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.
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.
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.
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
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.
‘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.
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.
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,
Blessed
are the wrongdoers, for they are our teachers -
the
proud, the triumphant, the forceful, the unrighteous,
the
cruel, the impure, the warmongers, the persecutors.
They
harm, they vilify, they hate, they oppress, they kill,
so
who would be like them in thought? Not us, the blessed.
Beware, lest your
praised deeds are turned to greater ill.
