the thin morning air
there is nothing as thin
as the thin morning air
breathing slowly over
the sea over there as
little as a ripple as is
as calm as a mind
in our lowly abode
on the rocks ‘neath the sky
so never ask why
for its just over there
the next breath
the next breath
in the thin morning air
the age old story
how the gnarled endure
when the dust from the drought
of human love burns for
no mountainside is too high
or cold valley too dark
to bear the fruit of time
when time itself is the wire
that supports the vine
the love of humankind
producing a vintage
for tomorrow’s child
coming down
mountains unfold into heather
in a laying of sunshine
sheep follow a few trees
bunched both in the morning air
grey stoned fists soften
bracken crackles
grass greening in the
gleam of a slow decent
the morning in rapture sighs
what a sight for sore eyes
it is
sunderland
sets the sun upon a rockpool’s gold
of a winter in longing for summer fools with
buckets and spades and castles with moats
high tide flowing over sand dug boats
full of shrieks and shouts and bailing outs
by kiddies immersed in jolly roger creeks
and feathers atop of the castle’s keep
with seaweed around all slimy and deep
oh come on my summer friends and friends
run and run into the rising sun and
of this and more we’ll speak and speak
when in old age our knees start to creak
and a smile is the worth of that rising sun
and a cheery tear life’s slow setting sun
recalcitrant
only one pebble will do
likewise only one word
as the pebbles roll in the backwash
the words dance like ribbons on a tree
the wind and the sea are the rush
to find you standing still there
recalcitrant upon all three
the sun is no help or the moon
or the blossoms falling like snowflakes
now there’s another cliché for you
to grasp one of those before it lands
upon a pebble in melt
or a ribbon of the stamen’s pollen
turning away a breath so deep
that all of them halt for a split second
you have it
i have it you say
but i venture a snow globe that you have not
all is settled then
please don’t shake the sea tree
i’m surfing a wave
tenby evening after a storm
now is that a storm moon
far away above the restless harbour
is it beguiled by the colours
seduced by the moods of
the houses riding the palette
of the town sloped away
far above the rash of buoys
red upon the dark sea’s weaving
between the mooring’s chink
the sands pull high and dry
the rain squalls beached the
town lights laughing goodnight
my sons and daughters
the moods are about the place
in a painting of tor
to have and to hold
the rock of ages
in the rages of sea and time
the walks we did under the tor
are a memory preserved
in this painting of happiness
unsurpassed divine
that boathouse at laugharne
and time lays like the slate tide
either side of the curtained windows
reflections slide
down along the mud they go
or ride the fright herons to their ruin
turning as always upon his words
reserved for the sitting of
things that never change
the castle upon the sunrise
the sunset along its length
storm damaged time and again
always sad
the passing of a tree of time
one is stunned in the passing of the falling
the rings of time silenced
the stones in the roots jammed no more
rained upon muddy time flows again
the stopped has started its decay
beetles and fungal slow to tears
remember the saplings
and cry no more
there’s that poet with the suit
the poet wore a suit
every pocket was stuffed full
with paper pencilled words
crumpled both
the weave warm to hand
the smile fortitudinous at
the threadbare words falling
through the fingered holes
collecting in a turn-up’s dustle
patched elbows shining in thought
of that pencil sucked and chewed
even in the loosening of a tie
the shift of a posture moved in
longing through the night’s window
the morning’s sleepiness hesitant to place
just one word
now and again another word
hesitant waistcoat’s pocket watch
the knitted jumper’s snug restrain
eyes wearily raised in a look at me
what good the pocket ‘kerchief
to wrap said tears
to smudge said past life
into sniffed smears
to cuff a sobbed snot
and one long long breath
rearranging suit and tie and
stepping forth they say
there’s that poet
the one in the suit
scruffy bugger
the signal box
the signal box
back in the 60s
the shiny levers
with their release handles
mutton cloth
that handed caress
the colours denoting
a child could imagine
hard black and white
the levers that pulled
the points too hard
for a child is wincing
at the counterweights
in the basement box
look
a phone straight out
of a Wells Fargo western
spin the handle
shout the spout
earpiece platted to the wire
we are
jang jing jang
coded in call
to another box
where in thrall
the wood is shining
the hands of time
going jing a jang jing
lime a tombola box
of winking eyes
some white
some red
pulled in this box
shining of time
this signal man
sipping a cuppa
and the key to the line
to the driver leather
the lights a flickering
all of the way
to Timbuktu
for this signal man
in his signal box
by his coal fire
with his cup of tea
and me trying
to pull the levers shinning
in my mind
the mutton cloth
many coloured oiling
memories foiling
until the red signal
in the signal box
falls asleep
with
jang a jing jang
and a
jing a jang jing
jim jim
sunny boy
the sun comes up
down in the trees
it rises up
you know
and gold coins
chase the phase
of ivy leaves
you know how
the lightening sky is
chasing pink away the grey
and in opal lessons
the clouds build in
the beginning of a day
bobbling down
through the stark
some crows again the way
it branches out in my mind’s eye
night’s closure squawks away
the cat rubs the more for food
for the nights been long you say
look
fool’s gold reflected in my tea
the way steam mists
away with you my sunny boy
for this won’t pay the day
the sun will high
and come down again
and i’ll sit like this again and say
the sun comes up
down in the trees
it rises up
you know how
it comes down again
isn’t that what they say
casus belli
the screech of broken fingernails
chalking ‘time’s up!’
on ultimatum’s black day
walking infinitely different ways
away from bumping backwards
into the knife of a final say
the scabbards hang loose
the swords are drawn
in blood
isn’t that what they say
another sad chapter
in humanity’s
one up two back
decline
how long is a held breath
before death intervenes
and has the last word again
fools
weekendoff
everything is bad luck in the poverty of times
a wake’s indecision is this morning’s thin gruel
how can i be someone if i don’t have the medals
to wear down the front of a mirror’s inversion
of time when ‘what‘ was the question oft asked
along the length of a rail sleepers’ improper precision
to pace an early walk on a hungover sunday from
saturday’s indecision revised and rerturned
over and over in a mind that slow minded
not to mind my redress of the poverty of times
for afoot in the long grass is the night’s lately moon
and another weekend is over too soon
for janet
and so here we are
funeral day
and the new patio isn’t half finished
they will have done a bit more by the time
we come back from the crematorium
they are not turning the soil there
with a red digger like ours
they / we are burning memories
deep into the patio of the past
the flowers of ash
would make good fertiliser
on the wind from here to the garden
is but a breath not taken
one foot in each world
we withdraw one from the sinking
and place two on a brand new patio
how nice it all went
type hypo ness ness II
hypoglycaemia
the low water line
where poems shoal
waiting for the feeding flow
when fat words are cast
the tideline lengthens
flotsam collect fires
to burn my fingers
braille in singing
across the ribs my heart
and then it is coffee time
milky with cake
and sweet breath intakes
a smile across the words in line
then full tide says follow me down
for the ocean is deep and depends
on low tides to turn the silt into silk
don’t you dare think it
again and again
written by SGL2i
high on estuarine
that long wait upon the tide’s slow breath
until the blush mottles the cadaver night
and the ghouls hoot ‘return them soon’
we stand transfixed as today whispers
that yesterday also whispered in
the turn of the tide’s mud pack
when the moon in all its beauty falls
cold upon the castle walls and the calls
of the owls hooting in the stark trees
where not a breath of the wind’s call
disturbs the night slide of the sea
back there beyond the black point
tread carefully now for
the salt marsh is stilled by wet
and the things that shine are not stilled
the mood moves everything until
well you know how it is
enough said about the thoughts
gathering at your hearth’s comfort
TILT TILT
porcupined in quills past
as nails recall the traits
that were not time’s perforce
but in time produced
what quills always deliver
the sepsis of the wild genes
that is nurture’s true harvest
memory reminds
you are what you are
what you were before you were
what you are now
and then …
[this was written on the toilet
dictated in the time it took for
my pinball mind to bounce and rattle
until the machine cried TILT TILT
and in all of forty five seconds
a new poem was delivered
steaming …]
postscript
then the night closed in and
it slept on a freshly ironed sheet
until
lit by your eye was resurrected
TILT TILT
you may cry all you want
the lint is bound in iodine
sarcophagus tight
in the book of the desiccated
the dust settles
