WHOLE
At that window,
with the colours drying out
Into less drab greens and browns,
the peace and quiet
in the soft yellow-green land
slowly arcs its way into distance
trees with bare boughs
and bushes with wide curtseys
clutter the foreground of,
Leads me to hope,
that maybe things are getting better.
Standing here at the window is no worse than before,
Hollowness
in front of listless colours and woods.
Maybe the birds that chatter,
Louder now as I listen more,
and the flowering that will flower
and the nature-things that will grow
will heal me, and mine,
and make us as we were.
GROWN OUT OF
The ticktock of the clock recalls pre-digital me.
Awareness of self,
in a country lane surrounded by green bits,
or immersed in the silence of ticking clocks,
was poetry.
I was poetry. I was words scratched on paper,
later, clicked on keyboards on computers.
Typewriters shouldn’t be forgotten.
I used all mediums to express my expressibility.
The murmuring of breezes through trees,
the solemnity of aloneness in a room,
didn’t need pen, key or tab, just me there
to record me there. My moment.
Vulgar, and silly, of course.
I look back at the arrogance of life.
But I’m still turning over the pages,
clicking on to the next one.
And the next.
Recording my journey through life.
Fabricating a storyline.
CAPO DI MONTE
A porcelain figure stooping
slightly, legs close together,
right arm held down, slightly
away from body.
Left arm hugging a tankard
midriff,
head nodding slightly
to follow the upper body’s stoop.
Ever so slightly about to tip
over, feet though, barely visible,
tight
on the deep, white podium.
Dirty white, save a golden
band topping the tankard.
Fuzzy hair, and young boy’s face
from where I sit
glancing at the corner
where the porcelain figure stands
atop the cabinet.
Alan Hardy has for many years run an English language school for foreign students (in UK). As well as Synchronized Chaos, he’s been published in such magazines as Sideways Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Envoi, Iota, Poetry Salzburg, The Interpreter’s House, Littoral, Orbis, Pulsar, South, Lothlorien, 100subtexts, Fixator, Chewers, Feversofthemind, Suburban Witchcraft and others. Poetry pamphlets Wasted Leaves (1996) and I Went with Her (2007).