Category: Poems

Incomprehension

It was never assumed we'd understand
the bewildering things our young hearts dreamed of,
the obscure and fabulous, tales
told like secrets on a star starved night.

Yet eventual clarity, we assumed,
would arrive like children, a mortgage,
the pattern of empty afternoons and death.
We promised ourselves and waited for light.

But still the taunts of the not understood tantalise;
a seagull taking flight, the moon obscured
by your shadow falling above me, our children's cries,
the space between words where silence roars.

Cider

That summer's harvest bellowed apples
bringing the trees almost to their knees,
nearly felled by the pounding weight.

We picked less than one-tenth the crop,
fielding fallers too, their bruised flesh
fizzing with self fermentation.

We quartered the fruit with a crisp slash
and they fell in the bucket like waning moons
falling from an orange harvest sky.

Sharp edged blades and water made the mash
running through our fingers like a fresh spunk,
pouring like cold lava to the press,

oozing green under the screws caress,
ejaculating the last liquid drops,
leaving a stink of dehydrated flesh

we threw in the compost as a slow
boiling began it's self controlling buzz.
Five days after sealing the lid

it began bulging with the weight of gas,
lifting with small sighs of apple breath.
We saw the soft scum, spawn mould,

apple brown, spewling and yeasty.
Siphoning into jars intensified
the ochre muck full of it's own sap.

For weeks it stood quaking in the kitchen
till a late, low sun clarified through it.
By Christmas we would be quaffing it.

And under the buoyant trees, fruit still pounded
with fermentation's pulse, making a cider
soil boozed worms squirm through.

Enquiries at Swanwick Station

'You've been here some years now.
I remember your hair dark,
how you were a younger man'.

'I've become rooted I suppose,
manured in by a steady wage,
that and just a mile from home,
handy to see the children grow,
plant and water shoots
blossomed now away
mulching makeshift gardens of their own.
And you've changed too no doubt,
although I cannot place,
among the many passing here, your face'.

'Well, I only travel
twice a year and sometimes
less than that, according
to the flow of things,
how much I need to get away
and other small dependencies.

So what time do I get to Milton Keynes'?

When the stars fall and more
grey dust is scattered here
among the platform-edge high ferns.

Black Rocks in Oriental Bay, Wellington

Could stillness be converted into rhyme
and age become a rhythmical address,
with weight a simple synonym for time,
darkness for that lacking emptiness,

I could then do no more than wish my days
encompassed by this eloquent repose,
enabling me to contemplate the ways
I might have chosen, and the way I chose.

When you have slept

When you have slept and I see you wake,
your limp and lovely body lying there,
my senses girdle up to undertake
the prospect of your lemon scented hair.
The picture of you dressing stirs me so
that all my skin is somehow set alight;
see visions of the urgent to and fro
partaken in the crevices of night.
For there, in shadows, I could feel the heat
the friction of our flesh materialised,
with you above me reaching the complete
abandonment of all we've rationalised.
   Then I myself awoke and daylight shone
   upon the empty truth that you were gone.

Retired

I've been attending work for fifty years.
I started slightly damp behind the ears.
I've hardly changed from first to second gears.
I've never been ambitious.

I've seen the climbers jumping through the rings.
I've never liked the bosses panderings.
I've kept my counsel for the peace it brings.
I've never been ambitious.

I've spent my life not wanting to be seen.
I've seen the signals change from red to green
And back to red to stop what might have been.
I've never been ambitious.

The bosses come and go, pass through my sight.
They've ranged from fearsome to the merely trite.
To see the backs of them is my delight.
I've never been ambitious.

Ambition, I have seen, eats up the soul.
Invisibility has been my goal.
I aim to congregate where tapeworms shoal.
I've never been.

Losing Things

Remember how our bodies once were thin
reminders of our later flaccid skin,
my paunch cupped in your lovely lap.
Our liver spots co-mingle, creating
a small universe of moons setting
where the bed's edge collapses in shadow.
A perfumed candle illuminates
our illusion of youthful coupling,
your taut breast, now a pachyderm,
offered gladly to my unfilled mouth.
And now we find that losing things
rarely causes any pain,
for what we've also lost, along with youth,
is the need to, every time, succeed.

Sensing You

If asked how to smell you
I'd say
move in close, touch if you dare,
ignoring the danger overwhelming your
reason, passing through brief
states of ecstasy.
I'd say
take but the slightest breath,
inhale the fecund fragrances,
the deep aroma dances.
I'd say
move just a fraction away,
see the sweet sensation
fleetingly on your face,
hear soft exhalations of relief.