- tom harding
(added 07.19.08)
Like A Stranger Bringing Bad News
Too many mornings dressing in darkness;
The heart heals over in woe, grows cold and dies,
like a tomb stone neglected in forgotten woods.
The courtyard birds leave the nest, the winter
world waits, driving its gloom like a widening
grin- broadening on the grass, like a strangers
shadow at the gate. Then crossing the lawn,
climbing the step and wrapping at the door.
- tom harding
(added 06.09.08)
2 am
i get up with a compulsion,
sit at the desk and stall,
happy with the thought;
the kindling is so much better
than the wrestling that follows.
i make coffee, walk the hall
observe the blacked out street
and look at the moon
then focus, and focus
i look in the mirror and say
- i don't believe you
you, your nothing but the books you've read,
the result of too much time
and easy living,
hot breaths of urges unfulfilled,
stop wasting time, go back to bed,
whilst she's still there,
warm and waiting for you.
god knows,
it won't be that way forever.
- tom harding
(added 06.09.08)
Jury Duty
Urinating at midnight, I
drown another fly in the bowl
then wash my hands and pass the hall.
Between clouds, the moon is signaling
the courtyard has fallen silent.
somewhere the cats stirs and
my heart beats beyond all reason.
I return to your side and await
the judgment of the moon and stars.
- tom harding
(added 06.09.08)
Tools
The worlds too full, I cannot talk.
I go and lie upon the grass,
with no thought of right or wrong, just
a child like dream of language.
I fumble in the dark and call
down the rusty old words of love,
and then venture into the light
to hunt you heart in the tall grass.
- tom harding
All These Faces Of The Crowd
The clouds are moving quick!
Moneys run away with the days,
Sat by the window
Never seen such movement.
The sky on a clouds bed
Winching round, a turning stomach.
A few barren hours sat by the window
Where the buses go wondering,
Old lusts have come crawling
Thinking, 'my youth is gone forever!'
Between the small times of love and sleep
And the other expanse of work and folly,
Dark as the deepest ocean.
All these faces of the crowd
Fallen leaves, spectacles
And my two more busying eyes
Heavy trained on the streets
Sat by the window
Thinking 'my youth is gone forever!'
- tom harding
Tuesday
I watched a spider cross the floor
I watched a woman come home.
What was achieved on a day it rained?
Men turned into men
Lights grew and died.
The rich grew rich,
The poor grew poor
Shutters raised and fell
To know applause.
I plumped my ego by a window
Laughing, still unnoticed.
- tom harding
I Don't Know You Either
I can't keep my mind
Off the way you deny me sex.
Laid in the bed light
Like a keeper of the chambers-
Goddess of trinkets and small things-
Hushed to silence as if sex
Was something invented
By you and your boyfriends
For quiet night alone such as this.
- tom harding
Master And Servant
A man always needs to bring his
Woman something, outside
Of humour and loyal service.
Nobody desires to love a servant,
When that love is just dust,
Spread at the corners
Of an overly familiar room and
Trust and assurance remain
The only gifts in the spice box.
- tom harding
Running Through
Men without prayer
Go about free as then can
When not concerned by death
Whilst those with god on the shoulder
Worry about living
Passing women
In their shining disguise
Thinking i want to live
I want to die
May nothing hold me
Let me roll in this city
Through all it's choices
In love with life in love with love
In love with a woman
Whose love is enough
Whilst the empty hearted
Passer bye runs
With no god in the sky
Scared of the night
Scared of the wine
Scared of the woman
city, neon, cathode everything.
- tom harding
Eleven Months On
What hit me most wasn't the pictures
Or your words in your notebook with it's
Plans left to do or your clothes.
It was your smell when i first returned to the house.
I was sent to tears for the first time since the ceremony.
And all the usual things that help, didn't
And all things worth anything just passed beyond memory.
When it goes all we have is the possessions,
The jumbled mass of commodities,
The pictures of you and the lilies on the sill
The empty mass of objects stacked and ordered,
The dead space we live our lives through
The room and chair, the bed end and midnight collision,
Laughing madly in the dark,
Whilst cars collide somewhere in the night.
The world and it's endless jolting masses,
The clothes hung upon the unhappy body,
The pictures and the lilies
You smell and laughter had no casket.
The world and it's billion lives lived and living
Trading on mass, weight and volume
Whilst you've disappeared eleven months ago
Under grass and under snow
Leaving us to afternoons and objects
The blank whiteness of white
And the temporary distraction of nodding lilies.
- tom harding
CITY MORNING
Strange to think of all people gone on bright morning as this.
Strange to think of whats hidden in such clarity,
These buildings cut so cleanly on the sky,
A morning so clear, i can see my breath!
And breathing i go down the pavement,
Swinging arms with all the other souls breathing to heaven.
Whilst the dead look down through the still veil
I go whistling holy! Holy! Under white haze over blinking towers and heavens.
Down with the morning hustle
Where cranes lift up over the railway like child toys on big city getting bigger,
Outwards and upwards expanding through clouds to heaven.
Down past the great gray swinging demolishen balls,
Resuming assault on St. Marks The First,
Two hundred year old chapel dust blowing across my shoes.
Past the Turkish grocer and his gentle face of commerce,
Past the estate agents and their alternate universe of truth.
Past the brightly dressed women in scarfs and hats
Past the department stores and side streets with their peak behind the veil,
Loading bays and trade entrance, trucks unload, clank, beep,
And men curse, sweat, shift the wheels and oil the rigging of conception.
Past the great bank buildings and sky scrapers,
Beacons of western success, mirrored erections
Reflecting their Hoboken neighbourhood in it's shiny faces
Where diligent worker fills their pockets with warm earth.
And men wonder below irk at the great metal feet for coins and hope.
Past the ineffectual neon signs flicking on over my head dim in the morning,
And past the headless chickens continuing their perpetual rotation in their universe of lo pangs rotisserie.
I stop for coffee below the libraries rusted scaffolding
And crooked pathways of light split in stream across my shoes and arms
I think to the peculations, clanking cups, honking cars and students talking Spanish.
Realising- it's ten thirty of a Friday morning, January 20th
And i couldn't care less because i leave today,
No shyness now, the clouds roll wintry gray, my coffee turns blue.
And go inside to pay where the waitress is extolling coffee from a great bell jar
To tables of single men in suits.
- A gentle nurse nightingale of barrister world with trembling arm-
How the men wanting say, 'please let me take away burden
and by the way do you like Jazz?'
But they do not know how yet to externalise themselves effectively
Or perhaps it's the world who is not yet ready to listen to them.
And I go back outside where all the other beautiful women pass
Trembling through the collective male conscience. And worlds collide,
To see the old drunks turn to her and the young men too
And the delivery boys honking with lawyers leaning from smart windows,
Whilst the dead look down through crystal clear wintry sky
Watching us live our live mans politics heavy on the trail of life,
Beating down every chest, getting handle on our insanity
Living live mans dreams such as one day making love to a woman such as this
Or perhaps of money or cars or gods
Or whatever other holiness keeps them from concrete and lonliness.
Just as this city is as much an older women herself,
Hurt in time and used by many men,
But if coerced long enough in the right way
Will once again lifts up her hem past the scars
And show you just what all the fuss was about.
- tom harding
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