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Don't mind me...

 I'm just putting some poems together for my trip to the Beehive tonight....

 To Tenby

that moment at the end of bleary chivvying
summer special on my lap sweets already half eaten
in that moment when with a thunk
unclunked or clicked we were sealed into our holiday

brown vinyl burning legs below my snake belted shorts
father's cigarettes virginian sweet ashen flicked midges
caught on the wind sucked back through the window
sugaring minnie the minx or ginger and numbskulls

all the while mother asking 'are you feeling sick'
brown paper bag ready in the footwell
with the tupperworn buttered ham sandwiches

into an A-road world of trees and hedgesrows
square council housing jig-saw cottages new build bungalow
portico piles down long yellow driveways
and tractors and caravans bicyclists and muttered
white knuckling grip cursing lost time

through country towns with one set of lights
church clocks and women wandered markets
wearing chemically printed polyester

                        i spy sky road car 'can I see it'
and groans for the unguessed three cows drinking
five miles behind
                          
as we ingested the size of the journey
and digested olympic breakfast pancakes fizzy orange
tartrazine brightness free lollipop
the afternoon sibling squabbling
the threats to sit still and put your feet down
then songs would begin

how young my mother was
as she slipped a fox's glacier
                          into my fathers mouth

.....

 Triangular Trade

occasionally I will shake my tambourine
crying sisters and brothers repent
repent the day of judgement
was last tuesday
and now we are all damned

but mainly I avoid angels except on utube
and live a quiet life of contented
drunken joy

sometimes I help others and sometimes
when asked directions
I deliberately send them in a circle
so they can shake their fist
through the help the aged window

but mainly I don't do that
as selfies annoy me
almost as much as other people's faces

I'm changeable you see
aren't we all
well you not so much

I draw the line at meths and weak lager
preferring the middle ground

though if I am feeling extravagant I will drink dutch gin
distilled by the desperate
each stone bottle contains a suicide note
and when corked
the factory throws them into the sea
without regard for profit
      then mermaids collect them
      taking care not to break their nails
      and deliver them to remote scottish islands on winter nights
      when half mad scotsmen put them in boxes
      and send them south to tangiers for distribution

the gin is terrible

but like the henna smoked by teenagers
it's the thrill that makes it worth it
and the license it gives

you do have to be off your head to pay for a bottle

but the blurred words of desperation
and the knowledge that creatures real and mythical
have died to bring you poor pleasure
makes it worth the need to top up on shiraz
if you want to feel anything at all

.....

 Trombone Voluntary

On blue days, when the sun breaks the clouds,
I like to take my lunch by the courthouse.
You might call it a fetish. I crunch crisps
and criminally profile the coming and going.

What really draws me though, is the statue
at the centre of the square to Delius.
Every time I promise to listen to his music
and every time I never do. Instead, having eaten,

I circle the bronze leaves, with the green
and amber glass, and marvel at the beauty
of art; of art in a city without much -
even Sir Henry Irving died to get out.

I'm never sure if you are allowed to touch
civic displays. There's no red rope. I want to -
I want to - to contrast the heat and light,
find imprints of the sculptors fingers,

embrace the shadows of the stained glass
on the shit strewn slabs. But - I don't -
instead I jab it gently, so that if a court official
challenges me, I will say, "just seeing if it is bronze".

Today I am disturbed. At the mouth sized stage
of my second sandwich, a girl sits down,
on my bench; next to me. I at one end,
hand in crisp bag, sandwich hovering.

She takes the guitar from it's case, and
for no reason that I can see, begins to play
the Adagio, Concierto de Aranjuez No 2,
I know this because it was on an advert

and I liked it so much I bought the CD.
Not being the rude sort, I set my lunch aside,
and listen. All the while admiring,
and appreciating, Amber Hiscott anew.

She played the whole thing perfectly.
I thanked her, and said she should try busking.
"Fuck Leeds", she said.