Monday 31 December 2018

new year’s eve

   
   new year’s eve

        tomorrow 
will be the same as 
        yesterday

   we all know that
 despite all the hoots 
nothing is left behind
nothing  carried forward
 that will fulfil our hopes
  at the allotted chime
          nothing
           will stir the dying embers
                   as the cat sleeps on
    the jazz player lays the blues 
       that simply fall off the edge 
          of time

each of us alone 
at the edge of
the lonely void
for there is no time 
when time is alone 

so we stand senseless 
       in the cold
  listening for hope
insides turning aside
while all down the while
    the new year sleeps
in the cradle of the early days
at the razor edge of time
  at this once and only
     poignant point

         when
  new year’s eve
      becomes
    just another 
 new year’s day
  forgetting that 
on new years day 
the new year ends




Saturday 29 December 2018

the graves

the graves

the depth of the sky in a grave stone vase
  wilted of the days bereft and thorn,
grey days that hang decrepit on chains
  of thoughts that turn around forlorn.

through the long dead we pass this life,
  reading a name or two their dates.
following the woodpecker, the jay, the fox,
  out through the opening and closing of gates.

left behind, halted in mid stone breath,
they relay nothing to us of death.
  so why not stay longer next time and say
  sorry you had to go on your separate way.
  
or shift a sod and snuggle beneath,
and leave this awful life of grief,
  and watch the passers by each day,
  watch them go their separate way,

down through the sky in that grave stone vase,
  turn up in the sky in the clouds and blue.
when the beacon graves blaze ablaze,
  i will be the i am, the you beyond you.

the hospital

the hospital 

the fear inside 
there
outside in the night
looking back 
in your reflection 
looking out

Thursday 27 December 2018

that morning moment

that morning moment

there is that morning moment,
  between sleep and awake,
when joy just is.
  before the worries take hold, 
and we lament
that the day is forged for sorrow;
until that morning moment 
calls again tomorrow.

alien universes

alien universes

when the human race is long gone,
our poetry will be lost in laptops, or
under the rubble in boxes of books.

the aliens,
who, glad we're out of the way,
will come down
and gather all our poems and
take them to their planet
to tell their people

this was the best product 
of a dangerous species.

and they will use our poems
to recreate a neural network 
of the pure emotions, and
use them as their blue moons,
or the dark clouds across their suns;
they will dine over the music
of our travails, and lament 

a verse to the cliché

a verse to the cliché 

damn the cliché when i say that 
i lay my head in the fold of this book 
and how i look forward to the end of days
and the company of the poets down
all their wending ways 

and how i long to write the one poem 
that has teased me all these years
that i might use it as a pillow
and cobwebbed deep to sleep 
the sleep of the damned if i will 



the secondhand book

the secondhand book

butt end of this secondhand book
smelling like a stately home
somnambulant deep in dust 
behind the purple keep-back rope 
the pages turn the light minded
like the crystal chandelier 
but a guide book it is not
never will it sleep again
lost upon a shelf in time
for it is mine

the blood that tastes like ...

the blood that tastes like ...

... all the tears of childhood 
that were never kissed better

... the ejaculate of the forge
annealed in the cold sweat of death

... the bitterness of a cherry
picked before its time
swallowed whole
with its guilt

Wednesday 26 December 2018

as once we did under a rancid moon

as once we did under a rancid moon

if a child wine did in winsome moons so slide
  the hard snow down the wide-eyed dusk 
to chill mine and theirs and more beside
  was this knot of boys shred of their husk

moon boys that sledged the flared 
  blue breath of secret nights
and in this their exhilaration shared 
  the rarest of rare just-mights

for when the hearth fades
  into the monochrome 
and when the gossamer threads
  are as thin as thin from home
the boys will be the boys of naughty 
  nights buttered under a rancid moon
and will toboggan from abandon’s haughty
  heights to crash out all but too soon

as the moon sets and slips these childhood
  tears frozen blue on stinging fingers
the boys grips fail and fall and no good
  night in this their old age lingers

Tuesday 25 December 2018

the foundry men

the foundry men

the factory hooters lance the menthol of the night; the
phlegm of slag, shrouded in the smoke of hade’s cupola,
lit blue by will-o'-the-wisps across the black anvils of their night; 
hard run, vein knotted, the muscular sweat of the iron men, 
sinews gaunt as leather aprons, nicotine spittled, bared in the
insane leer of lucifer, drooling at the pitchers of sherbet slake.
faces a-flash, half red in the furnace burn, half pock-black
away in the sharp crack of the foundry-sanded dark, deep
in the moulding shop, that roars defiance at the fettlers’ drills
sprite in the bottom shop, amid their gantries and their shot.

men of an iron-mind in their expediency, the immediacy 
of fighting the molten lode, bead-eyed, waltzing with death
day and night in this taut cauldron of alpha males;
as hard as nails and as canny as their throw-away remarks
that nail the new boys to the spot. 

out! tap out the flow of metal, bright as the sun,
the crust as dark as congealed blood;
spear the bot! spear the bot!
and let it urge into the mould, dodging the sparks
scorched and buzzing; 

and far from the homely hearth

the moulders’ clogs rattle the stanchions of fear,
their knuckles white at the foundling of men from boys,
in the melding of metal and minds, of dust with rust,
of an age when the iron gates of the mandarin’s mausoleums 
sigh for the men who flocked from bucolic’s green fields
to harvest this lode of hell, a heavy metal cross;
damned by their thirty pieces of silver, long before 
they die smothered, for the wages of tin is death, 

you see these foundry men? as hard bitten as they are,
red hot in lust, this is their long-sought post-coital sleep, 
and deep in this, the final settlement, they must lay
as foundry dust upon dust upon dust. 

and the factory hooters?

they gently lift the caul of a brand new day.





Saturday 22 December 2018

The black and forth fledgling

The black and forth fledgling 

Since birth, buried deep in the village, 
coffin cold, leaking little joy for this boy 
returning home to his coal fire night;
a room half searing, half freezing,
half fearing that worse is to come,
slammed inside every dour day,
that always wore the coldness of a sadness;
the lurking shadow of an inexplicable sadness.

Outside of the adult walls the pals
wove little comfort from kicking the 
dark around the corners of night, before
ricocheting from the implosion of daring do,
that sent them homeward flaring from
the sneer of night, its atavism in fright,
long shrouded hand upon their shoulders. 

Stranded on a blind dilemma; that
to leave the cold of the indoor outer-hearth, 
was to enter the cold-hearted night, that
bit blue every clinging finger, and bid
ne’er point to the dream of a destination, 
perchanced in this their destitution;
blanking out the hope for a brighter future.
Ne’er bid even the chink of a suggestion 
to dare be silvered around a feral cloud 
running the haunting moon.

All crescent moons bereft of my wish I wish havedropped behind the hill, dead above the docks;
and as the cinders fall in the grate, 
the kettle lisps goodnight 
up the stairway to heaven.
And the boy?
Well, he is away to his bed,
as weary as the day is long,
tomorrow forgone;
as far away now, let it be said,
each day is, has had ever been,
and never would be again.

Friday 21 December 2018

Village childhood

Village childhood 

Terraced from infancy in a hand-stoned cottage,
warm-palmed, sash-windowed, green door
to the womb’s dark passage across 
the scrubbed step inside. There, the more 
he stares into the black-leaded grate,
the more the fire disabuses, and as
the blowing-down smoke genuflects,
it carries his dreams back up the chimney,
and his eyes close. Out on the chapel-pubbed street
the accepting night creeps the corners away.

The same dark that, as he gets older,
stumbles him unsure-footed across the slag-stone
back roads towards that which lurks around
every corner furthered farther with his pals
as they purport ‘it’s no big deal’. 
This blackmange of testosterone
on loan from time and again 
they push daring to the limits of
the village’s turned gaze. The dark 
that allows the flash of a chip shop,
an oasis of chrome and a sweet
‘tweet now?’

Rediscovered, it is an empty sarcophagus 
blown of tattered bandages and dried tears;
toasting-fork love in the indoors of days, 
and all the ways he meandered blasé,
to make his way out of the labyrinthine
kaleidoscope of villagers, and the wicked 
ways of boys running in their full sap. 
The dark lodestone from the cradle
of his awakening to the drooping of
his final eyes wandering back there in
thought as soft as the deft of sleep,
deep in the radiance of his last goodbye.

Monday 17 December 2018

village of the damned boys

village of the damned boys

the village of dark corners, 
of boys around each other down
the back again ways, to and from and
down the wicked roads of every
naughtiness that dared be dared. 
the devil they took as they took each other 
further in their wide eyes tripping the tomorrow 
of nostradamus dimensions. we did
was their run-away motto, on the unsure-footed
slag stone roads, black as a man’s phlegm
in the metal works, or on the railway tracks
that the boys plundered, until they settled as
villagers themselves; in that cottaging of dark 
and slowly dying minds;
but tonight they are full in being 
where they should be not,
but bloody well are!
run boys
run ... run ...

Saturday 15 December 2018

the one and only

the one and only

just this far away 
just beyond 
the thought up ahead 
of the one just beyond that 
is the one poem
you know 
the ONE
just this far
away

on the 3A bus to town

on the 3A bus to town

on the 3A bus in the rain,
windows running with steam,
seems like the end of the universe,
in this grotty wet dream.

moan hot on us
this growling in sway,
three witch way women
on their vicissitudes inveigh.

white strip lights
pink bell poles
man in yellow plastic coat,
the driver wipes holes

in the concertina door
that water screen ran;
as a prattle empty can
rattled down upon the floor.

and the next stop is for no one,
for no one this day dares,
plod the flooding flood waters,
they’re all at home in their chairs.

piped rain rolls down
the vibrating windows,
soon to be in town
and shopping indoors. 

there’s a green light 
smearing at me,
it looks so happy,
so alright is he the

man (the only man)
in two seats ahead,
but he is nodding so stiffly
i think he might be dead.

through the hospital now,
pedestrian slow,
should we stop and
and ask if they know, if they know

if he’s dead? but no, better not
for the rain is dripping down
my trousers and coat;
let’s get on into town,

on this darkening of days
where a bus stop waiter, now listen, alright!
is flashing his iPhone it ever so bright;
please stop bus, stop bus, he prays;

and now a cough crawls on the bus,
giving every strain of virus to us.
but ding and
we are there, we are there at last,
so she announces, on her phone, ever so fast.

and so off i get
at the very edge of space,
the rain hasn’t stopped yet,
nor has the human race.

and i wrote this poem, all of the way 
on the 3A to prove it;
and if you can improve it 
then you’ll have to pay 
for a ticket to mark your favourite page,
for every bus in the world is a similar stage.