About…

The poem is about a journey, ambiguous and its written to be read at the Goat St Albans and see what the audience [if any] makes of it .

Book 301 is intended to be a collection of poems by Mike Burr for 2010 with no thematic precept.

Tom hark



tom hark the dusty spring run tracks
where journeys your caravan
far across the deserts acid heat
and northern ice fluxed scars

tom hark the sky-birds all a wing
and headed for your homeland
passing o'er haphazard hills
to plunge alike like black winged waves
on England's verdant shores

tom hark your heart is calling there
and the moonlight slept within has wakened
see your troublesome life and cares
a fleeting like the ghosts of sadness
amongst convoluted forms
that make the races of a disparate river
and flow and flood with temptations from another world
organic and diverting as that may be
it took you far from home

tom hark who calls you back to union
for idle hands did not bleed
and sorrow deepens in their bandaged wounds
and breasts bowed with their aureoles
that should have fed your children
through the hardship of a famine
are drained of sap
your babies parched and bare
upon the earth are scattered
where the flowing wedge of birds now graze that saw you
as a passing spectre far below

tom hark their passing
a wish as a feather falls
its vane a helix defined upon the air
that screws the fixtures of your failings
into the place where your wandering will fall
and must and rock will take your place

tom hark where is your fragile spirit now
upon the wing amid the mountain heaps
or rough cascades of briny green
addressed as roving albatross
or skulking somewhere deep beneath remorse
while skylarks flutter overhead
expanding on the fragile earth
their communal notion songs of joy

tom hark for what is duty but a burden
constraints were made for bonding weak and feeble souls
accounts of guilt or quest
so roam upon your own meandering course
no obligation meets its byway
where the spirit draws the landscape at its will


Sources…

the idea came from the 45 [vinyl single] Tom Hark by Elias and his zig-zag jive flutes

some info here

tom hark the dusty spring[field] run tracks .. as one of dusty's singles [with the pet shop boys - pet shop not included ]was next to it .. is how it began ..