Poetry by Simon Mark Smith
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To Talent
We will meet on Bridges across the Thames at 5 am
In smoky bars you’ll capture my heart and
At dawn let it go again
You inspire my children in laughter
Take my thoughts and turn them in to others
Lay gifts at the root of my journeys
Trickle miracles through my fingers
Bring words of peace to troubles
Read poetry in the darkness
Sing silence within me
Give to receive me
Your love to
Teach me
Let me
Be
November 24th 2002
“Meet Me On The Pier” 18 March 2007 Take two
And action
I open the door, you smile at the camera,
The stars that guide you guide me too
Fast forward
We climb the stairs
Rewind
Your fingers kiss
Pause
A moment there
Slow mo replay
In my arms
You rise
I fall
Quiet
From crying laughter
Play Animation sequence
Our naked love Is born
Lip-Sync
My mouth fills with your taste
My heart is full of night,
Fade to white
Your sleepy breathing
Offers me a fall
Make-up!
Then a height
Jenny is the set ready?
Across the sea the boat lights shine
The stars that guide them guide me too
Zoom, then blur
To the touch of your lips on mine
Can’t wait for the rushes
Roll credits
“My darling, for your love I thank you”
Jenny
For God’s sake love!
Meet me in the water
Come with me upon our bed
Dissolve
Even if the evening wind
Catches our last breath
Lower lights please
I want to sleep beneath your weight
Under the same roof
Is there something you can’t see
Strobe transitions
Are dreams your truth?
End titles commence
“What if what you do
Kills the love of those who love you?”
Close up
I look in to the sorrow of your gaze
Flash fade
In ecstatic fear you close your eyes
Freeze frame
Jen!
Meet me on the pier,
Or in the water
Where it meets the sky.
Fade to grey
Meet me in the shadows of our love
Silence please we’re almost finished
And greet me in the kisses of goodbye.
And cut
Faith and Allegation
I am on the side of the angels
And the helicopter’s flying high
I’m with you
In the lightness of this dark sky.
“Just look at that isn’t it something”
Just look at me ain’t I somebody?
Well we’re flying with the angels tonight
Making fun of their guiding lights.
I am with you in this deepest blue
I’ve got your left side in my view.
Can you hear them singing
Or the blades just spinning?
I am chasing angels through clear skies tonight
It’s a difficult differentiation of
Faith and Allegation.
And the angels ain’t God willing to sit for interrogation
But you are here.
28.7.1990 Simon Smith
What tree laughs so openly?
Written by Simon Smith on the 12 April 1991
A pinpoint of light moves across the sky
Like a miracle coming into land
On the palm of some friend’s hand
The city smells rise up from the ground
To haunt me with associations for life
And though I love the smell of wood more
I would miss this man made permeation
It is not excitement
But the smell of life
What tree laughs so openly?
Though what man stands so sturdily?
I look at you and hear words
Which I convey to you
Like a touch of mathematical improbability
We laugh
These words will never be so beautiful
As when in semi-darkness
They become unreadable
Tonight I am saturated by a feeling of well being
The day has moved well for me
I will stop writing
And you will come to kiss me
We will lay in bed and talk gently
And this day taken
For now has moved kindly around me
Old Ground
To sit and watch the sun,
Watch the wind
To walk and feel you close inside
To take away the pain and sleep
Soundly.
To live life happily.
To walk over old ground
Mother puts her head around the door
And says goodnight.
1985 Simon Smith
The Revolutionary
The picture pans across the sea,
To the place you held my breath,
In your clenched fist,
The revolutionary.
The tears you cried,
Found their way to me,
Like crocodiles,
Reptiles tied up,
Set free
The revolutionary.
February 1990. Simon Smith
Where the birds flew down,
I stood kicking dust
In the hot long light of evening
Two men emptied their pipes on the veranda
They looked up
Kicking their ashes between cracks
In the wood.
8.8.1990 Simon Smith
The Fear
On the landing
I look down the stairs
Tell the incubi to walk away.
Turn back and go back down.
The storm brings death to the front
Takes me back to fear.
Where I
Talk to the heads on sticks
Walk down roads on sticks
Kiss the baby in the arms of a mother
Kiss the may be in the arms of a lover
A black man I know walks his dog
Looks up
Watches his life go by
Rolling past in an old wheelbarrow.
Have I kissed you lately?
“Have I kissed you lately!”
Fear is
The gift of thieves
Was it a kiss I stole ?
The door opens and the man walks in,
Takes his hat off and sits down,
Looking down he positions his hat
Between his knees.
Cries
Then handcuffs me.
The Instinct Hint Of Love?
Can we collude or will we collide
Will we unite will we harmonise?
With one accord and hand in glove
A consenting accompaniments
Votes of no confidence
For my government of love.
The consensus of opinion
The adequacy of a well written word
Scratched on the back of a gloveless hand
Blood comes to the surface
But doesn’t erupt.
It’s the tendency of the tender hearted
The vulnerability of the
Submissive martyrs
The potentiality of the
Deathless departed.
Death is in our inability to communicate
The depths of our learning.
Meaning turns to dust with the mourning light
The irony of dawning
The curfew of our learning.
I am left alone listening
To the oblivious logic of
Intuition.
(The adequacy of an inner notion )
The instinct hint.
The paradox riddle of lucid foresight
The false reading of mystification
The confusion of the simple truths
The sophistry of the ignor(ant)ing.
I visit the institute of intuition.
Am illuminated by past life souls
Guided by the shadows of mourning light.
30.7.1990 Simon Smith
Poem about disability
After a hundred films on the doings of the disabled
I am bored.
Their purpose of education swamped
By their entertainment value.
Not another film on being bloody marvellous
Either that or a grubby black and white advert.
Cerebal palsy thoughts closing the door after the collection
And a thousand emotions holding apart
Pressures from outside from inside
And the door held fast in place.
Sympathy preceding
Lunch time jokes in the pub
Amazement preceding
Prejudice at the job Interview.
We meet.
Me in the way of your easy day
You look across to me
Your obvious shock
Still startles me
We talk and I know my words
Fall into the background
As every move I make disturbs you
But time encompasses me
Into your version of normality.
And then maybe friendship.
But I am one in a range of a thousand
Physical abnormalities~
How awkward life can be.
You come to me for an easy answer to
How should I be with them~
But their is none
Even the word ‘disabled’
With its Innuendo of worthlessness
And its categorisation of millions of very different people
Causes me pain.
And all these bloody marvellous films
What change did they make?
You’d still treat me the same
If I came for your daughters love
How would you feel?
I am here to let you see this discomfort
Between us
Revealing the hidden war
My first battle is to make you want
to understand
I show you the pain,
As you degrade me knowingly
Or in ignorance
You tell me I’ve a chip on my shoulder
But my humanity leads me to anger
So I can’t stop wanting to disturb you
From a complacency you’re so ready
To excuse
I have realised the impasse I face
You close the door and choose an easy life
You ease the pain with humour
And simplicity.
circa 1989
Go No Further
Written by Simon Smith on the 27 July 1991
This is some sacred book written in the half light
All out
Of town
All out
War was written
In the early months of my pregnancy
I never felt safe stepping out of bed
And in bed I looked at some one
out of sight
I stepped out of mind
She said “look between my legs,
what do you see”
I saw red
Like a red hole that smelt strange
“I don’t like that” and I got back into my bed
“Go on touch me again” she said.
Later I learned to spit
I spat and she liked it.
“Come here and touch me again”
Spit with a smile and I’ll hide the blame.
How anger leaves you standing naked
Normally in crowds of non attentive strangers
What joy in cruelty
And pain in love
“If I could kill the sadist”
Said the masochist
“If I could just kill the anger”
“You can
So go no further”
1986 Simon Smith
Beauty and Death
Come here and place your hand across my mouth
Silence my whispers
When I said you were beautiful it was true
I didn’t mean it
I just had to tell you.
You took an old cat and drowned it
How anybody could I really don’t know
You said you meant not to
But death is the friend of your frenzy
What meaning comes from meaningless words
More than words you meant to say.
Maybe I won’t marry you in Heaven
Written by Simon Smith early (April?) 1991
Maybe I won’t marry you in Heaven
But I’ll hold you through the night
Maybe not everything’s forgiven
But I’ll wait for you
In this springtime evening light
I ask questions long before their time
And in gardens of my heart
Swing from answers drawn in kisses
To momentary lips apart
Cigarette smoke gently touches me
Two men sit outside
In muffled Creole, soap and beer laughter
Catches me tenderly
Sadness and humour mix this grey sky
To some lithium orange cast veil
For fear of dying the stars are lost
Behind altitudes of reality that bare
No resemblance to you – especially.
There’s an old man who I want to see
Turning down my invitations
Maybe he thinks he can delay death
Because he knows it will be
Our last ever conversation
If I could be just one person
Then I would be the one who loves you
If I could freeze these ocean waves
I would time the moment to break
An overwhelming emotion over you
A gypsy woman’s walking
My friend’s grandmother to the car
After thirty years of waving at the door
There’s a reassurance in this goodbye.
Georgia On My Mind
As I walk down the stairs away from my fathers flat
I imagine you leaning against the wall
Back arched, looking in to my eyes
I walk past you
Not to ignore you
But I know this is wishful thinking
Well really I know nothing
I am trying to walk away from the not knowing.
I would try to think about what words I could say that would make you want me
But I know love can’t be persuaded, petitioned or bought.
A flashback memory,
We are close up,
Maybe a foot away your face in darkness except a band of orange
Streetlight falls across your eyes.
We are outside your house at night in my car.
I am reeling,
Trying to reel you in,
Un-realing the situation,
Reeling in feelings that I have preferred to watch get away lately.
You tell me you are worried about your bad breath,
I smell nothing and if I did would not mind
I want your breath inside me, good or otherwise.
You tell me later that you’re bum is too big,
But something in you and I
Has clicked me into a feeling of love towards you.
I take you as you are.
I would take your worries as a positive sign, if it weren’t that you’re a bit eager to go.
There is no feeling of “I must go” said 10 times over a 2-hour period.
It is “I must go” and then you are gone.
Your last words are
“A Woman may like bastards but after a series of bastards she realises the one she wants was the sweet one she left at first.”
To this I’m thinking
“do I figure somewhere in this scenario?
Which character am I?
Should I wait 20 years and see how you feel then?
Maybe I don’t figure there at all, and this was just a good bit of advice
Passed down through your maternal descendants and ignored similarly.”
When we kissed earlier you’d said my kisses were so gentle, you had tried to kiss me hard,
I’m not so young any more to kiss in a way I don’t want.
But I’m not so wise that I bothered to ask what you really wanted.
I watch you walk off as I drive away
It looks like you’re holding a cat to your shoulder
Maybe you’re talking on a mobile phone
You fade off symbolically into the darkness
I think back in to the evening
Memory 1
You are dancing with a friend, slow motion dancing, you ask me to dance with you.
I tell you I am an English male and would rather die! If we were alone I would curl around your limbs.
Memory 2
Your eyes looking into mine squinting slightly,
at this point I get that melting sensation that I need to be there if I’m to love a lover.
Memory 3
I say how much I like the design of the bar’s silver matchbox and you look at me quizzically.
Memory 4
Wisps of your hair brushing up to my face in the wind as we walk back up to the riverbank from a jetty.
Memory 5
The feeling of your body next to mine when you jokingly make love to me for 2 seconds
Memory 6
You trying to throw a lifesaver ring in to the river and me stopping you,
This one is like a dream warning me of the dangers of playing with you.
You are half Irish / Scottish and half Jewish,
Your physical look stuns me,
It actually hurts me because you are so beautiful –
It’s the pain of knowing this isn’t going to happen
So the sweetness reminds me of being a child when I drank ink
And was told I would die.
A few days have passed.
I know if I keep away from you
I will lose you in the river bank sands of my mind.
So I accept (without any dialogue with you) that there’s not going to be an “us”.
After all I had said that I didn’t want to stop kissing you because I knew it wouldn’t happen again and you had responded in an indignant manner saying “suit yourself”.
I now fantasise that I am asking you to be straight with me and tell me what you feel,
That if you’re not interested to spit it out because
I haven’t got time to waste chasing after people who don’t want me.
This is not borne out by the last 20 years of relationships, but maybe I’m changing- I doubt it.
Instead I write this which I may never show you until it’s safely too late.
29.7.2001/2018 Simon Smith
