Poetryblog

Magic

2012-01-21T17:34:00.000Z

My parents handed me the book called ‘How To Disappear’. It seems they’d been practising for most of their lives and had it more or less right. My mother in particular could dematerialise for quite a long time while I sat self-admonishing and amazed. It was easier for my father, who could not be seen all day behind vans and lorries at the Co-op garage and left the bones but no flesh on his kipper at the tea table.

From them I learned to self-erase before gypsies, anyone posh, commissionaires, waiters and floor walkers. Where the police and insurance men were concerned, it was possible to seem to be there but in fact to be nowhere at all.

I used this ruse to my advantage for most of my life in that I could disappear at will when danger threatened. More’s the pity I eventually forgot how to come back.

My Dad was the first to complete the riskiest vanishing act of all. Then my Mum followed after a few years in which she gradually made herself invisible but would keep coming back as a Cheshire Cat grin.

Now they’re both undetectable by the naked eye. Good trick!

Me, I’m still working on the piece de resistance they so perfected. At the moment I’m absent for a good part of the day. I’ve worked on my insubstantiality with children, old friends, siblings, relatives and anyone who’s done me down.

There’s just you, curse you. You see me and even with smoke and mirrors there’s no escape. You take my hand and I’m there. Such scrutiny I cannot bear. The light’s too bright. The room too vivid.

A lifetime’s work under threat!! This poem is my plot to regain the advantage of not being here. For while you’re reading it, I’ll perform the spell I’ve memorised until you understand this poem had no author, no progenitor, no creator.

Only the wind rushing at the door, the wires strumming, the indifference of the rain.

Elegy for the Sixties

2012-01-16T17:00:00.000Z

Dantalian only listens to old Bob Dylan albums and, as for the new stuff, asked his mate to get him the remastered ‘Tapestry’.

The God of Hell Fire grumbles about anything and everything, from the NHS to the way the deficit has stymied the life chances of his flower children.

In his Welsh retreat, Principal Edward leads a rural life, mostly alone with his books and Radio 4, although he’s winding up the affairs of his old Mum who finally chose to stop wandering in the Samsāra.

In a surprise move, Wavy Gravy was ambushed by the very music he loved because his blue meanie neighbours played it too loud at all hours. Now he seeks only silence.

Judy Blue Eyes became a committed Christian and sends out prayers to all sinners everywhere.

The last I heard, Blind Boy Grunt ended up a Headmaster but developed Crohn’s disease because the kids were further to the right than Thatcher and hated hippies.

Peace to you,
My old friends,
Peace to you all,
Shantih shantih shantih,
Peace and Love...

‘..sweet dreams and flying machines
In pieces on the ground..’

Icarus

2012-01-03T13:32:00.001Z

He would not have fallen so far if he
Had not aimed so high.

He thought that flight was his idea
Too self-righteous to notice
His parents and grandparents whispering
Him on.

You could understand his unease
At every secret nod, every
Funny handshake, but he thought
The air would lift him up
And the rest would come anon.

How sad his deflation,
Splayed like a slapped rabbit
In his field of dreams
Crushing the daisies and his
Life’s foundations eating dirt
His own words and humble pie.

Looking For Jack

2011-11-26T16:31:00.002Z

i.m. John Harvey 1923-2011

Did you see him?

Was it his boots that tapped a steady clip
Down to the forge in the early morning
And back home to his wife and daughters
In the forgiving dusk?

Did you hear him?

Was it his stories, jokes so droll
He lifted his head and let out the open-throated laugh
That was one man’s amazement
At life’s little absurdities?

Was that his sigh?

The satisfaction of having found
His true pal, raised his family,
Stayed at the same firm for forty years,
Built the best life his hands could make?

Then, having seen his daughters married,
He retired with full honours
And struck out bravely in his sixties
On package tours to see a bit of the world,
Opened up to life,
Danced once again to a proper big band
By an Italian lake in the moonlight.

Diminished, widowed, unseeing,
Only his final year was one of chastened
Hope, of a stuttering in his
Master plan, in the beautiful arc of his life.

Was it him after all?
Did he pass this way?

I only know this,
Putting the bratty DJ in the flat below
To shame, out of an open window
I heard, not hymns, but
Frank, Sammy, Ella, Dino, Duke,
Giving even his last days
A thumbs-up style,
A sure-footed grace,
A perfect swing.

Seeing God

2011-11-13T12:06:00.000Z

for Athanase Vantchev de Thracy

In the death zone,
In the terminal café,
Every November morning,
Every late afternoon,
Every cough and twitch,
Is a source of wonder,
In teary mindfulness,
The world you’re about to leave
Begins to shine
Since, if you will, it is
And has always been,
Infused with God,

But those of us who are still
Abreast of the boom and bust
On every High Street, where the glory junkies,
The losers, enraged and self-righteous,
Mutter to themselves,
Must tear their raiment
Before they can clearly see
Through the nauseating lurch of
The world’s seasickness,
God in the lay-by,
God in the car park,
God in the service area,
God on the unadopted road.

Death On A Shoestring

2011-11-13T12:04:00.002Z

Should you be favouring the economy version of Death in a time of recession,
Here is our experts’ list of handy hints and tips.
Of course, (and this for all Radio 4 listeners),
In many cultures, minimal is the given.
It’s not simply a question of inadequate water and sanitation
Or lack of laptops or iPods, but more that
You can’t take it with you and so you reduce life to
Its essentials: a friendly word, a spoonful of porridge,
A Coca Cola, a cellular blanket and a motherly nurse.
Don’t give in to the depressive mode,
Death takes all away, so ask your doctor for some
SSRI inhibitors, and don’t forget to give yourself small treats,
Some M&Ms, a new handbag, some Jimmy Choos.
Open the curtains, the night is over. It’s a new day
Full of productivity and wealth creation.
Those dreams were Nature’s car crash TV,
Don’t believe a word (or Google it).
And your loneliness, your numbness,
Your lift to the Lower Ground (the Bottom Line),
Your Senior Moments (there goes the past),
Your disappointment with the way it’s turned out
(There go the present and the future)?
Privatisation would stop all that; down with the
Nanny State and its vested interests;
Eat your soup, read your ‘Daily Mail’,
Your last moments on earth,
Your last day in the light of your Earth Mother’s eyes,
Will be aromatic as a download,
As cosily familiar as John Lewis,
As zero degree as a thousand shopping days,
For are we not, with our sharpened cheekbones
And our anorexic needs,
The sina qua non of shabby chic?

Houses

2011-09-26T16:22:00.002Z

Who haunts the old house now,
Now Mum and Dad are gone?
Whose footsteps clang through the scullery,
Down the concrete steps, along the plastic
Matted passageway?

Even then, the doors were bursting with
Rats, cockroaches, neighbours, oiks;
We had to push all together to
Keep them out, to make sure things
Were kept the proper way.

Now my houses might as well be
Hot air balloons or parachutes,
For intruders forced their way in
And found me, so that, homeless,
I walk unshod roads, sleep on seas.

And who are they? Who cooks where
They used to cook, DIYs where they
Used to hammer and paint?
Who squats, which home invaders?
Ghosts, cold callers, fly posters, strolling bones.

Endings

2011-09-20T08:21:00.003Z

We came here to escape endings,
But endings follow us even here;
If we had no mobiles, if we
Didn’t buy the papers and watch the evening
News, would we escape them?

Would they send sky writers, Banksy,
Sign painters or reinvent the telegram?
Somehow they’d find a way to force the words
Before our faltering eyes: Cancer,
Hospice, Palliative Care, The Big D.

Is it too much to ask for some respite?
OK, it’s all part of life but don’t we
Deserve at least to step outside in the morning and,
In the green moment, breathe the unexcited air,
And stare into the white wide wordless sky?

Conkers

2011-09-20T08:14:00.002Z

We used to make toys from Nature’s bargain bins,
The smooth shiny autumn fruit that lay around in recs, on incidental pathways;

We’d carry them home like treasure trove,
Put them on window sills to admire, though
Some would bake them or soak them in
Vinegar to fight the next day’s battles
In the Darwinian democracy of the playground.

All around me chaos and change I see, appearances
And disappearances, deaths, departures,
Emergencies, while I would have Time
As smooth, round and firm, as easy
To hold, as conkers, as pebbles smoothed by the sea,
As anything that I can hold that will not fall apart on me.

Departures

2011-09-05T15:57:00.002Z

We’d much prefer to stifle the sadnesses of leaving,
To gag them with the everyday: sausages, dishcloths, skinny lattes;

But the autumn leaves of poignancy must always fall,
Just as clouds and rivers flow and day will turn to night;

The house you were never sure you really liked will one day echo
After the removal van has come and gone,

The happy summers you spent in the caravan by the sea
Will end as the wind freshens and the ‘for sale’ signs appear;

And the ones whom you noticed or partly noticed
Will also disappear whether you can be bothered or not;

Maybe you’ll look up from your smartphone or iPad
And be moved to tears by some small silly thing;

Maybe you’ll feel their absence when the rain forces you indoors
Or when you realise that your Christmas card list will be shorter this year;

Whatever; things come and things go and we are left to decide
If our lives are poorer or more tarnished or whether we care at all;

We are left with our feelings slightly more muffled,
The sharpness of our minds a little blunter,

While down the long track into the distance
An old man and a dog walk slowly slowly slowly away.

Impermanence

2011-06-21T10:50:00.001Z

Tomorrow you may be a sunset
And I a subtle morning mist
For change is the only certainty in life
So let us be kind to one another.

Tomorrow you may collide with Venus
And I may be ruler of the world
For change is the only certainty in life
So let us turn our anger into love.

Tomorrow may bring you the Rapture
And I, with other scroungers, Hell,
For change is the only certainty in life
So let us be happy and sleep sound

Let us be happy and sleep sound.

Love Tips from Beyond the Grave

2011-05-11T13:22:00.001Z

Look upon us, O Perplexed of Pinner, and get a life,
For we can’t use our potholed skulls, our scraggy bones to love like you;
Some of us have even less with which to solve
The riddles we pursued all our lives,
For we are soft as feather down
And can’t survive gentle winds let alone tsunamis;
Too late for us the comfort of a kiss,
The pleasures of touching another’s foot when half-asleep,
Too late for us the conversation over tea,
The unexpected hour of empathy,
Too late for a lover to turn in a particular light
So that you see their original face,
Too late even for the cool distance,
The tiff, the silent door behind which passion hides.
Look upon us, O Confused of Coventry, and deal with it,
For we can no longer love like you
But rub our cold bones alone in the eternal dark
Or, like dandelion clocks, scatter in the four winds for ever away.

Fitness for the Over 50s

2011-05-10T10:51:00.000Z

I’ll meet you on the other side

Of the trickle-down effect, of repeat prescriptions,
Of doing things too early, of doing things too late,

I’ll meet you on the other side

Of ageist stereotypes, of the Saga generation,
Of silver surfing, of care budget cuts,

I’ll meet you on the other side

Of wrinkle creams, of Stannah Stairlifts,
Of commodes, mobility aids and afternoon TV,

I’ll meet you on the other side

For only our ghosts need go through
The indignities and inconveniences
Of failing bodies and failing minds

No, we were not made
For cardigans and free hot beverages,

Despite the hitches and false starts,
Despite the interventions of the Fat Controller,

Somewhere on the other side of the
Kumfi shoe catalogue, you and I will always be meeting

In our purity, in our youth, in our intimate eternity.

Ill

2011-05-06T12:25:00.000Z

Myth has it that
My mother queened it
In her illnesses.

My sister learned early on
That it was her life’s work to bring
Soup on a tray.

And me? I learned
A woman’s sickness meant
Exile, the end of any meagre love
There may have been,
And this yawning loneliness
No gewgaw could fill.

En Route

2011-04-29T16:15:00.001Z

For Athanase Vantchev de Thracy

‘This is the world, or part of it.’
Sean O’Brien

My friend, these are the carriages
And this the train, and this the
Passing landscape which may be
Quicker now, and this the way
We earn a crust, and this the
Jacket and this the open-necked
Shirt, and this the sheaf of poems
Unpublished except in the
Feasting hall of cyberspace.

How could we know, we who
Skated on the thin ice of
Philosophy, we who were
Intoxicated by the fug of
Incense, that it would come
To this: running away with a
Dish and a spoon, tapping our heels
On the floor we thought solid
Until we felt the motion sickness?

For, in the end, this is all there is:
The blanket and the pillow,
The dream of soft skin, the
Unanswered questions and the books
Which we’ll never reread; in the end,
It comes to this: the blinkered look
At midnight, the face in the mirror
That belongs to someone else, the stations of the night,
The bedside lamp, the crossing of the frontier.

The Connoisseur of Rainy Days

2011-04-29T13:21:00.001Z

Kept prisoner by my mother,
In the first five years of my life,
I would look out at rainy days,
Through the bars of the basement window:
Some were sunken green and frogman blue;
Some were almost silver;
Some were midnight rose and tinsel star;
Some washday grey;
Some were bleak Sunday, others civil servant drab;
Some were compromised white;
Some were days of refuge,
Some, overcast days when guilt could not be escaped,
Some bore sudden showers,
Some listless raindrops falling into puddles;
And I became the artist of stillness,
The prince of the ordinary
And knew that for the rest of my life
I would be at one remove behind this glass,
Looking on as the world did what it did,
With the uneasy pleasure of every poet.

NORTON HODGES, 22 WEST RD, OAKHAM, LE15 6LU

TMI

2011-03-17T09:45:00.000Z

Spare me the mortal data;
the wonky joints,
the permafrosted eyes,
they’re all TMI TMI.

What I need’s a step change,
a makeover into another space,
another time, where my mojo’s back
and so’s my renewable enrgy.

Spare me the wikileaks of
oblivion, the edgelands where all
avatars go to die, let me be
a bit more blonde, a better airhead,

eternally.

Post-Everything

2011-01-27T09:17:00.001Z

The body that betrays us
Belongs to life itself –
It will go its own way
Making a rendezvous
Tomorrow or today
With the fairground mirror
That returns us to ourselves
In sick duplication –
Meanwhile we have
This window onto sky, earth, sea
And coffee, morning laughter, sex and
The world as cake and ice cream.

Revaluation

2011-01-25T14:08:00.000Z

It wasn’t as I would have wanted,
But then again what is?
Eventually each day comes into
Focus though with something of
A halo and memories fade.
What once was disappears
Into another country
And you make the most of the
Present even with toothaches,
Colds or cancer;
The milestones have mostly passed,
The false candles and the photographic
Evidence of bad haircuts, sloppy grins.
There is something comforting
About the demise of the constant crisis,
For how can there be crises if
There was no triggering incident
But only the usual aches, pains and unease?
This wasn’t the landing point
They promised us in the full flush
Of our expectation, when there
Was still time, and yet,
Considering the melting of the ice caps,
The exponential growth in our
Attendance at funerals, the random
Cruelty of shoppers and governments,
Instant Karma slipping down the charts
Etc etc, I guess, all things considered,
This will do.

The Flowers Of Ignorance

2011-01-14T13:47:00.001Z

How they planted the seeds of ignorance
In your houses and places of work;

How ignorance grew at tea tables
Where the best china was laid only on Sundays;

How they picked the flowers of ignorance
And rooted around for Aunt Edna’s vase;

How they displayed the blooms of ignorance
On their sideboards, on their altars;

Until all their friends and neighbours
Took one polite sniff and found
The fragrance heady as pomander, or something French

The Flowers Of Elsewhere

2011-01-12T09:20:00.001Z

For Marcus Cumberlege

‘I have wasted my life.’
James Wright

Among the many things I brought back from my year
In France was a tin of coffee. Even though it
Was instant with chicory, my parents were
Highly suspicious having been lifelong tea drinkers.

Now their son no longer seemed to fit. ‘Abroad’
He’d become an intruder with his rude rebelliousness,
Long hair and strange table manners; they were sad and angry
But also intimidated by the dark continent.

That was why, after my year of enlightenment, I
Sank back into the white collar world they wanted for me:
The salary, the security, the nostalgia and regret.
My sin has always been not to live more fully.

Domestic

2011-01-06T09:30:00.001Z

The funny texts,
The small kindnesses,

The morning crossword,
The evening TV,

The Tuesday shop,
The winter shoes,

The rattle of the teacups,
The brief good morning, the brief good night,

The potions and the pills,
The unwashed breakfast stuff,

And each day
The world turns.

Listening To The Stars

2010-12-28T16:53:00.001Z

For Aguinaldo de Bastos

Only a few now can listen to the stars and
Send back the daily log of what they say.
Who can hear their quiet voices above
The strident crowing in the market place?

Only a few sad ones can listen to the stars;
Perhaps, they’re sitting by an open window
Lost in the past, or stretching out their hands to
Welcome a friend when suddenly they hear the silver song.

Only a few of us with our pockmarked hands, our
Obsolete references, our analogue minds,
Can listen to the stars and hear once again, through the crackle
And hiss, their music, their poignancy, their repeated call sign.

In Absentia

2010-10-05T07:44:00.001Z

When at midnight I count my losses
And scrape my nails down the walls of my cell;
When I mark off how each went their way
And make a tally of my emptiness;

When I consider how I tried to hold on
By explaining each one to themselves;
When I remember how I thought they’d understand
If I was honest with them about my own dishonesty;

Then I envy those trapped in the web of family
And happy to call a stranger Mum or Dad,
Relieved to feel their roots slither into the earth;

Then I know I need to go where the rootless go,
To the cafés full of orphans, to the boulevards slick with strangers,
And walk there still alone but among my own kind.

Dancing Days

2010-09-26T14:36:00.001Z

For Dot 1922-2010

'ghosts that did dance, did dance...'
Carol Ann Duffy

How poised we were when we took the floor,
Not hesitating but advancing with a firm step,
For there we had the science and the art
To trip the light fantastic through the years.

How strong we were when we skipped across continents,
Waltzed on the Ponte Vecchio, quickstepped across the bridges of Paris,
For we knew that even if we faltered and fell,
We’d pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again.

How graceful is a life well-lived,
And after, unlike those who played gooseberry through the precious years,
No one can erase your footsteps from the ballroom floor,
The sequinned moments, the fleet-footed memories, the dancing days.

This House

2010-08-23T18:32:00.001Z

This house has given up on me.
For years it held on more or less
But now it’s had it up to here.

This house has given up on me.
It wants me out even before
Sensible arrangements can be made.

This house has a soul in pain.
At night it lies awake while I’m asleep
Obsessing over previous occupants.

I liked him better; she liked me;
He left under a cloud but she was nice;
They had a certain style but he was a horse’s ass.

This house has given up on me.
It shoves notes under my door that say Leave ASAP!
Each morning I find a bag already packed.

This house has given up on me.
It wants a break from the blunt end of
The sharp-elbowed middle class.

This house has given up on me.
It ruminates on how long bricks and mortar can stay alive
And still not become a place called home.

Of Saint Céline

2010-07-27T14:47:00.000Z

We go to the funeral.
They play Céline Dion there.
We go to the finger buffet after.
But we don’t go home.

We go to the garden centre.
They’re playing Céline Dion there.
We buy a patio set and a new BBQ.
But we don’t go home.

We’ve driven all over the country.
Playing Céline on the MP3.
We know all the rat runs.
But we don’t go home.

We go to the mall.
They’re playing Céline Dion there.
We get coffee to go.
But we don’t go home.

We go to the wedding.
They play Céline Dion there.
We boogie until dawn.
But we don’t go home.

We go up in the lift.
It plays Céline Dion.
We get out at Bathroom Fittings.
But we don’t go home.

We go down the pub.
They play Céline Dion there.
We sing her songs on the karaoke.
But we don’t go home.

We download a new ringtone.
It’s by Céline Dion.
We phone all our mates.
But we don’t go home.

We log onto Facebook.
Céline Dion wants to be our friend.
We leave a message on her wall.
But we don’t go home.

When we open the front door.
Céline Dion’s in our chair.
There’s an iceberg in the fridge.
And this is not our home.

Envoi

O Saint Céline,
Our hope, our inspiration
Your heart will go on.

In My Mother's Garden

2010-06-22T08:54:00.001Z

How far away now
The geranium
And the pink,
The freesia, the
Wallflower and
The peony.

How vibrant once
The carnation, the
Camellia, the rose
And the tulip.

How clear
Against the sky
The lupin
And the hollyhock.

How sweet in the
Early evening
The night-scented
Stock.

How sad the
Dark coming down on

The lily,
The delphinium,
The rhododendron.

Raindrops

2010-06-14T14:13:00.001Z

Raindrops

In the playground he let fly
For that was the opposite of home;
The hours alone, the contemplation of
The rain drops.

In youth and early middle age,
He could only let go after
A significant amount of wine.
His looning was legendary.
Next day the forecast wasn’t good.

In that severely demarcated period
Known as ‘early old age’ or ‘chicken time’
(When the chickens come
Home to roost),
He had less chance to lose his inhibitions
And more time to reflect,
Sitting in the garden when
The sun allowed.

He would often return to those first five
Childhood years when he was
Kept away from other kids,
Became his mother’s little weather man.

He thought about storms
and torrents of guilt and shame,
about the hours and
hours and hours spent alone,
about his country’s uncertain climate,
about the melancholy charms
Of raindrops

Baby Boomers

2010-06-09T15:49:00.001Z

It wasn’t the acid or the sex,
The loon pants or the patched denims;

It wasn’t the kaftans or the beads,
The patchouli or the smelly afghans;

It wasn’t Carnaby Street or High Street Ken,
Lord John, Biba or your local swinging boutique;

It wasn’t headbands , peace signs,
‘groovy man’, ‘fab’ or ‘don’t bogart that joint’;

It wasn’t long hair or Pre-Raphaelite curls,
Moustaches, ankhs or cheesecloth shirts;

It wasn’t Beatles wigs, not inhaling,
Hip capitalism, the Flower Pot Men or Grand Funk Railroad.

No,

It was the bliss of dawn to the sound of sitars,
The divine ecstasy of a twenty minute guitar solo;

It was suburban kids becoming shape shifters,
Estate agents turned on to the power of art;

It was the discovery of occult practices
Behind the twitching curtains of 22 Acacia Drive;

It was the daimon on your shoulder
Channelling youth,energy, lust and the world’s boundlessness;

It was music become central to the soul,
And Von Daniken, Velikovsky and Crowley leading the dance;

It was whirling until you broke on through
To the placeless place behind the Locarno, Bolton;

It was these greying curls and full beaming faces of today,
Knowing they’ve been the finest they could ever be.

Roses

2010-05-14T15:05:00.001Z

That penumbra

around the roses,

is it smoke or dust?

Mist? Volcanic ash?

Or is it the gauzy twilight

Where all fades into one?

Memory Book

2010-05-14T15:03:00.002Z

This is the life I never lived,
These its contours, this its heft,
This is the box I keep it in,
Under the bed, under the bed.

This is my book of memories,
Never done, never said.

This is the coat I never wore,
This its warp, this its weft,
This is the hanger, skeletal, bare,
Of my coat of red, my coat of red.

This is my book of memories,
Never done, never said.

These are the roses never sent,
This their number, this their length,
This is the One still waiting there,
For what is dead, what is dead.

This is my book of memories,
Never done, never said.

Never done, never said.

In The Zen Garden

2010-04-21T09:13:00.002Z

My earthly paradise
Is ordinary

This strip of land
Once through-designed
Now beatified
By your Taoist hand

So that, although we do nothing,
Every year new growth bounds through

And the birch tree we planted for us
Steady, tall, flourishing
Despite all the despites

And the little birds...

Although this is not
Chelsea or the Temples of Japan

Here the little birds are unafraid.

Summer

2010-04-19T09:29:00.000Z

When I imagine summer,
It is you:

A constant tenderness in the air,
A subtle warmth that makes me feel

I’ve somewhere I belong,
Like wandering in my grandfather’s orchard,
Happy to be alive.

When I imagine summer,
It is near and far,

Far like a dream of yesterday,
All gone,

Near like your face

Beautiful at any age

Dew and damask rose

An easy chair at sunset

Every day a good day.

Life After Theory

2010-03-10T10:10:00.000Z

You look at me with that look
When I say I’m done with
Classrooms, courses, systematic learning
The whole kit and conspectual caboodle.

Autodidact, justly proud of your achievements,
You can’t understand, O curious child,
How anyone would not want to Increase their
Word Power, pore over an OS map or read the OED.

But I am letting go, with snags and backward tugs,
The lunacy of wanting to comprehend it all,
The googling of infinity, for mystery is always piled up
On mystery and where there was nothing there is always more.

Without an ideology, I need a true humility,
I need to value the fragmentary, the trade off between
The tiny human, the tall cliff and the white sky in the Chinese scroll,
The note, the sketch, the point of view, the part and not the whole.

And I need to learn to play again, after most of a life in the after dinner
Sweat of exam rooms, to make my two left feet somehow work together
In a clumsy dance, to have the awesome courage to make one free mark
On a canvas and finally to see the link between mud puddles and Love.

Hats

2010-02-11T09:49:00.003Z

You’ll never get me into a flat man’s cap,
Too Del Boy, too market trader,
And that Inca thing with long ear flaps
Like a sad egg cosy, I wouldn’t wear that.

You’ll never see me in a tile or a topper,
A derby, a deerstalker, a balaclava or a boater,
(though I might consider a mitre for the evenings
And a mob cap for my morning chores).

You’ll never find me in a Homburg or a helmet,
A sou’wester or a stetson,
Too ostentatious, too uncool,
Let alone a beanie, a bowler or a bearskin.

Yet I don’t think my pride would suffer if I wore
A cloche or a poke bonnet,
A noble turban, a leopard skin pill box,
A Dillinger fedora, a yarmulke or a Mingus pork pie

And my self-esteem would surely soar if I wore
A tam, a sombrero, a hoodie,
A toque or a beret, a cardboard crown or a kiss-me-quick,
A fez, a hijab , a red bandana.

Hare And Tortoise

2010-02-10T09:45:00.001Z

While she is all about beginnings,
I have the sense of an ending.
While she is a forerunner of the enlightenment,
I am relentlessly postmodern.
While she is beginning to have visions,
I’ve seen it all.
While she is hurrying towards her self,
I’ve been there, done that.

Abusers take control: so why would
I want to make her journey for her?
Done tilting at windmills, my
Knackered horse wants to live free
In a field without theory, cropping
Grass, watching two magpies at play.

Fates

2010-02-02T11:53:00.001Z

The first born ends in a room alone,
Content with his music and his books
Despite the strictures of the great and good,
The superhuman crew, the fashionable madmen,
For what else has her ever known?

His sister’s alone in her own way,
Safe because she’s shunned him and all
His teacherly constraints and can bunk off
With the faeries now unschooled and
Frolic in their cyber Shangri-la.

Their mother too sits unhealed
Incommunicado in the care home,
The audio books they earnestly sent
Unsealed, the mobile phone they kindly
Gifted blissfully misunderstood.

Whose fault, their fates,
That they should find their skewed happiness
Narcissistically in a world where solitude is
A neurosis and worklessness a crime
and no one’s heard of hubris, fatal error, nemesis?

Soft

2010-01-25T16:54:00.000Z

Emptiness is soft
And can’t be filled
By any physical formats
You can load.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

Your heart and its hunger
Are not these hydraulics
But this cave,
This elusive emptiness.

Out of the depths
Have I cried unto thee,
O Lord.

Your anger is a sine wave
And your fear a black hole;
Far from self-help, answers
Dissolve like mist in the morning sun.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

This is the inner void, the
Soft stopping place for the
Stranger who cannot be seen,
The haunt of the soft machine.

Out of the depths
Have I cried unto thee,
O Lord.

So forgive us for what we do
Out of loneliness, when the
Self stands beside its own invisible
Infinity, its vital nonentity.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

Have mercy on us,

Out of the depths
Have I cried unto thee,

Have mercy on us.

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem.

O Lord, have mercy on us.

Old Men and Dreaming

2010-01-20T18:23:00.000Z

Only after the last skirmishes in
The attenuated winter of work
And the long uneasy armistice
Of retirement

Are old men
Free to dream

Only if they let
Their body armour go
And swim free
Naked as tadpoles
Away from their consciences

Can old men become
Deep sea divers

Fond and born again
In the playful
Depths.

Be Kind

2010-01-03T15:29:00.000Z

Above all, be kind.
If hate is the twin of love
And kindness the foundling of aspiration
Then we are destined never to be at peace
Despite what the entrepreneurial upstarts say.
No, we will live with border skirmishes
For the rest of our lives and
Scrape our knees again and again
On our long slow crawl towards happiness.
Above all, be kind.

Cities

2009-12-31T12:45:00.001Z

In Paris there is so much to gain:
Around each corner a man in
A lurex skirt and platinum wig
Carries in his handbag the
Shining spare change of Life.

In London there is so much to lose:
Alone in the movie rain a woman in
A waxed jacket and flowered wellies
Texts the dead from her smartphone
With a practised thumb.

My Despair

2009-12-30T14:34:00.001Z

I sang my despair in the depths of a well
Hoping someone would hear me.

I sang my despair in the market place
But not as loudly as the other sellers there.

I sang my despair to the crashing waves
On a cold winter Sunday morning

When no one was around.

So at last I sang my despair to you
Or at least

To your favourite empty chair.

The Life

2009-12-10T08:55:00.000Z

The meaning of a life
Is in the grace

Of a child running up a hill
To join their friends

Unconscious free
But wholly themselves

With that integrity
Of the sinews
Of the juices

Still present
As truth or memory
Even in age
Even at the moment of death

Knowing you are simply
Yourself

And running again
Up the hill

Where they are all
Waiting.

The Touching

2009-11-27T09:17:00.000Z

When do two hearts,
Two souls become one?

Not in the market place,
Where the cries of the sellers
Drown out the silence of the heart.

Not in an empty room
Where a mother punishes herself
By not singing nursery songs.

Not in plans or discussions,
Tickboxes or value-added graphs,
Desk diaries or itemised schedules.

No, only when you’re not paying attention
And a stranger’s sudden shadow pauses
Under your window on a day always unlike today.

Prayer

2009-11-26T15:58:00.000Z

From out of the depths
I cry to thee O Lord,

From out of the desert
Of my childhood,

From out of my
Irredeemable solitude,

From my unfulfilled need
For the Mother,

From my disappointed hope
For the Father,

From the defeats and
Disappointments of my life,

From the terrible desires
That return after midnight,

From out of the depths
I cry to thee O Lord –

Lord?

Mother?

Father?

Not one will reply.

Walking The Numbers

2009-11-23T14:43:00.001Z

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

I lost my sister on the road;
She said she couldn’t go the distance.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

My mother stopped to see what was
Inside her head and never struck out again.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

A woman I used to know went on her way
Still bearing the scars of earlier odysseys.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

My children have their trajectories
And they must find their own way not mine.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

I left my other self back in the cities of
Ambition, Opportunity, Resilience and Aspiration.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

Crunch time: either I sit here in the dirt
Or hitch up my pack and walk on.

I walk the numbers
With the ledger in my hand.

Leaving Glastonbury

2009-11-10T09:17:00.000Z

for Jude

They never told me
two souls can meet

leaving Glastonbury
in the morning

they called us animals,
to be tamed and caged
by keepers, assassins and
priests

they never told me
two souls can meet

leaving Glastonbury
in the morning

but from now on, although
we’re driving back to
brown envelopes, boot polish and
Sunday regrets

I’ll never forget
two souls can meet

leaving Glastonbury
in the morning.

She Knows Me

2009-10-05T15:56:00.000Z

In the garden between us
where once a robin sang
its clear-sighted song

she knows me.

For it’s there that
we both became free
(though no apple came into question).

So fragile then,
subject to habit, cliché, the shortest distance
between two points,

so fragile that liquid land
where each moves within the other
like unparented offspring.

So fragile because
it’s in view of
the quantifiers, the over-devoted,
the torturers, the free marketers.

So fragile, breaking into pixels,
each separate piece
magnifying the hurt,
so easily lost,

that fabled land,
that urban myth,
that drunkard’s dream,

that territory of the ruminator,
the dysfunctional, the maladjusted,

that Shangri-la for those
deniers of the current and
perpetual crisis;

in our fragmented dreams,
in the bare necessities
of the working day,

in common sense,
in kicking a stone,

in the diktats
of the Sado-politikers,

did we imagine it?

That piece of the earth that is ours,
that unencumbered patch
of modest land,

where ordinary birds
sing free?

Where she knows me?

The Ordinary Sutra

2009-10-01T08:48:00.001Z

Because Love’s not
cellophane hearts
or paper kisses

but walking the plank
or crossing the Great Divide

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
maps or apps or
teleportation but

giving an ear
to difference

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
Interflora or Brides Magazine,
H. Samuel or Ann Summers

but tough negotiations,
a fair and frank exchange of views,
border patrols, cordons sanitaires,

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
eternity rings or
cartoon pyjamas or
never having to say you’re sorry

but saying you’re sorry when
you really did foul up
and stumbling on

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
four bedrooms and
two garages in Toytown
and holidays in Lanzarote,

but knowing what to ignore
and what to welcome in while
cobwebs gather

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
Oedipus or Jocasta

but simply clear sightedness

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
a Lad’s mag or
a high-class hooker

but a question of
who washes and who dries

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love ‘s not
eating spaghetti from
both ends

but having a window in your
schedule wide enough
to eat at all

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Because Love’s not
running through fields
hand in hand

but this pause from labour
this hard-won hour
these gloveless minutes

not an unfinished symphony
but that snatch of pop tune
on an old-fangled radio

she is my one in all
my all in one.

Anger

2009-09-20T15:44:00.001Z

I never used to get so angry,
never felt the fire in me
so intensely it became a,
a focussed icy flame.

I thought we were looking for
peace and gentleness, that’s why
we split our families apart to retread
missteps we made so long ago.

Yet what I feel for you today is anger:
anger a curse from my mother whose love
was like Russian Roulette, anger from the survivor inside me
who wants to save himself and so to save you.

Can this really be love: dowsing
you in this acid from deep inside?
Doesn’t such a baptism contradict
the vows and promises we made?

The Buddhists say anger is to be
nurtured, to be taken care of,
so that it transforms alchemically
from this base metal into gold.

But all I have to give you now
is this incendiary device, these hot coals, this unbearable
enclosetedness with the central heating full on,
this message from the miners deep in the earth.

Perhaps it would be a kind of love if it were
juggled, eaten, breathed out in immaculate fire,
if it caught a sail like the hot breath of the trade winds,
and, powering our dreams, carried us oceans away.

Photosynthesis

2009-08-30T16:07:00.000Z

for my mother

How we are made from light.

How sometimes the light
grows dim or goes out.

How for some it unexpectedly returns
one windy morning by the sea.

How for others it never comes back,
extinguished by
self-centredness, cliché, apathy.

How then we live lampless
taxing one person or another
to find our flame.

How it still lives deep down
tough but seduced by darkness

like your life
like your life.

No Pipe And Slippers

2009-08-02T15:10:00.000Z

For Emily Payne

Some go gentle into that good night;
with empty hands they sit
in anterooms, blaming carers,
daughters, daytime TV for their
nihilistic finales.

Lying awake at 3 a.m.,
it came to me
that my solitary childhood,
the one the therapists blame
for all that followed,
will stand me in good stead,

for I’m making plans to be
a funky old guy
who quietly puts to use

his Picasso hand
his Lennon head
his Heaney eye.

Anam Cara

2009-07-27T15:53:00.000Z

For Jude

You remember the names
from school

Rosebay Willowherb

of what now lives shyly
never leaving home

Purple Loosestrife

but flourishes among
its own kind

Lady’s Bedstraw

in the place it loves

Vetch

rooted

Wild Geranium

free.

My Dream Of The Sea

2009-07-27T15:52:00.001Z

Stretching to infinity,
sometimes calm,

sometimes angry
but always the same,

wild and ineffable
but self-accepting because self-possessed,

always of itself,
going the way things go,

violent and benign,
empty and full,

vast enough to engulf the sky,
yet eating its own tail.

Listen, say the citizens of the deep
from within their element,

When you are in and of yourself,
only then will you stay true.

The Unforeseen

2009-06-16T10:36:00.002Z

‘There’s no point saying anything except what you can’t’
Kenneth Patchen

After twenty years away with the fairies,
he woke one morning full of joy.
They’d been years of hard labour,
of slowly nudging his trauma and despair,
seeing therapists, reading books by other survivors,
but something must have hastened
the tipping point, for new possibilities
dizzied him as he walked down the street.

There’d been no life-coaching, no
brain-training, only the steady drip
at night of the tap they’d neglected to
have repaired, only the glimpse of
an iris or the bowed head of a peony
when he remembered to look.

Until yesterday, he’d been
comfortable in his despair, safely
wretched, ready to spit in his
own face before they did it to him first.

Wu wei, first thought best thought,
spontaneous flow, no mind,

the splash of satori
in one skilled but unthinking stroke
of the brush,

this lovely overgrown garden, this velvet life,
like a deck of cards thrown
every which way,

waiting to be scooped up

and risked again.

Goodbye To The Party Life

2009-05-14T08:46:00.000Z

Farewell to the six pack and
the cheap Spanish red.

Farewell to Now 42 and
the eighties megamix.

Farewell to Jackie who
fancied Ryan and went
home crying.

Farewell to the condom under
the coat pile.

Farewell to the neighbours
hammering on the wall.

Farewell, farewell
to the knackered
epiphany of no sleep,

to the icy blast
of the 7 a.m. street.

Farewell, farewell,

and hello to kids,
responsibility, a measured calm

and memories.

Post-Everything

2009-05-12T15:08:00.000Z

I stalk you through the back yard
where my mother’s already hanging out
the washing, her teeth shiny with the
promise of spring when new labour-
saving devices will fill the shops.

But when the sky clouds over and She
sees me fiddling with the edge of her
vision, her face closes and the sun
goes in. This is how I lose you: back inside,
heating turned up, boredom, biscuits, tea.

How Late It Is

2009-03-16T15:39:00.003Z

My love,
I met you in the end,
though down the street the boys
were doing their last wheelies
before their mothers called them in.

My love,
how could we have left it so late,
so late the chip van's
taking last orders
and dads are already parked in front of
the big game on Setanta Sports.

My love,
see the night outside's already a media blackout
and the raw young lovers
who met at the school disco
have nowhere to go
and dream of shop doorways
or the ghostly leaves
of the local park.

My love, we must be quick,
everyone's settled in by now,
each before their separate screen,
only the memory
of the distant buzz of
boy racers
under the sodium lamps
disturbs the silence.

My love,
I met you in the end,
but the world had already moved on to
a different kind of reality TV
and we were left orphaned,
bargain binned, out of time,
like Marianne and Mick,
like Phil and Don,
like John, Paul George and
all the other
restless creatures of the dark.

The River

2009-02-19T09:59:00.000Z

for Emily and Jon

Like a river,
everything must change
but everything's the same,

the plans we make,
the first flight out,
the next phase of a life,

like a river,
everything must change
but everything's the same.

And what keeps us going through the years,
what holds us steady
when we're riding out our time and space?

(Like a river,
everything must change
but everything's the same.)

Why, Love of course,
love of each particular
for another.

Like a river,
everything must change
but everything's the same.

Old Men

2009-02-18T16:28:00.000Z

What do old men do?

The old men of Melton
meet their friends for
espresso and water -
Ciao Italiani! -
gesticulate and
set the world to rights.

The old men of Peterborough
sit in Bridge Street
on a bench
under the trees
loudly appraising
passers-by.

The old men of Uppingham
go to market early, clutching their
wives' hands and a jute bag,
anxious for their five a day.

The old men of Stamford
stroll around bothering the shopkeepers,
telling them long stories
and making dubious remarks
to young mothers in checkout queues.

The old men of Oakham
walk the same route every day
dapper in a flat cap,
gathering stones and twigs
to leave on walls,
pissing where they think
they won't get caught.

What do old men do?

They don't write poems
on wet afternoons.

What do old men do?

Old men disappear

leaving the old women
of every town alone
to struggle across the road
with their shopping
trolleys before the
lights change.

Weather

2009-02-04T09:11:00.000Z

No sunny day has come between,
each more overcast than the last,

your winter boots stand ready in the hall,
fashion yielding to survival at times like these,

and when she asks you how you feel,
you don't know what to say except,

there's a sixty per cent chance it may get worse
and a deep depression heading from the west.

Snow at the Care Home

2009-02-03T11:31:00.000Z

Oh, but I dread the winter, she said...

(totally dependent now,
so well taken care of
she's free never to be satisfied)

... and I wonder why she refuses to love
a world like the one outside my window
where all the edges are softened
by this white hiatus

the last gentle thing
on earth.

Philosophy

2009-01-07T15:19:00.000Z

Babies? Empiricists.

The young - existentialists.

The newly mortgaged: pragmatists.

The middle-aged ...sceptics.

The not-so-young, in the temple
or on the church steps.

The old, in their
toothless armchairs?
Nihilists.

A Poet's Life

2008-11-29T17:39:00.000Z

How could he have known he was
a poet as he struggled to get out
from under the stupendous weight of his
father during carpet wrestling?

How could he have known he was
a poet when he could not tell
his mother's shadow from his own as he
set the tray down on her sickbed?

Today, the solidity of his book hints
at the truth, the almost tearful eyes
of his first reader repeat the trick,

yet his own eyes are dry, empty of
the feelings he squeezed onto the pages,
longing for less words, more white space.

The Call

2008-11-21T09:36:00.000Z

Somebody wants me to move into a larger life.
When he knocks at the door, I pretend I'm out,
sinking further into the marshmallow of the sofa.

Otherwise, he emails, send me glossy brochures,
or phones at an inconvenient time (any time).

I imagine him to be fresh-faced, a little chunky,
with sculpted hair and a Burton's suit.

Maybe he'll try viral marketing or buttonholing me
in the street like a Jehovah's Witness who's not
had anybody on their knees all morning.

Maybe he'll advertise on the sides of buses, whisper about me
to the neighbours, or, if he's really desperate, leave
dead birds on my doorstep, paint hieroglyphics on my wheelie bin.

Whatever. I'm immune to manipulation.
I'm perfectly fine all alone with nothing but my war-shattered past
and the slow drip-drop of last night's rain.

The Dignity of Survivors

2008-11-20T11:16:00.000Z

We wonder how come we're still around when
office workers are staring so hard at their screens
their cartilage will turn to chewing gum,

and passers-by in dress-down blue and black
all seem to have a bunch of errands, a to-do list,
goals as straightforward as the plot of a by-numbers blockbuster;

but our narrative became post modern when the
perfect storm struck; now we're characters in search of
an author, a back story, chapter headings, an epilogue;

so each day begins as a mishmash of nasty little leftovers
(drive and ambition) and the tendency to be a slugabed;
every day we have to rebuild what we built again yesterday

from the ground up, because life blew us off, because kids throw stones,
because we were there and nobody else, just us, because violets are blue,
because, in the enormous room someone left behind an umbrella, a pair of gloves.

At The Gate

2008-10-31T17:48:00.000Z

'But I want neither world nor dream, divine voice,
I want my liberty, my human love...'Lorca

You fought your way out
from under the pile of corpses.
It took years.

For each one you got close to,
you lost a shred of cloth
and a bucketful of tears.

Finally, naked, bruised,
you came

to the threshold of silence.

The guards tried to turn you away,

said your journey showed
you still should live among the soul-takers,
the Grand Inquisitors,

that you still should spill your guts
to the father confessors
of the Great Panopticon

again and again and again.

But even flattened against a wall
and frisked by the subtle hands
of government enforcers

or splayed out on the slab like a fish
unable to stop the ocean
flowing from its mouth

you knew

that this was where you should be

where you had always and never been

before the gate

that is the beginning and end

of all mystery.

The Other Passage

2008-10-16T09:10:00.001Z

Your journey began with a stutter;
like Kerouac you went out in the dust
but the road always led back home.

How you envy those whose arcs
were straight as a die;
men with square jaws, eyes bright
in the lanterns of their skulls,
limbs unfailingly taut.

In your school books
they faced Nature's perils with
bravery, forbearance, self-sacrifice;

at the pole, in the jungle,
on the high seas, through the stratosphere,
they made their passive-aggressive expeditions,
used to conquering worlds.

But your journey was a circle
not an arrow; you'd be the
embarrassing boomerang, not
Tarzan's unerring bow.

Or else you dreamed of being
some kind of hippy guru greybeard,
dispensing wisdom from a kaftan
to impressionable young things.

Well, you haunter of libraries,
you lifelong note-taker and précis maker,
these days you spend your time
listening at keyholes, tracking the
stampede of the neighbour's kids
across the laminated plain.

O for a journey from here to there,
anywhere out of this world,
where your ticket's not returned
unused and your passport,
blank with disuse, is not
stamped 'destination unknown'.

The Spoils

2008-10-16T08:05:00.001Z

There is a rhythm in things
beyond the styrofoam drawl
of the evening cold caller
with the stilted script.

From the hiccups in the
boy racer's career arc,
from the hidden sickies
and duvet days,

from the blips and
burnouts, the fuck-ups
and blooper reels you
don't want on your CV

come these green shoots.

Earthly Riches

2008-10-07T10:40:00.001Z

Like the pearl of great price,
I hold it inside, since
to show it even to you
would spoil its perfection.

I made it in the secret rooms
of my heart, down the corridor
where I finally lost them and they
gave up their pursuit.

How could I take the risk and
expose it to vulgar light,
for you would be bound to find some flaw,
something that made it not quite beautiful.

How could I let you turn it this way
and that under your searching gaze,
the only thing that makes me what I am,
all that I've shored against my emptiness?

The Aeronautic Age

2008-09-20T08:13:00.000Z

How easy it has become to fly
beyond the solid earth
and into the formless void,

to give up
the ground beneath our feet
and launch out
still imperfect
into the blue.

In these breathtaking days
the myths of air's greatest pioneers
ring hollow:
portentous, overweening, autocratic.

No, flying now is easy as sand
running through an hour glass,
as painless as a butterfly on a warm day
dissolving into sunlight.

When You're Young and in Love

2008-09-04T10:41:00.000Z

What was most important was
to be 'going out' or not not 'going out'.
What you did when you 'went out'
was a subject of whispers, smugness or improvisation.

At the cinema, was one kiss enough, and
at what point in the film? Was an arm
round the shoulder, a held hand OK?
How did this square with the midnight hurricane of lust?

Caught in such social awkwardness, like the anxious
etiquette of meeting her parents, we managed not to
notice what was hammering insistently on our door:
Life's ache and ecstasy which would never call again.

Vocabulary

2008-09-03T15:03:00.003Z

Age 60's like an exam with no revision time.
Did you pass? Who knows?
Overnight the doctor becomes brisk,
fails to explain putting in a telescope,
adds as an afterthought: operation.

Words jump out at you from Google
or the Age Concern leaflet you once
thought didn't apply. 'Osteo-' something,
'arterio-' something. Good Lord,
soon it'll be Mobility Aid, Pension Credit, Assisted Living
(Is living ever unassisted?).

You find yourself wondering 'When?'
and copy down a new phrase, timor mortis, which
needs no translation. Meanwhile, the bouffanted
louts on the telly grit their teeth and repeat
the familiar mantra: 'More Choice, Better Value'.

It seems that growing old gracefully or disgracefully
doesn't seem to be on Nature's current
drop down menu. You feel like adding
a few items yourself, even though by now no one's listening:

Silence, Moment, Mindfulness,

Lightness, Loving, Letting Go.

On Not Being Able To Paint

2008-06-21T08:40:00.001Z

for Marilyn Ricci

For passing the 11+, they
promised me a Dansette
and three 45s.

After that they were lost,
not having been to grammar
school themselves.

Today when I consider the
blank canvas, I can't bridge the gap
between the brush and the first unruly splodge.

What if there's an end of unit test
and I'm not ready?

The Silences

2008-06-12T11:04:00.001Z

At first we talked all night,
as if words were precious drops of water
none of which we should spill.

Now there are silences as we read or doze,
like the white spaces in a Japanese painting
which frame the pleasures of the floating world.

The Evangelist

2008-06-10T10:53:00.000Z

They sent me on a mission
to save the world, but
the world didn't want to be saved.

However angry I became, however choked
with righteousness, however obliging and kind
I was, they didn't want to know.

I admit shedding some tears, astonished
that they wouldn't take off their
iron overcoats when I could already see them naked.

I put my bible away and spent
the days writing letters of admonishment
in my head that I never sent.

Then one day I found someone who needed my compassion,
who'd suffered long and dark nights of the soul,
who'd borne a life of solitude and hurt. It was me.

Shelter

2008-06-03T07:27:00.000Z

The poem will protect me against
what I fear the most:
the undigested trauma, locked away,
that a pinprick causes to break free.

I will live in the poem in perfect safety
and not be lonely again, or wrong,
or shunned, or given the silent treatment:
within its twelve lines I'll be untouchable.

For poems are tucked away in books, and
no one reads books any more so they'll
sit on a shelf or go to charity or gather dust
in a warehouse, or, best of all, be pulped to nothingness.

Why

2008-06-02T08:11:00.000Z

If we're not loved at first,
but bitterly resented
for turning her away from the
importance of her own uncertainties,
for crying too loudly to protest
the emptiness of a world without sustenance,

all through our lives unconsciously
we stand apart inhabiting her resentment
as our true home,
failing to recognise love when it comes,
shocked when a hand touches us
that's not our own.

In My Father's Garden

2008-05-22T11:53:00.000Z

Dad, you might have seen the funny side,
me happy just sitting at a garden table.

I remember on your retirement day,
how you left the party quietly
and sat out on a bench, just looking.

I thought that was how you saw the years to come,
well-earned peace and quiet, watching things grow.

When my life broke apart that picture appeared to me too:
a hand, a plant, the tending.

Sometimes I imagine you in your open-necked shirt,
relaxed, glowing from the return to what you grew up with:
vegetables, fruit and the private pleasures of flowers.

How you must have kept that unmanly thing in your heart
through all the years of duty and action.

And did it work out for you in the end? In your last years,
did the struggle cease enough for you to place a hand,
calloused but tender, on what needed help to grow?

I suspect you never came to terms with my
awkward, leggy wild adolescence,
my off-kilter careering through your ordered beds.

Now you're part of it all,
your ashes and bone fertilise the earth you loved.

In my life, let me reach beyond hate, fear and anger
enough to see the flowers.

Yellow

2008-05-20T08:21:00.000Z

You remember the time
you chased the yellow butterfly
that moment that returns to you
suddenly after many years
and catches you as you're

adding up debit card receipts
taking out the wheelie bin
why does it still pursue you
childhood being simply the larval stage
that put you on your way to where

in dreams you guide a
craft with a yellow sail
vast as the sky across an
ocean so blue it wakes you
with a headache surprised you're home.

Story Time

2008-05-19T15:27:00.000Z

How I lost
this one and that one
along the way

How I found
I couldn't save them
from themselves

How the Famous Five
always rescued
poor souls in peril

How I must close
the book now and put it
on the bedside chair

How Mum will bring
up the night light soon because
I'm afraid of the dark.

His List

2008-05-19T13:46:00.001Z

My childhood and the fissures it has left.
My blind alleys. My train wrecks.
The false scent with which I lead others astray.
The builder left struggling under the heap of mud.
The shack I live in that lets the wind through.
The umbrella that won't last another gusty day.
My right and my loudmouthed wrong.
My jealousy, my scorn, my hatred, my secret grin.
The failed MOTs, the false starts, the grinding halts.
The soft girls with parasols who tiptoe through my dreams.
The others in lampshade red who offer their perfect thighs.
My cross mornings. My house of horror nights.
My big head. My puny arms.
The lacerating newsreels I replay at 4 a.m.
My handiness with a remote control. My cack-handedness with a saw.
The practised gait my mother said she hated.
My feminine side. My masculine side. My backside.
My love for Hayley Mills forever unconsummated.
My solitary path down the garden to look for a star.
The door shutting on me as I lay in the yard and my friends laughed.
My sweet tooth. My sour thoughts.
My missing teeth. My missing sister, my missing mother, my missing daughter.
My life. My death. My piebald in-between.

All these are my perfection.

The Gardens Of Japan

2008-05-16T18:38:00.000Z

I missed my growing up, I knew to notice it would be pure indulgence
for by then they had annexed my head for the keeping of chickens,
and the cultivation of essential produce to aid the war effort.
Wander as I might among the wallflowers and cabbage heads,
I was always alert for the call to rake or sweep the path
always conscious of the furious digging for victory by one or the other.

I never knew the guiltless sensuality of fondling what grew
as if I were a vegetable aberration or just too boringly common-or-garden
to be trusted to slide a hand between the neat rows alone or eat at will;
no, I was always looking over my shoulder for the
head gardener with his clean spade, his earthy wit
and his home-grown homilies about proper husbandry.

Surely it would have been different in
the gardens of Japan? For there everything that grows
is seen for its true worth, its shining particularity.
There, every outgrowth is accepted in its strangeness,
its consonance with the way Life goes. And there the
gardener is a lover who sees the utter wonder of every seed.

The Mysterious Origin Of My Books

2008-05-15T10:51:00.001Z

The books that have
begun to flow

towards you
by first-class mail

so late in my life -
I don't know their provenance;

mysterious, without
my cognizance,

they began to meander
down the river of my self

then, bearing a stranger's face,
(though with something a little

familiar) they flooded out
into the world.

Advice To The Unloved

2008-05-13T09:03:00.001Z

Be thankful for the following: the clothes on your back, the food on your plate, the empty place in your heart.

Note: empty places are useful in several ways if you are handy with a clove hitch and a hurricane lamp.

Be a brave little soldier. Do you know his story? They forgot to relieve him and he stood on guard all night. What an example to us all, standing in dutiful agony while everyone else went home.

Don't be angry. In fact, keep all that messy stuff inside. Aren't you a man? (No, you'll never be a man).

Don't bother me when I'm busy. Sistine Chapel? No, sorry, doesn't ring a bell. Come back when you've passed a few more exams.

Be good. Be happy (that's an order). Stop your moaning. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.

A lot of other children would envy what you have. In fact, they're out in the yard now. Shall I let them come in and go through your stuff?

Stop snivelling.

That's not funny at all.

Don't care was made to care.

Least said soonest mended.

Boys don't cry.

Boys don't cry.

Boys don't cry.

Tired Flowers

2008-05-13T09:01:00.000Z

We wanted them to bring
the lost chord of springs of long ago,
yet not two days from the supermarket
they drooped like funeral clothes -

sometimes our hopes are dashed
despite our infinite pains to
make trade fair,

and love is only politics.

The Moment of Sudoku

2008-05-12T14:09:00.001Z

for Marcus Cumberlege

The setters would beg to agree
that time runs smooth as caramel
and you could pass many a velvet hour
on crosswords, word searches, sudoku.
Haven't you reached the point, where, with
a rucksack, a rail pass, a pair of action trousers,
you can ease off the toil, look to quieter pursuits,
soften your horizons, spend the stop-gap time
on crosswords, word searches, sudoku?
No, you don't think about that. Such moments can be
planed smooth, made to soothe, like Horlicks;
why not order a hazelnut latte instead, unwrap a flapjack,
use the gold-tipped pen in your shirt pocket,
get back to crosswords, word searches, sudoku?
That's what retirement's all about: time, evening
classes, grandchildren, a paperback novel or two,
crosswords, word searches, sudoku.
For our comfort, didn't they invent direct debit, chip and pin?
Another letter from the DWP? File it with the rest, all your
affairs in apple-pie order, the funeral bond paid up,
the will, the P60s, the birth certificate,
crosswords, word searches, sudoku.
How Japanese that must be, the tree, the golden fields of rape, the
sky smooth and unclouded as a satisfied mind,
no doubts, no second thoughts, no backward glances,
only crosswords, word searches, sudoku.

Welcome To Yourself

2008-05-09T17:08:00.000Z

There was a voice in your head
at the cruces of your life:
but you managed to ignore it,
wanting to be good for Mummy,
to be righteous for your Dad.

You never gave it a name:
you could have called it
Maverick, Alley Cat, Dr Sardonicus,
Mr Lofty, Too Big For His Boots,
Beyond The Pale, Outlaw,
Pseud, Egghead, Four Eyes,
Excess, Villain, Naughty Boy.

Thirty years on you look for it
again: it's older, huskier,
more of a whisper, still shushing itself
by draping its cloak before the laydeez
to stop them sullying their feet.

You call it Tired Old Rebel,
Sixties Male, Old Man Trying To be Young,
Throwback, Too Late, Long Ago,
Far Away, Distant Echo, Wilder Days,
Feckless Youth, Younger Self,
Four Stone Lighter, Loon Pant, Hippie,
Old Labour, Freak, Family Shame,
Laughing Stock, Dead As A Doornail,
Last Gasp, OD, Dream Is Over.

But do you really believe the war zone
in your head, is the epitome of how
your life should have been lived? How did
you renege on your soul, retreat into
the quiet life to cultivate your garden,
give up the fight?

Out in the back yard at dusk
where you used to sit on the wall
and call out for the boy next door to play
Michael! Michael! (He never came),
I hear you call out again
for that Awkward Annie whose
name was nearly lost in the
traffic hum, in the
warplanes manoeuvring overhead:

Square Peg!
Home Invader!
Mess Maker!
Upstart Teen!

Pathfinder!
Contrary Mary!
Action painter!
Beat poet!

Angelheaded hipster!
All Mouth And Trousers!

Come home!

Guard Duty

2008-05-08T13:39:00.001Z

The mother of all mothers,
the Mother Superior, the termagant
whose work is never done, the one
who never has time to sit and play,

is the mother I must get past to
breach the doorjamb and break into the great outside,
but how much washday guilt
will it take before I step over the threshold?

The other way's to stay inside,
count the cups of tea, sit in a chair and stare
at the sad old movies on the wall,
waiting, waiting, to be recognised, to be rescued.

Easier that way, easier than to defy
the guard, the gatekeeper, the screw,
for that way risks a clout, a clip, a shove
that sends you wrong-footed incurable into the light.

The Empty Space

2008-05-06T10:15:00.001Z

The Axminster where my toy soldiers
fought their costly battles
was the one I gave away.
Together with that I donated
my savings, my integrity, my lock and key.
Of course, now we are all consumers, we should expect
other people to break into our most precious sanctuaries,
shout their mobile secrets into our ears,
steal our trees, our time and whatever
can be sold on eBay.

And now I know it's gone,
I don't know where to forage for it.
The TVs full of people on their knees in attics,
or queuing up to ascertain the market value of
their grandfather's moustache.
But our attic's full of stuff
I can't bear to touch, it's either too painful
or the dust's already in there, doing its work.

Even alone in the sunny garden
with a second cup of Java and a San Pellegrino,
I sense thieves in the alleyway,
neighbours with big stereos and no brain.
Even inside my mind, my parents still deliver
their sheep-like sermons, their sadistic apothegms.

Be sad for me, my one true love,
little boy lost wandering the empty rooms
after the removal men have gone.

Inheritance

2008-04-24T08:54:00.000Z

Mourning follows the generations.
The losses your grandmother felt
make your mother sit in her flat alone
brooding on a life not lived.

Their hidden plan was this:
to assign you your work in the
secret factory of Death-in-Life,
to bequeath you their wish for nothingness.

Eros and Thanatos have pushed you back
and forth like playground bullies your whole life
until you have less years left than years gone by,

yet, now and into your last moments, and
even then, I have the foolish hope that you may suddenly
wake and see with utter clarity, daylight, a face, a tree.

On Learning to Dance

2007-09-24T09:02:00.000Z

'We have fallen into the place
Where everything is music.'Rumi

The boy who sat down at his first school desk
got up forty years later
having finally run out of words.

He sniffed the air and found the world had changed.
He seemed to be married but couldn't remember his wife's name
and on the side table there were photographs of children.

This must be his house but why was it full of
voices that seemed to come from the sea?
Were there guests? Had they taken in lodgers?

He dreamed he was on a rock flying through space,
clinging by his fingertips. He dreamed the world was
a shipwreck and he was sinking, sinking.

There were too many to blame.
His rage was universal. His scorn filled the cosmos.
He hated all men, cats, dogs, trees.

For years he sat in a chair facing a window.
His children never visited.
His wife seemed resigned to silence.

Then one day she came in and threw open the front door.
People in peacock uniforms were sauntering by
while others travelled swiftly like angry bees.

He realised that she must be the Beloved,
offering him her hand, leading him to the doorway,
welcoming the raw beginner onto the dusty floor.

Poem for a Waiting Room

2007-09-24T08:57:00.000Z

Don't despair...

Somewhere there are still all day breakfasts and barbecues
and children eating ice cream from a sugar cone;
somewhere there are pub quizzes and race nights
and girls wearing cowboy hats all the way home.

Don't despair...

Somewhere there are karaoke nights and back to school discos
and gossip mags on the lounger in the back yard;
somewhere there are guilty afternoons watching Brazilian soaps
and evenings on the sofa with a romcom and a biryani.

Don't despair...

Somewhere, after you've walked down the long carpeted corridor,
there'll be salsa dancing on ice with your celebrity husband or wife;
somewhere in the reality TV show of your life, you'll be voted the winner
and the paparazzi will scuffle for one shot of your dazzling smile.

So don't despair,
O superstar,
please take a bow;
and Doctor So and So will see you now.

Life's Like That

2007-09-24T08:56:00.000Z

with apologies to Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
then you must be some kind of plaster saint;
who wouldn't feel narked if all their
workmates started turning against them?
We're not all Jesus bleeding Christ are we?
The thing is this: don't turn the other cheek,
just accept that life's like that and you got a bum deal.

Beware of the fame game, of businessmen bearing gifts,
of treating every day like a Big Brother audition,
we weren't all designed to be size zero icons,
some days you'll feel like shit but life's like that;
there are those who'd steal your grandmother for a few bob
and those too thick to understand even one of your thoughts and
sometimes it'll all come crashing down, nothing
lasts; so why shouldn't you be brassed off?

And don't believe them when they tell you it's
all a lottery, a super casino; we all need to survive, sure,
but why would you toss it all away on a number
9 scratch card when you could just be happy?
So for God's sake don't do yourself in,
that's for athletes or madmen; go for a walk,
feed the ducks, enjoy the sunshine, don't run
yourself into the ground, let it all go. Life's like that.

Why would you want to star in 'The Sound of Music'?
Why would you want to know someone who knows Prince William?
Even tough guys have feelings and believe me, everybody hurts,
life's like that, just do what you can;
and don't clockwatch, if you've
got a spare minute, have a coffee, chill, just be,
why would anybody want to rule the world
when we could all be average? Life's like that. Deal with it.

Watercolour

2007-09-24T08:55:00.000Z

Since I passed fifty, I've felt them breathing down
my neck, itching to make me take it up,
but only over my dead body would I agree
to sit on a hill with an easel, a folding stool and a sunhat.

Watercolour! The Complan skies, the tea cosy trees!
And they make you wear a fisherman's smock,
and grow a beard and sport a jaunty yachtsman's cap!
And they send you to Coventry if you even whisper the word 'cubist!

Then there are all the lifelong learning opportunities,
the summer schools, the U3A groups, the Readers Digest manuals,
and the DVDs about fixatives and sable versus synthetic, the exhibitions in
church halls, the extra burden of an art box on coach holidays to Southwold!

There's no way I'll give in to Mastering Washes and Fine Detail,
to Keep Fit or Holiday French or Silver Surfing or Family History;
for how will I have time to develop that late style where I broad-brush
my lust, ride a bicycle through my envy, drip paint my rage?

Metamorphosis

2007-09-24T08:54:00.000Z

1
better if someone with a clipboard came along
who could tick off every box
issue you with a final certificate or licence -
'no more trauma' (subject to occasional MOT)

2
but the 24 hours have always been the crux
(days are where we live)
and we career about with a head full of should
barely noticing the ratio of
footfall to floor space

3
how do we stop the 2 a.m. rollover
when our numbers never come up
yet the wheel spins and spins

4
or we get let down again
or some random thing reminds us
and we're staring again into
the terror of what's in between -

5
the void
the space that defines the figure
the sempiternal darkness -

6
if you believe
saints, holy men, kamikaze pilots
there's only one way to go
pour trouver du nouveau

7
straight in

Domestic

2007-09-24T08:53:00.001Z

You can't work the plumbing out:
its morning helicopter assault.

Your sewing hand makes empty gestures
like ET's bicycle across the moon.

The cake looked OK
but inside a chasm yawned.

You had no rapport with the houseplant,
it died within a week.

In the cupboard, the ironing board
barely hides its thin metallic legs.

The washing basket lets ghosts through,
ragamuffin, unstarched.

You could blame parents, genes, chance but that won't stop
the washing machine's black curses, the sinkhole's loveless void.

The Haunted House

2007-09-24T08:51:00.000Z

The terrace now gentrified; the flowered wallpaper and the utility furniture now Farrow and Ball and IKEA.

You typed at the gate-legged table inherited from your grandmother, but here's a workstation, a TFT, a Vista-enabled PC.

How did you old guys get inspiration with an aspect like that? The yard, the washing line, over the wall next door's outhouse? Much better a garden room, a patio heater.

And I doubt if you dusted much; as the paper piled up you probably forgot. Yet now e are Dyson-immaculate, allergy-free.

It seems we've come a long way since then: today you'd be a podcast or a download. No one can explain the persistence of the book - an old, slow, fusty unsustainable technology.

I see they had to keep your blue plaque, though few of the jogging iPodders stop to read it, too busy outrunning the heat death of the universe.

And your voice? Do you really think it was so unique? Do you think it still rings down this replastered stairwell?

Today's TV psychics would hunt down that ghost, reduce it to a guest spot, trap it in the eaves where it made its last stand: finally cornered, raging, beyond reason.

Escape

2007-09-24T08:48:00.000Z

It was the ceaseless restructuring,
the necessity for new build,
the depleted skills base.

It was the changing remit,
the cosying up to the market,
the need to be in pole position.

It was economic inactivity,
it was plummeting production levels,
it was this sunny day, these spring trees.