Author Archive

That Place

This time I saw the garden
From a side street by a shopping mall.
I looked across a wall, and there it was,
Full of chrysanths and wallflowers.
I could almost smell them,
They were so bright and clear.
And she was there in the garden again,
In a bright red dress, belted,
And just above her beautiful white knees.

Seeing her once more,
With her red hair framing her face,
Set me longing for her.
The past rose up to stand by me,
As if I were still with her.
And I try – how many times have I tried?
To see the way to that garden – to her.

It always looks so easy.
Take a left, keep straight on,
And head towards the high ground.
I try, but I never find it.
I never arrive.
And perhaps, looking back, I see it again;
I see her reading, or busy with the roses.
It’s been nearly seven years since I held her,
Since she was mine,
And walked the same life,
Enlivening and making a home together.

I’ve seen that garden from the river.
I caught a glimpse of it
From up against that grand old oak tree,
Near Hodden’s wood.
Sometimes I even see it in photos
In the newspaper,
Or occasionally
Watching old films on TV.
And if I don’t see the garden,
Then I might be reminded of her
In some other way.

While in K Mart,
I was idly watching a couple my age,
Selecting a freezer.
I must have been staring,
Because I was lost in the woman’s quality,
Her cleanness, her intelligence,
And her full female body.
Then suddenly I realised her man
Was looking at me,
Probably wondering why I was staring.
I smiled and looked away,
Not able to tell him
How much I had lost.

But perhaps today
I can climb across the wall,
Scramble straight to that garden.
Maybe I can keep
The shape of her in sight,
In her red dress.

Tony Crisp

Smoke in My Eyes

I looked at the world through smoke smeared eyes this morning.
A fire had burned furiously in me during the night.
Twice I had reached out to you across the thousand miles.
The voice on the end of the line said you had gone.
Distance made me helpless.
The miles were a locked door between us.
Could I love you so much,
And it seemed, you me,
Yet you have gone?
The future crumbles away.
The present is full of flames burning inside.
The past, once a meadow of growing flowers,
Now holds the dead weeds of question marks.
A terrible story unfolds,
Full of deceit and hidden purposes.
Such stories are written
By the struggle to understand.
But what can I believe,
When I look at the world
Through smoke smeared eyes?

Sea Woman

The wild wonderful things were said,
As the clouds passed over the hill.
The sea is the mood of the wind and the sky,
And I am waiting still.
Waiting alone for the things to be called,
That were written upon your limbs.
Waiting alone with the seagulls cry,
And the sound from your throat like hymns.

How can I ever imagine a thing
Like the call of the tide on the shore,
Reaching and falling,
Hoping and calling,
For ages and evermore.
So went my words
And my blood and my arms,
My feet and my thighs and the rest.
So went my longing
And need for belonging,
In warmth and desire at your breast.
Oh Mother the Sea –
Oh Mother to me –
Oh Woman who calls to my tide,
Be like the Earth to the oncoming surf,
Beckoning, restraining, Seaside.

Tony Crisp

Sailing the Seas of Love

I passionately sailed the seas of love from birth.
When more so than as an infant?
When more so than when it seemed
To lose my mother’s loving milk meant death?
From that so frantic, gut felt love,
I understand the singers ever chanted cry,
“I cannot live without you.”

That was my wordless call,
“My life, my mother, I cannot live without you!
Hold me, kiss me,
Want me as desperately,
As mortally as I want you.
Then I will know we are lovers
That nothing except death can separate.”

I sailed the storm wracked seas of love,
Near rocky desperate coasts,
As the young boy.
My sails set for howling winds,
I met the waves and troughs
Of separation, of abandonment and betrayal.
Isn’t that the normal route we sail?
The rage, the painful doubts,
The hope filled meetings, the misery of loss.
Those indeed are tempestuous oceans to voyage on.
Those are troublous waters to navigate through.

Shall the turn of wind and sea
Take us to the Ocean of Despair,
To harbour in the river of The Lost Victim?
Or will by strength of arm and soul,
Our craft float upon the Sea of Transcendence,
And harbour in the Bay of Courage?

Tony Crisp

Robin

I saw a robin dancing, on a
Branch of briar,
Pouring out his heart in song,
To a robin higher –
All his body moving,
Rhythmic to the song,
Weaving out a pattern,
Beautiful and strong.

I heard a robin singing,
To his robin hen,
And my heart went dancing,
Back to you again.
Skipping on the chimney tops,
Over valleys green,
Dancing back to you my love
Across the hills between.

Tony Crisp

Married

Married we be, though no ring shows.
By all the things in me and thee –
married we be.

Though no one roof will shelter us,
No common babe be ours
Married we be.

Apart we live together,
Our love to cradle
Other lonely hearts.
Though all the world between us,
Married we be.

Not needing one another near us,
The chosen task to share
Some others life.
Constant in each other,
Married we be.

For now we know –
What matters?
Near or far apart
Our love has set us free.
My hand in yours –
Married we be.

Tony Crisp

Partings

Isn’t this a pretty shell
On my bracelet?
She said, as we stood close,
Saying goodbye.
Tears were rising
For both of us.
Only a temporary parting.
But months together,
Shared kindnesses,
Given kisses,
Slow, gentle, intimacy,
With unwrapped words,
Had joined us
In the subtle parts
That feelings signal.
Weeks of ordinary things
Done with each other,
Without friction,
With play and laughter,
Had married us.
And that bond
Robbed parting
Of real pain.
But partings
Can make such ruin
Of the structures
We build of self,
That only years mend,
Or soften the stark
Outlines of destruction.
The links that
Decades spent together
Build and shape,
Do not part easily.
Lava sometimes flows
From the deep rents,
Burning and hurting,
Exploding onto others.
Or else collapse.
Breakdown of the fabric
That make us who we are.

Tony Crisp

Red Negligee

She walked in from another room wearing only a tight one-piece silky red negligee. She had never worn anything like that before, so at first I didn’t understand its meaning. Then she moved in a way that was supposed to be suggestive. It hurt me to watch.

You have to understand that my wife is a beautiful woman. She had never needed to act out being “sexy”. A beautiful woman doesn’t need to bait her attractiveness. She is allure without effort.

Slivers of pain and distrust had slowly been pushed in like splinters between us. Enough had entered to form a gap in our togetherness.

Gaps can be peopled with pleasure. The gap between us remained empty. Empty of exchanged warmth. Empty of eagerness to be near each other. Empty of sex. Just empty.

A memory stands out from that time. I was walking alone along the village high street. A car came toward me on the same side of the road. As it got near and passed someone in the car recognised and waved to me enthusiastically. They were going too quickly for me to see who it was. But I wept because someone had been pleased to see me. Someone, a woman I think, had wanted me to receive her feeling of pleasure. I did, and from it knew how lonely I felt.

All of that was the backdrop to Lorraine standing before me in the red negligee. All of it was part of the pain I felt.

We often forget how much history is in everything we do. But as Lorraine stood looking at me, I knew it all. The arrow shafts still emerged from where they had struck us both.

But the core of that history still remains to be exposed. I had left Lorraine and partnered another woman. Lorraine and I were facing each other now because I had returned to tell her of the change. So, as she posed in the red negligee I shouted at her angrily, “Fuck you Lorraine!” and turned away.

You see, the red negligee was crying out to me that Lorraine was convinced the only reason I would turn to another woman was that for nearly six years our marriage had been without sex. And that was like a punch in the face. The reason I had wept in the street wasn’t because I was longing for sex. What I needed was to see eagerness and admiration in my wife’s eyes. I longed to be wanted and have my woman proudly show me to her friends. I wanted a wife.

Tony Crisp

Peace At That Touch

Delight is in the arms that hold me closer now.
Firm is the hand in mine,
That long withheld its pleasure.
Peace at that touch,
It stills my tumbled longings.
Peace at the presence that merges into me.

How can I tell of the years I wanted?
How can you know the dreams that troubled me?
What do I care, now that you draw me closer,
All dreaming now, wrapt in your lovely hair.
Now see my heart has stopped its wild beating,
Living for ever, the moment of your kiss.
Peace at your touch,
It stills my many longings.
Peace at your presence now merged into mine.

Tony Crisp

Peace

Dear woman,
I am at peace
In my love
For you.
Striving neither
To the right,
Nor to the left.
In stillness
I watch the Flower
Of love grow,
Listening to the
Voice of silence.
And if the petals
Of that Flower fall,
The silence stills me.
For Flowers
Bring forth seeds,
And in the stillness
I will watch.

Tony Crisp

No Words

No words,
But let your heart be gentle
Like a jelly,
Or your belly
When you laugh.
No words,
But lots of kisses,
And wet noses
Or damp crinkly toes’s
Like when we have a bath.
No words,
But smiling
At quick fags
Had by starlight
On your garden path.
No words,
Not when you hold me
And enfold me
Slip sliding
And colliding
When you warm me at your hearth.
No words
As your titties
Press against me
As our eagerness has ebbed
And we lie there
Breathing silence
To touch each others heart.

Art by Caroline Atkinson

Tony Crisp

Night Thoughts

Age brings me memories in the quiet evenings.
I am sitting alone in the house
And my thoughts lead me to sadness,
Letting me see beauty and tragedy in everything.
Memories of love come, bringing back so many things we did.
Feelings as tender as the evening quiet move in me,
Leaving me wistful, living moments with you again.
But are these anything other than fading memories?
I want to believe the love we shared lasts,
Even beyond your going.
Twilight shadows make me wonder.
I hear the song of the bird in the dusk.
It enters me through the empty space of your parting,
Like an open door you went through.

Are you no more?
Just emptiness beyond the door?
What does that leave me with?
What construe of it, or thoughts weave around it?
Tragedy and loneliness? Decay?
Shall I consider bones to be what I loved?
But I am still yearning.
The love still felt for you –
What am I to do with that?
I am calling to you like the bird
Crying your name to the evening.
Till the night comes bringing quietness
I think of you.
I am ready to walk through the door
Though I do not know what is beyond,
In the dark of the night…
In the dark of the night.

Tony Crisp

Moonglow

Candles of the moon she gave me,

Smouldering gently not ignite,

Glowing slowly through their substance,

Never dazzlingly bright.

Burning into fragrant matter,

Leaving but a perfumed void,

Never lighting up our features,

So to have our dreams destroyed.

Staying warmth to linger longer,

Not to flame like flash disperse,

Leaving us to mingle and

In each other’s self immerse.

Glow tips in a crinkly wrapper,

I to pull them one by one,

Then to light them and remember,

We are back where we begun.

Tony Crisp

Midnight Sun

We walked along the river bank,
Alone despite the crowd,
Then chose our ship and sailed away,
Where our happy hearts allowed.
We would have dug the Panama,
But that had already been done,
So we went and bred blue polar bears,
In the land of the midnight sun.

Then hot little hands,
And fast little hearts,
Held close as could possibly be,
We escaped the eye of the FBI,
And frolicked in the sea.
We’d left our ship,
And our polar bears,
Some distance down the street,
And now we were mermaids swimming along,
It’s less tiring on the feet.

But you can’t build a house in Ocean depths,
Especially up a tree.
And she’d not be wed
In an ocean bed,
So that’s what it had to be.
I built her the house
In a giant tree,
And we filled it full of ourselves,
And we swung through the leaves of the giant trees,
And us the size of elves.

With hot little hands,
And fast little hearts,
We clung to each other’s side,
Only to find the evening had flown,
And our fantasy had died.
No longer the ship,
Or the mermaid’s lip,
So soft against my own.
But she and I
And the station nigh,
And us no longer alone.

The station crowd
Had not allowed,
Even one glimpse of the sea.
And the glory died,
When she left my side,
And said goodbye to me.

Written for Sylvia.

Tony Crisp

Love Past and Love to Come

In my dark room I thought of all the women in the world,
And just as silent as the dark She lies there beside me.

I let my heart into the vast delight
Of all that women’s beauty now could bring me,
And just as vast as all delight,
She opened eyes to chide me.

I longed for all the pleasures that my heart and loin are strong for,
And She, still silent, yet told me with her eyes,
Of all that women long for.
My body turned, and lips touched lip
As cloud touched cloud.
And as lips smoothly into lips did slide,
I kissed all women I had ever dreamed of.
And all that in me until that moment slept,
Then rose up, trembling, and cried aloud.

She had become all women in the world,
And I became all men who seek them.
Convulsive moments passed
As hand arose to seek a breast to fill it.
Still were we, yet movement filled us,
When light as Love’s first touch,
Fingers on nipple dwelt,
In order then to thrill it.

What symphony of pleasures then arose,
What music of a thousand joys and longings,
As gently I drew from out this living harp,
A melody of all human heights and woes.
Then deep to deep cried out and shouted loud,
The sea within me threw me wave on wave,
And all the fires and torrents in me burst,
And to that woman’s being myself gave.

Tony Crisp

Night

In the night when I awoke,
And those close bodies in this house slept,
I heard a whispered sound,
Perhaps like rain,
When in its gentle fall,
Undriven by wind
It touches the window.

I stood within the silent house
Listening to that
Murmur in the night,
Wondering.
Then soft against my face
The touch of wings.
A moth fluttering,
Alive with me in
This quiet dark.

All else sleeps
Except my memories
Of other fleeting
Times when,
Gently touching
Fingers to your lips
Reaching through blackness
To find you.

Tony Crisp

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Tony Crisp

Author Archive

That Place

Smoke in My Eyes

Sea Woman

Sailing the Seas of Love

Robin

Married

Partings

Red Negligee

Peace At That Touch

Peace

No Words

Night Thoughts

Moonglow

Midnight Sun

Love Past and Love to Come

Night

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