#poem #poetry #amwriting 29

29

The less I talk to my mother
the more we say.
The more the laughter rings between us:
the arms length mechanics
of fading connection, gripping on yesterday.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 28

28
(the Anne Sexton tapes)

The greatest sadness of a female poet
is not to be overlooked; or out dulled by men;
but to be revered by tight faced virgins
in amorphous black clothes, and finger nails.
Black-holes suck them in, closer than
the cunt walls feared by boys, and neurotics
who have just given birth, confusing tightness
with thoughts exchanged: the lolling dildo
of projected voice. One might almost weep
with laughter, were such things allowed.
Jokes mangled, points missed, statues
raises for the pulling down, of panties,
in some quiet bearded backroom,
between one revolutionary, and the last.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 27

27

Crows hang heavy on the hill light dusk,
lung-tarred they call against the night

encroaching craw. And bite, down
the grassing path, speckle dotted

daisies peek, angled from the tired track
of downward toiling trek. It is then

you see the circled crash of fox:
breaking, startled, and back

into the unfern crisped dry brush;
and you stand; still. You taller then, spotting

the cowered yellow ears, snarled in weighing fight.
The invisibility of reality plainly sees

the ermine in the fur of waiting grass, but not
that snare that holds your gaze, and its.

Of what is too clear. A tunneled tube
to hold all time, and the very air
of inhaled worlds and gone.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 26

26

How dull to talk of rain, again,
again cold piercing spiked assaults
to sting the plodding foot
from knee to almost coat.

How dull, again, to errand out for food,
and sugar, and count the flexing
money spent, How dull, to look to the hills,
and once again imagine
that a poem will come crawling.

No, no, now we wax wood
of pencils broken, on paper, unlined
as the swirled rain of limping sleep.

No, no, in this light
no onions chopped, or drool, or longing:
just cardboard and bright words
of passing time; between the drops.

Hope, drab hope, of days beyond
the kerb, the terraced sprawl
leading to harsh lights that stun
food hopping into baskets
to pull the arm to waste upon the waist.

How dull.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 23

23

I'm rolling them loose these days,
saggy and loose, and hard to pull
with arthritic fingers.
Loose on the bone and hard on the lung
that's how. Drooping down,
more out than in, and hanging.
I'm rolling them loose

And every time I see him
he asks when I'll stop
and I say when death comes calling.
And every time death comes
I take an aspirin
and he whimpers like a puppy
in a box beneath the tree
at Christmas.

And every time I see him
he asks how you are
and I say I haven't noticed.
And every time I notice
you are much the same.
I thank
whatever sets your compass
and keeps our light burning.

And one day the doctor
will say I'm a miracle,

I'm rolling them loose.

#poem #poetry #amwritng Women

Women

If I live ten thousand years
I could not approach the hatred
of women. I would walk away.
Not bother with hemlines,
and entitlements,
and the endless little traps.
Not batter my eyes with knives
and then accuse you of murder.
Or endlessly drag up some rotting squid,
of some species unthought,
and identify it,
and catagorise it,
and fight to have it catagorised,
and legislated,
and then deny it existed,
until later.
I would walk away
punching it as I went.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Dance

Dance

The fish are blowing out their cheeks.
The fish are blowing out their cheeks
at the woman on the bank reading Ariel.

The woman blowing out her cheeks.
Misses the pearls the fish spit at her:
the pearls, the fish, the sunlight, the rain,

making rainbows, making rainbows.
Making music to the drumbeat of laughter.
Making music to the drumbeat of laughter.

And the laughter makes us dance
and blow out our cheeks, at the fishes.
At the fishes dancing in pearls on the bank.

Around the woman reading Ariel on the bank.
Around the woman reading Ariel on the bank
who won't blow out her cheeks and dance.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 25

25

While I, not writing the great novel,
you sewed cherubs onto guaze
and read my thoughts.

You would say 'that I was drifting,
too ambiguous, of too weak a plot,'
and I would agree

burning the thoughts, seeking a new hook
I would watch with amazement
the picture grown from stitches.

'If only words could do that,'
my great un-started novel would say.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 24

24

When my father lay mute and dying,
and not the man I knew: his eyes revealed
a memory, shaded blue.

Men live in solitude, like the last goose
always falling back. They belong,
and then do not.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 22

22

In my madness I write letters to angels
and flinch at the hanging cobwebs
formed by the frame of my glasses.

Sometimes, testing the elasticity of things,
tapping each rib in turn, I hold my breath,
hold it, hold it until I dare sign each note
of hollow music. And, when echo brings
a sound of who once inhabited my soul
then is the time to breath out, and live.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Happy Easter

Happy Easter

Curled around in neat segmented sanded sections
behind glass misted by ten thousand eager noses
dragged back by the collar, lie the fossils.
Somehow they have more life now.

More life than the moth I squashed with my thumb:
its blood drying on the kitchen cabinet door,
it's millennia of wings, patient in the laundry
to be washed off my jeans.

There is a graphic, to earnestly describe,
the process by which certain individuals
attain significance. A cautionary tale
of constipation, that isn't very healthy.

Then this happened, then that happened,
then we don't know what happened,
but then this happened, viola! a horse.

And hey! If you don't believe me!
Strike a match, drive a car,
look at the internet and abort all Down's kids.
This would all be condemned as witchcraft
years ago.

Now move along...
to the animatronic dinosaurs:
now with new and improved feathers.

Then this happened, then that happened
then we don't know what happened
but then this happened, voila! we're in the gift-shop

eating chocolate eggs.

'Did Jesus really die for our sins?' you ask.
'God can do anything.'
'No, he can't.' you say.

And I don't disagree, for who
can doubt sand?

or swim against the silting tide
pressing down upon the bones of that
we seek to remember
without context.

Nothing has the weight of stone,

And I hope, but not pray,
that when your teeth have cocoa rotted:
that you will not idly lay down,
but
think back
to the generations who got you here

to this place of insignificance.

#poem #poetry #amwriting 21

21

Scent of light still haze hung: wakened,
opened to day more now than dim
ridings of the moon; curtain trees

starkling in their elemental twigness.
A brutal sheet inviting not
to enter in. but softly lay

a palm upon the skin:
as knowing as your face compared
in mirror to old photograph.

This place of sharing breath tricks
in puckered kiss, finger cross,
slopes that lull us onto steepness

to keep the timid bayed. Feel what
you cannot say. The flinching
flashed phantom thrilling scene

brought to sense by folly, as by faith,
that we connect with all things
and with all things we too vibrate.

Our heart, our pumping doubt,
forever knows this moment, it is
the thinking eye: will never....

#poem #poetry #amwriting Beta

Beta

Drunk and alone, beneath
the tree below the golden window
drunk to the point of wondering:
on the fag I pull.

I'm not cold here, just wondering
if the late bars you know
will still be serving
and if the last bus is gone.

My buttoned lip upon the Marlborough
as I a cowboy of night, waiting,
await your happy carnal laugh
and wonder why I stand awaiting.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Sod

Sod

I happened upon some argument

between an atheistand a neo-neo-christianist
about creation.
The crux of which

(no pun intended)
related to the proto-legs of whales.

Since atheists know nothing
and christianists refuse to look beyond the pale

I felt sorry for the whale.

I measure myself in stones not tons
and get little buoyancy from the air

but I can imagine that
a whale needs a little help
without no pubic hair.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook hfjvut

No doubt at some point
when seeking the light, it might
have occurred to you
of something or nothing between your legs.

And then it spoke.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook fhsdlfhk

Looking down; the criss-crossed twigsof the living and the dead:
the seedless cone, the pink flower beside
spiking buds like caterpillars hatching;
one might almost be one year older.
These woods lie open now in possibility.
Only the deepest streams still run
here. Here where wet winter winds
topple trees complete to spread their root
without earth: the bluebells, ancient
as the stars, grow against the vertical
in this shadowless transition, weak sun.

#poem #poetry #amwriting The A Most Often Missed in Suicide

The A Most Often Missed In Suicide

It isn't the daemon within me that talks of death;
but the angel. People often get this wrong.
They think I am fighting it's calling message.
A wicked hangover
from the time they would bury me
at crossroads, standing up, driven over, spat on:
it's sheer jealousy. If it were the the daemon
it would be more fun. Certainly.

#poem #poetry #amwriting New Politics

New Politics

Perhaps we should all be Jews,
not in body, but in mind.
For within us all we lament
a temple, we once revered
now crumbling, stone on stone.
And, somewhere, somewhere,
there will always be
some bright young person
with some bright idea
that we are to blame: for everything.
'No, no,' but to no avail.
We the disavowed of the future tense.
For we are jews
to be locked in, by the colour of skin
or party, the unengendered
in a gendered, coloured world.
For to refuse the revelation of language,
to not go with every new messiah,
to hold on to the quaint notion of tradition
marks us so. Jew is a four letter word:

now.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Beard

Beard

Everyone should grow a beard, too long,
without regard for your face. And lick it
to taste the coffee. Lick it, to taste the thoughts
wound round a finger when not thinking
but simply indulging in the pleasure
of twisting hair. But one must not watch
the grass grow. Or notice the way
your children change, inch by inch:
sometimes reasonable, sometimes
almost
so shriveled as the puckered skin
you held whole from palm to elbow.
No, wind that into your greying beard.
Wind it in to be licked later,
or brushed out when trying to be smart.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook left wing love

I like to imagine we remember those moments
when touching tongues
we ran through the sensations of sex
to emerge in each others arms.

Those events so intense
when you purred like a kitten at my stroking
that I sent you death threats
and you showed me opinion pieces in the Guardian
to prove you never came.

Oh the joys of left-wing love.

So I'm not surprised that the unlovely, and unlovable,
blow themselves up in railway carriages.
And that you find reason to defend them.
You were always resentful
of the fireplace in my rented room
and,
were pleased when when I gave up hope
of finding a world that matched your own.

#poem #poetry #amwriting True Dead

True Dead
(for Anne Sexton)

If she didn't wear knickers,
but for that dress she would be naked.
The cigarette
at odds to the angle of her hand.
Her hands set for back-hand
and her hair set
for a ruddy cheeked 'well played'
between the games;
fingers resetting the fringe
in a gesture of 'will you play me again'.

It's all so grown up.
So effortlessly measured

but what of the dead left eye,
and the right that burns more bright than love.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #aketchbook Wanting to Die

Wanting to Die

To those who have gone beyond
and woken to find themself there
death holds no fear it never had.
We all make mistakes.
We all look at gargoyles in churches
and then read the guidebook in wonder,
that anyone should question
or even bother to seek explanation.
Just make sure, if you're a woman,
to wait a few days before being found:
it's not so important for a man.
But, try to be drunk, and try to discern
between the pleasure of the idea
of not being, and who might find you.
If you have children,
unless you wish to scar them
best not to be found hanging from the banister.
In fact it's probably best,
if you have children,
to not take a direct route, but set a moral lesson:
like smoking, or drinking spirits,
or driving too fast. Though driving too fast
might be exciting, and give you a desire to live;
so best make it driving recklessly.
And wear clean underpants.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook if

If... I want to start with the word if...
but you will not let me.
You will ignore the premise and dive,
seeking your own reason, for the literal,
for the fish below the water:
for the tree I marked, or the flower I picked,
or the perceived of confession
couched in the tender word if.
You will not look inside yourself
if I ask. You are the face at the window,
the mouse half seen, the itch that does not itch
and then itches in the night.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #ilkleywriters jfhksdbfkj

I have given everything away
for want of love and hate:
to find returned this space to dwell.

What hell is other people;
who from this well draw cups of hope
and bid me drink of bitter charity.

#poem #poetry #amriting For Brussels

For Brussels

Night does not follow day,
when drowning.
Let the way of love and hate unite
in chalk, and let the wind wipe it clean;
without meaning.
Let all the dust swirl
as we swim towards our mirrored self,
and away; when we find the face,
we find is not our own.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #kingslynn Tuesday Market in Lynn

Tuesday Market in Lynn

(coming from North End)

Sometimes we'd go by Devil's Alley,
where the houses sagged and drooped like teeth
and no rain would never fall

but mostly we went the long way. There to stop
to buy cooking-chocolate at Southgates shop,
round by the fort, to walk on the solicitor's wall.

And turn you down past the pub, to the market
where the voices flowed up the street
like they was still burning witches.

With the briefest of glances, and a creak of basket,
we was in: to the crowd. To the up and down
of sight and sound, 'hello missus', and the smell.

'Hold my hand'. Past carpets and brasses,
Pink Elephants and fabrics we'd go.
And, the cooking-chocolate shrinking all the while.

Everything at nose height. Part dragged, part bribed,
part scolded most the time; 'til you stood on the step
of the hot dog van, eyes wide

knowing next was toy stall. And the auctioneer
with his jokes, and what he would not take
for the plates and cups he'd often break

tossing 'em up high. Hold my hand, 'hold my hand
I don't want you to get lost,' while I talk to this woman
I hardly know. 'Yes hasn't he grown'.

Weaving through the women there feeling up
and weighing out, and all is chatter: 'til fruit
where the market ends, and the town begins.

#poem #poetry #amwriting A Better Place

A Better Place
(for St Kilda)

To them that winged, and legged and gutted,
and salted for the winter; all the world
was yolked around the Fulmar and the Gannet.
Spinny weaved and woven farthings
sing louder than the sea, of Sunday blessings,
as they watch the sky fill with crosses
of the winter closing in. Then only waves
of the mournful ocean, unbroken in imagination,
as the fiddle's reel, and the comfort of the fire
to await the tapping beak of spring.
Grinding bones for barley and the corn,
liver lighted lamps to ward the mice
they held around the bible's reign. They knew
themselves not chosen. For bold men fall
for reaching beyond what hand may grasp.
Until the last: until the last when they saw
the high cliffs depart the spray.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketcbook sasquatch

The Choctaw word is forget.
And, like Darwin's heavy brooding brow
it is not easy. When there are pigeons
to boil, and a wife to keep sweet,
how does one forget, seeing what no-one
should see?

The physical pleasure of knocking a tree
or screaming into the dark of night.
Rather ignores, the common link
of iron bars, at the zoo, at the prison,
at the asylum, or at the concentration camp.

Toughened glass, smeared with fingers:
and noses and tongues.
Behind a Gorilla eats an apple
as disinterested of us as the tree that dropped the fruit.
We might play a flute,
but seeing is not connecting.

And your marrow sustains in winter.

The Choctaw word is forget.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Fuck Freud

Fuck Freud

There's this mong, who I see,
spawned from a best before egg.
And he vocalises like a yeti.

There I am, one hand on my trolley,
my finger on my cheek,
hips thrust to the left,
weighing up the merits of crumpets versus pikelets;
'Oh sorry'...  *move the trolley...
'Or should I buy muffins?'

And up goes this low frequency noise
not unlike a foghorn.
And I grab potato cakes.
Bloody mong! 'The kids won't eat these.'

And round he comes, trailing his trolley,
his drooping face almost in front of his dragging body:
knees splayed, pigeon toed, iris pinched and closed.

I wonder how much his house is worth?
No that's unfair.
We should judge his privilege to discover his worth.
He's white, he's male, he's vocal.
He's clearly bad.
Just look at him.
He's everything that's wrong.
I bet he doesn't work.

But for all that liberal talk
I rather like him.

*hang on while I put the potato cakes back
and pick up the crumpets that I will eat even if the kids don't*

I like him because...

well just because he has hung to testify
against the testing
of liberal's who would deny him birth
and measure his worth
in terms of the wages of his support worker.

But if I ever catch him
eyeing up the marked-down steak on Friday night...
I'll let him have it.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook girl

There are times I wish I was a painter.
That I could just walk up to that girl, I saw
and flatter her to pose
for me
in a fashion that desperately tried to recapture
what it was I saw.

I'll have her with an urn on her shoulder,
or reading a book naked,
or floating down the river with flowers.

What I won't have, is...

That passing moment of time,
when happenstance caught her on the back-steps of the church
when I happened to be passing:
in an idle moment of dis-satisfaction;
and startled her in the action of lighting a cigarette.

I won't have that.

Nor will I have the perfection of her youth
caught in the revulsion at my form
and the interplay between the two:
that makes an old man's heart skip:
and jellifies the female form.

But if I could paint her
I am sure I could find countless other old people
willing to admire my eye.

But as a poet one must rely
on those moments when thinking nothing
inspiration comes without words...
to be lost in the telling
unless you resort to the lying
of the visual arts.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook ...........

I might make you laugh, or orgasm, or crybut connect?

What does that even, literally, actually, mean?

I can connect with strangers:
by not bumping into them in the street,
by not sitting on their lap on buses,
by not staring into their houses,
in a hundred and one way we can connect
but don't....

Yet in the lingo of the age
to connect
and be connected
is of the highest importance.

Could this be because the individual is dead?

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook plath

My abiding image of poetry,
is being dragged to hear Frieda Hughes.
And sitting
on a children's chair in the front row
and looking up into her vag,
draped in bottle green slacks,
while she read verse about Rumpelstiltskin
to generous applause.

It's not Frieda's fault.

One can not more refuse to be born
than go back into the ocean
in some vain hope
of one day becoming a whale from a mouse.

#poem #poetry #amwriting On My Son's 8th Birthday

On My Son's 8th Birthday

Life expands, like the awkwardness of a child
with coxcombed hair, and teeth too large.

And I, as a parent, in my role of little God
laying out rules, expressing love in letting go,
ever-so jealous as proud;
bewilder with each birthday.

The crown of the head that slowly climbs each rib
will soon look me in the eye.
And then look down.

He is already the man.
He will be.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook late night poetry

Ok, while I'm waiting shall I masturbate now....
or after... come on... come on...
Oh yes.... hello....
first time poet, long time reader
... hello... uh yes...
I just wanted to make sure you could read this....
Oh you can... great...

Yes, well I found it really interesting that you mentioned daffodils
and I was wondering... and this is more a question for your guest....
if you ever thought them over-rated? at all.
I mean, just because it is spring,
and I have never written a poem before,
and don't really know if I can... or want to...
but you know if I was to take up painting...
I wouldn't start with the Mona Lisa...
I might just start with a window sill or shelf... or a box room...
you know, just to get a feel for the brush.

Hello.... can you hear me,,,
Yes, well I know this isn't the topic of poem,
but do you think mother nature hates us?
I mean, all these people who go missing, and have cell phones...
I think you call them mobiles....
well I can never... you now... it never let's me turn the GPS off...
so I don't know how people can go missing,
and certainly not starve... ok perhaps if they are in the wilds...
but everywhere else... not so...
why they only have to give their GPS
and they can get pizza delivered.
So there must be something else going on,
and I think it is mother nature.
She clearly hates us.
Why else is always raining on school run?

What? You want me to what? as a question to the guest?...
What guest?... I thought I was writing a poem here....
waxing lyrical, you might say...
Ok... uh.... you've stumped me now...
Oh yes daffodils....
Why does no one ever write a poem about... say...
the orbs of light in the woods...
I see them all the time where I live
when I'm out wandering lonely as a cloud... bang... there they are...
and the shimmering silver mirror of dimensional travel....
And yet I never read a single poem about that.
I mean.... I ask you.... and I'm not using divisive rhetoric here....
or hateful.... but of course you don't have the right to not be offended....
I mean....

Yeah, why can't I turn off my phone?

And I'll take my answer off the air.

#poem #poetry #amwriting box

It yields with the coy resistance of weak magnets.
Of artful sublunary skill constructed
this box, embossed with marigolds
burnished the colour of plasters, once held a ring.

#poem #poetry #amwriting The Familiar

The Familiar

Behind us, a black-man is telling a work colleague
that she mustn't like pork chops, with a few potatoes.
The world passes our left shoulder at living room height,
each normally private room revealing
as the bald spot of the man at the traffic lights.
Rice and peas, like his mother's, that's the only thing to eat.
He begins to give the recipe.
She tries to get on board, but at every turn he stops her:
not that rice, this rice, no, no, she can't like that rice,
that rice is no good,too commercial,
you have to get it from the Jamaican grocer;
and never buy Uncle Ben's.
You roll your eyes.
The countryside never quite gets going
before we are into the next village,
and the next set of living rooms over shops.
She tries to reroute him, by talking about work: but to no avail.
Since, if you have been listening, you will need fish
to go with his mother's rice and peas.
Not a nice bit of battered cod or plaice,
you have to go to the fishmonger from St Kitts
who has a stall in the market.
A woman,
in a towel,
changing channels
catches my attention,
so unfortunately I cannot relay the details of the fish:
that you will need.
Though I do know it needs coconut milk.
We drink the last of the tea from the flask, cold,
nowhere is yet quite familiar enough.
I don't share the Twix, on account of my teeth.
You need to let the rice cool a bit
before doing something or other with the fish.
But you'll be glad you did.
It's far better than a pork chop, with potatoes.
It will make your mouth sing.
But if you must have a pork chop,
then you need to cook it like his mother.
A white haired lady stands at the window above a baker's.
We have paused at a zebra crossing.
We both look away, though I have the urge to wave,
but that would be unfair.
I am already invading.
As we move off, I look back, she is crying.
Some kids, at the front, get off.
If you can't get banana leaves then greaseproof paper will do:
at a push, but you have to grease it with oil: lots of oil.
And make sure the oven is hot.
We almost make the effort to move
but a man with a dog takes the front seat.
The backpacks relax into place, again.
It all seems so long ago, that we were stood on the brow
looking out across the valley, with the shining lake,
and nothing but ourselves.
Reading my thoughts you scroll the pictures on your phone.
Diffidently you say you were just checking time.
I like this about you.
The partial pleasing lie, like when I took two buses
to be just passing, and you said you were just about to ring.
And then we got into that nice stage
of apologising for saying I love you.
And do you mind if I say how excited you make me feel.
You need spices, lot's of spice, to make a good pork chop.
And rice and peas, you can't beat rice and peas.
Then she says, bluntly, that she grills the pork chop
to the point of crisping the fat, and that's how she likes it.
With potatoes, and sometimes a few peas,
on a plate on her lap, in front of the tele
with her slippers on, and the door locked.
I notice a shop I know.
And we hold hands.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook jdlkjsakl

she died at nine of the complication
of a bone in the leg and shortage of breath
well is a hole and hay is for horses
you've got to die sometime she always said
buttons and bus-tickets paid for the wake
bread and iffits were laid out on plates
where there's a way there is a will to be read
I'll send you ten bob but maybe next week

#poem #poetry #amwriting #beehive #bradford beehive poets digest compilation

Don't mind me...

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

....

Heart of Spring

    Late and late, here and now golden glimmers spring
upon the whisper rippled river, who begs, 'let me sleep',
among the stones;
    late and now. Across the bridge,
in the park, couples stretch to take their ease
among the bawdry budding flowers,
the scattered showers, of purple, white and yellow Crocus,
and the melting Snowdrops.
    Here and now.
The violent songs take wing from every new-build nest,
to fool our ear, to trick our sense,
unaware of the worms and eggs that every note defends.
    Now while late, the smokers gaggle at the pub' house door,
expend upon their passion louder than before without
the fizzing wet car tyred roar, and the hush of night to chide them.
    Here and here. Now guided by our retina to longer sight
by clearing air, and everywhere the colour lifting,
dotting, brighter than each yesterday.
    Here and now,
and ten feet on, beyond the fringe of the wood
three twisting elms contort balletic from a common root.
Beneath the sister's entwined arms, Bluebells mass
upon the bank, waiting with wild Thyme and the Eglantine
for the frost-less nights to come.
    Here and here, the fallow passes
greening into growth. Yellow winter, slow departed
from the muddled earth of pathways,
slips away to the single grained white, brown and grey.
    Here and now, one sees the trees for the opened woods.
The etching, flexing, branches on the spooling sky
and the slender warty frames. Naked, more than leafless,
no glade nor ley delights the mind to fancy,
or invites the weary to rest in shade.
    Late and late, here and now.

....

US and Them

I was sat drinking DDT on the porch with my ol' buddy
and we got to talking about the good ol' days,
when the Democrats didn't never let them coloureds vote,
on account of them being too violent.
That there big ol' sun was shining, in the big ol' sky,
and if you could'er heard us, you'd of laughed fair fit to burst.
A Whip-poor-will whippled in a Whippletree.
My buddy sucked the juice out' his beard.
An' bright eyed, he pointed to the trees
and cried, 'I do declare a Sasquatch is looking at you!'
Well, I declare I saw the eyes,
but I can't rightly say, what it was I rightly saw.
Whatever held my stare, was not of this world.
Then it up and went.
I measured out another finger. Downed it straight.
Settled down, I asked, 'who do you think will win the election?'
My ol' buddy paused a while, leaning in his rocking chair,
'Putin,' he said, 'he always wins.'

....

Sunday Walk

Flashing rainbow blue, the trout, darting,
breaking the darkling bank;
to the lolling depths: where no sunlight ever goes.

Haunched parental pointing finger
guiding
wrapping round that eager child,
who seeing only glinting light,
suspects no fish.

Strange the urge to magic then,
as in the super-natural
glimpsing game of seen unseens,
that later are rememberings.

For even now we doubt. Even as I know,
the trout is in the river beyond our eyes.
An angel now would be more real.
For we have walked this path before,
swishing grass with sapling sticks,
and split the world with tales tall.
Yet never in our glancing,
have we yet caught hide
of angled prize chancing into open sight.

Though we have not looked.
As we look now.
Too busy with our company to watch for hints,
from that world, from which we are removed.

....

Last night, after dark, I went out defacing statues
when I met the nicest chap. He was doing the same.
So, we combined our chisels and went to work
on a some dead white fellow:
you don't get arrested that way.

I took the nose and he took the brow,
the lips came away of their own accord
with a satisfying smash.

I asked the chap what he did, and he said teaching.
How we laughed, when we read the plaque.
The the fellow we cracked, was in teaching too.

And we moved on to the dove of Victory,
on the war memorial. Chip, Chip little dove:
coo, watch it fly; crash.

Not being vandals we balanced a Coke can
on the empty hand; in a sort of ironic way.

And posted the picture on Facebook.
Well, before we had got to work on St George
we had nearly twenty 'likes'.
And a comment, 'to let the Dragon win'.

....

starts at 8 for 8.30, at the Beehive on Westgate... do come along....

Tonight there are gest poets, including Cathy Benson

#poem #poetry #amwriting Heart of Spring

Heart of Spring

    Late and late, here and now golden glimmers spring
upon the whisper rippled river, who begs, 'let me sleep',
among the stones;
    late and now. Across the bridge,
in the park, couples stretch to take their ease
among the bawdry budding flowers,
the scattered showers, of purple, white and yellow Crocus,
and the melting Snowdrops.
    Here and now.
The violent songs take wing from every new-build nest,
to fool our ear, to trick our sense,
unaware of the worms and eggs that every note defends.
    Now while late, the smokers gaggle at the pub' house door,
expend upon their passion louder than before without
the fizzing wet car tyred roar, and the hush of night to chide them.
    Here and here. Now guided by our retina to longer sight
by clearing air, and everywhere the colour lifting,
dotting, brighter than each yesterday.
    Here and now,
and ten feet on, beyond the fringe of the wood
three twisting elms contort balletic from a common root.
Beneath the sister's entwined arms, Bluebells mass
upon the bank, waiting with wild Thyme and the Eglantine
for the frost-less nights to come.
    Here and here, the fallow passes
greening into growth. Yellow winter, slow departed
from the muddled earth of pathways,
slips away to the single grained white, brown and grey.
    Here and now, one sees the trees for the opened woods.
The etching, flexing, branches on the spooling sky
and the slender warty frames. Naked, more than leafless,
no glade nor ley delights the mind to fancy,
or invites the weary to rest in shade.
    Late and late, here and now.

#poem #poetry #amwriting US and Them

US and Them

I was sat drinking DDT on the porch with my ol' buddy
and we got to talking about the good ol' days,
when the Democrats didn't never let them coloureds vote,
on account of them being too violent.
That there big ol' sun was shining, in the big ol' sky,
and if you could'er heard us, you'd of laughed fair fit to burst.
A Whip-poor-will whippled in a Whippletree.
My buddy sucked the juice out' his beard.
An' bright eyed, he pointed to the trees
and cried, 'I do declare a Sasquatch is looking at you!'
Well, I declare I saw the eyes,
but I can't rightly say, what it was I rightly saw.
Whatever held my stare, was not of this world.
Then it up and went.
I measured out another finger. Downed it straight.
Settled down, I asked, 'who do you think will win the election?'
My ol' buddy paused a while, leaning in his rocking chair,
'Putin,' he said, 'he always wins.'

#poem #poetry #amwriting child 1

child 1

Up on the old airfield, a desert of green
so flat, that like the sea, one sees the bent horizon.
We found in the cracked concrete an ant's nest.
At first it didn't interest:
because just beyond the slab, we found a bullet
that we beat with stones. At first timidly,
and then with ferocity, but it didn't fire.
The red ridged sides we blamed for it's blankness.
You had a penknife. I had a stick.
And we dueled, constantly en-garde,
swapping with each hit. Until in our words
we had ribboned eyes, and gummed out teeth.
I held the penknife, you the stick.
We found two more bullets in the grass
and a clip, and a buckle, and part of a wooden sign
that read, 'RES', in fading white stenciled letters.
One bullet was clearly live, no red sides,
you kept that in your pocket.
I didn't haggle hard.
Sometimes the grass was waist high,
where the sign read, 'DANGER'.
We decided there were buried bombs
and dug no deeper than the penknife hilt
struck no gold, only tossed glass from a lemonade bottle.
According to you, ghosts walk here,
and on nights when the moon is full
a jeep drives out to the runway.
The shiver I felt, made this true, in a way
that your story of your cousin losing a testicle
falling from a tree, was not.
I had fallen from a tree.
We found the worn rubber heel of a shoe.
We found the key of a can of bully beef.
We found ourselves back at the ant's nest.
Something shamanic occurred,
in the chanting and the dancing
and the clear vision of each ired insect.
How we flowed, in our campaign, never wholly still,
circling the black tide, we wore it down: from above:
down into that diamond crevice, to the eggs and to the queen.
'Try one' you said, 'they taste of sugar'.
It did not.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook 1973

We never went to the waxed church
preferring pledged whitewash walls,
until standing at the sink more often
we never went to church at all.

I still resent the cutting roads
stripping out hawthorning lanes.
The penny faced past dull clinking
pigtails snipped. The shining came

breadcrumbed sludge symbolising
that trampled moon, more personal
the squired stars, now close at hand;
retorted can, the plastic kit.

We'd tingle tongue the cattle fence:
unbruising whitened knuckle clenched
to fight the drowning urge to piss
swelling up from grey numbed toes.

#poem#poetry #amwriting Dead Dog and Other Stories

Dead Dog and Other Stories

My mother, then vital in the way you forget,
bursts the door, in such a way
as I know I will be beaten, and forced to grow up.

It is noon, as good as: or past.
But the shafted sun of summer spikes the velvet green curtains.
The dust, and my father's cigarettes turn in endless kaleidescope.

And there lays our dog.

On the matched green carpet,
(on whose ridges I drive cars, in jams)
slow breathing, solemn eyed,
each belly filling breath exposing skin.

On it's side the dog lain.
It's white eyed wonder, at how
wandering to the warm spot at the centre of the room
it now lays,
behind the shadow of my mother's chair.

And why this boy, it saw born,
is now kneeling with tearful eyes
and not laughing
at the matted snow of fur ploughed around shined black nose.
Or passing unproved pastry from the rolling table
in which all weights are learned on balanced scales.

Too cruel, is death's first lesson:
for a child alone as a mother runs for help.

For what can a child do!
Who each day lives with wanton death:
as brief as flick'd finger
the plastic soldier falls.
It is only polite in the playground
to provide, with one's genuine friends,
an most heroic gargled end, with two tumbles.
But those deaths have rules.

Real death, does not.

What I remember is the light.
With my mouth to the dog's ear,
and my hand stroking that familiar fur,
intoning, 'do not die, do not die. do not die',

Perhaps when my mother dies -
assuming I survive her -
and I have read more of Freud, without laughing,
I might explore the fracture of the heart I felt expire
in the descending darkness of the moment:
when flesh moves more from life
and that pulse switches off;
no matter where one lays ones hand
one feels less response.

The coldness on the despairing face
when found in place
there
guilty
of not holding place
and lacking in one's duty.

And kept in one's room, from the dog.
Until your father comes home
and half praises, half condemns: your failure
to keep alive
the dog he bought
to not love your mother.

#poem #poetry #amwriting IQ Test

IQ Test

May I take five minutes of your time.
Don't worry, I don't want your bank details and nor will I ask you fund the second home of some charity boss; with a sob story.
But I am doing a survey on reading.
I was wondering what sort of metaphor might get you to the end.
Thank you.
And if the importance of colour matters.
That's fine.
Are you male, female, other, don't care, don't want to say, or careful.
Yes I can see.
Do you prefer an 's' or a 'z' in words like patronise, or similar, and do you mind if I automatically include the opposite in defianse of the red line.
Too kind.
On a scale of 1 while 10, how much to you care about poetry: with 1 being I studied it at university, have had a few poems published in some magazines and go for drinks with a classmate who works the submission queue at Faber, and 10 being I like and care about poetry passionately.
Oh you like Yates... that's a minus 1 then.
Is the moon a pearl, a secret Zionist research facility, sometimes an inspiration, sometimes a cliche, a symbol of the feminine principle, ruined by the Americans, a chunk of the earth that was formed in some cosmic collision and now serving as a counterweight that runs the seasons, which shines purely on some scientific principle that we assume is correct but haven't bothered to check but quote often as a way of winning cheap points when discussing matters of the heavens with religious types.
I'm beginning to like you.
Oh don't worry about the jacket, it was given to me when I was homeless.
Do you ever use the word gender.
Yes these are statements and not questions.
Why should you answer in the customary manner.
This isn't a test.
Yes I have been drinking.
And smoking cigars.
I'm asking the questions here... sorry making statements.
Just one more.
Shouldn't you be watching television.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook notes 10 mar

You never wore the moon as pearlsas other girls, believed they could.
Another world you pursued,

...

vicious abundance of phase

...

in the silence of the bloody ear
before ingested of the poet, we hear
a little the inner landscape bought
to that place of prejudice

....

in simplistic tone upon the bloody ear
comes

...

bring me your landscapes
your seascapes and your prejudice

...

occasioned of landscape happenstance in stretching view

...

if in the ridging landscape, gouged in pressure
of the glacier, we might dream of fenny streams

...

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook numbers

I've never liked the number three.
to me it is an eavesdropper
of secrets and exclusions.
Always taking sides to exclude
in protection for promotion.
We should ban it.

Along with evil number two
who tricks us into love.
When everybody knows that love
is one and one projected.
But don't tell two, for it divides,
forms sides, and is half of number three,
so please whisper if you agree
with me that two and three should go

 But leave jolly number four
on a par with pa and ma, with jolly kids
in cornered car, singing brightly as they go.
Not to a prison cell,
where four might dwell, I agree,
but compassed on the wind.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook kaldi

I don't know the poem
but I suspect I have heard it before
and I don't want you to take offence
at my pansy leftist reference

but aren't you rather like Auden
in that bar on 52nd street
before he learned the wisdom
of his ways.

I have no love for the wickedness
of this government
but I do ask you to think
and not to blame

#poem #poetry #amwriting 1

1

let sinful pleasures wash my soul
with each and every blissful passing
whither not upon my joy.
the heart within me wretched
as always was, as a boy,
cracked thin as parting friends of orphaned smiles.
my kisses now lack passion
but gain all the more in contemplation
of that which I love, and choose to keep
when weighed against that certain madness of former days.

in all ways we taste more sweet
when looking back, from that place unclimbed.
happy to be here.
from the height we did not ascend
but found ourself lifted
by being, and refusing not to be.
slave or free
licenced or in liberty
is all the same to you and I.
yes we can define and correlate
seek the things that divide and place our words into mouths
that never knew our name.
but eggshells are for breaking.
and fragile love, which hangs
untitled for our taking
will turn its back more sharply than the counting pen can note.

if it is sin to love the things we love
then let all sin be pleasant and not the sordid lie of taking.
the saddest word is goodbye.
whether on the fork
or in the hurried walk of morning
or the dropping dreg of wine scraped against the glass.
not for what has passed.
but what is again tried in finding, when we might accept
the touch of a hand upon our hip
sliding in beside in simple act of fellowship.
money buys nothing more than time.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook dle

The day has dipped it's corner in water -
the colour running in tree fattened mist
without horizon - only pre-covered dusk.
Puddled by an early rainburst the streets
soak into dark stains, bidding quiet
by every passing car. But, the clock
of my heart sees only the unwinding light
and will not yield, this streaked returning.
How subtle now become the sights that interest.
I find myself opening to the commonwealth
that winter closed. The rotten fence,
the lumber stuffed beside the rotting shed,
the thinning whitewash of the fence
it's long dead grain shining from across the road.
I suppose the leafless tree still grows.
I trust the living will take note
of their long dead useful kind
and glow in the liquid light of spring.
I almost heard a blackbird sing today
in stunted aria, to warm the summer cords.
And noticed the streets unfolding
in a very pleasant invite, unhuddled
from their shivered fires, the walls
take of their gentle hues, like cheeks.

cliffhanger

My wife, now more bone than skin, insisted we burn the last of our furniture to heat the iron, to press the clothes. Hunger and defeat hung now so thick, that walking to the square occasioned no name calling or spitting. When they took our papers we knew. But still, hand in hand, beneath that rainless winter sky, foolishly we allowed ourselves the folly of hope.

It was then we heard the first of the planes.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Sunday Walk

Sunday Walk

Flashing rainbow blue, the trout, darting,
breaking the darkling bank;
to the lolling depths: where no sunlight ever goes.

Haunched parental pointing finger
guiding
wrapping round that eager child,
who seeing only glinting light,
suspects no fish.

Strange the urge to magic then,
as in the super-natural
glimpsing game of seen unseens,
that later are rememberings.

For even now we doubt. Even as I know,
the trout is in the river beyond our eyes.
An angel now would be more real.
For we have walked this path before,
swishing grass with sapling sticks,
and split the world with tales tall.
Yet never in our glancing,
have we yet caught hide
of angled prize chancing into open sight.

Though we have not looked.
As we look now.
Too busy with our company to watch for hints,
from that world, from which we are removed.

poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook jpe

Last night, after dark, I went out defacing statues
when I met the nicest chap. He was doing the same.
So, we combined our chisels and went to work
on a some dead white fellow:
you don't get arrested that way.

I took the nose and he took the brow,
the lips came away of their own accord
with a satisfying smash.

I asked the chap what he did, and he said teaching.
How we laughed, when we read the plaque.
The the fellow we cracked, was in teaching too.

And we moved on to the dove of Victory,
on the war memorial. Chip, Chip little dove:
coo, watch it fly; crash.

Not being vandals we balanced a Coke can
on the empty hand; in a sort of ironic way.

And posted the picture on Facebook.
Well, before we had got to work on St George
we had nearly twenty 'likes'.
And a comment, 'to let the Dragon win'.

#poem #poetry #amwriting To My Lonely Friend

To My Lonely Friend

Bright booked memory mumbles
liquid tumble picked
in the subtle undulation,
of perhaps ourself: that we would see
knelt in justified reflection
of the ego's beatific truth.

For who really lays out youth,
if not in what we un-recall.
Or not call to mind, as if in sign
of love lost lightly, when later
love takes wings, to lift beyond
the petty things we lived to forget.

Beset with fear of what may come
we tack the winds of hope and pain,
watching not the wake
of shapeless oceans sliding by.
So why cry? For that time,
in idle wrinkled age's stare.

There it is not. Nor shall be
though we hear gurgled voice authentic,
see the bright dancing past.
It will not last unless hard grasped
to the sickly heart's desire
to once more be part, of that
spring-legged day: not here.

#poem #poetry #amwriting Gender

Gender

At what point do you take things on board
and not buckle at the knees
for having to take them on board again?

Oh I know I am privileged for be laden:
I learned that with baked beans on toast
as we saluted the flag and our dear queen

must you pile them on again?

Wait a minute, while I check my genitals.
I'm sure I can find something down there
that gave me advantage, while you made daisy chains
and I had my head crushed by older boys.

The same older boys you married
and divorced
and built your portion of happiness.

But let's not talk of genitals -
how crude -
when I rolled stockings up my legs
and minced around in kinky shoes.
Did the flutter of your proto-penis stand on end?

I thought not.

Because of course you were reaching for the rabbit
in fulfillment of your role
while deleting all your business cards.

But I was hard.

And harder still.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #sketchbook spring

Today we were tricked into believing it was spring
blueskies and sunshine, the vapoured air
of flood hills warmed. And tonight
in perfect constellation cloudless pointed
a frost on every window spreads.
But no trees were fooled.
They do not rush to blossom or leaf.
A surer sign is needed
to touch the heartwood and the root
than mere air: and bouncing step.

#poem #poetry #amwriting #beehive #bradford beehivepoets digest compilation

Don't mind me...

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

....

Wake

On the shingle stands a gathering
wrapped against the chill faint breeze.
The recent rain has swelled the tide
to an almost blue: though not quite.
The iron-stone beck bottom still
taints the water's tone from sky;
and I break stride, upon the farthest side,
curious to watch the little crowd.

Reticent, with an urging air,
like teenage girls about to kiss,
or boys set upon some dare
they know will strip of innocence.
Each takes the earthen pot in turn,
in turn to take their last goodbye
around the congregated friends,
until back into its spousal hand.
They jointly say a private prayer
or perhaps some verse from the heart,
as the sun breaks weak from cloud
to light an elm in single shaft.

Then to the water's edge she goes
the last remains clutched to her breast
as if she holds a branding iron.

She goes alone
to the very edge, as to the sea.
Unscrew the cap
half-bent she kneels.
A thin stream blusters in its reverent pouring out,
as steadily as she turns her wrist
until, at last all is gone.

And I walk on.

And I walk on
turning back, only once, to see.

....

Impression I

Or row on the river with the boys
and the castle on the hill,
and watch the drinkers at the riverside cafes.
Shall we follow the current
to under the willow
to the toothy smiling darkness
behind the door of brushing leaves
and cry 'mind your heads', and laugh.
Or climb the ancient stone-cut steps
between the pastel walls of gardens
with stooping gates
and rusted hand-turned rings to open.
And listen to the sandaled feet
pattered rush to catch the dream
of what might lie dog-legged behind
the corners of the twisting climb.

....

The Weatherman

Smoking; he stands by the apple tree, they bought
when they came. And, into his thoughts comes the word...
Somewhere he read it is always raining.

A falling mother gathers unto herself,
both swelling and clearing the path of descent.

The cigarette droops on his lip, almost touching his chin.
Thinking of nothing his mouth tastes of nothing
but condensed smoke turned to tar: asinthin and disgusting.

The swollen mother, subject to friction, jellified
silver; a sac held by motion: obeys the laws of time.

He spits the burnt-out cigarette like an olive stone.
Picks up his saw, and begins work again
to add to the pile of branches: that he will burn.

And as he saws, the teeth gutter on the green wood,
slip wet from the cut, hack the living wood in grinding shreds.

Only a laser can see that moment when a raindrop bursts.
When in a vacuum of lubricosity the laws of time break.
And, the parts conform to the terminal velocity of the whole.

The branch tears and twists away leaving a ragged, lacy spike.
He drops it. Rotates the pot. And, begins on the next easiest branch.

He thinks to himself, that he might use this metaphor of rain:
to explain, where it all went wrong, and evaporated:
when drinking whiskey in a darkened snug with strangers.

Perhaps by then he will have expanded his theory, to include the physics of clouds
and a description of the centrifugal force that creates a mother.

He turns the pot again, and again, but then he doesn't cry.
Instead he thinks of the sigh, on the children's ward,
when told by the doctor that she will live.
In the moment before she said she was leaving.

And instead of the Nobel prize, he shovels stamped coins into a machine.
And instead of an audience, he bitterly explains to the nearest disinterested person.

The tree is now a shapeless stick.
The one thing that was ours.

Of course they say 'they'll be friends', to friends; and civil.
But he cannot forgive her; for loving his daughter.

....

The Shape of Rain

Absolent as the flap of my pocket
around which rain escapes,
chilled, to trace the veins of my hand;
winter numbing rain.

Numb we close to sight.
Chin tucked.
Projecting with the fight of enfolding shoulders.

From above we might see.
See ourselves mimicking our torment.
But we can only feel
with plodding steps.

....

Impression II
(variations on the verge)

Outside the neon verge of history
all lives virga on the wind as icons.
Once we learned only of kings.

Now we learn only of types:
of parts of us we dare feel or deny
never touching soil,

never being soiled,
never being soil on the verge
of the road from the past.

We measure out by branching class.
And birch, to purge something
without sunlight or edge.

Rimless as the swinging rod
falling to make stripes.
Thus by the mark

shall we know their type,
and no gentle rain
shall ever bring them blood
to boil, or run cold, with the fickleness
of real people.

....

Smacked

I see them now, hand in hand, hurrying
late for school, on empty bellies; again.

But I don't see the child I first saw,
two, maybe three years ago.
The one with large optimistic eyes
keen to learn,
with a easy way of making friends;
if a little shy.

Now the missed baths on Sundays
have begun to show.
And, smell less than the lies,
however well intentioned
by a sistered proxied parent of barely seven.

You get used at the school gate to pain.
The child bravely turning blind,
the child who might die at anytime,
and the small aches of the playground
that you know can be kissed away.

But some scenes remain.
Like those two...
like those two
caught in that moment of lick combed dressing
dodging the road, late for school breakfast.

....

starts at 8 for 8.30, at the Beehive on Westgate... do come along....