Alan C.
Brown was a founder of the Tyneside Poets and kept it going with his
monthly poetry workshops in Newcastle upon Tyne. He was a true stalwart
of the Tyneside poetry scene and deserved a medal for his amazing
stamina and ongoing commitment to the encouragement of others.
Here is a selection of his recent poetry:
LIFE IS LIKE THAT 2
Believe me –the greatest enjoyment of existence
is: to live dangerously
Friedrich Nietzsche
Brittle glass? Not that. But inevitable shakedown
Came surprisingly on the gentler front
Of his women; not many, but all fatal:
The Leipzig whore who gifted a student lapse
With slow, but predictable paralyses;
Lou Andreas, a repressed intellectual,
He nicknamed, ‘A Monkey with false breasts’
A Queen Bee who’d droned, de-winged his adversary
In courtship, Paul, with the same blank coin she’d dished
Out to all cocksure males that crossed her path;
Until later on absorbing Sigmund Freud,
Deflowering Rilke, she put herself in line
For something else: a continuous springing of Seed.
The third, an unexpected distanced hope at best,
Recipient of his last note, signed, Dionysus.
Elizabeth, his sister, sinister shattered glass,
Closed all accounts with lies- She was his last.
Brittle glass? No, rather a catatonic rock-crest
When Zarathustra burst in on his mind like magma;
And all was collusive, given the death of God,
Glistening icy cold unstable as water.
Mistaken? Driven? Recall his dark saying,
“There was only one Christian – he died on a cross”
Crossed out? Double-crossed? Going unarmed to women;
Had he who’d advised us all to use the whip
Done so himself, perhaps we’d snatch our souls back,
And become supermen, even should the bomb drop.
PURE LOVE
We must follow after God, never precede Him,
When he gives the signal we must leave all and follow him.
Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon
Kept in the dark, we gain all being stripped
Of everything. The surgeon would need no sharp knife
If the flesh were sound. If we were not gripped
And wounded by our last enemy – the self.
Whatever we cling to too much must be snatched;
Form us, before we can enter eternal life,
Our sufferings, only when they are matched
By cowardice are doubled, disabling relief.
Kept in the dark is gain, come leap into it,
As into the absurd, that makes no sense,
That is a place where love and faith exist,
That brings the grace of final recompense.
Kept to the Other’s Will, avoids disgrace,
And passions us to see God face to face.
THINKING ABOUT QUIET THINGS
Potted indoor plants on a smudged window sill,
A prospect into a Zen garden seen through glass
Such dumb things with their own quietness fill
Out the present moment, wood fences, sparse grass,
Together with a flat dull redbrick wall
Have the same fluid mood flooded with grace,
If we allow them like a presence to fall
Into our mind detached from time and space.
There is a green gift given of quietude,
Something we miss, rushing from place to place;
But something brief moments of solitude
Open to watchful eyes like a flower’s soft face,
A healing wholeness, waiting to enter us,
Locked in inert things, placid, at peace.
VISITING NEVERS
The winged chair, you sat in
Unable to sleep at night - Remains.
Glows beneath protective glass;
But now you are not there.
The rose-beads on a snapped chain,
The rusted crucifix discoloured by time,
Are those you fingered once in prayer.
The frayed old books
Their pages yellowish-brown with age,
Survive out-spread, untouched, unread;
Closed off from your hands
But we are aware, of them, and
Of what you were:
Something taken up by God
And laid aside, like a broom.
And also of what you are
Beyond these left things.
Glittering like a white star
Undimmed by time - Not frayed
Or rusted, broken or unused
Your prayer – takes wings!
DISCOVERIES AT TYNEMOUTH
I am waiting to find fine amber words
To float me in a row boats flaxen moonlight.
But they‘re too quick, and slippery to hold,
Nimble as pink sea urchins detected in
Creviced wet sand, beneath a lifted stone.
I wait to lift up in two wet cupped hands,
Words, brittle and spent, as shrivelled leaves,
Agape and moist as specimens in glass jars,
Exact and limpid as a child’s rock-pool eyes,
Words, simple as open light, or printed sand.
Those, no screwed down lid, or rippled water sheaths;
But these are those, not I, but others find.
Those that run sideways like quicksilver crabs,
Others restrain, and join with easy linkage,
Like the knotted stems, of a child’s daisy chains.
Words round and clear, lacking raw empty spaces,
Others nail down, against a darkening landscape
That shine like moonlight lakes or stars;. I turn
Mine over gently, like indistinct coins,
Sunsets with bandaged eyes, throbbing with fever;
But when I look once more they’re scarecrow thin.
