where art collides

click here for part 4

I wonder what the birds think at dawn when no man is around. Contempt I would imagine for why would anyone want to miss the best part of the day? The early worm will have gone!

I look out of the window and see the slightest of movement of leaves in the small plant pots on the doorstep. The air in the conservatory is still. The remains of yesterday lie scattered on the lawn. A table tennis bat, dismantled hammock frame, a blue plastic hoop and toys spilling out of a shed door that these days never closes. Can’t close.

That shed’s days are numbered. It is going to be a barbecue area with a grapevine growing round the side. I don’t do many diy jobs these days but [Read more →]

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

Miss Dunleavy is getting married. It’s the passing of an era. I am very happy for them both. I find it strange that not only will I not recognise Miss Dunleavy when we pass in the street but she won’t even be Miss Dunleavy!

There is so much I want to know. How did they meet? How did he propose or didn’t it work like that? When and where is the wedding? Where are they having the reception? Where is the honeymoon? What will her married name be?  I wonder if she has started to practise her new signature. etc etc the list goes on. I will probably never find out.

Goodbye Miss Dunleavy.  Goodbye, and good luck.

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.

There was something very poetic about that glass of wine. He had one on the stage and I too had one sat at my table at the front. There was a bottle next to mine. We were both making a statement. We were both also enjoying ourselves hugely. He hardly touched this glass but I made steady inroads into mine. He had a job to do. Mine was to listen to him. Drinking the wine was part of it.

The wine was not top notch vintage but that wasn’t part of the fun factor so it didn’t matter. The music was incredible. Django Rheinhart meets New Orleans. Nobody spoke during the show. It would have been an insult and none of us wanted to miss a single note. We all clapped and cheered at the right moments and at the end of it all members of the band clearly appreciated the support. People play jazz for the kicks.

Afterwards we I stayed to talk to him. Joe bought a CD and got all four autographs. Reach out, reach up and go.

Django a la Creole, Lincoln Drill Hall, Friday 4th June.

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.

Born in God’s own county, I first breathed Yorkshire air,
was bathed in Yorkshire water, was fed on Yorkshire fare,
but now I live in Lincolnshire, where men are coarse and loud,
not like we shy, retiring Tykes, taciturn but proud.

[Read more →]

the birds are happy
remember it’s a sin to kill a mocking bird
joe’s done a good job on the lawn
now he’s watering the autumn fruiting raspberries
they are about 18 inches high
it’s a lovely evening
23 degrees whilst I was on my way home
see that barrow in front of you?
I think we should redo it
the spray is so refreshing,
it’s on the really light mode
out comes a cup of green tea

Once upon a time there was a friendly gargoyle who never had a cross word for anyone and always had a wide smile. His one failing was a habit of spitting, and, because of this, Gordon the gargoyle was never spoken to by anyone except the very youngest of children who didn’t realise that spitting was a nasty, unsociable habit. Then one day a grown up who, up until then, everyone had thought was a responsible person decided to switch off the water supply to save money for the city council and so that he could go on a courtesy visit to their twin city which was in a foreign country many miles away over the sea. All at once many more grown ups decided that they hadn’t minded Gordon’s spitting and if anything they actually liked him doing it (although just because they wanted Gordon to do it didn’t mean that they thought it was OK for all the boys and girls to do it). They kicked up an enormous fuss and paraded in front of the city hall until the grown up responsible for turning off the water relented (he was the mayor by the way) and to everyone’s joy turned it back on.

For a short while people made a special effort to go go and see Gordon gargoyling, but very soon all the hoo hah was forgotten and everything went back to normal. The only people who would talk to him were the children, but Gordon didn’t really mind this, after all he quite liked the boys and girls.

The end.