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
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
Inner space
This is the space,
the void
the abyss.
immeasurable,
barren,
producing nothing.
Yet it can dissolve worlds,
this emptiness.
Render rock, roof and feather all alike,
vapourising vapour itself,
popping planets
like rainbow contoured
child blown bubbles.
I am caught between what is and what is not.
Trapped in the cofferdam of illusion
bulwarked against touch and vision,
drifting on a starless night,
hearing only the
rigging-shriek- creak of a mast that strains to snap.
Yet there is peace
for space is an all brink no edge, no ledge.
Once fallen
we fall
forever,
like the weightless
wings
of an extinct bird
never to land
again,
flowing eternally through the
rimless eye of infinity
My thanks to Tim
Kelly and Brigitte C for the new look to my site