Category — poetry

The wind beats my cheeks and blows back my hair as I stand on the breakwater gazing out to sea.

sentry I

wind: pummels cheeks
blows hair, unkempt, across face
catching eye, distracting not

as I search the scudding clouds
and foaming waves,
a swirl of whiteness, green and grey,
the cormorant and black guillemot
patrol their beat, cry for my attention,
ignore me and plunge
for their cold fish supper.

after five hundred years of watching
a lone sail sets its course

and now the fishing boats return
men in industrial overalls
Foillan Beg, Lenague, Coral Strand 2^nd
Genesis of Peel, Aleena,
stocky, thick set queenie-catching bottom-dredgers,
The Manx Cat, a “Sutton work boat out of Peel”
with two deck hands and a cargo of crabs
bright red buoys contrast with navy blue,
a swath of rust pours down the side,
dirty green nylon nets hang down.

oily sheen on the water.

The boredom of the long ferry journey
hearkens back to another age.
No internet connectivity,
the flicker of the TV glimmers hope
but it is Sky News -
repetition accentuates tedium.

I imagine we are on a spaceflight to Mars but I already only have one hour of laptop battery left. With two years to get there and two years to come back (you would hope we would be spending some time looking round when we arrive) the question of the moment is what to write in my remaining laptop hour?

the condemned man drug free
draws in deeply the sea air,
wonders at wind-born birdsong
and absorbs the sun’s facial caress.
instant relief,
a care free moment that will end;
the lure of the laptop-reconnected.

Geoff Smith has by now been forgotten
Not remembered by his peers
- they’re all dead
He was a single, simple man,
A gardener who liked his life
Although he died never really
Knowing what it was all about
But there again
Neither did Copernicus!

Yellow, smoke stained walls alive,
Breathless, coughing back an
Evening’s abuse of much abused bodies
Shoulders hunch over enlargened stomachs
And half filled glasses; half empty
Promises of better times, unkept, uncaring

Sallow, time engraved carvings on
Faceless faces, well known but anonymous,
A collection of portraits
Hung for a lifetime then
Stored in dark boxes, out of
Sight and soon not even memory.

This is a duet with both parts to be read simultaneously.

The soul destroying factory – buzzum click
Eats away at the brain – buzzum buzz
Like a maggot let loose – buzzum click
Driving me wild – buzz buzz buzz

Day after day – buzzum click
The same monotony – buzzum buzz
The same pain – buzzum click
The same dullness of mind – buzz buzz buzz

The routine – buzzum click
Even the tea breaks – buzzum buzz
Are boring – buzzum click
How do they break free? – buzz buzz buzz

At night the pub – glug glug
The freedom, drink – glug glug
The same every night – glug glug
- gets boring.

The moderns factory
No whirling cogs
Or cranking shafts
Clanking through steam
And greasy bearings.

I look around
Even the bins
Are clean but I
Can hide behind
The noise that shrouds
This place in silence.

I scream a silent scream
Desperate amid the
Degeneracy of progress
Impersonal,
Practical,
I scream.

Under clear blue cloudless bowl of sky
Lay I, with sweet smelling grasses and
Wing-fluttered butterfly, accompanying crickets
Chorus in the meadow hedge
And small boys search and stoop to
Scoop them into jam jar summer cells.

Into the cooler trees I wander, though not a murmur
Of breeze to mop the August brow
And how at height of silver sun
I fall inert into the arms of one
Who cares as much as I and worries not
Of things to come, and time goes by

hot and sweaty rush hour in June
lots of people wearing office clothes
clammy, oppressive, tiring heat
yearning for ice cold water in a pint glass
mind is at home in the back garden
with no shoes on

wallet check
tickets check
bag check
hat check
phone check
son check
let’s go

dejected, sat on sofas
travelling ever so hopefully
they arrived disappointed
as usual
happens every time
memories of 1966 linger
even though they were largely unborn
England expects

 Have you heard of Mary Mary,
the first of the gardening bimbos?
Charlie Dimmock in a frock,
she liked her flowers in rows.
She’d plant them all down the middle,
her borders exclusively grass,
well, you’d be a bit contrary
with your first name the same as your last.

[Read more →]

morning after the storm
feels as if we are in the tropics
nature at it’s loudest now as then
birds all celebrating survival

The barbecue has 2 inches of rain in it this morning. Last night’s storm is one of the heaviest I have ever experienced.

The 1984 – 1986 series of poems are ones written in those years. They have been in a book in one of my drawers since then and never looked at. I hadn’t actually realised that there were more than one or two but there are 23 in total and I will be posting them all in the 1984 – 1986 category of poetry.

Having forgotten all about them there is a little overlap in words and ideas with what I am writing today but I thought they were worth showing anyway. I was in my early twenties when they were being written and only a year or so out of college.

In scarcely a shelter of frost-bitten briar
A tramp slept soundly his last night of sleep
A bottle of whisky, last drunk of at midnight
Lay empty beside him poor company to keep.

Oaken boughs cracked and small ponies shivered
As the teeth of the wind and the ice made their mark
But this wretch was no wiser to wintery weather
And died in the gutter, alone in the dark.

No searchers came searching, no body was missing
In this soulless black of a January night
And the snow drifted deeper, a ghostly white cover
For the corpse of a brother who lost his last fight.

Middle class suburban Sunday
Boredom, traditional and tedious
Black and white film on television
Followed by Dickens and religion.

Outside the rain falls steadily
Clouds closing sooner, a soon
Forgotten afternoon of Monopoly,
Tea and quarrelling with sisters.