Thursday 31 December 2020

on the dunes of the year

 on the dunes of the year


on the dunes of the year

the fences slip

the sand drifts

what we did is blown everywhere 

for all to see

what we did

has exposed the long roots of

the marram grass that ends

on what everyone else

may think

and we never know do we

what they are thinking i mean

how their tides flow

how the long light falls

all we know is that everything changes

the fences are secondary pickets

for at the end

our days are numbered thus

cat cake

our cat likes apple and cinnamon cake

i like our cat

our cat likes me


cos i give her apple and cinnamon cake


she likes that


our cat does

Wednesday 30 December 2020

post-mortem

 

post-mortem 


on the scent of a promised flower

of a summer we may yet live to see

in the depth of a meadow’s bower 

may you lay down low against me


and embrace the moment foretold 

when to foretell was a difficult taste

to bake in an oven stone cold

a virus that was spreading in haste


and in this downing of days

down all of the reasoning of ways

lay no hope at the feet

than a bedraggled shroud sheet


that we will greet hand in hand

at the boundary of the boundary

of a promise promised land 

social distanced deemed never to meet


for enough was never said 

that they (it’s always they)

would understand the way

that the virus is caught and is spread


far and wide and woe betide

the oxygen of yesterday

will run out today

and force the old songs that we deride


tip all the faith of youth

over the precipice 

of a perception 

that such an island uncouth


in a bravado of youth

is not an interesting notation

except to the bloody fuddy duddies 

that are not a worthy foundation


for tomorrow is a new world

and what was culled was not

anything essential but

at best irreverential


and to beholden as ‘them olden of days’

at the 2020 - 2021 boundary

when the virus was retooled 

as a reaper of the unwary fool


the corollary of yesterday

being the repentance of today

the corollary of today being

that which is now lost


never to be found


remember 

never 

is a word oft repeated

but rarely understood 


the dawn dipper

swimming into the sunrise

it will come as no surprise that

although my legs were purple blue


there was that smile within my eyes

Monday 28 December 2020

pedestals

pedestals 


the ancients were

like you and me

searching

for eternity


the cathedral citadels

where we mmm in awe

were built to elicit 

a simple ‘cor!’


Sunday 27 December 2020

~ mattie’s gutter ~

    ~ mattie’s gutter ~


emerging from a pipe from somewhere,

we never asked of the spoiler where

this white water came from, milking

over the long rotting hanging bits

and over the silted concrete flume,

flowing in five fingered fountains;

ask not what pathogens we licked

or were licking at our rude health 

running through those childhood days

of feral exhilaration at every indignation 

that raised the hackles of childhood,

that when inkled, would be snuffed out

under the next shower of time to go

on, for the next adventure awaits,

init boys?


droppers

droppers


maple peas in a sack

all the leaves of autumn rolled

into shiny brown balls

they feed them to their pigeons 

the men who have skies in their eyes 

flying way above the smoking chimneys

where the ghostly white droppers are

tumbling them down to earth

to the click of the tongue clicks

calling them down to the loft with

it’s white lattice above the landings

feathered to the fluff

flat caps shadowing the sun’s squint

the blue expanse above the factories

the smoke and the grimed toil

homing the beauties to a flap

but why do they come back to this 

at all

Saturday 26 December 2020

after watching a BBC documentary

 after watching a BBC documentary 


    now

there is mercury in the whales of the faroes 

and the birds they are dying in kind

for the tunnels from the past to the future

may be turning the tides of the mind

    then they come all the sentimentalists

with their databanks of absolute validity

when decrying of ‘this ‘barbaric slaughter’

are they talking to you or to me

   for the blood you see staining the harbour

is arraigned in the mete of every man’s quota

where the eating of whale meat and blubber

aughta keep us strong upon a stormy sea

  and the ropes and the boats and the daring

bring home the winged harvest of the time lines you see

that are etched on their wind-red faces preparing

to risk everything thing for you and for me

  and for our kids say the beautiful mothers

in their coloured houses and national dress

for on that day there is never any mourning 

just our stress on the rare life of these isles

and one imagines what the smiles of the elders will be

when they hear the faroese kids fondly say

that this is a must place for me

blushes

 she put tassels on her tits


she put tassels on her tits


and she swung them around like this 


she put tassels on her tits ...


oh I say - I say 


blushes

autumn leaf

 autumn leaf


oh, 

      go on, 

                  pick me up,

go on

crunch me into biscuit flakes.

scatter me to the storm,

for old times sake.

Friday 25 December 2020

droppers

droppers


maple seeds they seemed

like all the autumn leaves in flight

rolled into shiny brown balls

they fed them to their pigeons 

the men who had skies in their eyes 

above the smoking chimneys

the ghostly white ‘droppers’

brought them home again

Thursday 24 December 2020

the robbing

                    the robbing                   

                           ah 

                      the robin

                  christmas card

                is bloody freezing


                  christmas  card


                    and starving


                  christmas card


enjoy your mince pie carol snow scenes


                       oh oh oh


grand jester me knows

the grand jester me knows


stands the church clock at the midnight hour,

of this old year that was so sour;

oh grant me sir, grand me sir,

and brooke no argument or pleas;

stands the church clock at ten to three,

is there covid still for tea?

Wednesday 23 December 2020

it’s personal

 it’s personal 


it’s personal, who we admit to tomorrow,

who we deem to have procreation’s permission

to perpetuate what is personal in such an impersonal world.

i mean, who would you? i would probably insist, but

that is personal, it is what drives inter-personality when 

all could be asexual. (oops😱) i mentioned the word, did you notice?

is that what you were thinking of all along, and if not, why not?

ask yourself why not all or not any of this? 

tomorrow is such an important day,

don’t you think?

and what if

 and what if


and what if the sun does not rise 

as it always has but now does not

the cat cannot read but looks at a book

doesn’t know the start from the finish

but will sit on the book and think of washing 

it always does and always will

but what if the sun does not rise

who will feed my cat

i ask you that but you have no bright ideas

no eureka bulbs come on 

no dawn of thought

bugger! bugger! bugger!

Tuesday 22 December 2020

mum - it’s late

mum - it’s late


fish scales, dark and light, silvering

the scour on the marbling of time;

thoughts from before my mother became

my late mother, and the long years

when the remembering was blank;

but now, peppered, a mixture of good and bad,

of light and dark, of smiles and tears,

that were spilled and were mopped up.


for now, all one can say is sorry, 

more to one’s self than to any diviner

of inner thoughts who might twig

that "mum - it’s late" is not an admonishment

but an apology.

oh please - not the knot

 oh please - not the knot


put your finger here

and i will tie the knot

not the umbilical - silly billy

what a pretty shroud you’ve got

sewn all down one side

with a label on your toe

as becoming as a white bride

but now it is the time to go

for the marche funèrbre

is sighing down the day

and we have all gathered

to see you on your way

so long 

   farewell 

o bachgen bach

rest now is all we ask





Monday 21 December 2020

twitter

just a click

and we meet ‘there’

online is sometimes so out of line

until the planets align 

but such sign is oft denigrated

as simply histrionics  

Well yes?

 Well yes?


Oh, do get to the point! My poet friend.

How long have I known you now?

How long have I shared you?

I need no enigma to unravel,

no eureka ‘ah, I get it now!’ 

at the last gasp of your lines.

Please, please tell me it as it is,

now before the reception closes.

Oh my friend, my friend, now you have made me cry

with your real voice iced above the spittle;

your tears flowing in my eyes,

your sigh my sigh.

The drizzle is closing in and running down the shutters

that close up the days when you never said a word,

when all was bubble wrapped. Now? 

Well yes - now I see, 

at last you are speaking to me 

alone.


Sunday 20 December 2020

re-melding

 re-melding 


it’s the song of the melding

the blending of dark into darker

of slag-stone roads shining wet slide up

down along the long moon hours

when around any corner widening eyes 

might stir faster feet wary of the darkness

of the wayward stone’s tripping and the

trundle of nonchalance in flaring nostrils 

and frowns so much more fleet-footed

than our bedclothes would ever warm

on an icy night such as this

laugharne

 laugharne 


heron tides its broken boats,

words left tidelined, stranded, 

picked over, kicked over,

over-collected here in laugharne.

castellated over cottaged lanes

as we thought it should be;

but here it is, as it was when he wrote, 

candled in spindrift wince,

all alone, 

high and dry,

and ever so bloody mighty.

scatalogical humour

 scatalogical humour


if you take the high loo

and i take the low loo

my turd will be in sewerland 

afore thee’s 

but me and my true shove will never sheet again,

on the bony, bony shanks o' dump don’t man


Saturday 19 December 2020

poor try

 poor try


i am tapping around the room with a white stick. 

all the windows have fallen out and are bricked up. 

every aspect of poetry fell out and cannot return. 

if i am to write anything now, where is my pen?

what can shed light on the enigma of sightlessness?

what pulse can come where no heart is?

newness alone must not be called poetry;

if anyone at all calls!

it might be orphaned at birth and misplaced. 

their minds might be event horizons,

might deny the parallel word of verse,

might insist that the mirror reflects what isn’t there. 

that a poem’s virgin birth upon the detonation of the old

will be an alien civilisation with a sixth sense called nonsense.

the bricked windows will be doubly dumb. 

the voice in the wilderness will be just that;

a wildness beyond understanding. 


Friday 18 December 2020

the clichés of hours

 the clichés of hours


take out the snow

the dawns and the sunsets

the moon and the stars

and reflections of mountains

and there you are 

take the lonely out of loneliness

the mountainous seas

storms in the rain

or warm sunny days 

explaining the meaning 

of life in the telling of death

put aside love and the broken hearts

‘deaths and entrances’

the bird songs and the flowers

the clichés of ours

i am, i do, i think, the ayes, 

the very clever emetic of words

the short lines the long lines

the ones in between 

all the dross on a ladle of molten gold

the mettle of emotion for ever enthral

chop the autumns and the golden leaves

the summers and the winters

the spring that believes

the pudding the syrup the cloying of words

shapely text and the cleverest spacing of lines

the short lines the long lines the prose aching shape

the halcyon metaphors similarly the simile

alliterating the sublime

and believe you me (or not)

what’s left is / might be

the beating heart of poetry


or have i lost the plot

Thursday 17 December 2020

grating britain

 grating britain


britain is rotting

the municipal magnificence of mercantile success

is grime soot darked in lodestone pediments  

or crumbling pre-pre war housing as renovated slums

or the new build boxes for workers in thrall  

to consumerism that lecher the leacher of souls

and when the carolling snowmen have turned to rain

never will we see our old britain again

in deceasing december

 in deceasing december 


the day darkens, rain is coming, they say

it is the lunatic asylum season,

these long dark days of december.

through the big window the day darkens,

reflections of table lamps pop up,

the pale blue sky pales blue to darken

a promise of rain upon a book’s last leaves 

rattling in the wind’s turn over;

and there i am reflecting upon my reflection,

fathering further the past’s surmise that

begs the curtains be drawn on the black thoughts;

for inside me the brightest of past decembers 

remembers the comic’s antics and the smiles

that would never end - even in these dark times

the drapes sleep me a dream upon a big sigh.


Wednesday 16 December 2020

:: who cocked kill robin ::

 :: who cocked kill robin ::


who cocked kill robin

i said the sorrow

with my plough and harrow

i cocked kill robin


who’ll parse the reason

i said the book

i’ll take a little look

pass me the treason


all the turds in their hair

fell a-knotting and a-bobbing

when they turd the bell toll

for poor rock throbbing





Tuesday 15 December 2020

murmuration

 murmuration


murmuration of letters

a murmuration of words

turning pages this way then that way

then putting the book down

then picking up this 

and picking up that

one is the trigger for a library of wow

this section is better than section now

or around in this section are words in fact

or there the fiction of stirring emotion

of turning the pages

of spilling the words

in a cloud of punctuation 

apostrophising the stance

of an astounding and stir

of letters that are sparking in an internal eye

mimicking the starlings a-cry in the sky  

roosting to rest or rising from roost

they give this little ditty 

an unforgettable boost

Sunday 13 December 2020

Estuarine

 Estuarine


Flickering leaf-light, carolled on a red wall,

as the cat sleeps on and on, the sun rises slowly.

The coolness of a sigh warming to the thought

of a walk to the estuary of the night, to

watch the tide turn in favour of what is

next on the menu of time’s feast.

Keep ajar the door between two minds,

two thoughts that crutch each other up the hills; 

close enough, just, for the mysteries

to be pulled long, and fresh enough to spin into 

the weave of another thought that was a

pattern not finished without two needles

clattering against each other’s colour; each other as

apposite as the ripples from a thrown pebble that

sail out and down to nothing in dawn’s thin light.

A sigh that it might not, is not welcome.