
Come look upon me, see me, sigh
Enrapture me like storm rack sky.

Like confluent streams we dream, rise, dream
And it would seem concomitant delight
Hushes a great bird’s song
Strong like dawn burns away the summer night

We carry each other around inside
Like a mediaeval German clock
What talk with empty words we spend; flattened, stand
No never mends nor heals
As the tick of the moment like parading winds subside.

Must I say, “I love you.”
When for the want of empty words you sigh
Peace, I love you, though peace, a thousand times
More than expensive, your pensive mood to buy.

From your planet, my planet, I take you green into the hills
Wills like testaments stand up, howl and are forgot
And none can say nor disagree for long
That we, with each discernible hard fact
Should lose heart, let it go its way
Sway stagger though facts stagger sway.

"Turn Around"

Like frost on tobacco plants you carry a black scar
Like war you dispense and dispensed are
Less human, less likely to overcome
Like fear, like bird hammered wind, you are
Trapped in a hurt of your own, to your own, devising

So take the spine of autumn in your hand and break it
See how the night grows cold
See how the winged pain beats down about you like a rain of fire
And the kernel of time opens back less than forward
Encumbering every explicable attempt to dance like a jute man;
No feeling no loss
And fans of peacock all in beauty vain like beauty stands
It tells you the eye is alien, the heart has no tight bands.

"Spincast Joy"

As though a cloud in fury barked like a dog
And spilled us out like a million fingerling fish
There is no mystery surpassing, surpassed by, or for
The conduit of question you carry at the core
Sharpening, honing, in mystery flicks bone
To flex or fix shape mould bend
Wanders wondering spinning wondering pondering;
How could you know that in the fire of dawn
The spiked wheel of night would turn
Row, rue, ripple, rend distend display
Lay joy beside your spincast joy, then take your joy away
Yet you are happy and happily see where you are, you are haphazardly
Like a top awobbling with the earth, dreaming of earth, abhorring with earth, jumping in the air
You see the furious relentless patience of the earth.

"Hitch"

There is a certain edge in music that makes me think of snow and a field and a faraway place and a desire, a yearning
I know it is but a trick of the mind playing at associating words
It always hitches hinges links chains equals parallels contradicts denies defines;
Where would you be without word pictures moods thoughts desire?
I think you’d be an overripe egg that even the great steel nose of God would shun
And having been shunned, so you would band together, make rules laws principles
And your first and last word would be, earth you owe me something.

"Spark’s Change"

When I look into your eyes I see you eighteen
Withall as sunrise you carry the same clean look as snow
Within this dark world’s hard beam aglow;

Down through the full length of thirteen years I have gone to find you and I cannot
I can see myself single in pursuit of each clue
Driving hard like a hammer that throws up spark’s change;
But I could not find you this way by driving
Nor is it as a stilled pool this clamour of driving disturbs
Nor fear that I change, how can I change;

How can I change, I cannot bend my heart
Nor can I look at it part by part for it is whole
I do not covet the gold the thief’s heart stole.

I would record this day that the heart that stole away like a thief a condiment from a drum, that all your innocent smiles can’t hold or stay or still the drum;
How can a queen protect a knave when she herself is hammered down
No wonder shame can’t creep on him, he shrugs it easy by his side
The heart’s hard that blind men see returned, changed and lied
O always they turn it by an act of will as a child will forget and make memory stammer
No one can see the record now nor how he let you innocent into his life
And no one shall know him any place or harbour him
And none shall remember his end or his beginning
Not even those that carry him in their hearts.

"A Storm Breaks Where A Calm Field Rise"

You are like spring’s long delayed awakening
Her place as sure found refuge under snow
As gardens glisten green by summer’s moonlight
You are by lamplight green life’s whorling centre
Here you sit as fold couple and at peace
Know the harsh world ignore it and are strong
What is a burden compared as we are to this
Oh what is our strength compared to our weakness

See what became of weakness as we grew
Ebbed up like bubbles’ clean quick divide
And took the shape of men tree weed animal flower
We are the peace that knows a small domain
Which we range over timely like the wind
We are as hills we move so much this far
Yet unlike these we cannot long endure
Well time is your own speak the centaur whorling thunder off.

"Pace"

The heart’s pace, its impulse to be quick
When in mystery it finds it’s taken up, handled, turned
Like water levelling in a brook runs back shaking yet does not sink below it
Does it hold back hoping when it paces the sun in its yellow flight from east to west passing in such haste seizing searching everywhere
Till its tired eye repair wresting a beach from the sea;
Knowing the heart finds surrogate for this
Its anger turns easiest; keep pace beside me.

"Winter Hills"

If I would say I came this far just to look on you as the earth moves with a river leagues to the sea
I am wrong again as one is often, as taken up with something partly sees
Shifts as the winds shift to compass bearings
As blue is white snow at evening, you, in outline like these winter hills.
As a clashing crescendo’s the full symbol
And a wind’s cadence is the cogent heart
I keep my guard like a ram turns out of the wind
As the wind blisters into white flakes on his loose wool
I look on you thus after your refusal.

As I turn and make my way home, full of youth’s vigour thinking next time
I walk part way and turn, I won’t go home
I make my way to a friend’s house, it is late winter
They hear me pound like a stallion at their door.

When I see urgency rise up cliff hung like a gnarled tree
Wind shook, scrabble, scree like a child whether right or just
I stir my fear lest you should go away sour and hunted circling at bay
Must the moon rise pure as winter fragile heart part, enchant, cliff hang
Part powders earth, earth shatters bang
Is it not right limber luck that I should hold you tight and breath slow cliff hung as dumb animal crops there
Yet need I hunger luck to hold you circling above, see
See innkeeper, circling above your head love circles free hungry austere and God made proper, share
All the while cold winter shambles there.

"Reef"

As you are mine and genuine
And the night is cold and bitter and lean
You came with lightning in your eyes and brought rain
Strode sure and feline between two as lightly there as wind and feather and sun
What ever purpose, surface, swim away as may fly ah seem chambered, night compartmented, celled
Say that this entail thought, fire crowd, couch and cumbered loud zang
Oh, winter reef of fire corral all quarrel, quote dismay
See even unto detail where we fail and get up gentle with one another and we hang.

"That Also Seasons Mantle"

The cruel glean again returns the grain;
Oh my sister where are you gone, oh, my brother are you gone to?
Why do you fallow each other out of sight, zone?
That even your locus, footsteps, disappear?
Oh life is long and dear, bare flicker spilling and spinning encharge
Oh why is the world so complex and so large and sorrowful at end of day?
Keep back my eye the tears years spilling away
Cool is the cold and fastful is the night and spare thinning
And my heart is chilling like a candle in the reflection of the eye of a bird flying, thunder
Casting there within itself a feeble light and a calm down dying dinning.
And soft, and yes, that also seasons zing the blood under.

"Warrior"

I see your swift flight, oh, tell me how you are happy and sensual and able like a wind that cradles a tree
I look and see you in half formed situations that shift and divide like plasm
And all the time, I can hear the trees outside rustling sere
And calm carries on your face a combustible fuse, oh, ails in ill, wills strength, finds and fails when martialled, slipped, fell and dust settle
Oh what is this device that heroes down to keep crevice abyss chasm skirting the edge wary or finds us improbably once and troubles, censures us
Too soon to keep or rise or go, emotion’s emotive as electric light and fights that same barrier, be you happy and ably sensuous, swift warrior.

You see you won’t risk losing and you are closed in
Oh what are you after doing
You go beyond need and love and chance hurrying past
Seven years good luck will tickle you, laugh regular spoke turn, break the mirrored glass and chuck it away, learn that luck’s duck lame quack is a bubble that doubles you with laughter, laughing gas
Hell, you’re alive and strive to stay, sway, begin, burgeon, baul, kneel
Life was not meant to be under glass and seal
Spat out like quills, arrows pierce the round stump
Soon enough it’s done zoom swish crump.

"When All The Joys Ran Rapid"

Oh it was good when all the joys ran rapid and sang down blood
And none understood to keep it and it stayed
These winds parade change equally as my youth gambled without knowing
As though whipped him ten to one weak and he cried in his pain like a lamb
What joy laden rivers I journeyed on brought me safely outside my filmy mind
And the film burned off like mist on a river, its power to turn again and again turned to itself each time, incident, pattern and plan
I think if it were my unhappy duty to keep watch and guard, I would give it up and be burning sad
Oh as well, weigh the past’s fragile shell badly as be barred from joy
Oh that lamb, whose wool nestles tight round the beast, springs safe from the dark like a hand.

"What Level Of Love Concerns Us"

As love decides the level that it functions best
And the level of love affects the level of life
And the level of life turns like a ship’s keel on success
It will not suffice love to second guess it, I know
Perhaps maybe direct its channel; let it play itself out original and free, again then, others yourself and I also, what level of love concerns us but it is better so
Oh it’s free enough to compare this unaffected but if it should go, tell me where are these others that decide, that frighten it away; I think you could not tell me either where it is gone or where they are or the manner it was done
So let it be its free level function best like rain
Keeping and loving like a tree, a hard maple in spring where the wind sings and the warm sun release life sugar in the vein.

"We Are Brave And Brief"

That the oceans of the heart that wave and lave at the cave can have peace above all
That meek men can turn brave as once were brave and brief with each breath before the heat of each birth had quite cooled
If we had not saddled ourselves with this thing, fooled with this thing war, or, even going passed close enough to see clear, or, I could say forever or
We could have been the children of the earth playing there, oh, what have we settled for
For perhaps, for maybe, for the chance of a ruse
We see we settled for something less
We see we did not know we had to choose
Oh yes, spin juggler thief we are brave and brief.

Oh, love is a yearning thing, a turning thing, and a burning thing
It clings yet is itself free, it passes like a brand, it burns like a lariat,
Yet it has eyes and an equal heart;
See my scarred hands and your scarred hands, before they were soft as often as they are now not
We have fighter's faces that are hammered gold from lumps, but being men and women we would not give up this gold;
We have fought too hard for it to let it slip back anonymous;
The enormity of our task is the enormity of sun and planet, of plant and wind and rain
And we shall not treat it as some dumb bell that rings a few times on Sunday
Some day we should place it in the heart of old, but as we are too young it is too strong and it would be pretentious to tell ourselves so
So there is no wrong done, you and I look at the burn and we need not save, in truth we can’t
Be there one million to raise the planets up, sun;
We spend the gold that takes the heart, that takes the face between the hands, that takes the tears like leaking diamonds and feeds them to the thirsting plant.

"Drover"

It’s sad to drive a heart down and hard and be both drover and driven beast
Reason that reason is arrest, sage save worst, say riddles are child markings first, than change, lain sleeping come to life
Drawn out, come to downfall, getting up easy, peace place part role
This preamble is that same ritual in destruct; strict district, distance, rise, fall, amuck
Left over from some age, sage, cradle, bark back; oh get up, whipping-tongued wind, speak
That evil sleeping hark back to dawn rain and when somehow broken bays again
I told you drover, held left over from some age, it were sad work you seek
Oh leave me now, give me back my rage.

"Rising"

Wonder will not hold us back; grappling hooks and chains spider webbed down with its laughing spring and wind tremble
The gull cry gathers aloof lofting and bathers sun dipped on their two legged walk, crack stacks ‘em block and block, smooth corded and wood grained, light slipping through tree leaf limb
All spun dizzy they shall sleep, then slip the present form and try on tree shape, cloud form all boon and beam, imagine
I caught one by the tail and he turned and swallowed my arm so that I felt hand on hand and gazing out to sea, my sea eyes wonder, oh yes, fierce dawn sighted her thirty-thirty and like a whirlwind and I myself ripping apart piece by piece, found myself pebbles on a beach
And then a woman came to shore and found my finger fierce in agate and liked and carried it away saying ah, she placed it on the dash of an outbound boat grinning and pleasantly spun down small and small yet I stayed the same
The rattle of the cock dawn detonate grew fierce and fierce, my arm all asleep, fear beads on my eyebrow, the room formed like a cube and love and life and light like a black and white blanket over us rising.