Liverpool Tales from the Mersey Mouth - A book by John Williams

"This is a wonderful collection of writings by John Williams. While it isn't specifically about the Beatles, they are clearly a part of the story, along with the very fiber and fabric of the city that influenced him and them as well. The pieces are short, well written and filled with a delicious sense of humor that shines in the titles as well as the essays." Jan Perry, Cincinnati Post
"John Williams writes in the language of Liverpool, a Scouse scribe who brings to life the people and places, inner thoughts and outer images, the vigour and vitality and essentially, the iron humour of a unique city." Bill Harry, founder of Mersey Beat

Liverpool Poems

This is a sample of my poetry that had been consigned to poetry limbo for years. As Coleridge once remarked, "Poems are never finished, they are simply abandoned." Poetry is a solitary occupation and so I have never been part of any ink crowd. My poetry is a mixture of the formal, such as Villanelles, and free verse. Some of it is an attempt at a lyric form, and I suppose is more correctly called song. Poetry is a difficult medium for people as it presents a conflict of perception because it stems from an oral tradition thousands of years old, yet we insist on reading it as if it were prose and so we encounter problems of understanding. Poetry is nothing if not a motion picture show, a flowing stream of images carrying ideas in its meandering course. I hope you enjoy mine as it contains images of my life.

John Williams

Crystal clear

Sand and fire have

Combined

To divide

My realities, and

My eyes glaze with longing for

Tangible worlds

Beyond flawed transparency.

I am brittle

Inside my crystal cloister

I idly gaze at idling traffic where

Sleek saloons contented purr

Alongside four wheeled drivers who, straining,

Curse the tortured tarmac

And dream of mountain roads.

I am alone in my pedestrian world

To console myself, I switch on

A window to another

One-dimensional world,

Navigating channels

To seek currents of joy,

Avoiding the straits of despair

And wave bound images of eternal tragedy

I am becalmed

I trace my thoughts in moisture beads

Pearling the crystal sarcophagus,

And Neon-dazzled Angels dance the Scintilla

To the bubbling rhythm of a beat

That mocks my inertia.

I am treading water

Now there is no black or white,

Just the grey to be eliminated from my life.

Foam spins behind the bulbous Cyclops' eye

Which, unblinking, oversees the absolution

Of profane vestments rendered sacred.

I am cleansed

I cannot escape transparent truths.

These words,

Out of key,

Are like shoals of fleeing fish,

Nebulous

Quick

Gone

I am purged

Faced with the cruellest reality,

I reflect now that I am older,

And pray the distortions I envisage

Reveal a mercurial warping of the senses,

A quicksilver trick of the fading light

I am exposed

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