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
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
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
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
lamp light
deep saxophone
the falling open
in the lap
of a poem unknowing
the dusk’s duskness
at reason’s eventide
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!
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?
