Saturday 30 September 2017

Freedom

Sea swim.

Salt under the back scratcher. 

Red and green seaweed in the bath. 

Joy in my heart. 


Purple knees hold memories. 


Freedom to choose. 



Second childhood

Throwing back the comfort blanket,

the old man from his chair,

picks up on a conversation, 

with a small boy playing there.



Another Haiku poem

Swansea boy Dylan.

Always under his mantle.

Write you are then like.



Friday 29 September 2017

Haiku

Dads are our prophets. 

They never, ever leave us. 

We are their freedom.


Wednesday 27 September 2017

Haiku

the man with cancer
daily swimming in the sea
damned if it will!





More Haiku poems


childhood village tear
for away in the manger
Sunday school pinned

me see sea see me
onto me shall salt sea be
sea see me see sea

the cuttings blossom
not sure if to live or die 
problem of the root

verdant sedum rouge
on the wrinkles of autumn
will not melt the snow

Haiku poetry is: 



Mellow September?

My latest illustrated article on Swansea News Network 




Haiku


old songs are ear's tears
we remember how it was
and we hug again


Monday 25 September 2017

The thing in the night


Just beyond earshot
the night will not say. 
It is creeping reptile black
a heartbeat away. 
Through the window now
and I'm under the sheets!

Sunday 24 September 2017

Parking mad


Parking mad

I know said the Devil,
  outside the church,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the adult,
  outside the child clinic,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the far-sighted,
  outside the meeting for the visually impaired,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the running engine,
  outside the rehabilitation centre,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the fanatic,
   outside the gym,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the youth,
   outside the senior citizens club,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the unfit,
   outside of the playing fields.
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the adults,
   outside the playground,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said the mum's and dads,
   outside the school,
     let's park on the pavement.

I know said every driver,
   outside of common sense,
     let's park on the pavement.

No!
  said the little man,
     but nobody listened.

In that case, said the mob,
  let's get rid of pavements,
    I hope you are all listening!


Sent from my iPad

Saturday 23 September 2017

Teenage


you stretched deep within the machine
reached way back to the source code
changed "you are the 1" to 0
and you broke my heart

Reaching for the word


Like the biggest blackberry 
just out of reach,
the words are never sweet enough.
So, describe the thorns, and
the blood will remember.

Friday 22 September 2017

Down the seas of my history



<Audio>

Down the seas of my history,
the dreamboat ploughs the rolling waves,
the high tiers of tears,
stinging, just there, where I used to be.

Aquamarine in dream, but grey
in reality, the slag tips and the stone
where we played, short-trousers ragamuffins,
with mum waiting at home for tea.

Little light bulb station road,
haloed in watering eyes.
When darkness beckoned, adventure bragged,
and dragged in backward glances.

Pals we were, dwarfed by the ghosts
who were there. We knew. We stepped
onwards in the flow of growing up.
The round trip of home for supper.

The wooden bridge, the slag slashed path.
Our hurrying feet, sure but unsure,
span the wide-eyed orange moon, of Dan Dare,
up there, in a spacesuit full of bated breath.

Take not the chapel path, nor by the pub.
Meet not the prayer books or the beer blather.
But tread the boys' own secret paths,
of a communion, dark in conspiracy.

Knowing there's an answering to the village,
in the mist above the moon ways.
Where the book of times was written,
recording all our sins.

Even 'ere we shun the whispered rules,
even our mothers' solemn contracts.
So runs the demon spark of youth.
Go on! It is! Go on!

I could race around and down
these warren ways, for all my days and days.
Awash with sangfroid broken tears,
and the anguished love of years.

Long gone, and yet alive for always,
when we return in thought,
to our ruin in the ruins,
on the slag tips and woe betides.

Lay the ashes of my thoughts,
where the torn pages smoulder.
Lay them upon my village times,
and sprinkle over my slumber. For

I've been back there again.
I've hugged them all again.
And I will return there again.
To laugh again, and again, and again.
Surfing the tides of my history.
Running in mystery.

Wednesday 20 September 2017

Second-hand prose


Second-hand prose

<Audio>

The faces, held with bated breath,
in a book's dusk-dusted pages,
congregated in the pews of twilight,
drawn down upon their ages.
Each slice of their hearts delight,
desiccated in the spume of tears
torn from their rants and rages,
to lay warm, wrapped in dust, 
and fast within the pages.

I can smell their sadness there in must.
The hands that held the book,
cheek to cheek, dusting dust,
swirl fast a gazing loving look.
Or, cosy in brown paper shroud,
you haunt the time machine, 
tip toe through the mausoleum,
wherein we all do dream.
Waltz me forever, tight to your bosom,
in love's long pirouette.
Down all the fastness of our time,
for not one minute do I regret,
our second-hand repose.

Monday 18 September 2017

Great Brexit


Great Brexit

Britain, on the catafalque of lies before Europe,
who, sitting around the empty, rattling tumbrel,
whisper of the Thuggee garrote. Tighter.
Britain, to be interred in the mausoleum of Empire,
by those so minded of the glory days,
that they forget the way back.
Their misty ways, now so irresistible
to the dew-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool
old Englanders of the viceroy plumes.
The flag is at half-mast. Going up or down?
The last post or the reveille?
Never before has so much been ....

Uncle Jim's Poems for Children

The illustrations

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1976481244/
My poems for children now on Kindle £2


Poem titles:

Flight of sand
In the deep midwinter
Piggy
Butterwhy
Lazy lizard
Modern man
Robin
Fair feather
Tulip
Water boat
Mariah, Mariah,
Icecream 
The three bells
The frog
Elf
Snowy the abominable snowman 
Beans
The sun
Purple
The race





Wednesday 13 September 2017

The frog



Look through this frog's speckled eye
  and you will see black spotted spawn,
and all the wriggly tadpoles swimming,
  in the well where he was born.

Why do you think he is watching you?
  With his skin shinning wet and bright.
Perhaps he fears you will pick him up,
  and stop his trip tonight.

For he is going on a long hop,
  across the fields and dales.
Until he finds that same old well,
  where he was born in Wales.

He is looking for a wife to marry,
   so she can jelly lay frogspawn.
and all the little froggy eggs
  will be shining in the dawn.

They will leave them there in a gang,
  where they will grow little legs and tails.
Until they too will go on their long hops,
  to find their own homes in Wales.

And big mister froggy?
  Well he is living in a stream.
Eating worms and juicy slugs,
  having forty winks, and a dream.

Saturday 9 September 2017

Abstract


the salt pans of tears
                     flamingo city
the cat rolls            upon the shoreline
                     high ho
            silver 
  moon
            stop
                    the snow falls
            scarf
  breath
on                                   Christmas Eve
sing     anolis carolinensis    
of
                        the breeze 
in one window
                         out the other
  fire me timbers
  safely gathered in
  the wood pyres

the wooden cats soak up the sun
          cooked in their fur
             to sleep upon
                 the night

twiddle my rock-cakes

nash                                             nash
         nosh                           nosh
                  nash          nash
                           nosh 
 nish         nish           nish         nash
         nosh         nosh        nosh

the sun explodes the horizon of infinity
at the back of the front of the black hole
such a very small t whiskey
down the highlands of your mind
    bottoms up

the Who tore up the Sixties
did they not
as the red wall absorbed everything
                   and was gone
home

Thursday 7 September 2017

Always




Brittle boy girl lamplight corner,
  glow chip shop darkened streets.
Night held breath, fingers sparking,
  the knowing generation meets.

Where loadstone days embrace,
  the itch of destiny unfolds,
then do faerie days, as must away,
  for in bated breath - lo, and behold!

A child no more. No more blushes,
  in church hall breathless musky dances,
tiptoe on eggshell furtive crushes,
  shared in surreptitious longing glances,

winks the eye of the hormonal storm,
  surfing the waves of angst and joy,
running stampede, heartbeats thrumming,
  when boy meets girl, and girl meets boy.

Saturday 2 September 2017

The mothering of the day



The iron thumps, mothering the washing
in front of the fire tales.
Night turns it's back at the window
where the ceiling light winks goodbye.
Clock tock, iron thump, tick clock.
Cinders tinkle, the grate clinks.

The radio thrums the world
to sleep, eaten deep of the chair.
The stair curtain ruffled by ghost's
cool hand across the room.
The doors are closed,
the fire guard in place,
the ironing piled high
way up to bed,
out of time
out of day
out of tock, tick tock, tick tock ...



Friday 1 September 2017

Full pelt

On the adventure doorstep
of which way today?
 Run!
Full pelt down a childhood morning,
warming to the sun of play,
forever fibrillating and wide in eyes.