Tuesday 30 April 2019

don’t bank on it

don’t bank on it 

the queen and the emperor 
jostle in the food bank queue;
after you, no after you,
are gone.

morning dew

morning dew

served a light breakfast 
of thought upon a blossom
floating to the ground 
 warm 
      and slow 
and long 
               and 
beaming
in the morning sunshine 
that is lifting 
in the silliness of a breeze 
that is turning 
the new leaves fresh upon the trees       
and when it settles 
on the nettles
bluebells ringing in a dream

now i ask you
was there ever such a forever
on this morning given dew



Sunday 28 April 2019

Home goal

Home goal

They buy the footballers
They sell the sick
It’s the home goal
We cannot kick

Saturday 27 April 2019

yesterday the chapel vestry

yesterday the chapel vestry

two doored the vestry lain in trust
the elders around this purple tablecloth
crocheted with dust upon the
peddle organ’s music and the 
hymn books long in being and yet
and yet it holds welcome for
the errant child Sunday schooled
by the pearl necklaced teacher 
scripture prizes hard ridden out of galilee 
the sunlight fading from the obscura 
inside outside the village long ways 
his a week of sundays   wet wet sundays 
the cold walks of a slag-cobbled childhood
toeing the line of god (is) love (is) god of the
net curtains and the fox stoles their status 
processing until their final days are laid out
by the mother of all mothering sundays 
she closes both doors quietly without lifting 
a single speck of dust off a drawn breath

Twitter and Facebook

Just deleted my accounts

Storm

Storm

The soft music inside is calmly calming;
and thoughts of summer so slowly flow.
The storm outside is going nuts;
throwing a tantrum, spitting, thrumping.
  Just go away will you!
Go and lie down in a darkened moon;
let me clean up after you.
Tch. The toil of winter teens.

Friday 26 April 2019

whatsisname

The silver cloud
Mortuary trolley comes and goes
I’ll miss old whatsisname

Thursday 25 April 2019

Spring

Spring

The birds are singing in the rain,
and although the sun’s gone in again;
Spring! Spring! Comes bounding in,
blossom dressed, decadent as sin.

when

                            when
not one word more
could so implore
one word less
so undress
a poem
then

Tuesday 23 April 2019

Lotus days

Lotus days


Bring me the wasp days after the buds of May
have run their summer course. When the honey dew
has settled and closed our sleepy eyes that have
followed too long the sundial’s slowly curve;
closed our ears to the chirrup’s chirrup to
the fledglings roil across the summer lawns;
that yawn upon these daisy daisy days,
and tilt a straw hat to the sun,
upon another daily daisy dose.

Monday 22 April 2019

The town crier

The town crier

I cry for Notre Dame?
Or is it the bees cause feeding,
frostbitten and transparent 
as the tears of the ghost apples,
my shame, so lame, retro-redacted,
in black hole of my eye.

Sunday 21 April 2019

The eternal sadness

The eternal sadness

When he took to his bed,
his bed took him. 
At one time he had been
all that youth should be.
Then he took to his bed,
his bed took him. 

who is the boss here

who is the boss here

don’t you dare stare at me
poetry
you are not in charge of me
i am the poet and
i’ll publish and be damned 
the critics
i’ll throw away the lines
they are cheap
they are cheap
apotheosise you 
never
what is this poetry thing
what is so special about
acceptance
here are my words
eat them
or spit them out
like i do

the last gas p

the last gas     p
at the roots of the snowy mountains
under the frozen tundra wastes
the methane 
of tomorrow’s endgame 
hastens forbidden thoughts

blast

blast

a motorcycle?  no
a train or a plane??  no no
the red arrows???   no no no
       the nuclear bomb’s
detonate winds
arrive
          and
the scorched page turns

Saturday 20 April 2019

rebel rebel

rebel rebel

let’s all join #extinctionrebellion 
overpopulate it super fast
then sit down together to
form a government that will last
and last and
at last we can disagree with it
and form #extincionrebellion2
for I’m at the end of my tether 
the blame doesn’t lie with me
it’s you & you & you

global beacon

global beacon

there’s a queue at the top of the mountain 
they are queuing to see the view
but they look in vain       for
in the valley it is just me and you
and you and you and you 
and we are not part of the queue

Friday 19 April 2019

Top of the morning to you


Top of the morning to you

Spring inhales on a bruised nettle day;
shushed, the bluebell choir, wait;
the sun woodpeckers the lectern;
the day begins with birdsong.

Thursday 18 April 2019

Vermillion

Vermillion 

The global warming worm has turned,
fed by wet, annealed by dry, it is
of monstrous size; it will devour us,
and I will tell you why.
We think we rule and deserve to be
forever rulers; never shy
to claim ownership of we are / will be 
forever wedded to we need;
for however could we be
who we are. Cannot you see
how silly billy it is to suggest the car,
or the modern life, belie that we
need we, we need we. Need we die?
Oh yes, we die; for the worm has turned
and the insecticide is turned on us.
So dig your grave my friend 
and no more fuss. 
The fuse is lit. 

A foundry man

A foundry man

Picture this man. Pipe clenched 
in a face of sweat, shovel poised
to deliver the sand to the mould;
just there, where the moulder says 
is where, and his muscles do;
time after glistening spot on time. 

His grimace a smile of a winking that
he can perform any task you ask and more. 
He’s been around, you see, knows all
the dodges and how to tease the youths’ 
slow growing stature. He’s a work man,
a hard soft man and proud of it. 

He knows his place because he made it 
his place. It is his cog, and he knows
above and below all, that he is pivotal. 
He is his own man in the perfection of
his labour that earns a hard man’s respect.
In the face of the furnace, sherbet water 
drooling to cool the cramping sweat,
he is a rod of iron in the softness of 
this hard life of ours. 

Tuesday 16 April 2019

Hive an idea that ...

Hive an idea that ...

My mind is a hive of words.
Sometimes they wiggle their signal bellies 
to indicate where the pollen of a poem lies,
and off they flies to collect the nectar
from the read thesaurus blossoms, to 
feed it to their runny honeycombs,
where the grubby words are sleeping;
and golden of the royal jelly, set from
the sun in their eyes, all faceted by
the lines of the stained glass windows
of my other mind, they fly away and
drone on and on over the meadows
of my dreamzzz.
But I don’t mind at all.

Monday 15 April 2019

Scythe

Scythe

Harvesting the cornfield of memory,
the scythe sparks a stone
and it reverberates;
the chaff burns,
the barley is roasted
way up the sun. 
The staff of life sustains
the scythe to swing again,
and we gather ourselves
together. 

Let’s go

Let’s go

They are playing one of the old songs.
Let go, let go, let go.
Fall back and soar
over summer again. 
Let it be always summer again.
That nugget of gold.
Open your fist.

Sunday 14 April 2019

War, let’s play war!

War, let’s play war!

They marched home, all the way back
to Talpow Terrace and Rifelman’s Row;
where we now play with their ammo pouches
drawn fast on the high noon of their tallow;
moist with tears dried in the hallways
of the tenements of the speltermen, spitless,
grimed on tongues and metalled to forget. 

Slag’s hard eyes, blood let and congealed,
black-hearted, shining in deceit, calling foul
and a twisted ankle of any stride to escape
the dark night of their discomfort. 
One might well ask
where are the ghosts? Look around, for
they are here alright; they are here
under the wings on heels of your fright. You
play war, then you will get what you did not
pray for

listen, listen; there, the voices, there the
voices, begging under foreign suns 
in foreign tongues for the ultimate.
It’s in the stone walls of the houses,
the tired hearth of frugal suppers,
down all the days of our childhood;
down all the dim alleys of their dotage;
time suspended in the names of the streets.
Trip dark and twisted, with no street lights to
cleave the facade of a child’s dread dream,
with mum nowhere to be seen.

It’s an act of course; it’s all an act.
The street names of the departed,
for the departing, leaving the actors
in an empty auditorium. The soliloquy 
of a poet on a misguided tour of the 
battlements of the past. Get the bus
out of here lad, for you don’t belong.
You don’t understand.
You don’t belong.
Be gone. Be gone.
For you the war is over.


Saturday 13 April 2019

Dear old RS.

Dear old RS. 

Dear, old, and dead RS Thomas man. 
Still you palm the back of my hand,
as unready as yesterday for today’s
calling of the wild words that have
gone to earth again 
in the hedgerows of my mind. 
You move my arthritic thoughts to
finger the Braille of the blind page,
and having wrought my reluctance 
to accept the divine, you guide and
trowel my poem into the wrinkles
of the straightened line.

 ‘Divine?’ Yes, at long last, I give you 
such utterance, you, on your knees for me,
on the cold stone floor of my unbelief 
that I could ever say now, the things 
that you said then, while I carp on 
and on about the speed of youth. 
Alas, I have to say that your dictation 
seems like a plagiarism to me, 
whose only gift was to open 
my mind and let your words soak in. 

Stop! Stop now. 
And now I address myself, for you
are long gone, way past the last peninsula,
to fly with the birds over the indifferent sea. 
And me? I need to think this through,
for when the sun comes up 
decide I must; we must.
Do we plough this furrow?
Release the hens from the wild pen 
in your clouds. Or do we not?
For not would be the end for us;
would it not?





Under the Station Road

Under the Station Road

Night as black as the culvert
under the stood boys’ stomping - go!
The lime stalactites and the rat urine,
worry scurried in all the bravado 
of a stooped boy running the
gauntlet of his youth. 
Done it! Did it!
Din I?