Category: Poems

The Rock and Basalt Lava Party

Here's the politics of it -

An election every million years,
manifestos erupting in white heat,
volcanic debate, a honeymoon period
the birth of a small star.

The electorate canvassed
among bleached stones;
polling on cadaver care,
how crematoria perform,
were targets met for erotica 
in Pompeii and was
Krakatoa merely PR.

And when ash,
like a broken promise,
settles on still, silent lands,
who will ask for a recount
to trouble democracy's sleep?

Bliss - A Decima

These days I'm wont to reminisce
on hours achieving happiness,
swerving consequent crappiness.
It certainly would be remiss
to diss the side effects of bliss,
the coming down from such a height
whilst grasping at it's fading light.
All highs have their own aftermaths,
some are benign but some, bloodbaths,
two hundred degrees Fahrenheit!

Breakfasting on Worms

If you rise before the sun -

(when dawn is still a dream you had,
unclaspable, where reason ends,
before the rote of compliance begins,
before the language of constraint unstops,
acting out the all too rational;
a wage to earn, a meal to cook,
children's needs to tend,
the diction of No, after you
and various similitudes
designed to coalesce
around the sociological)

- you feel the pre-dawn less than dark
fizzing somewhere interplanetary.
And through this percolation
the Earth's curve courses,
hieroglyphics of expunged soil
cast like prayers upon the plains.
Too soon, tangents of light
precurse the onset of a sober day,

our dark worms sleeping off the sun.

Captain Swing

A Haiku
 
    Shelter with me here
where the fires cannot reach us,
      scorching now the earth.


A Decima

The history of Captain Swing
is told in tales of burning ricks,
machine destruction, polemics
of resistance imagining
a better world and songs that sing
of full employment, profits shared
with labourers, all those who cared
to question if the status quo
was fit to see a nation grow,
those who rebelled, when few had dared.

The Last Bus

Remember when you used to drive a bus
On several pints of Gales HSB,
And didn't cause a scene or make a fuss
When punters would demand a ride for free.

Usually, of course, just when the pubs
Had kicked out into Gosport's busy town,
(The matelots heading back towards their subs)
Before austerity had closed it down.

The last bus from the Ferry back to Fareham
Left around eleven I recall;
Most drivers hated sailors who would scare 'em,
But you never minded doing it at all.

They pushed and shoved onto the double decker,
Ringing bells and spewing in the aisles,
There was hardly room to pick up from the Mecca,
Bingo winners trading in their smiles

For a freebie to the flats at Rowner,
Grinning, reaching out to touch your leg,
(The drunks were just beginning on a downer)
But you let them on without the need to beg.

By now the bus was full of raucous singing,
No one had a ticket, paid their fare,
The songs accompanied by a constant ringing
Of bells to halt the bus when they got there;

To their stop, that is, increasingly dishevelled,
Reeking of beer and various spirits too.
Just as well, you thought, that they had revelled,
Disguising fumes arising out of you.

That last bus from the Ferry was the craic,
You miss it now but, after all, who cares
The boss had copped and given you the sack
For generously neglecting all those fares!

Released

For Andy Levine

At seven-thirty, when they unlocked the gate,
he wandered out into a world of light.
The local bus to the ferry left at eight,

so he climbed aboard, refocusing his sight
to long perspectives, feeling slightly sick
at the foreign movements, fighting to ease his fright.

The houses hurried by, a blur of brick
at a speed he was unused to. Calm, just stay calm;
a few deep breaths would likely do the trick,

would pacify his every mounting qualm.
He thought of quaffing down a pint of beer,
of setting, once again, his own alarm.

What could he do to quell the coming fear
of city streets that could only do him harm,
of living with his past, year after year?

The Newsagent, The Gardener and The Railwayman

About noon on most days of the week
the three would gather at their regular table
in the Affiliated Workingmen's Club.
All around was natter of football, cars,
the price of houses, hankerings after larger things
and greater social standing, how to beat
the fruit machine and which flavour crisps to eat.
Yet amid these deep debates, the three muttered
of socialism, the absurdity of our lives,
existentialism and, once, a brown
paper parcel containing the Myth of Sisyphus
was passed, subversively, between empty
bottles of Old English Ale.

Midwinter

'Gatsby believed in the green light..'
(F.Scott Fitzgerald)

We woke to a dark day
twisted around the equinox,
light entwined like ivy,
the low sun skimming
the earth like a flat stone.
Suddenly the sun sank,
beached itself, a crimson whale
on the shore of the earth's edge,
clouds wound round it like a scarf.

Perhaps this short, dark day
is meant for meditation,
mulling over time,
how it trips and traps us,
how it's continuous trek
wrings and wraps us,
our slivers of carbon
diffused and infused
with the long ring of sleep.

Embers from our fire redden
in the afternoon dusk, heat
pulsing from your hidden places
full of electricity.
Over the water, 
a green jetty light
switches on revealing it's location,
somewhere far, 
somewhere almost lost.

The Stream - A Decima

There is an exceptional way
leading over the hills near home,
a path through which I see you come
in Spring beneath the budding May,
it's blossoms white as this midday,
the stream in which you bend to look,
it's pure, pure water we once took
for granted as it burbled by
not questioning the reason why,
but know it now, our own prayer book.