Jonathan Beale

Poetry from

The Destinations of Raxiera

 

 

After…

‘Morning Sun’ by Edward Hopper (1952)

 

She sits, waiting…

as if, bracing for an unworldly event;

The lighted wall seeking to embrace the moment. 

She is an unsymphonied phrase.

Waiting to be written.

 

A morning ritual

The sun, her cult God touching, 

In silent optimism as the fine sand grains pour -

Ever quickly away, ever.

Resentments wash along.

The hours, days, weeks, month’s coastline…

Up to the mountainous years; that seemingly never move.

And remain immovable.

 

The window is the open soul.

Looking back out, to tomorrow.

The air is still.

The light is moving above the eye.

 

Her pink dress.

Spring blossom like.

In the days anticipation.

She sits.

She sits.

 

She sits.

Until the days necessary cogs churn.

 

The long lit evening is to come,

And pass.

Before she braces the morning sun.

Once more.   

 

 

 

Out-of-gas

 

Deserts suck and drain

Silently; whispering; silently

Dashboards’ chasing death –

The red light came

Night quilting the earth’s edge

No light, no sign, no life, = no gas

No wind- the Thin Line = survival

The red zone drawing the needle

A ghostly draw backwards away from birth

Red fractions creates mass fear

…jutter, jutter then. Silence. No motion-

 Just motionless – a wall of sand: snakes whisper

Among the night. Out-of-sleep. Out-of-gas

The dawns current allowed me to move on 

 

 

 

For the ghosts of they who passed by night before 

After Hopper’s painting ‘Early Sunday Morning’ 1930.

 

You don’t see us

Along life’s rails

The sleepers and paths

That Veer away from

The split infinite.

Of the fire and 

Passed by; under windows

Eyes, closed on the world

 

The rats and foxes

On night maneuverers

 You cannot see them in doorways

Sanctuaries of the bum.

Sevenday absenteeists

Words that smooth and caress

All lovers are blind except for echo –

A cast in these vast stone artefacts

 

These places to store…

Created for building & making.

And ‘no’not us, we’re the bums –lost, strayed.

Just the bums invisible, yet there. 

There is reason. There must be, reason.

Kant’s mind occupied him a lifetime

Sorting those colossus pieces of,

Bishop & knight …

 

We feel - the fork

No address: no, no, no,

Begging breeds, no ingenuity

The cream always finds

The way up – the wise will

Wield a new way.

We sit, sharing stories

So old now, they become rusted.

 

Stuck in time, the cells, their D.N.A.

Become and the story grows different

The scene remains the same

Life remains until the days grows 

The light cuts the polished shop window

They have passed away

The eyes of the morale and the moneyed

Don not see them today.

 

 

 

Stairway

Stairway at 48 rue de Lille, Paris 1906

 

The air, heavy with experience;

Darkened corners harbour some dark secrets

Men met women (for their own liaisons)    

The avenues on avenues – in Soloman’s house;

Memories lay here.

 

What has happened behind the door?

The permeated balustrade with memory of small talk

And coffee and nicotine and love and lust

Anger and regret – history here is written in

These stains and scars.

 

The epee edges of each stair

Wearing down the souls of those who live

From the bottom up chip, chip, chip

Away-a-lost-poet. And philosopher flicks his

His out of spring airs open window

 

When the they step down to the light

The all judgements are lost as their hand slides

Along to the volute the last touch, Inside

Before the lightless spire is lost to

The new Parisian dawn.   

 

 

 

Barber shop

Barber shop 1931

 

Eyes scan the lines

Bridging between

The islands of

Clients posed still

 

Ready: smile on

Standing by –clinical

Blue his chat

As slips and snips hair

 

Evaporates as steam

The cells seep 

In thought and slow

And cool are

 

Forgotten - clocks

Make hours in

Shadows they slow

To spite the viewer

 

Hair falls marking

A new epoch

Mounds of grey

To be swept away

 

With the trash

and dime bar wrappers

the sun has slipped

a fraction to the left

 

the clock has not moved

she remains seated

as there is no passing trade

has come her way today.

 

 

 

Jonathan Beale has 300 plus poems published in such journals as DM, Decanto,  Penwood Review,  The Screech Owl, DM du Jour, Poetic Diversity, and also; Voices of Israel in English, MiracleEzine,  Voices of Hellenism Literary Journal, The Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Down in the Dirt, & (Drowning: Down in the Dirt July 13) The English Chicago Review, Mad Swirl, Poetry Cornwall, Leaves of Ink, Ariadne’s Thread, Bijou Poetry Review, Calvary Cross, Deadsnakes Review, The Bitchin Kitsch, The Dawntreader, I am not a Silent Poet, Pyrokinection, Festival of Language, ‘Don’t Be Afraid: An Anthology to Seamus Heaney’, Ygdrasil, the Four Seasons Anthology and The Seventh Quarry.  He was commended in Decanto’s and Café Writers Poetry Competitions 2012. He studied philosophy at Birkbeck College London and lives in Surrey, England.

 

His first collection of poetry, The Destinations of Raxiera (Hammer & Anvil Books 2015) is available on Amazon.com.