don’t bank on it

don’t bank on it 

the queen and the emperor 

jostle in the food bank queue;

after you, no after you,

are gone.

morning dew

morning dew

served a light breakfast 
of thought upon a blossom

floating to the ground 

 warm 

      and slow 

and long 

               and 

beaming

in the morning sunshine 

that is lifting 

in the silliness of a breeze 

that is turning 

the new leaves fresh upon the trees       

and when it settles 

on the nettles

bluebells ringing in a dream

now i ask you

was there ever such a forever

on this morning given dew

Home goal

Home goal

They buy the footballers

They sell the sick

It’s the home goal

We cannot kick

yesterday the chapel vestry

yesterday the chapel vestry

two doored the vestry lain in trust

the elders around this purple tablecloth

crocheted with dust upon the

peddle organ’s music and the 

hymn books long in being and yet

and yet it holds welcome for

the errant child Sunday schooled

by the pearl necklaced teacher 

scripture prizes hard ridden out of galilee 

the sunlight fading from the obscura 

inside outside the village long ways 

his a week of sundays   wet wet sundays 

the cold walks of a slag-cobbled childhood

toeing the line of god (is) love (is) god of the

net curtains and the fox stoles their status 

processing until their final days are laid out

by the mother of all mothering sundays 

she closes both doors quietly without lifting 

a single speck of dust off a drawn breath

Twitter and Facebook

Just deleted my accounts

Storm

Storm

The soft music inside is calmly calming;

and thoughts of summer so slowly flow.

The storm outside is going nuts;

throwing a tantrum, spitting, thrumping.

  Just go away will you!

Go and lie down in a darkened moon;

let me clean up after you.

Tch. The toil of winter teens.

whatsisname

The silver cloud

Mortuary trolley comes and goes

I’ll miss old whatsisname

Spring

Spring

The birds are singing in the rain,

and although the sun’s gone in again;

Spring! Spring! Comes bounding in,

blossom dressed, decadent as sin.

when

                            when

not one word more

could so implore

one word less

so undress

a poem

then

Lotus days

Lotus days

Bring me the wasp days after the buds of May

have run their summer course. When the honey dew

has settled and closed our sleepy eyes that have

followed too long the sundial’s slowly curve;

closed our ears to the chirrup’s chirrup to

the fledglings roil across the summer lawns;

that yawn upon these daisy daisy days,

and tilt a straw hat to the sun,

upon another daily daisy dose.

The town crier

The town crier

I cry for Notre Dame?

Or is it the bees cause feeding,

frostbitten and transparent 

as the tears of the ghost apples,

my shame, so lame, retro-redacted,

in black hole of my eye.

The eternal sadness

The eternal sadness

When he took to his bed,

his bed took him. 

At one time he had been

all that youth should be.

Then he took to his bed,

his bed took him. 

who is the boss here

who is the boss here

don’t you dare stare at me

poetry

you are not in charge of me

i am the poet and

i’ll publish and be damned 

the critics

i’ll throw away the lines

they are cheap

they are cheap

apotheosise you 

never

what is this poetry thing

what is so special about

acceptance

here are my words

eat them

or spit them out

like i do

the last gas p

the last gas     p

at the roots of the snowy mountains

under the frozen tundra wastes

the methane 

of tomorrow’s endgame 

hastens forbidden thoughts

blast

blast

a motorcycle?  no

a train or a plane??  no no

the red arrows???   no no no

       the nuclear bomb’s

detonate winds

arrive

          and

the scorched page turns

rebel rebel

rebel rebel

let’s all join #extinctionrebellion 

overpopulate it super fast

then sit down together to

form a government that will last

and last and

at last we can disagree with it

and form #extincionrebellion2

for I’m at the end of my tether 
the blame doesn’t lie with me

it’s you & you & you

global beacon

global beacon

there’s a queue at the top of the mountain 

they are queuing to see the view

but they look in vain       for

in the valley it is just me and you

and you and you and you 

and we are not part of the queue

Top of the morning to you

Top of the morning to you

Spring inhales on a bruised nettle day;

shushed, the bluebell choir, wait;

the sun woodpeckers the lectern;

the day begins with birdsong.

Vermillion

Vermillion 

The global warming worm has turned,

fed by wet, annealed by dry, it is

of monstrous size; it will devour us,

and I will tell you why.

We think we rule and deserve to be

forever rulers; never shy

to claim ownership of we are / will be 

forever wedded to we need;

for however could we be

who we are. Cannot you see

how silly billy it is to suggest the car,

or the modern life, belie that we

need we, we need we. Need we die?

Oh yes, we die; for the worm has turned

and the insecticide is turned on us.

So dig your grave my friend 

and no more fuss. 

The fuse is lit. 

A foundry man

A foundry man

Picture this man. Pipe clenched 

in a face of sweat, shovel poised

to deliver the sand to the mould;

just there, where the moulder says 

is where, and his muscles do;

time after glistening spot on time. 

His grimace a smile of a winking that

he can perform any task you ask and more. 

He’s been around, you see, knows all

the dodges and how to tease the youths’ 

slow growing stature. He’s a work man,

a hard soft man and proud of it. 

He knows his place because he made it 

his place. It is his cog, and he knows

above and below all, that he is pivotal. 

He is his own man in the perfection of

his labour that earns a hard man’s respect.

In the face of the furnace, sherbet water 

drooling to cool the cramping sweat,

he is a rod of iron in the softness of 

this hard life of ours. 

Hive an idea that ...

Hive an idea that ...

My mind is a hive of words.

Sometimes they wiggle their signal bellies 

to indicate where the pollen of a poem lies,

and off they flies to collect the nectar

from the read thesaurus blossoms, to 

feed it to their runny honeycombs,

where the grubby words are sleeping;

and golden of the royal jelly, set from

the sun in their eyes, all faceted by

the lines of the stained glass windows

of my other mind, they fly away and

drone on and on over the meadows

of my dreamzzz.

But I don’t mind at all.

Scythe

Scythe

Harvesting the cornfield of memory,

the scythe sparks a stone

and it reverberates;

the chaff burns,

the barley is roasted

way up the sun. 

The staff of life sustains

the scythe to swing again,

and we gather ourselves

together. 

Let’s go

Let’s go

They are playing one of the old songs.

Let go, let go, let go.

Fall back and soar

over summer again. 

Let it be always summer again.

That nugget of gold.

Open your fist.

War, let’s play war!

War, let’s play war!

They marched home, all the way back

to Talpow Terrace and Rifelman’s Row;

where we now play with their ammo pouches

drawn fast on the high noon of their tallow;

moist with tears dried in the hallways

of the tenements of the speltermen, spitless,

grimed on tongues and metalled to forget. 

Slag’s hard eyes, blood let and congealed,

black-hearted, shining in deceit, calling foul

and a twisted ankle of any stride to escape

the dark night of their discomfort. 

One might well ask

where are the ghosts? Look around, for

they are here alright; they are here

under the wings on heels of your fright. You

play war, then you will get what you did not

pray for

listen, listen; there, the voices, there the

voices, begging under foreign suns 

in foreign tongues for the ultimate.

It’s in the stone walls of the houses,

the tired hearth of frugal suppers,

down all the days of our childhood;

down all the dim alleys of their dotage;

time suspended in the names of the streets.

Trip dark and twisted, with no street lights to

cleave the facade of a child’s dread dream,

with mum nowhere to be seen.

It’s an act of course; it’s all an act.

The street names of the departed,

for the departing, leaving the actors

in an empty auditorium. The soliloquy 

of a poet on a misguided tour of the 

battlements of the past. Get the bus

out of here lad, for you don’t belong.

You don’t understand.

You don’t belong.

Be gone. Be gone.

For you the war is over.

Dear old RS.

Dear old RS. 

Dear, old, and dead RS Thomas man. 

Still you palm the back of my hand,

as unready as yesterday for today’s

calling of the wild words that have

gone to earth again 

in the hedgerows of my mind. 

You move my arthritic thoughts to

finger the Braille of the blind page,

and having wrought my reluctance 

to accept the divine, you guide and

trowel my poem into the wrinkles

of the straightened line.

 ‘Divine?’ Yes, at long last, I give you 

such utterance, you, on your knees for me,

on the cold stone floor of my unbelief 

that I could ever say now, the things 

that you said then, while I carp on 

and on about the speed of youth. 

Alas, I have to say that your dictation 

seems like a plagiarism to me, 

whose only gift was to open 

my mind and let your words soak in. 

Stop! Stop now. 

And now I address myself, for you

are long gone, way past the last peninsula,

to fly with the birds over the indifferent sea. 

And me? I need to think this through,

for when the sun comes up 

decide I must; we must.

Do we plough this furrow?

Release the hens from the wild pen 

in your clouds. Or do we not?

For not would be the end for us;

would it not?

Under the Station Road

Under the Station Road

Night as black as the culvert

under the stood boys’ stomping - go!

The lime stalactites and the rat urine,

worry scurried in all the bravado 

of a stooped boy running the

gauntlet of his youth. 

Done it! Did it!

Din I?