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
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
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
swimming into the sunrise
it will come as no surprise that
although my legs were purple blue
there was that smile within my eyes
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!’
~ 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
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
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
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
oh,
go on,
pick me up,
go on
crunch me into biscuit flakes.
scatter me to the storm,
for old times sake.
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
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
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?
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 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!
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
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
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?
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
:: 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
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
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.