Hello, my name is Yogaratna/Simon Goode. In this first post are some of my poems, in the second are links to some of my prose pieces, and in the third is a link to a short book. You’re very welcome to give me feedback on any of these, at simongoode9@gmail.com. Thank you for reading!

Feeding Emily

She’s very old, and in a way

I know she’s fading away

and she even seems to be fading away

but her eyes are so bright,

and her hands so gentle

gently reaching over the table

questing nowhere like flies —

my spoon to her lips she drinks it straightaway

and I watch for her swallow

she looks at me, looks elsewhere

swallows a little but I wait

she stands up, grips the table,

shuffles slightly as if about to walk

sits down and finally

swallows again

my spoon to her lips she drinks it straightaway

the room is full of motion and noise

but this drinking is silence

Emily looks straight at me and winks

I wait for her long swallowing

she gently pulls the table against her midriff

gasps and sighs, pushes it back,

looks around, swallows, regards me sternly

enquires of me with words that make no sense to me

I smile and nod vigorously

my spoon up to her lips she drinks it straightaway.

This drinking is silence, she’s fading away

her eyes are so bright.

Kids and leaves

A drift of brown oak leaves by the side of a track in the park
Dry as cornflakes on top
Sedimentary beneath, wet and
Packed together like decks of cards
Pulping down into the cold chocolate mud.

We pelt towards them like running to blast a football
Closer, closer — heart tightens —
SMASH! leaves in the air a brief sprinkling curtain
As we let out our wound-up breath.

When they are all gone we turn on the other leaves
Lying stupid in their warm beds
Kicking them into the air again and again
Like goose-stepping Nazis.

Then we turn lovers
Eyes for nothing else
Rolling on them, tummy down and swimming through them
Hugging armfuls to our chests
Stuffing our world to the brim with more and more leaves.

And finally we lie back
And dream of digging down into the giant drifts
Whole rooms, corridors
In the strange thrilling coldness
Of being without Mum and Dad
We could run
Under the black oaks and frightened moon
Through the never-ending cave of trees

Climate change fiesta

Carnival hat: black, gold, crinkle.
Climate change fiesta.

The beat ramifies and grips like clockwork,
like sand edges, falling through the hourglass,
edging you nearer the drop.
To dance, to die, to empty into nothing.

The beat plays funky mantraps.
We whirl and smile with our bones,
opening our arms to the desert.

In the 600 year-old pub

Strong Belgian beer for me,
Merlot red wine for Johannah.
Laughter, hubbub.
A couple talking,
their faces soft and open to each other.

Through the window the Moon
and near to it Jupiter like a star
only 40 light-minutes away.

Apple trees in moonlight, pausing for Winter.

Conversation slows down, speeds up.
We hold on.




Moon message

Seagulls angels, squabbling chaos:
saying the universe is unknowable.

It never started, will never end.
Noise I was always part of, and always will be.

This ocean I’m in, bubbling and surging:
nothing but play.

This is what the moon tells me:
in the night sky, above the streetlights, impending.

The slightest movement, somewhere in my roots.
I’m intricately weaving, blur of blur.




Hungry child basis

staring through the city, sure as the moon.

People in the city are micro-circuitry, rapid.
The circuitry’s conscience darkens, is burnished,
both slowly and quickly — 
all in the tone of forgetfulness.

The moon and the city won’t read each other.




Tara

She sits still, meditating, but moves a little —
questing for her sky home.

Hottest love through her mere, beautiful body.
Deep rainbow,
black bog, mountain water, fluffy cotton grass.

Crystal: clear, purple, red, green.
Sunlight playing these lights, from ancestors,
she’s dancing.






Walsham le Willows

She cycled into a shallow flood
in the countryside of my heart.

She laughed at her travails, getting to her solitary retreat.
She went deeper in meditation, met her demon saviours,
went looking for mushrooms.

Springs, rivers of needing her:
flooded fields, flooded roads.

Rain comes on, answering,
with this, and this, and that, and what.

Virginia Woolf

She loved literature
that sparkling stimulant
she took it all the time.
Her shade is restless:

’I make a painting of cold colours,
I stop life in moments, stop —‘
(she bends double, both hands pressing her stomach)
’impacted, with black lines,
I make them into one thing.

’Looking in the mirror:
hardness, sharpness, as if people’s glances
were angling in my body.
At the party: I push outwards, brilliantly.
I feel a tiny, distant weeping
wavering like a seedling grows, an aching fracture.

’But with you, Vita,
I am unsure, like a child,
and embarrassed, foolish:
manage to look into your eyes.
You smile, and lift my hand
to the line of your jaw, your neck.’

Longing to exist,
she diminishes in her reflections.

New shape

I’m lying face down,
and Solitude is carefully walking up and down my psyche’s back,
like an excellent masseuse.

Working my tired posture,
she softens my edges,
teasing me in ways I don’t know,
towards some new shape, perhaps some truer self;
like water finding the shape of whatever it flows into.
I can almost hear the taps fully open,
the water’s noisy splashing…

I’m not quite sure what’s me — 
what might be down there, tonight?
Notions, realities; anything might swim in me,
through me.

Shapeless as the night itself,
I’m welcoming all comers.



At Dhanakosa

The hills are in anjali.
Two hands in prayer-position, at the heart, they offer:

day after day of low cloud,
the whole valley filled with light and rain.
Dripping on my verandah:
piano key pressed with no note;
padded, wooden; dry of music.

Thinking turns to rain,
feels the whole valley in my bones:
natural processes are conditional;
they can end, and one day will.

I dip my hand against the spating stream,
scoop heavy flowing water-bricks,
find white quartz, the jewel in the lotus,
like an insight:
we are built of water and oxygen, we flow.







Everything happens now

Looking  towards the waterfall on Stob Ceol:
sheep on the steep hillside,
pointing in different directions,
as in train-set scenery.

I can see chunks of the water falling,
sunlight travels towards me through shadow,
like an insight impending;
everything happens now.




An angel at my ear

spoke of the moorland wind.
His lips moved slowly
speaking greyly and whitely
saying swirl furl hurl.

Saying, ‘Walk and don’t stop, bones.
I’ll bully your walking.
You will cool down.
The sun will see your bones,
water and grit will nurse them.
The purple-black clouds above your head
of corn-stalks sunlit.’

Devoke Water

Sings with no voice.
It’s off the edge, I’ve never been there.
Sings with non-being.

It’s reflection makes sky and depth:
drawing all towards it,
nowhere staying there.

October fox

Pushed out, parents won’t feed it —
the young skinny fox isn’t running from me,
but casting about, begging for food.

I remember being young
left home, big city:
little anxious sun.

Wondering what I was,
what I really wanted:
nosing around, hungry.

Ballooning

Meditating down here
released by my anchoring weight
and held by miles of air.
Clinging to the speck that is me.

Winter is mother.
Under her blanket of cold, rain and ice,
I’m the deep, inaccessible, comfortable burrow,
and the rabbit there, blissful, at ease.

The dog, Anxious Thoughts,
sniffing around up above,
is also me, but only just.
I can hear his occasional, distant whining.

Pipe-cleaner ladies

How can a lady be made from pipe-cleaners?
Their poor legs, thinner than their knees.
I just guess that somehow
they’re always having to push a great boulder
and the pushing grinds their bodies.

Two of them hug;
living skeletons, weeping.

Swifts

Completely unmerited unreasonable extravagant
joy, thrown up to the eaves, fluttering there and gone
wing-shake, thrown glide, flutter-swerve.
Quantum uncertainties, allergic to time and space,
pepper-grains shook in the sky,
schist-screech, schist-flight,
tumbling mountain streams.

 Glass ten feet thick

I’m a message I can’t read:
glass ten feet thick;
that I’m in, that I am, can’t hear.

All the life that has been,
behind glass ten feet thick,
in my uncertain breathing.

Only being

Experience comes clean, in true colours,
developed by mountain-stream water.

Distractions chatter away, just air.
The hills,
and the sky with its clouds, meditating.

Time waits, streams trickle; breezes —
like dust suspended in water, settling imperceptibly,
you accumulate.

Spring

Javelin in the heart might be a gas.
Arrow’s thud; wood’s shudder.

Springes hold.
Your girlfriend’s a zombie but fast with sharp teeth.

Springboard weighs
up through your feet tossing
you — somersault.

Vernal assent oh yes ascent
a scend incendiary insane inane
blew me up happy-go-lucky
hither and thither bits fall from the sky.

Faith and the Pavement

In true love and wisdom, my heart opens;
and I feel the edges
of the pavement of guilt, a few inches down.
I can almost get my fingers under it.
It starts to break up, and melt.

My spiritual career

I’ve been cracking up, for a long time:
treasured blobs painfully slipping off;
a snowman forgotten, in the rain.

I’ve reached the bottom of the ladder.
My ego not so much overcome or transcended as
knackered? short of breath? bleary?

But I do feel lighter than I used to.
More like a popped balloon’s space:
happily billowing.

Beer

Lovely beer, all those bead-curtain bubbles
floating upwards, rooting in my fore-brain.

The miracle cavern, the wonky molecules, the knowing sideways,
spade in my crusted perception
lets darkness in — 
smoke, slurred
slumped, profound;
tortoise turned over, and my limbs waggle.

Smile campaign

Insert a smile at the base of your spine.
After due consideration of the consequences, press ‘PLAY’.
Listen: like a malign influence, inoculation 
it radiates your body.

Flowers, rainbows, happy dazzling suns
rise in your bloodstream
break your heart, upset your mind
until, beaten and broken by this alternative story,
you smile, you love.

Jinananda

is like certain very fine coffees:
full of darkness, acerbic
almost rough; earthy; punchy.

A man who gets down to the coffee grounds of being,
the fundamental crap.

And yet with a dark brightness;
a fine, zesty edge.

And, mysteriously through all these other qualities,
a certain chocolateiness.

Techno

As the music builds, it forces you.
You try to empty yourself through a point.

Friendly corrugated squawking noises.
Sense of deep colours. war-like friendliness,
mountainous bass, scurrying and quaking
lit with scampering, zesty cymbals.

Dancing despite shrapnel striking up and sideways;
and boulder-textures, vibrant levels of air, sliding upwards.
You and the lasers; squiggling.

Evaporation

The poor won’t die, but we’ll let them evaporate:

somewhere behind the backs of our minds,
well behind our shopping preferences,
our acceptance of sensible policies,
our well-earned flight —

they will evaporate in large numbers,
and we hope they’ll balance our account with Gaia.




A candle going out
is where your body is —
thinking it is here





Light on the leaves; cuts for fresh air.

The wind looks.
Bright glance circuits; air must get away.
Such a heart holds:
helicopter’s shaping.

Light in a clear puddle is safe; simpering.

Sunlit rock is gentle,
a grandfather by the fireplace;
the weather is passing shadows.

Slimy-outside friends

Interesting,
is a way of moving.
Texture nourishes.

Nice people here; they leave food out for us
give us rides out of the window —
black flash, wet wall.
But the kitchen interests back.

In here interesting is horizontal or vertical.
Sometimes the light vibrates,
there are clashes around up there
and odours, and sizzling.
Sometimes chewing. sometimes interesting.

Predator fish

Dear, whilst love is warm in our hearts,
the predator fish circle us angularly;
love is angry, steel and so exciting.

And such possibilities;
flash gone in darkness, your treasured one.
And love drawing you into mournful darkness.

But we swim steadily, cleverly,
keeping our hearts for ourselves
and each other, hopefully.

So our love is young and strong, or dies.

Saturday afternoon in W1

City like burning paper;
dazzle and black.

And the air glassy like heat from a furnace;
buildings black, above.

Gold evening sunlight; cold, alien.
Walking people are black changing shapes.

Buses in the distance with empty top decks;
shadowy glass boxes briefly catch light.

Wallace Stevens

A face is approaching
pared, harlequin.
Knowing eyes, known by freedom.
It’s a cardboard portrait.

He perceives like glass
longing to sense the rose —
disturbed in rose’s absence, essence.
Hunger or silence
impending to his roots.

A face is approaching
knowing the shadows and light of trash as skeletons
or as the figures of love.
Possessed by the force of knowing,
of only being able to know.

Addicted civil servant

She’s a policy babe, a victim of government.
Her stammering walk is panic as purpose.
Hair cut scrawny, flesh dried and functional,
she hasn’t slept for days —
she’s going to see.

She’s going to truly sort things out.
Addiction is a point she empties herself through,
skrimshandering herself.

Her eyes see harder in the desert, seeing desert.

Clean sheets

I’m wrapped up snug
domesticity approves of me
even the dark is there to help me sleep.

The ghosts come pleasantly
fixedly as the dim walls,
they patiently wonder what I’m doing with my life
like the light getting through the curtains,
an awareness of knowledge, an outside coolness.

But this is all so routine
it all continues, tiring itself, getting sleepy.
I’m snug, in an upland of grace, passivity, many clean sheets.

Pacific 202

Dance-heart machinery locomotive
making eights out of eight easily
as the rhythm of news speaking importantly
flippantly, all one stylish inflection.

Afflicted by steel speckling fast.

Iron wail soul; ignored,
calls in a hard land.

It’s going to get there, and the sun will rise.

Ode to The Stones

Round-space voice; angry, horrible.
Boulder’s shape; no uncertain terms.

Raucous, a spirit staying above the pavement,
strutting like a cockerel, like a man
creature of the scrap-metal
guitar-music — oiled and rusty.

Bass guitar goes
like tunnel gobbling the surface.

The swoop and howl of voices in prison.
Prison unable to sway.



Janis Joplin

Summertime; cracked.
Seeds; dust of glass.
A wreck sings, its voice wispy,
mainly quietness, directedly.
In summer, clear glass provided shade.
A wreck throwing its hands up.
A wreck hopelessly open to heat, vacancy.
A wreck: the hot soil aching for desire.




My hill

Sinking into myself
                                  like sinking beneath water
Ears stopped by rumbling quietness
The world above necessary but irrelevant 
Where thoughts flicker unattended
Shadow over my mind deepening its darkness
— Solid black hill
Black edge and white sky
It dominates the world of my dream
Cold as winter winds
Blank as the eye of a dead thing
Looking at that hill, all the questions inside me
Urgent as fish fighting upstream
Fall flat as a rope thrown and missed 
But I can’t look away
If I turn around and walk in the opposite direction
It’s there again

Smokey.
Upwards, coiling
anxious? no —
                           softly;
hands      paws
reaching       touching       air;
doing no good
                            knowing no guilt
simply smoke
                           smoking
smiling
               fading
                            maybe