NHS

 

NHS

so what the hell can I do?

when 2023 takes over from 2022

come on

seriously

why can I do?

at 73 i have done my bit

nursed a bit

but I mean ~ shit!

it is bad out there

but what the hell can I do?

die quietly?

the sad advent calendar

the sad advent calendar 

the sad advent calendar 

every degree of warming

every centimetre

of ice collapse

of sea rise

stations on the cross that we have to bear

there are more stations than there are trains

express trains running away

the bridge on the river why collapses

there is no way back

enjoy the ride

ticking off the eye-spies

the slow immersive

boiling of the crabs

the winds of change are blowing

the wind farms generate more ire than fire

deforestation of the mind’s serotonin

self-harm the new religion

the rash of stigmata of the icons

is purloined by death

the deserts are flooded

the rivers run dry

grave diggers are digging their own epitaphs

the grass has withered 

it is time 

it is time

the book of the train of thoughts is finished

the engines of doom are underlined

at the end of the platform

all change all change

this train terminates here

it’s the end of the line 

storm sea swimming

 storm sea swimming

it’s a narrowing 

between the getting of each other 

in the pulling away

in the ignoring of the rocks

the backbiting 

the seething

the unrequited angst

again and again

then

 then 

they demolished the house 

and chopped the tree down

the lawn is ten feet tall

there are brambles on the wall

the gate is on one hinge 

half open half closed

isn’t everything 

these days

forelock and country

 forelock and country

the king is in his counting house

counting out his money

the serfs are in the food banks

eating bread (no honey)

they dressed up in their finery

on the way to church

they left all the nodding forelockers

outside in the lurch   for the

nondoms have taken it all away

all our hard earned currency 

it has gone in the usual way

they have broken our society

a papal prayer

 a papal prayer

the previous pope is dying (n-1)

pray for him says the current pope (n)

but what do we pray for

a fast death

a slow death

a postponed death

ecstasy in heaven

a deathbed confession 

a death bed revelation

a thank you 

wild sea swimming

 wild sea swimming

we take the storm

and make our storm against it

pull away from its undertow

shoulder the thrusting

the rage of the pebbled feet

the split lipped salted rime

damn the bruises you you

come back here now you you

horizoned opinioned beast

here i am 

steadfast

reading a poem by buhowski

 reading a poem by buhowski 

                      rattling 

             like a flicked pinball 

       in a poem

by buhowski 

looking over my shoulder 

        under the bed

mopping up the spilt drink 

emptying the ashtrays 

looking up at a smile

that is gone as soon as it is noticed

the door slams angry

morning morning

 morning morning 

that shrub and that shrub and that tree there

waiting every morning for me in my chair

and at this time of the year not much

happens as such

we are all waiting for spring’s gentle touch

and the doggerel wood if it only could

bark the wind clean of that last leaf to leave

and the cold and the snow we never believe

will ever vacate the thorns by the gate

or the wrinkles on the kale growing ever so late

a movement of breeze in the trees of my mind

snoozing gently and if you’ll be so very kind

to fill up my cup with another hot tea

and leave this morning to nature and to me

this moment as precious as anything wise

when the winter on its knees is starting to rise

to the occasion of an occasional thought divine

for you see this morning belongs to me it is mine

so a deep breath and a slow nod to it all

as i draw around me this woollen welsh shawl

here comes the visitor cat entering left stage

but that is a story for another morning page  

 somewhere between 1 and 0

that spiral galaxy

with the black hole at the centre

where between 1 and 0 is stretched to infinity 

the singing starts but never ends

the song of the spheres they called it

before it called them

the needle is stuck in the groove of thought

of thought of thought ommm

once upon a super-moon

 once upon a super-moon

once upon a super-moon 

rising ominously like a giant orange

once we glimpsed the northern lights

we listened 

with ears to the telegraph pole

dan dare talking in his spaceship we said

wide-eyed in stampede we was

never looking back upon that time

never to scuff our knees like that 

never again that once upon a time

of a super-moon in its ascendancy 

froam

 froam 

the brightest bubbles rise

but it is still froth             all

sparkling froth 

but still                   froth

spume some say

on the wind of things

burying the anchors

muffling the drawback of the pebbled voices

i do not sink therefore i am a float

laugharne yard unleashed

 laugharne yard unleashed

the door latched on the inside of

a room window-mooned pouring still

across the chaired coat  the fag packet

pencilled in a controlled disarray of

crumpled papers

beer bottles  lamp  light  the view

estuarine sliding in and out of thoughts

twisted as trills in snake-mudded drills  eel

words listed with the trees down the crumbling 

to the boated ventures folded on the grasses

candle lit the replica of a ghost  gone now

in our turning to unlock the door 

that hid nothing

that preserved nothing

but our pseudo-reading of him

in the price of a smoked pie at midday 

midway through such laughing 

as in brown’s today

all for one

 all for one

accosted by

a degree of absurdity 

@ two for the price

of one’s soul

a grave choice

these days

all

 all

it’s all

a bit of a waste of time

isn’t it

in no time

there’s no time at all

think about it

is it worth considering at all

or not at all

that’s all

the worm philosopher

in the base of my being 

is vomiting

self?

 self?

the self is spat at

by the wind off the sea

scalping the carapace off a numbskull

a fool errant in the irascible mitre of

the anvil to the sky to an irredeemable sea 

self? self?

ask your self 

is an echo of nothing the wind of change 

don’t fool yourself

pray don’t

cranes and lorries

 cranes and lorries

they dug the slag

with cranes

put it in lorries

down the turns

we dug the dirt

sandy by the load

dinky cranes

dinky lorries

wound our ways

their lorries 

over the weigh bridge

our lorries

over the weighing 

of time before tea time

in retrospect

from the perspective of correlations

we played the history of our time

to the dereliction of childhoods spent

too early 

before our horizons 

had ever been over read

gutters

 gutters 

it was the gutters

that we boys walked in times

mattie’s gutter emerging white

from a pipe from who knows

and ernie’s gutter flowing under the road

and disappearing into the delta grass

to emerge all oozly under the station road

in a high arched stone culvert

complete with white stalactites and rats

scurrying bravado as far as the ventilation shaft

or the sulphurous stepped gutter 

fresh from the slag tips above its falling

under the road and the railway and on

past the scrap works to don the river tawe

there were others of course

up past bethlehem chapel in that steep ravine

frogged and tin can ratted well past john’s shops

or the one that pistled red out of the gold mine

fossiled into kilvey hill deep in the quarries so minded

or the one from the spring that ran in chickweed

alongside the railway and upper bank signal box 

the glory of our gutters ran straight through our childhood

coloured our adventures of dams and fingered our fountains

ratted our hunting and frogged our days

froze our fingers or cooled our summer ardours

paced our strides through the village boundaries

questioned our where-from and our going-to

the small backyard ones banked with ashes

or the wild ones embracing their fall into the rivers

of our windings and our to and from ings 

few were cemented many were clinker-lined of old

or meandered of their own free will unhindered by tradition

by the neglect of elders and the distain of boys at play

remembered in the longevity of memory they flow

still and serene in their dilapidation and their nuance

of adventures gone to ground or run into the sands

of time for supper with hands not washed long enough

to remove the bacterial inoculations of longevity

or the romance of wet reminiscences by dry hands

endowed with parchment skin and quivering fingers

that ring the rime the tears of great distance 

for the gutters are still there running their waters

through a heart of a different hue

now where’s a thought

 now where’s a thought

not in our lifetime 

so why worry i say said

but the children you implore

how long is a lifetime i ask

does the end remember length

does nothing remember anything

is an algorithm found or is it made

is life’s algorithm anthropocentric 

how to make something out of nothing

is death the black hole of intellect

would a stone ask a nebula why

or a cataclysmic event demand an audience

cold is a distant relative of the fusion of a thought

this family tree is rotten to the core

there is no future in perspective 

only the past

the seed of nothing is nothing 

life a fast-drying oasis 

appetite eats appetite until the table is bare 

when all the philosophers are dead

where’s a thought

leave the dishes unwashed

look it’s snowing again

a book before bed

 a book before bed

lamp light

deep saxophone 

the falling open

in the lap 

of a poem unknowing

the dusk’s duskness 

at reason’s eventide

A prose poem

 

Yes?  No?  Yes?  No?

Yes!

Some worms from the compost heap in a tobacco tin with de-sliming grass, hooks in another tobacco tin, one in each of the breast pockets of a secondhand black leather coat given to me by Duncan. Fishing rod in two parts with the thin eye of the upper part through the large eye of the lower part, hook still attached to one of the eyes. 

Down the side of the terrace by the post office and on to the black path to Upper Bank station and then on to the saddle tank line. Follow that, sleeper to sleeper, past the engine sheds and take the branch line to the left past the Pluck pond. Roach are not the prey today but trout! Follow the line through the wet stone tunnel under the main line and on past the derelict Mannisment works and the cooling pond for RTB foundry Landore, with its pipes spouting steaming water. 

Coots crawk at my passing on to the Grand Canyon cut by a stream through a thousand years of industrial tipping ominously white. On the left a breakers yard of rusting steam engines some still have their names proud but sad in brass arcs. On and on to the gasometer, squeezing past the "no trespassing" sign by the tyre fitting building. 

Now, try a worm in the golden rust pebble rapids of the short stretch before crossing the Neath road hard to the small slaughter house and on to the long stretch to Llansamlet church where grandpa is buried.

Fishing all along upstream in the flumes between the chick weed. Trolling the worm sometimes snagged sometimes vacillating to the muscles of a struck trout.  The small stone arch bridge offers a seat for a while with the worm trying its luck under in the shade.

Now the last stretch past Llansamlet secondary modern school (rough) and on to where the stream dives under a culvert in towering dull red brick railway embankment wall. Hell Las is up that way, but time to turn back now and maybe try that long thin stretch of a tributary by the arched bridge.

Got a few trout in my bag for tea.

It’s a long way home as the afternoon winds down as satisfaction stirs the rushes.

Yes was the right decision!

Way down upon the Swanee river

oh i say ~ my word!

 oh i say ~ my word!

there is this torrent of words

my nose just above the waters 

turning over a green rock smooth

this cataract of words gilded

in the light of it all 

just above the surface 

flailing falling

gargling gurgling words

sluicing slithering words

from some heady head-water 

replenished by the cloudy words

the reign of words gathering

meaning gathering meaning

through every paddler deeming

to pan for gold in them there ills 

begotten of time and again the words

tumble non-stop into the abyss 

of a cavernous appetite to swim

in this torrent of words

your words become my words

and my word do tumble

in their meaning to say

what?

w w what’s that you said?