propitious
my mother had a clothes prop long
outside of the tent of the garden it rose
to blow in the winds of the wind’s highest sky
i was knee high to a nettle back there in the fifties
leaning on a neck over looking life in the eye
before all the fences blew over them days
and i flew far away on the wings of this memory
the power of a prop in a blue sky far away
grief
for what can words say
of breakdown
in a way we know that
they can’t
but words are not all we have
between us
there is my hand on your shoulder
as you shudder
and mutter some other words
intelligible only to my touch
for comfort
is all
alone
mumbling of mumbles
down the long down streets under a castle cupped in sun
run the pubbed and chappeled ways all the way to a bay
of days cockled and mudded far and away way out out
to a tideline lost in the haze of a believing that
by this evening it will be lapping the sea wall
opposite the mermaid and the pilot and the georges
of the infamous mumbles mile while we wander
as aimless as aimless was meant to be at our inhalations
of salt and vinegar on fish and chips and of course
go on my son and have another one for the crazy golf is
of course as coloured as any sunset through the
leaves of the trees that purloin the gulled boats
drawn up high and mightily dry and rattling their lanyards
at even the slightest breeze that counts our steps
along the promenade at southend to end at
the end of the pier show of fisher if-men and a
lifeboat tolled of untold tragedies and a gift shop
of parodies and a pub of melodies in chorus to
the high bells on a swell pulling on anchor chains
and buoys as yellow as mustard on any hot dog
that could not compete or any of the flowerbed’s
pretensions from the council east of the slipways
green slimed slipping and mothered under the shrieks
of kids and dogs cross-leashed in their growling at
the end of a day’s outing totally satiated by the
realisation that the names of the rocks might just
trail a sea tendril or two way back to the true
oystercatcher days before the fields were housed
with these wandering lanes spidering all the way
up to that very same castle pale in the milk moon
watering down the village lanes to slumbering seas
beaches and everything that made this a day
the preternatural being and seeing that everything
has been done and done proper like all day long
and all in just the tide of one day’s long excursion
the sea splits its trousers
the sea splits its trousers
a rip as long as the long curves
tear back along the white repair
sitting just there on the flotsam line
with a wet behind and feet drawn up
on the jagged rocks black there
standing on a feather and the broken shells
walking backward along the bladder wrack
popping the questions can you see it
the magic fish the red crab on the horizon
of my return in jest upon a white horse
charging no fee to gallop along
into the sunset of a red beaming
or the dawn of the such and such
of a surreal realisation
two held breaths
1.
sometimes
you need to slide in a sinus forceps
slowly ever so slowly
into the loin of a poem
open the prongs and let the pus
a kidney dish (or two maybe)
from a mind infected with turmoil
a draining of the cold fires
the exhalation of a held breath
pus somewhere
pus nowhere
sub-phrenic
i heard that said
it had me in stitches
gave me hiccups
so i held my breath
2.
there is an ancient poem
that has carried a held breath
for ten thousand years
here take it
now
close it
i have replaced the breath
ten thousand years made me gasp
and i feel so ancient today
tomorrow is another day
they always say
but
ten thousand years
is a long time
to hold a breath
sometimes
sometimes my poetry is boiling like mud
spatulating flatulating bubbling
releasing puffs of sulpherated nonsense
to no great height or beauty
and
other times it is like a geyser
hot glass calm and clear blue
of inestimable depth then
whoosh
a rainbow as high as the sky is
reduced on mountains in a stream
of words so cold they could cut you
in between
in between i wait and wait
to discover who’s pulse
the effluvia dances to
who is there where when
whoosh
we sometimes catch a glimpse
whoosh
since the sun gave birth to day
at the swelling of the thigh’s gap
where the pheromones fall softly
in one’s mind nothing that can be
fulfilled by looking upon this falling
or the replication of time and time again
can be thought of in any coherent way
other than the overwhelming knowing that
onward is the only way forward
as the waves flow over the divining thought
that waters under the earth are the font
of these tears at the beauty of belonging
where the genome says now go we do
and to do thou likewise is the consummation
over every trajectory throughout history
since the sun gave birth to day
autumn in laugharne
in river wrapped
and poetry rapt
drawn down around a castle
a spot of sun
in a hedge field spun
away from all the hassle
let us hunker down
in this fair town
through all the snows of winter
and breathe the mulled
wine of the pulled twine
of this our christmas glitter
butterflowns
pinned in many a camphorated drawer
ne’er the hedgerows ne’er no more
the meadows sweet the summer flowers
ups and downs over entwined bowers
pressed under blue skies end to end
hot white grasses making do and mend
of the ways of running of naughty boys
and jam jars full of summer’s toys
and up and over across and down
just one step ahead of the pollen crown
of summer at its highest highest point
melt my eyelids melt anoint all
the days that we thought would never end
of a summer recalled recalled reverend
The Anglican bishop of Leeds
It’s the Anglican bishop of Leeds
The Anglican bishop of Leeds
The Anglican bishop
The Anglican bishop
The Anglican bishop of Leeds
It’s the Anglican bishop of Leeds
It’s the Anglican bishop of Leeds
The Anglican bishop
The Anglican bishop
The Anglican bishop of Leeds
legacy
the tears of industry
still leach into the sea
off swansea built
on the salt of workers
in the furnaces of history
glowing the one side
dark on the other
west be the king
east be why bother
my brother
before coffee
before coffee
smoothing a smooth cat
coolio
listening to gentle piano
on the radio
on a pearl grey day
in november
not a breath of wind
a leaf or two falling
with the piano keys
a whitening lobelia on a wet garden table
hint of blue in its blanching
crazed above a glazed pot
and of course that vacuous feeling
needing
coffee and cake with butter
along an intake of a breath
as smooth and cool as the smooth cat
waiting to lick the butter from my fingers
and oh to linger
here forever and a day
did i say
cliché on a sunbeam
put down
placed in slow motion
a sunbeam for a poet’s cat
to sit the days away
the back tears of an eye
strained for the words
warm between the moments
when the movement is too slow
to see where it is going or
where it came from
this warm feeling given wing
a grainy recollection
walking and walking
into that black and white image
as grainy as time is
a conjured past in telling
a story at once contrived
to fill a vacuous precedent
of having the feeling of not
not quite being there where
you appear to remember being
there or thereabouts
autumn’s mis-thoughts
falling in love
with all the missed heartbeats of
the russet leaves under a held breath
i once saw a leaf bounce
on top of all the other leaves
and i thought of the autumns of long ago
before you were the tree of me and
see now how so many autumns
that winter springs upon such a day
when this once falling has had its way
with love in falling falling dear and
oh dear me oh dear me
another falls at the other’s falling for
an embrace that never will release
such a thought as i have had just now
crumbling leaf-like in the palm of life
to die in the autumn of a poet’s day
so you may fall for me
or then again may not
how we wish
for that hillside in the rain
yet get bullets once again
how we kneel
in the bloody mud
tears mixing once again
sliding slithering down
that familiar hillside in the rain
anger’s rancour blinking hell
lashes dripping eyes screwed tight
the knots that bind us to that night
of hollow darkness in out souls
we really are such bloody fools
do you see
you are thoughts
the alchemy of acquaintance
finding your everything in nothing
nothing is contrary in that everything
that is the ultimate way of seeing
and seeing is believing in you
you do see that
don’t you
this government
your error is thinking that they care ~ for be sure
they’ll write and sell their memoirs and retire to their insular islands
they’ll leave us up to our necks in the shit that they have created
they will not even deem us worthy of a laugh or a distain or a second thought
or worthy of any sort of retrograde consideration
that is the truth of our errors about their ways
and there in nothing we can do about it
a revolution is out of the question when there is sport on the box
alcohol in the system and holidays to places where they would never go
vote! dear god ~ ‘we like him’ says the minority who form the majority
your error is thinking that they care
not that they care about your errors or your terrors
on their insular islands in the sun
i’ve lost my cloth
the yellow one
i thought they were all together
now
i’ve lost my cloth
i’ve lost my cloth
i thought they were all together
now
not streets away
the layout of corners and doorways
where the light refuses to pay homage
to the humped blankets of the night
the peeling maroon bottoms of doors
scuffed and flaked columns creamed
in dilapidation across this pocked town
backwashed and walked in trepidation
of prowling thoughts turning down
under railway arches and subways
urine the vintage aroma of a wrinkling
but
who dares
but will not go
where despair stares
where the stone walls weep down
the long-drained ways of under here
below where the lights blaze warm in
shop windows richly comforting in
the buffering of money
as it always has
and yet these dank corners and doorways
alleys and praline darks vanishingly small
in calling out what is the point of it all
the backwardness of this cornered map
these catacombs of decorum
where the effigy of a shiver walks
who will dare follow i ask
because anyone with any sense
would fear to tread
but i will not ask you that
not yet
the leaf autumn
how to describe this one leaf
on its own autumn wind
to rustle up the words
the stem of a thought
that will dry my tears
at the birth of melancholy
when down and around
i chase my thoughts
at
summer’s end
at
autumn’s beginning
and at the end
winter’s cold beauty
where are the words
that will fall this fall
with the leaves
with the fingerprints of snowflakes
misty yet wild
on the windows of my mind
here and gone in an instant
while a leaf joins another leaf
in the maelstrom
of another leaf and another leaf
another leaf falling
falling falling
stirring these words
around and around
on the hillside of his saying
and we stare
at these poems of his
slowly realising they are a mirror
of our poor thoughts
that we thought were so city grand
but out here in the hill tops
the dross is blown away
but reveals no gold
just the hollowness of the wind
crying for us
for when we cannot cry
we stare
