Saturday, 8 October 2022

Taking Leave


I won't be putting up any new poetry for a while because I'm writing a book. I can't switch mode easily from prose to poetry and back again, so it has to be one or the other. Poetry mode, for me, is contemplative; prose mode is more down-to earth.

I'll be back from time to time
, though, to put up some prose pieces on the writing of poetry or allied topics. Meantime, it's nose-to-grindstone work.

 

Saturday, 20 August 2022

Where It Stops


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Everywhere’s sunny,
except at the field’s end

where shadows sharpen
the warp and shift of elms,

a thicket behind
that slub of quaking green

down to our pond.
A world slopes at the edge

where we both stand,
nipped between firm and the drowning.

Friday, 5 August 2022

Fading Out

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

That day bled into rain,
trees dripped with mist
in the morning,
our drapes gathered back
to a room thick with quiet,
light shallow as leaves
in this dimmed work.

It's on the wall still:
blued pagodas, muted
willows above the boat
stitched onto water.
There's no hurrying
over the grey bridge
where a man stands.

Hours picked threads
set stiff within frames,
layers lapped out
to unnatural flowers.
No one goes anywhere.
There is grey, slaked blue,
the gone tone of a gone sun.

Wednesday, 29 June 2022

Re-housed

 


 

 

 

 

 



Beams in the skip
are fractured, grey
as the bones of children,
three to a grave. 

Doorstep mothers, aprons
flowered, re-housed
in citified concrete,
their potted plants flaring,
not offering gossip
when winter’s bleached
all colour, clotted
sap in the stalks,
they lifeless, brittle

as beams in the skip
 

Wednesday, 1 June 2022

Endings







 

 

 

 



Night crackles colour.
Your children bounce
around the bonfire.
They shout for lighting
the last of the fireworks.
Now. It must be done now,
before fire flips into ash,
before flattening smoke
smothers the grass.

Standing in shadow
under a dimming moon,
I watch their faces rise
while rockets explode
a shivering rainfall
above the trees.
Stars twitch out,
denatured by fog
as acrid silence hovers.

Behind us the cats
call for their meal;
the radio hums
through nude rooms.

Saturday, 14 May 2022

The Real Romeo


 

 

 

 

 





‘lt is the East,’ soliloquy by Romeo, act 2, scene 2, ‘Romeo and Juliet’

‘But soft!’ Yeah, right! It’s effing cold, not soft,
out now, waiting for dawn and Jooles to wake
then kill the moon because its loitering’s useless;
she’s draped like a fool in sickly pale green.
The sun will always rise and we need heat
down here, but there goes Jooles, with stars that might
replace her eyeballs though they’d lengthen night.

(Who penned this illogical tripe?) As for shining
cheeks out-brightening stars so that birds
would hail them as the morning light, no hope
of that, and if she leans her cheek on her hand,
what’s that supposed to signify? She’s never
mentioned me once, so I’m done with freezing here,
am off to nosh and suck up hot spiced beer.
 

Wednesday, 27 April 2022

I Am Not



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


                         
I Am Not

amused, my Muse. You’re always having a go
at me – when you’re around, which isn’t awf’lly
often, y’know. My plot’s for you to sow,
but you won’t sew your shift, let alone put lively
seed to soil. Putting in the boot
is more your scene than gently greening dreams
of damsels, dragons and other such dufferish toot
some plunging poets expect. You’re out on your beams
if you can’t shake up at least a vision or three
linked in layers appropriate for my age:
even your rags are dropping in tatters, my crone-y
friend. More, your splatter is rank on my page,
    so off you trot, you untucked, dribbling phoney;
    I’m sour enough without your spluttering rage.


Wednesday, 13 April 2022

More Practice

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now our rooms resonate
with the warmth of chords
three centuries old.
I feel your bow firm
through shared air between us,
drawn over strings
tight on the cello’s belly,
repeating waiting phrases
to perfection sounding sure.

The year over shivers closer,
music locked in its case,

draught searching for discord.