the night the moon broke
the night the moon broke
at full tide on a high tide
the lighthouse
the lighthouse
flashing on all the little wavelets
but no moon after waiting
the obligatory
it’s broke
it’s broke
i’m telling you the moon’s broke
the moon’s broke
and no one knows it
yet
Vaccine saved our gracious Queen!
Long live our vaccinated Queen!
Vaccine saved the Queen!
Vaccinated her victorious,
Happy and impervious,
Long to reign over us,
The vaccine saved the Queen.
Without the shadow of a doubt
Wouldn’t it be interesting to live in a world of shadows?
Not the dramatic shadows of the movies, of the "Third Man" sort,
but the shadows from a hair brush on a slanted sunbeam,
or from a fork in the candlelight of a dinner.
Of course you would also be a weird shadow,
but would your thoughts be the same?
Would real shadows be unreal and unreal shadows real?
What is the shape of a shadow of a doubt?
The angular shadows that move in the sun, hard
against a red wall or a dazzling white. They are dichotomous
within the thinking in the blinking of an eye. A light that flickers sending
the shadows peeling. The stare renders them a negative positive
fluctuance. A retinal searing of slow time’s resolution.
All shadow is night without lights. The obvious ambivalence
of a line drawn where no line is adumbrated but upon
the shifting borders of a light’s fleeting presence.
A shadow cannot be scooped up and stored in a box;
or trapped in a jar. Can a light?
Without the shadow of a doubt I am sure doubtful it can? not?
the bridge of throngs
there’s a queue of muses
on the other side
of that great bridge
across that great divide
all have tickets A to Z
waiting to pass
through the guts of me
waiting to pass
their messages to you
i have their words on
the winds that blew
their lines of poetry
from them to you
they are unruly bunch
these poets dead
jostling and pushing
to get inside my head
although
some seem to be quiet
reticent slow to raise a hand
at the back in their chair
as if it were planned
to sit it out
to wait and see
what scribe am i
what i profess to be
that i fear no critics view
that my eclecticity
is deemed poor in taste
and that i need pity
will i seek to conform
to be the norm
or will i say it
as i am bid
and having done so
close the lid
yellow warning
false alarm -
it’s the man with a pole
who listens down the hole
with a yellow jacket on
not the hole
the man
with the pole
he has not come to fill the hole
that is the goal for the man without a pole
who has not yet arrived to fill the hole
so a real alarm
that the hole will be a permanent feature
of worry when i see any man in a yellow jacket
with or without a pole
who looks down into my hole
there see
i have taken possession of the hole
please send yellow jacket
ASAP
I’m a sea swimmer ~ I don’t care
I’m a sea swimmer
I don’t care
I’ve got sea salt
All over my hair
I’m a sea swimmer
I don’t care
I swim out to the point
Over there
I’m a sea swimmer
I don’t care
Summer or winter
Ice deckchair
I’m a sea swimmer
I don’t care
I guess you don’t either
But there you have it
I’m a sea swimmer
I don’t care
IN THERE
to look at
in THERE
[ yes {in there} no ]
the future in the darkness
in the mystery volleyed
between protagonists
the one surviving passion
signposted by curves of
sentience in scent intent
on irresistibleness
in lines aye
in the falling in up into into
pheromone_d automate _d
a strabismus towards a point
that is blurred in secrecy
adipose padded of genetic design
co-evolved with desire
sublimated as it is consummated
in a pull of such gravitational
collapse as to obliterate thought itself
in the mirage of sentience
for desire in satiation is desired
perpetrated engorged disgorged
ablated in the ultimate act of
procreation
go on
deny it if you will into your misted mirror
but clear the fog and the corruption
of the silvering is red real enough
the amalgam is mixed
the race is on
the consummation is imminent
move on now
away back down
back off
your time at the front is over
count your heartbeats
refocus your eyes
and sleep the torpor
of forever
thereafter
spike up man
those spikes - you know the ones
like tiny antennae
the ones that adorn walls when broken glass is in short supply
the ones that say we hate bird shit so go away
fly fly you you ... fly
or we’ll net the municipal facades and pediments
no birds or wildlife in this city
pity
but that is the decision of the council of war
we’ve jelly-resined them tight
glistening in the shirtless sun where
the oiled club-footed station pigeons roost no more
the squashed traffic scuffles over corn are gorn for
a new dawn is born for ladies walking their doggerels
coffee taken with no scrapping of crumbs
it is so quiet that we cannot even hear a
nightingale sing on the parquet floor
shares in spikes have ballooned
what could ever prick that bubble
what could ever come home to roost
not even a single feather on the sunset of a breeze
COVID-19
how some went in and never came out
twenty twenty yet it’s called C-19
a bit unwell what’s all this fuss about
a tickly cough nothing at all to shout about
i’m fine and checking the twitter scene
how some went in and never came out
but i am fine and feel such a lazy lout
fussing over a slight temperature well i mean
a bit unwell what’s all this fuss about
off my food a bit and can taste nought
can’t even smell the cut grasses green
how some went in and never came out
a bit of a headache so please don’t shout
that i should ask doctor to be seen
a bit unwell what’s all this fuss about
time to go in to see what it’s all about
a bit of oxygen before the ventilator screen
how some went in and never came out
a bit unwell what’s all this fuss about
is marsupial?
a panorama of brutalism
that landscape of mars but
looking back at the earthenware
that is cracking crumbling in looking up
with wizen eyes at escape velocity
maybe a promise of a promise
that what was there once
maybe be there again
the perseverance
of the roving
of hope
Editors!?
I had a their prescription for a poem,
but the pharmacy would not dispense.
Seems my muse had not signed it.
So the mountebank rattled some dried snake oil,
but that turned out to be invisible think.
Ah well, the surgery is open again next month
for the next edition.
I’ll throw a few pebbles at the bedroom window,
my muse is sure to be stirring.
thin skin
a float
with just (a) small weight
keeping me upright
in choppy
the water
all the bait has been crabbed
bare hook (J) with
nothing to attract
even a small nod
to say yes
he is was a poet
not one of the greats
perhaps
with their reams of
tartan flies
no bait you see
~~ shallow water ~~
no small sleight of hand
no flick of the wrist lines
no
more like thick guy ropes
that hold contented down
when flight was called
clipped wings hopped
after them
looked at their soaring
{{ flying south }}
while he wintered
oh yes he wintered
a dream on the trout stream
and there it ends for me - just there
where it dips under the dressed stone
of the railway arch beyond the fence
on its old way down from heol las
the last run for my worm upstream
trolling the trout ledges of lunch
i have walked from the gasometer
to here and fished there and back again
to the deeper downstream flow of the wide
sandy ledges and rushes where the best
run for a brook-trout to take a sunny worm
is in the shallows of the golden rapids
flashed in flash and tugged to my hand
slippery and bagged for dinner and
across the neath road and on to the stone
bridge arched beneath llansamlet church
where grandpa sleeps
here the flumes are narrow and fast
where the chickweed has tickled many
a trout into the hand of this boy and
his dog slowly walking across the midge-
meadowed mid-dayed heat to sit
for a memory to be set for old age to
fish for a bite upon a hope and not
as false as the narrow tributary lies
for the water breaths much promised
but which they could not sustain
during a long summer when the fish
turned belly up white and sad finned
walk the last flat fields of meandering
before the mystery of that last dive
into the past of heol las has turned upon
a thought of a retraced step and a bag full of fish
for the last worms are expended
the long tired steps turn to walk
back home to the hearth of a frying pan
and a meal of stories shared with my dog
who is sleeping under the setting sun
where we meet
where sand meets sea and sky
never asking why
we meet here
we leave here
so many things ride
upon the next tide
upon the next day
the movement of the sands
of our time
hail fellow well métier
a century anthologised by its poets’ potted biographies
signposted by the words they have shaved off their time’s
erudition expressed as the development of their oeuvre
métier genre or the preoccupation with what the subliminal
muscles of the mind can be pummelled into yielding as carrion
for the circling literary historians bent on consuming all on
the prairies and the tundras of flaxen words tumbling like brushwood
until down upon tired knees of a prey chased to exhaustion they are
consumed with no passion but for the marks of their last breaths
and the blood on talons that rip it all to shreds to drink of what
will satiate the avarice of a reader consuming but never giving
one cussed sod for the stones in the furrows of a poem’s turning
when a season draws due tallow and due resonance when
at the final yearning finds its peace just there
wasted?
everything that ever lived produced waste products
even the ones that lived on waste products
produced waste products
recycling recycling
ergo - we are all shit
even continents subducting at volcanic margins
spew molten shit
faeces faces faeces
the big bang ?
wasted more theories than nothing ever didn’t
Missed cake
I think you’ve made a big mistake
I’ve not got any cake
Now in your seat mum has sat
You really are a silly cat
You took my seat away from me
Now you’ve given it up of free
I think you’ve made a big mistake
Although ownership you’ll not take
For any miscalculated decision
You treat the whole thing with derision
OK my girl I’ll get you a little piece of cake
Looks like it was me who made the big mistake
Mollycoddled you certainly are
Ha ha .. ha ha .... ha ha ha
the poet’s mortem
tiptoe
through the flowers, the poetry
of the dead ones, graven,
green, watered but bowed;
browned what bloomed,
the ones they anthologised,
the ones they strew before their
messianic arrival and their departure
in the gospels of the past.
can we entrust these be a photo-fit
of the real poet and the real meaning?
assuming there was meaning in their writing.
how can we remove today from the past?
the past from past lives?
i mean, come on, write something of yours,
try to envisage the future drawing you, when
you still have pockets full of touch stones,
fluff you wish burnt rather than displayed.
so how can we wear your coat?
how can we describe the weave
when all there is is mothballs
and camphorated memorabilia?
time being bottle bottomed and distorted,
the want to know what you do not want us to know,
but all we have is what you wanted us to know,
for you knew us as we do not know you.
you took your heart to your grave,
and dig as we will,
all we find are bones.
mother-in-law
she always said "he had a good innings"
then that cricketer died
and she was stumped
"she died" he said
but then again he always did say that
until he died
but he had a good innings
i said
the sargasso sea
the words that are becalmed
the plastic words
the slippery elver words
the journeys ahead for them
even
the ones that slowly sink longingly
wait
listening to the old songs
moving when we were
moving so slowly just to stand still
moving as slow as glass pours years
eyes shut as tight as breath allows
the third eye crying how could we
something something something
forgotten now what it was
other than the ache we had for it
it it it
drips as a net at a damp window
nets the cold night’s ineptitude
looking for that chink of light
through those curtained days
around and around looking
for something we would not recognise
if we ever found it
and yet the music incanted that it
did exist somewhere this something
the others dancing knew
didn’t they
and why if they did
didn’t they say
didn’t they tell me
no matter how the music spoke
the language was foreign even
as the beat beat it into me
wait
wait
wait
