BuiltWithNOF

 

Jimmie Dickie

Born in Irvine Ayrshire, the poetic wind didn't hit me until 1995 – some 33 years after my birth. Although currently working as an accountant for Aberdeen City Council I would rather while away the hours with creative writing than creative accounting. I hope to start work again on a novel soon. Meanwhile the poetry keeps me busy and I have had about twenty poems published. Hope to self-publish a small collection in the near future.

Poems

 

 FROM THE BOOK OF LIGHTS

An attempt to translate into words the 3-dimensional poetry of the Colour People

  1. When love is blue
    And anger is red
    Then prose is purple.
  1. When wine is red
    And bread is blue and green.
    Then the days are Halcyon.
  1. God is light.
    In him were all colours.
  1. God became transparent
    And the whole spectrum of colours,
    Radiant and otherwise,
    Including those colours that only exist
    As a function of our cognitions,
    Bled from him;
    Into the whole known universe,
    Both corporeal and metaphysical;
    Until he became wraithlike, spectrally depleted, leucistic;
    So that we, the children of his light,
    Might become colour rich.
  1. God made us different colours
    So that we might admire
    Each other's beauty.
  1. What colour is good?
    Monochromatic is good.
    Polychromatic is good.
    Variegation is good.
    Ask us,
    You can have any colour
    Or combination of colours you like
    As long as it is or they are.
  1. Here is an epiphany:
    I reveal your signature colour to you.
  1. Colour cannot be grasped.
    Neither should it be bought and sold.
  1. The saints give up their light
    For those they love.
  1. If you bleed and bleed and bleed and bleed
    And in so doing gift your colours to your
    Fellow people. Then you will be
    Like a blind man with perfect pitch
    Seeing everything
    And you will be one with God.

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THE SELKIRK TRAVELLER

 The hypnotic lights of Trypol 2
Lit memories I had long since buried
And I beheld a lambent procession
Of my younger selves.

Watching the blood worms of Aldebaran 4
Gnawing at a tapestry of fur and blood;
I remembered the broken body of my son
Lost in another futile war;
Though some had said
It was the righteous thing to do.

On Glogauer the incessant chiming
Of the stop start clocks
Drowned out myself,
And for a brief while
I was happy.

The way to Awlerol was wonderful;
Dodging asteroids, drinking ice
Sliced from comet's tails,
Slingshots from the dark side of the moon;
The nap of space a tablecloth
On which I dined.

And then at the sign that says
'There is a right way for a man'
I stopped; for it was the end
Of my adopted road.

And now you find me in the ante-room
Contemplating this living fridge,
Pencil in hand, sketching;
It's the only way to really
Get to know someone. I
Threw the guidebooks, maps and satellites,
Out long ago.

I am well travelled.
I am well kent.
There's no denying it
In black or white or rainbow hues,
The journey has been my religion.
So let it be;
One final karmic trip.
Let the ice make an icon of my face.

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MUTTON DRESSED UP AS VIRTUAL REALITY

 Mr Weatherhead is charged tonight.
His perm is lit up like a low watt lamp.
He drives Rolls Royce dreams.
He was a charmed youth then.
Wealth is now a stranger to him.
He knows little of the colour of money or elementary particles.
He is more concerned with virtual hair follicles.

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NOT QUITE THE MIND OF GOD

 The black cat is lucky, he does not
Feel like a mouse in a big cage.
Movement is everything to him, and,
Wherever he lays, this cat, that is his home.
As he is stroked he arches his back reflexively.

Look, the thin man peers like a mathematician, say,
'Isn't it amazing the way their backs are so curved;
Like spacetime. It must have been very painful
For them at first, yet they practised.'

It is indeed a most singular cat, and soon
Slinks off travelling mysteriously from
Ward to ward: unharmed.

Meanwhile, the mathematician moves slowly to prevent
His own heat death. The black cat like a black hole is now
Invisible and has disappeared beyond his event horizon.
The laws of spacetime have broken down for both of them.

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THE CONSUMMATE FUNAMBULIST

 He knows how to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
And that time he fell on his goolies for comic effect was just pure theatre.
Every new move accompanied by a different musical rush.
Durchcomponiert: drum roll maestro please!
And then some idiot shouts out from the crowd –
I hear your mother had a beard
And your father was a clown.
But he just cocks a leg.
Why hang from a rope when you can dance on it!

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