Saturday 27 July 2019

upon the summer seas

upon the summer seas

the sea’s recalcitrance, its patience 
with the children, their screams,
the colour of summer, 
the screech of tomorrow’s storms forgotten, 
when the wind’s icy face is burned away on
this July day of come what may, our smiles 
set to stay until the sun sleeps red upon
our sleepy heads, and upon a seaweed
bed we float our days away.

Friday 26 July 2019

Summertime blues


Summertime blues

I hates the heat see
There’s all these people in the sea
See
That as you know was meant for me
For me
I hates them all with
Their BBQs and no Ps & Qs
Their cannabis fumes and 
Their loud music
Oh youth you are such a prat
And I’ve had for too much of that
Be gone fine summer high and mighty
Leave the sea my mighty Blighty 
Be gone I say you prattling hordes 
Didn’t Larkin say something about toads
Well there you are you rabid swine
Be gone I say this sea is mine
Be gone be gone be gone
Be gorra 
Winter is coming upon this fastness
For my tomorrow in all its vastness
Will be mine mine mine alone 

But never mind eh?

Thursday 25 July 2019

poet bach

poet bach

this poet 
never learnt the poets
this poet 
never learnt the words
this poet
wrote the words

oh
I say
my word
what oh
poet bach

Tuesday 23 July 2019

the refractory poet

the refractory poet

It is not the withdrawal from a dry nib,
but from the waiting for the emotion to 
coalesce like moths around the bright candle
that is my mind. 
A goblet filling with the golden words 
that sprinkle from that font upon the linen 
of the birth sheet or upon the shroud of 
the having not been said. 

This is what yearns in me when the oneness 
of the immediacy of haiku, that short expression
of all the conundrums of life; and yet, and yet,
never to feel the depth of the visitation of the magi
on the dark blue night of the longing and waiting.
Not a single star twinkling in the universe of being,
but the slow dawn that will blow the moon milk
across the slow bones of my sitting, thinking, 
for when / then
the tango from the inkling of a smile 
flows in the love-juice of a fully formed poem; 
then! 
I wince at my tongued words, and cry ...

Bathe long in the eraser tears of a time gone by. 
Let me sleep now upon this poem, gentle in the
satisfaction of seeing the butterfly, the open door, 
the longing, fly across the meadows with 
the like-minded upon the glory of these days.

not half

not half

the half of giving
yourself 
is just a half 
until your other half
will make you too
into two 
and a half

Monday 15 July 2019

THERE ARE THREE
ARE THERE THREE
ARE THREE THERE
THREE THERE ARE

Sunday 7 July 2019

the air show

the air show       sky       where
every child’s jaw hangs agape
at the end of the longest pointing finger
for there never was a blue sky so torn 
by the rip of jet engines flaring
in all the colours of all the eyes
they ate the whole wide sky

Saturday 6 July 2019

impussible

I can read my cat 
                           just like a book

she can lead me  
                               with just one look 

Tuesday 2 July 2019

mower fodder

mower fodder

the mower killed
     the daisies
          the frogs
               the slow worms

and it is killing me

mellow meadow 
tell me please
all about the bees
and the wind in the trees
the buttercup days
in daisies chained 
convoluted high in
convolvulus skies

lay the mower-man under his sods
and sing your heart unto the blue