Which other writer today could produce poems of such startling originality and elegance as these? So alive with imaginative energy, these sonnets threaten to fizz beyond the bounds of their orderly form. And yet it’s that defined structure which sharpens mind and language, forces the precise enunciation of the momentary flash of awareness, the insight summoned by the chance events of a day. By turns intimate and abstract, each poem is a moment of stilled time. Here are the shifting seasons, the flights of birds and aeroplanes, the flowers in the garden; and here are vast, enigmatic landscapes of metaphysical meaning. All emerge from 14 lines of supple musicality, with moods coloured by celebration and praise, sorrow, doubt and the dark shadow of a technological age with no place for the sacred. Christopher P. Wood’s extraordinary paintings are a perfect combination with their dual suggestion of inner space and cosmic perspective. Both men’s rich and fascinating worlds reveal fresh vistas with every encounter, and they demand to be explored again and again.

—Joe Banks

Generated by one cataract
annihilated in the next
each is a cosmos, imperfect
creation of that old context
we understand only too well:
chaos, whose enigmatic spell
full of incentive and caprice
drives addition and decrease.
This sky, a transient canopy
a bubble on the face of a stream
floats downriver in a dream
a sacrifice to entropy.
See the rainbow flash as these
air pockets burst, brief vagaries. 

♣

Paid to stand with golden buttons
scanning the traffic impassively
his presence supposedly brightens
a banker’s doorway impressively.
Each banking house must have a dragon;
at his price this one was a bargain.
To some extent draconian
certainly Babylonian
in his mouth there is no pearl
only a mint, which he sucks
to sweeten the poisonous influx
of diesel fumes: leaden swirl
around his daylong pavement station:
small comfort in his situation.

♣

A tavern on the Egyptian Bridge
heaves with psychotic laughter
suggesting self-created bondage.
Here a Siberian weightlifter
splits the jacket of a bureaucrat
implying a new social format
just around the corner, very near.
(Iosif will be born within the year.)
It is ecstasy to suffer more
if agony means liberation.
And so this reverberation
where drunkenness is a metaphor
where singing means Christianity
in the church of profanity.

♣

After the storm the noon was angry
still overshadowed with emotion.
Now and then lightning's filigree
flickered, silver radiation
crossing the sky with ferocity:
fingerings of electricity
still gesturing with disdain
threatening more vernal rain.
I crossed the wet fields glistening
mounted quickly through the wood.
Then all at once, as in my boyhood
just as the sun commenced shining
with tiny wings of green and purple
I saw the butterfly people.

♣

This blustering day of cloud-scud
the sun is like a frightened old dear
who peeps out when she hears some thud
a front-door slammed with nasty sneer
other sudden noises in the street.
Grey curtains jolt like her heartbeat
rainclouds on the move across the sky
window from which she casts an eye
dim as this near-sighted sun
myopic god keeping watch
over the vagaries of March
when equinoctial unison
seems a rumour founded on hearsay.
What's that dark form in the alleyway?

♣

Wolf whistles under the front door
as March raises vernal skirts
(childlike, innocent metaphor
vis à vis annual best efforts
to tempt the goddess from her doze
to wake her sleeping meadows
from winter's existential coma).
Now in the air a lush aroma
says she's lashed herself with scent:
vital fluids presently in fashion.
Songbirds play a part in her passion
small choristers of spring's ascent.
No wonder the wind is out of hand
wolf whistling madly through the land.

Doves tumble through dark grey clouds
grazing this skylight's diagonal;
in spite of will the dream corrodes
where all is so conditional.
Now gales make the house a flute
the wild breath of the absolute
forcing its way down smokestacks
forming a mouthpiece from door cracks
blowing through a wooden embouchure.
And as these rough passages are played
resolve is lost, purpose delayed
the reasons being as ever obscure.
We only know iron must weaken
when a butterfly wing is broken.

♣

By mistake I crushed leg or wing
as he was looking for sweet flowers
along the bookcase slowly buzzing
(plenty there, many honeyed bowers).
He came in through the Velux
thereby his fatal influx;
I tried to trap him in a jar
but something, in spite of care
crunched under the cruel rim
lowering to seal him in.
No Jain felt such a sense of sin
as I when I heard that small limb
crack beneath my clumsy hand
in an execution unplanned.

♣

Willow tree, here's a sad man 
leaning his irresolute spine
against your trunk, trying to scan
the unknown over the skyline
slave of anticipation
dreamer of emancipation
turning a sonnet in his mind.
How is it she has declined
meeting by the waterside?
Tension pulls spasmodically
at his mouth; periodically
he gazes round, far and wide.
Has the sun been stolen away?
So little now remains of the day.

♣

The dead weight of the chalice
bears it down to the black bed;
the dark earth gives the final kiss
soiling the sunlight-heavy head.
Yet consciousness is in ascent 
since the everlasting is unbent
like the crimson flesh of a flower
brought low by terrestrial power. 
Up there lucidity commences
flowering in the oversoul;
even crucified self control
tenders reverent allowances:
a blood-red tulip borne to the ground
by its own broken beauty crowned.

♣

The silver doves were saying amen
up in the top of Chantry Wood;
I heard them say again and again
in mantric cycles: the world is good
repeating their circular prayer
on long curves climbing the blue air
gliding down with gray wings fixed.
Below in disbelief, transfixed
I listened from a tangled glen
to the clapping of their vans
as if worshippers joined hands
singing some ecstatic hymn.
Then I repeated after them:
The world is good, amen and amen.

♣

The rose whispers 'yes' as the wind glides
through the garden towards the stream
stealing her petals with cruel asides:
‘Say goodbye to your summer dream;
here is an autumn without fruits.’
(Such frequent and so many disputes
between beauty and necessity.)
As another in adversity
I can hardly nod in agreement
as pink sails drift towards the ground 
as I watch September uncrowned:
my goddess’s dismemberment.
Soon October’s smoke, bittersweet
burning-up the year, obsolete.

A thought moves, predatory
in a dry terrain wartorn;
as concept assumes authority
over sensation desire is born.
Attractions of artificial need
fester in the wars of greed;
stricken forms lose mobility
rot in unattainability.
Now autocratic mimesis
holds sway in the sensorium
murdering equilibrium
with manufactured images
as words weave sly linguistic nets
as tongues spit, carnal bayonets.

♣

Reaching up far past the sun
passing through spiral galaxies
up into golden stardust finespun
through densities and transparencies
I thrust beyond the presolar grains
towards those luminous membranes
which hang like veils across a face
forever hidden in depths of space:
countenance of mystery.
Beyond fire, ice, cold and heat
above the void, where a child's feet
danced for joy in a star nursery
on the sacred ground of nonbeing
I touched the One all-overseeing.

♣

Don't imagine the sun coming up
find the pole and feel the whole planet
revolving eastward like a vast top
massive globe of fire and granite
north and south crowned by night
with axial magnetic light
immeasurable neon flares 
flickering above the hemispheres. 
Sense the celestial mechanics 
which lever all worlds secretly
each grain of dust separately
spinning in the absolute matrix.
The earth dances, she's not passive.
And the sun finds her attractive.

♣

With your twin turrets of grey steel
armoured like the breasts of Athena 
who fights in the front line, surreal
air machine of the double spinner
I hear you coming in the still night
from miles away, tip the skylight 
check the black horizon for blinking
red, green and white triple winking.
The dark vibrates with your footsteps
skywalker, Lord of the Flies;
the petroleum you metabolize
is the lifeblood of apocalypse.
Fat on the carrion of future wars
the cloud fortress overflying roars.

♣

The big rim scrapes a thunderhead;
midnight flickers to the north.
Taking a chance under the hazard
he spits from blue lips an oath.
Pulling down the wheel is dangerous
a lightning strike could be serious.
Against a young girl's ghost howl
again his gruff, sarcastic growl:
A roller is made to be ridden.
Far below in a red caravan
flagrantly a man and a woman
fornicate with abandon.
Now Fortuna flicks a switch:
Burn in hell, son of a bitch.

♣

The half turn of a dancer's head
holds back until the sudden flick;
waits while the whole body's sped
round in its light fantastic
pirouetting in one place.
You see the stationary face
above the fast-spinning blur
all that's left of some him or her:
the form which always disappears.
Then a look flashes and is gone;
the trick's over before it's begun.
Stillness forever engineers
movements of experience:
all episodic variance.

This very comparison
prized for such acuity
meant to suggest unison
yet rooted in duality
as surely as condemnation
undermines unification
making the vertical split deeper.
Experience is the grim reaper
with endless beautiful seductions
luring the mind from pure thinking
playing the game of interlinking
all time's transitory fictions.
Beyond compare is the permanent
metaphor is a contaminant.

♣

The muttering rotor of the beast
throbs and pounds irregularly
larynx adequately greased.
Grinding through rainclouds, surly
here's a drill sergeant with strep throat;
otherwise the endtimes moonboat
on flightpaths turbulent enough:
burly fallen angel, blunt and gruff.
Presciently the sky shudders
as the heavy lifter passes
titan among flying fortresses.
Always the same air corridors
over towards the military town.
How long now to final sundown?

♣

Seated under your own portrait
there is little resemblance
to the military heavyweight;
Now you figure in some romance
as shaman, healer, sacred elder
while the marketplaces still smoulder
with the memory of genocide.
Screaming your poems as cities died
poet warrior drunk on Bear's Blood
dressed in camo for the killing fields
the mythic hills and strongholds
you believed your own coded word.
Look: your name in red on ruins scrawled
still proclaims you as the First Called.

♣

Psychiatrist certainly
sucked into political whirpools
doctoring mindsets clandestinely
among village idiots and green fools
but poet very possibly not.
More propagandist juggernaut
dispensing indoctrinations
limited identifications
ultranationalist fountainhead
churning out eerie jets of ideas
not without some basis in fact
yet twisted to make overreact
the masses, exploiting phobias
local and tribal, ancient distrust:
you, evangelistic antichrist. 

♣

Wind island hovering here
offering garden fragrances
to the incredulous air
do you know anxious glances 
bittersweet jealousy
emotional leprosy
which eats away at the heart
tearing the strongest mind apart?
Have you seen storms on this scale
battering down sanity?
Are you fair without vanity
behind a beautiful pink veil?
Or is the crystal oil of your soul
this ambiguous indole?

♣

First they invent names for eachother
derogatory but affectionate;
then come pop songs which smother
sense and humour under naked hate:
wooden drum machines pounding
beneath offensive sounding
lyrics none too lyrical.
Next, after the satirical
phase comes the deceiving lull
when false flags fly and rumours crash
with talk of infraction and backlash
while nations bow before a red idol
which grins with a reptilian smile 
half-human, half-crocodile.

A backstreet fertility clinic.
He is a freelance consultant
the appointment quite ironic.
Though birthplace has been important
death has been his speciality:
life yields much unreality.
Two hands cupped round a dried-up scrotum
seem to counteract sexual autumn.
Microscopes confirm the miracle:
a client's sperm count is increased
at the touch of this quantum priest.
The end results are numerical:
patriotic families expand.
No other seed for the motherland.

♣

Are plastic flowers grateful for rain?
Ask the rainspout if he has heard
a thankful, if synthetic, refrain
from windowbox sun-weathered
where the pseudo-roses bloom.
Insentience is natural to assume
yet long ago these were black gold 
in buried forests of the old world.
Somewhere in the Euphrates basin
once upon a time these stood tall
sensing prehistoric rainfall
through anatomical green skin.
So why not here faint memories
lingering of rain and honeybees?

♣

for N.M

Gliding in density, weightless
flying just above the ocean floor
through a shoreless world, stateless
I'm the dominant whale of folklore.
I've pushed your ships free of the storm
made drowning sailormen transform
to unconsious dancers on my back.
I'm like that one in the zodiac
you call the Waterbearer
planing into a black abyss
hiding from human malice:
the altruistic standard bearer.
My song three times circles the earth
with the sun's Aquarian rebirth.

♣

When even wood doves are at war
inevitably these demons rage.
Look: neurotic hammerings seesaw
as poker-faced warmongers engage
issue lurid threats of worse to come.
Now another combatant’s struck dumb.
See the victor nursing his flights
torn in these pathological fights
over a perch in the Norway pine.
No more soaring for him today
in the shadows hunched away
song silenced and eye malign
post-traumatic in the aftermath.
Old glooms along the warpath.

♣

for A.C

Her listener glimpses in sinking flames
through smoke of woodfires, in embers
how some narrative proclaims
warm, everlasting Septembers.
A dying fire contradicts itself
with sparks of resurgent belief;
and the stars are considerate 
reaffirming the preliterate.
Now she travels back-histories
the thousand curves of a night lane
winding through old Donegal terrain
where on the skyline some hearer sees
huge crescent moons lying on their backs
pursing golden lips; from children's books.

♣

All this talk of nationality:
you'll be stateless when you're dead;
learn something of commonality
the great inclusiveness of Godhead.
How are you going to readjust
when your motherland is dust
like the flag that wrapped your bones
when flesh went under flagstones?
Will you sing banal anthems
when you meet the Ineffable?
There is something laughable
about xenophobe Te Deums
chanted in bombastic spirit:
songs of the unregenerate.

Talking to water in a dream
holding her mystery in my mouth
within me is the new lifestream
come to end a wasteland drought.
Sensitive to thoughts of wonder
recording them as memoranda
the living element enters me
tranquilizes and centers me.
And turning over her cool wave
moving her about under my tongue
it seems a river has just sprung
from nowhere into this dark cave
illuminating interior night.
And now from my lips comes light.

♣

The holy drinkers evolve
futuristic hydrations:
old solidities dissolve
with fantastic libations.
Waters vast and velvety 
rolling in the oral cavity
incorporate an ocean:
liquid worlds in slow motion.
Green immensities suggest 
aquatic movements of an angel 
keeping maritime vigil
over swimmers of serene unrest
who taste the cosmos in one drop
where blue seas of being never stop.

♣

Only one tent in the funfair.
And lining up for three hours
hypothermic in the mountain air
there was excited talk of superpowers:
the mountain people saying frankly
what they thought, as I waited blankly.
Then came the crisis as our slow snake
inched through: long drawn out intake.
Never will I forget what I saw
in a shoebox of glass. Trapped inside
on a doll's house ottoman I spied
something from fairytale and folklore:
the homunculus, by magic spawned
a tiny man, who as I stared, yawned.

♣

Neck-twisted by the riverbend
you were a sudden emblem there
while the whir of some old friend
still airborne this last day of the year
sliced across pastoral silence.
What accident befell innocence
where a telltale fan of breast-feathers
spoke of that endgame which severs
the living from accustomed life?
Stooped to smooth two blue-grey sails
warm, which rode last autumn's gales
I asked the meaning of all strife;
hearing from a tall green house
the mourning keen of a lonely spouse.

♣

Domes that momentarily
glisten as they slide along
flash and wink temporarily
riding downstream headlong.
See these structures of a moment
uncertainties in movement
racing in the green channels
small hemispheric capsules
so many hurrying breakables
fragile things of abbreviation
bubbles of differentiation
so many floating variables
all made of the same lifestream:
foam of the equivalent life dream.

♣

Orphaned again by absence
I who used to love solitude
saw a ring dove from the fence
flutter down with incertitude
to take her breakfast in the grass.
Quickly I found her in a spyglass
beige with dainty flights brown-trimmed
watched her as she lightly skimmed
flowerbeds to land beneath the tree
where sunflower seeds lay jettisoned
from the small house you fastened
in altruistic basketry
high, high up in the branches:
the feeder for the shy bullfinches.

Born in Leeds in 1961, Christopher P. Wood is a painter and printmaker of atmospheric and enigmatic imagery. A skilled artist in collage he also writes and composes. He gained a master’s degree in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 1986 and has consistently exhibited both in the UK and abroad. His recent exhibition ‘Landscape Reimagined’ at the Goldmark Gallery coincides with the publication of ‘An Innocent Vision’ a survey of his work by Dr Richard Davey. The Goldmark Gallery are the sole representatives for his work.

Joe Banks is a freelance writer who has authored features for Vice, the Bristol Cable and other publications.