FRACTURES

IN A MANNER OF MY OWN CHOOSING

2011-07-19T01:46:00.000-07:00

Death came to call last night.

Pulled up in his green-and-yellow chequer striped van,

and stepping out in the ribbed jumper,

corporate boiler suit and fluorescent tabard

looked a right smart bastard.

I wouldn’t have minded,

being – in a professional capacity –

usually happy to chat with his Grimness.

But we were just about to leave

for a well-earned Halloween break.

Asking no questions, he brushed straight past.

Although – as concerned neighbours –

inevitably we became involved:

hanging on grimly to chase after relatives

and keep the clogged road clear.

A shame we couldn’t do the same

for the arteries of our friend next door,

whose ashen face, when they emerged,

told its own story. Fifteen-to-two compressions

and breaths only for appearance sake.

He's been around too often lately;

we live in a No Cold Calling zone.

Couldn't he read the brand-new County Council signs?

The Reaper shrugged: second thoughts

were more than his job's worth.

I wanted to punch his lights out. Shout:

“You're not taking me till I’m good and ready,

and in a manner of my own choosing.”

But in kids' clamour to be dressed up,

he closed his door and slipped away:

a siren postscript of blue light.

vi.2011

Lesson for Darwin’s altar boy

2011-07-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

Sanctuary

among the Lenten Rose -

in its mauve chalices

a host of potent stamens.

Genuflect

to weed out wild garlic.

It gets everywhere,

this straggle of bulblets.

Make a complete action,

don’t cut it short:

the smallest left pearl

becomes origin.

Between joined hands

lies its renewal;

in the crumble of soil

germ enough to start again.

Dig deeper down

visible to invisible;

microbes mutate,

surpass our human count.

Observe the outcomes,

unfold their lineage –

rich, inscrutable

as the wisdom of birdsong.

Water marks the credo

of a birch’s weeping habit;

shallow roots spread

unseen beyond its drip line.

From next-door’s bonfire

the incense of house clearance:

snuff out that flame,

in ashes new-create your kind.

vi.2009

SHORE THING

2011-07-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

Windows ajar, awake to the dark:

a squeal and hiss of braking below.

But I hear the surf’s looped roll

smash mussel shells, pounding

their jagged fragments into sand.

Like spume in the wind, doubt nags my skin,

but does not crystallize.

Instinct, professes Winston, is what matters:

we’re hostage to our genes.

Queasy, I reach for the remote.

Another celebrity channel:

the stink of dead cuttlefish

washed up among plastic bottles,

glass shards and broken chairs.

Night buses jostle a stretch limo.

The mini-bar yawns, and houses tilt

seaward. Here in hotel limbo.

Over a rutted mudstone shelf

flood tide fills extinct footprints,

leaves question marks in pools.

Full English breakfast dawns:

mushrooms grace my plate,

the closed anemones of trodden water.

A cormorant suns its unfurled wings,

cruciform as my upbringing.

v.2003 / ix.2005

ALLOWED

2011-07-05T11:06:00.000-07:00

“Do you never listen to a word

I say?” You ask,

balking at further repetition.

Pointless any protest that I've

(so audiology reports)

hearing of an eighteen year old,

since already my ears are full

with the creak of timber in wind

and some distant chain saw's buzzdrone;

with squelch of muddy bridleway

as trains grumble through the valley;

with a bird scarer's fitful claps

and crows' indifferent croaking.

And besides I'm otherwise occupied

searching hedgerows for sloes and rosehips both;

cross-questioning feathered small talk all around;

translating the tinnitus of a stream.

Yet I misinterpret a tone of voice

and over my own tongue stumble:

its barbed wire excludes the public

from what has been fenced in.

Abruptly then aware, I rush to meet

head on your silence waiting still

within earshot, at the next stile.

vi - vii.2011

LIFE AT A STONE'S SPEED

2011-06-15T15:09:00.000-07:00

one

steady hand

kneads our nape

where a boulder's heat

is borrowed yet magnified

the shape of its ache polished

shoulder smooth with spilt regret

from a lifetime's dream that

tears were all cried out

ending as though

they never

began

vi.2011

THE DIP OF THE HORIZON

2011-06-12T03:22:00.000-07:00

This day's for looking round,

for turning arthritic

necks and shuffling feet

to scan horizons.

In the showery distance

a rainbow's arc breaks through,

questions our assumptions.

Circling the full three-sixty

we eyeball each degree,

our heavens to divine.

Nimbus, cirrus, stratus:

middle years bank up

in layers of letting go,

between clouds one and nine.

Function, sense, control fall

prey (or will) to dotage,

heart attack and strokes.

A pyrocumulus forms

from waste incineration,

and children leave like geese

to make their own mistakes.

Our tide is on the turn:

we eavesdrop the plaintive

skirl of curlews' evensong.

Lapwing are loose pages, Dunlin wheel

with hundredfold glints of sun,

and crepuscular rays flood marsh

with myth of silver linings.

vi.2011

TIME OUT OF MIND

2011-06-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

What flood discharged you here

at this meandering point,

where banks of crumbling psyche

burst, and morning bells peal

dolorous over pasture?

From room to room you drift.

Your shards of silence set

a crystal curtain tinkling;

brief the insight shimmers

in sunlight glanced off trees.

The cut-up montage monster

roars unlived choices, relapses

into dumb acceptance,

inevitable as single socks

escaping laundry baskets.

Coats are hung upon their hooks,

shoes put in their rack. When words

dry up grim duty calls;

letters sullen sit on stairs,

seek to catch you unawares.

The hood of cloud rips open:

over your shoulder daylight

moon peers down, traps - like fly

in amber - that template

of who you thought you were.

When perception's hinge came loose

what gate were you passing through,

which slammed behind? Unlatch

the snib, return, with heart

quilt solace from the remnants.

vi.2011

BREAKDOWN

2011-06-12T01:11:00.000-07:00

Have you ever strayed

over the edge of reason ?

Driven by all-embracing logic,

become a metaphor in pyjamas ?

Driven, for that circle must be squared,

or crossed, or arrowed.

Every road sign, every street name,

every lit window is symbol.

Each number signifies, all actions link -

while the wide world chain smokes.

Your silent voice yells in an empty cave.

Where doors of perception jam open,

no one is neutral:

in any car’s colour, the driver’s allegiance.

Vision - a contraband daughter -

bathes perspective in hallucination,

sends wisdom a postcard.

Ears ring with the fallout in your head.

When diurnal rhythm lets go its hold,

time melts like a Dali watch

across the labyrinth of waking.

From one slug, or burn, or coffee cup

sleepless to the next;

each turning point an act of futile defiance.

Have you ever drifted

beyond your hidden depth ?

Reached deep within to grip

some outstretched hand ?

viii - ix.2001

SPARE CHANGE

2011-06-12T00:26:00.000-07:00

Already browning leaves

bask in focussed warmth:

the definition of sunlight

held in hard-edged shadows,

which slant bars of night

across the furrows.

I squeeze the most

out of time remaining:

removal of crumbs

from arcane elevations

with dampened fingers, thumbs,

and expectations.

Leaving is the absent word

on a torn page:

smoke in a blind spot

where one can’t be found -

trusting footsteps do not

follow you around.

II.

Taking a breather:

I turn the block to its corner, and back.

Retracing routes to a dead reckoning

of climb-downs, compromises,

and short-lived triumphs.

To stay is to swim,

to drink the poisoned river.

Limbs stretch, pull, kick and glide,

emerging silent for a year

beyond the point of no return.

Catching traffic at a halt,

I scuttle by, green lighted.

Place a coin at the bedside

should the ferryman not hear my rhyme.

Always there’s a fare to pay.

III.

Hung up on tenterhooks

a wet blanket of doubt dries:

the masks of here and there,

two-faced, waiting on a word.

Leaf-fall as rain soaks away.

The shouted team-talk of six-a-sides –

lunch hours played out

in swearing, sweating echoes.

Parking meters promise

“free use of unexpired time”;

I plot reappearances

to the rhythm of wheel on rail,

and doze in grubby compartments.

Sunlight and shadowed passages –

the clear-cut choice

long made, long unrealised.

IV.

Pressure on a button then,

for drawn-out if becomes when

in the blink of a moment.

Familiar faces, soon no more

than unsharp recollection,

count these eight years down to days.

I am my own dissector,

measuring mixed sentiment

with a metre length ribbon;

And seeking some balanced view,

which neither labels nor betrays,

is mere shift I’m working through.

Sliced strand by strand, the stale knots

loosen; expose my parting shots:

Home again. Whole again. Home.

viii - xi . 2000

FULL CIRCLE

2011-06-06T00:00:00.001-07:00

Lush June spreads her untrimmed limbs,

reaches skyward where criss-cross runes,

like cloudy kisses, vaporise.

Approaching our meridian

on wheels, I duck its overhang,

gaze through windows and hurry past;

untaken timelines, glimpsed and gone

in the passage between stations.

Deep sat, my crows feet eyes backtrack;

someone's fading lofted photo -

lover’s keepsake of gilded years -

spins a distant, tunnel vision.

And there before you first fetched breath,

all mock demure, your echo smiles.

Youth supposes endless encores.

But leant on wall, hands tucked behind,

the image speaks of no return:

leaves me to plumb that pool of genes

for common features, weaving stitches

out of scars. The hidden birthmark

ageing, losing definition.

Decades later, from time to time,

the disjoined stories rendezvous,

make cameo appearances

along the riverbank. I'm perched

in blustery spitter spatter

on a barstool with espresso:

scanning the walkways' lit parade

to fit, in teatime’s suck tide, each

quick step in its place. Yet skirting

sentiment until - as five chimes -

out of the grey you stride, through spokes

and cantilevers into view,

all heels and legs and brimful

of confidence. Neck like a pillar;

bold as once I was, decades since.

Then marching off to the nearest,

noisiest pub, we talk full tilt

and reason you've reached half my span.

So from here on our ratio narrows:

as day dims slowly might-have-beens

get overthrown, while shared things grow.

v.2011

WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN

2011-05-28T10:29:00.001-07:00

Clang echoes clang after clang after clang:

the rockman’s jwmpah pounds a shothole

deep in the angled vein; earth’s hoard is hard

and dense. Black powder is mixed with care,

for metamorphosis begins.

Ifor turns from the blast, looks back

to the incline where daymen haul rubble.

Cowjian gripped in one hand, rhys in other,

dust clings to his downy cheeks.

Counting the floors above: twenty-six

ascend within the mountain;

his roofed world seen by candlelight -

chambers beyond reckoning.

From six to six, six days a week -

bar three days annual leave -

there’s thirty, forty years of muscle-ache,

until, like some sneak thief silent,

silicosis steals the lungs.

On the surface Uncle Alun sits,

hunched astride his blocyn hollti,

splitting slabs wrested from their bargen.

The screech of a hunter’s teeth pierces

his insistent chipping rhythm.

When dressed, the slates pile up by size:

singles, doubles, headers small and wide,

likewise ladies broad and narrow.

Then the titled, Countess to Empress -

roofing for rich and poor the same.

Noon. Men withdraw to their caban:

a general removal of flat caps,

place-settling, boot-loosening,

and unwrapping of rations

before their chairman calls order.

Ifor minutes the debate:

his native hand witness

to the brooding brethren.

Fifty-three are suspended;

there’s sixpence a week to win

from mansioned English owners.

The word is strike, solidarity

constant as underground warmth.

Charged with hwyl, Sunday chapel

is bursting full; for hours together

in tune with the Minister’s spell.

Or not. Ifor ponders the risk

of cupboarding to make ends meet.

I stand. From his waliau gaze out

across the distance: torn hillsides

are blue-grey heaps of sharded waste.

Road fill for MacAlpine. Rain falls

on dark stone, from dark sky. Hiraeth.

iv.2009

SPIRIT OF THE SARD

2011-05-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

“He who come from the sea comes to rob.”

Mastery rolls in

unrelenting as the tideless waves:

always another’s coast.

Safe harbour for Carthage once,

before Rome planted its grain;

later Mussolini mined

the coal and discontent;

now NATO play their war games here.

This island’s had its usage.

Time piles up in layers:

we look and tread on history

quarried and laid in stone.

Rotund remains all over

mark the Nuraghi’s slow retreat

to Barbagia, the unyielding highlands.

As a snail withdraws into its shell

malaria , serfdom, and wealth are left behind.

In Arborea, last of the guidicati,

Eleanor codified laws

to endure five hundred years.

Unlike her realm’s resistance,

broken at bloody Sanluri.

Yet your falcon bears her name still.

And free as flight above is,

so the pretty deceit of a snorkel:

that one swims with fishes.

In their valleys, mountains, forests,

all is crystal definition.

Our tourist vista, framed

by oleander, juniper and myrtle,

seldom has such depth of focus.

vii.2008

VIGNETTES A LA RONDE

2011-05-28T08:40:00.000-07:00

From Autoroute we exit

through silty plains, slowing

to the pace of sunflowers.

Where Man and marsh commune,

once limestone islands

emboss this monk-drained basin.

Here, our journey ends

in pantiled roofs, peeling shutters

and unmade, sun-baked pavement.

Monsieur freewheels the potholed slope -

a single geared, sit-up and beg descent.

The faded polo stripes

and shorts and socks and sandals

worn comme Hulot.

His creased features speak of weather:

“Orages dans le Sud”, he says

showing front-page shots with solemn glee.

Yet fretful, for saplings - parched

and wilting - croak, while Bordeaux floods.

This pitched site, plus simple, more to him

than unretired income:

his stubborn foothold on a walk of life.

Taking a dim view of motorhomes -

“sangsues, pas vrai camping” -

he vows to charge them extra next year.

* * *

For Saturday evening frites,

Monsieur’s spent all day mending.

Disgruntled, he shakes his grizzled mop -

“Il est panne: rien ne marche” -

an ancient fryer in bits around his feet.

Later, after meticulous checks

of the pool’s pH and chlorine,

Monsieur lingers to observe petanques,

and exchange pleasantries:

We talk of Pineau, Troussepinette,

some vagaries of the Michelin inspectorate,

and how his tomates biologique are ripening.

The clack of boules on dusty gravel

continues under globed lamps.

Unnoticed, Monsieur departs for home

from where, at eleven sharp, our lights go out:

“ Monsieur bon nuit.”

Morning: warm baguettes, jam,

and the smell of bikes lent into rosemary.

The day yawns, stretches out its canvas:

we paint each one, full to its frame,

with paddle-stroke and pedal-turn.

Gnarled pollards edge the patchwork,

squat its banks like old anglers, hollowed out.

Beyond a tumble of purple loosestrife and fallen trunks,

a dagger beak rises through poplars:

hooked and trailing legs are carried out of sight

by huge, deliberate flaps.

Our barque zig-zags through lime tarmac:

the conche’s lush silence disturbed

only by frog-splashed gashes in its duckweed,

an iridescent flash of Kingfisher,

and family disputes over navigation.

Market garden mojettes yield

to sunflowers in their day-glow pomp:

emergent from a dappled maze

we track the levee dividing wet from dry,

wheeling, like kites over treeless meadows,

in search of the next deserted village.

Evening: swallows swoop low,

with chittering swerves, to scoop the pool.

The site settles to after-dinner books, card games

or the shake, rattle and roll of dice.

Two plots along, guttural geese honk evensong;

a bat jags through the twilight.

Out at three a.m. with a bladder full of wine,

the Perseids streak luminous to earth

where fireflies, like cigar stubs, flicker at my feet.

Cassiopeia sits due north, her beauty at its zenith,

and Cygnus has flown from east to west

while I grow old in gazing at such skies.

v.2002 – i.2003

TURN

2011-05-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

Barely into our stride,

the year and I become acquainted,

shake off the newness.

Shed leaves are frosted

as sugar ice on stale mince pies,

and crackle under foot .

Through callow saplings

and fallen branches, the crashing

echoes without reply.

Beneath our canopy

heedless long-tails twitter, weave the beeches

black-and-white with gossip.

Light hungry, I look back

and find you there, picking your own path

to brief convergence.

Precarious above,

the aerial deadwood waits on

January’s first strong blast.

iii.2010

ESTUARY ENGLISH

2011-05-22T09:34:00.001-07:00

This creek is all fished out, drained

by the suck tide of capital.

Flotsam and jetsam are stranded

at the high water mark of greed.

But buoyed by undertow of tax

avoidance, the scum still floats.

vi. 2010

HAIR AND NOW

2011-05-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

Today the hairdresser comes

to fix our horrid image,

and dining chair is fetched to kitchen.

We wait to sit, for nimble fingers

execute their task by turns.

One hand crimps the tufts, her other

juxtaposes comb and blade.

Chat circles my head: she pauses

only to tilt her own, to gauge

the snick, snick, snick of scissors.

Were some remembrance locked

in every cropped filament,

what triumphs, hurts, sorrows, joys

lie tumbled, stranded there on lino?

In those dead fibres, swept up together,

memory enough to stuff a mattress.

But we remain, with restored crowns

of gauzy grey and wayward browns.

ix.2002

PIER RELATIONSHIP (for Gerard Cassidy, 1926 - 2007)

2011-05-21T18:08:00.000-07:00

Under a corrugate roof

open to the wind, rising

brusque from waves below,

I wait in dying light

as you so often did

for carriages to move me on.

Out of that photo long gone

your greying beard, in straight-faced

converse with an elderly guard,

nods recognition.

Memory’s pull is strong,

here at the head of the line.

Thick with paint this iron spine

resists its rusting. Nightfall:

a cloud of wagtails

flitter like distressed moths,

seek roost among the stanchions,

from settlement draw common strength.

Along the pier’s full length

I’ll follow the lamp lit tide,

rippling, broadening to the margin.

In sea-black mirror

no view to bring back home

and dispute, with you, its proof.

v.2009

RECOGNITION

2011-05-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Observe the pool of self-regard:

there you feature,

scrambling through barbed wire

beyond wishful thinking.

There you stalk the hedgerow,

in pauses, keeping

your shadow hidden

from mouths in a glass.

Far from out-of-focus faces

you might not know again -

blinking, staring,

lost without a label.

Sometime elbows rest on knees.

Shielded by lee of bluff,

you scan horizons

where eight eighths sky meets sea.

Testing the acuity

of binocular vision -

for windy hours on end.

Or looking down

in precipitate espionage,

on the whirling, diving mass:

driven by demands of nest,

parents cry their name

to close-packed, cliff-bound young.

Colonised.

Or neck craned, peering

into the canopy for clues

to specificity.

One glimpse may be all your sight,

saving an ear to call or song,

or click of beak cleaned against bark.

Evidence.

On questions of identity,

record only what's seen for sure.

It helps to know which trait you seek -

the jizz of your quarry.

This bird’s-eye view, bespectacled,

has crow’s-feet at its canthi;

in such ruffled diagnostics,

more than sum of my reflection.

vii.2001

SHIPPING MOVEMENTS (Portsmouth – Isle of Wight)

2011-05-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

Embarkation:

“Go now while you can” toilet trips,

and pointless rummaging

for items unlocated,

pass the queuing time.

Cycles racked and bungee strapped.

Roofboxes. Caravans.

Waiting on drivers and their rigs,

phalanxes of freight.

The sweet fume of petrol

undercut by salt tang.

Clouds and evening close in,

and neon rips the broken light.

Gulls bicker for scraps on tarmac.

For twenty years my father came this way

watching warships, noting their numbers;

through cold war to détente, and back,

naming the gunmetal greys:

British towns and Greek goddesses.

On a ship’s rail leaning, looking back,

I fathom their allure; picture

his teenage ear lent to a crystal set,

construing the enemy:

Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Tirpitz.

He never went to sea: signed up

to navigate the skies instead;

was transferred when gliders flew no more,

and ended up in Varna, spying

on a Black Sea fleet at anchor.

Decades on, like some ghost of a frogman,

rudiments of Russian picked up then

found recalled usage, translating

the Hammer and the Sickle,

when Obraztsovy was in port.

Daily ferried by three sisters -

Southsea, Brading, Shanklin - and bearded

in naval fashion, he stands:

pint in hand at bar, sustaining a sense

of other tongues, other islands.

Cast off and underway:

tricolours and Union Jacks,

grubby both, flap loosely.

Cranes salute, point skyward

alongside missile launchers;

who, fresh back from the Gulf

triumphant but empty-handed,

line the wharves.

And now gulls crowd

the detritus-churning wake:

in our turning manoeuvre

rich pickings, below the surface.

vi.2005

DISTURBED

2011-05-21T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here's a novelty:

with family outdoors,

I’ve house to myself.

No other agenda

than revising lists

of things-to-do;

surrounded

by the incomplete.

Slap-bang in mid-potter,

a wail from the garden -

“Come and see” -

breaks such reverie.

Its sun-warm stone lifted,

a limbless misnomer -

neither slow nor worm -

blinks and writhes,

shiny antidote

to my paper life.

Curious, anxious,

I reach out

for fragile grace.

It slips my rash grasp,

sheds tail in self-defence:

a lifeline left flexing,

reflexing down the path.

Part-death by design.

Hand-picked at second try,

the lizard slides

over palm, through fingers;

trails ichor

from its breaking point.

We note the subtle marks

of age and gender

on smooth skin.

Guarding stumpy survival,

I place our amputee

in a compost refuge,

chosen for its slugs.

A notched tongue

flicks defiance.

iii.2002

DAUGHTER

2011-05-21T08:34:00.000-07:00

They say eyes are the place where love begins.

Yours are blue:

not sad, forlorn or tearful as in a thousand songs,

but strong and brave.

In them I see you

swinging from monkey-bars with arm in cast,

or taking a cardboard box toboggan

down the stairs.

Also hand on hip,

upbraiding me for some dim-wittedness,

with mock exasperation

and a grown-up turn of phrase.

My pearl with pigsty hair

not often tamed,

whatever the choice of clips and grips and bands:

You are the rose that hatched.

i.2003

SON

2011-05-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

There's a picture in my head:

a garrulous, gap-toothed grin

emerging from the surf sun-blond,

all gangly angles.

Inheritor of my bony string-bean frame,

you’re older now.

I’m picking your tomatoes,

pardoning the insolence,

anticipating the pleasure of losing at chess

for the first time.

Punk baby,

tremulous then at climbing frames,

will you recall the anthems

I once sang you to sleep with?

v.2000

SWIMMING MY AGE

2011-05-08T08:17:00.001-07:00

From shock of deep end dive

to a shallow turning

is thirteen, fourteen, or

fifteen strokes depending

on the force of kick applied,

and reach of outstretched glide.

Boredom kept at arm’s length,

I am a metronome

counting the span of years.

Voices lose their bearing

between my muffled ears:

all is rippled hubbub.

Raising my mouth for air,

shoulders shrug at might-have-beens

as hands pull back in prayer.

Hips, the source of power,

plunge me forward groundless

through backwash of flashback.

Beneath the broken surface,

a bygone shadow play

looked down on, goggle-eyed,

refracts in cobbles of light,

splashing bottom and side

with fluid parallels.

Across my face, bubbles

stream the exhaled distance.

I whip legs together

to trim resistance -

a trunked back number, skin deep

in rhythm of reckoning.

x.2002

GALE WARNING

2011-05-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

“Dover. Wight. Portland. Plymouth.

Southwesterly. Storm force ten.”

Season of soggy letters,

collapsed fences, and thrashing trees.

“Imminent.”

Buffeted from a filigree path,

I’m woken unawares

to roam other neural tracks,

startled by lightning synapses

in rainy night.

From a broken gutter

cloudburst spills onto concrete.

At the junction of sound and light:

the cadence of your name,

rising and falling.

“Visibility:

moderate locally poor.”

Jack-knifing across the highway,

an artic gouges tyre ruts

in the verge of memory.

Thunder. Counting seconds

to measure the distance we’ve come.

Down those roads not taken

I lunch with your ghost, the unfledged stirring

of wind-blown thought.

v.2003

EROSION

2011-05-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

Fidgeting beneath dank veils of fog

the half-term day trip begins by ferry.

Posterity clamours, yet I only half attend;

and unsure where to look, ahead or back,

dredge memory's reach for bearing.

No guide but our gentle wake of crossing.

Bedaubed with gaudy dinosaurs

a veteran tube train waits at the pier head:

reduced in circumstance, two coaches on single track.

Taken for a ramshackle ride,

we're rattled along to the end of the line;

to where, as nipper, I grew in sunshine.

There, with two good ears between them,

my parents shoulder their years with modesty:

arthritic lives perched safely clear of landslide.

Closer to the rust railed edge, newly exposed roots

gape at passing generations.

Each set of feet makes its own migrations.

Candlemas Bells bloom in nodding clumps,

their snow-white tears a mark of human hand;

likewise the cliff-top shelter some hooligan transmutes

with fag butts, spray paint and rancid piss.

Via headlong hairpins then our path descends

to spill us, like outfall, on rippled sands.

That wind-pitted face whose crows nest early

commands the groynes, steams in risen heat.

Kids beyond 'KISMET', a peeling beach hut palace,

we near the rearing steps to climb full circle:

"Falls can take place", points out the hoarding,

"at any time, and without warning"

iii.2001

Poetry Salzburg Review #9, 2006

HANDED DOWN

2010-03-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

It is Easter Sunday evening.
We pore over our given hands,
shake off the torpor of a feast.

Mock reluctant grandparents, razor-sharp
in armchairs, have been drawn in.
Back to the fireplace, on a stool
I’m folded, ready to wrestle
their wrinkled fingers: solo whist,
the clash of one against three.

With a one-time bank clerk’s deft flick
my father riffles the pack, cuts, shuffles,
and deals four provinces their chance.
I decipher the semaphore
of reordered dispositions;
hidden faces are fanned as a shield.

Preferring no-trump mayhem
to the canon of hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades,
Dad’s favourite bid, misere,
defies us all to make him win.
As patterns emerge, others warm
to the prospect of abundance.

His own father is a slab of a man.
White hair trimmed weekly, serious
about gaining a majority and
taciturn as a croppy boy.
Has De Valera next to God,
says only “talk never played a hand”.

“There’s a nice little card for you”
replies my mother’s mother, easy
with the humour of dual loyalties:
brothers in Cork shipyards, husband
at Jutland, translating wireless
signals. Another volunteer.

Hush. Turned cards are on the table,

played like scenes from Irish history:
the rising and the risen.

viii.2009

HOLIDAY HOME

2010-03-29T17:14:00.000-07:00

I. BREAKFAST WITH ALZHEIMER

Hello. Hello.
Swimming the synovia
between sleep and perception,
a voice articulates:

Hello. Hello.

I turn deaf ears to awareness.
Clamber back into dreamy silt-traps
where other endings are allowed.
Too late.

Beyond my curtain, long awake,
gulls with yelping laughter
jeer at contemplation.
Hello. Hello.

Unable to plan his rising,
an old man calls from the next room,stiff with confusion.
Hello. Hello.

It is a creeping death:
personality crumbles and faculties fail,
week by week by seven-day week.

Hello, he says. Hello.

* * *
II.

Away on a well beaten track
Dorset nears with appearance of gorse,
splashing the borders yellow.
Here is a folded soil.
Beneath its lynchets, a chalk spine
porous, soaks away our turmoil.

From paddled landings and whooping wingbeat
we nudge past gift shop fudge and crystal figurines,
hot on the trail of clotted cream, jam and scones.

Over downs to Melcombe Regis strand
where once town band, sardined in bathing machines,
honoured royal bellyflop - “God Save The King”!

Below the precinct’s mansard windows
baggy skateboarders displace shoppers,
with darkness gathering
to practice tic-tac manoeuvres.
Pigeons, at roost on stucco garlands,
rubberneck the umbrageous craft.

Grabbing, open armed, a moment’s solitude,
I flip through secondhand vinyls.
Higgledy-piggledy they recall
a gull’s wheel in my mind’s eye,
arcing after charity scraps
flung from the harbour wall.

* * *

III. A MOVEABLE FEAST

Over juice and cereals
with leaflets, family and friend
review the host of possibilities.

Sunbeams penetrate our narrow lanes,
warm the uncertainties
between Palm and Passion.

Strewn with gusted sand, the prom
in bow-fronted fashion
welcomes mismatched pilgrim feet.

A Maundy paddle chills
as mea culpa, hand on heartbeat,
I do trousers-rolled penance.

Children, grown beyond my preaching,
pursue their own balance
on newly purchased skates.

Across on the Pleasure Pier
fishermen choose their weights,
and casting lines, coax Bass to bite.

Parents stuck in dodgy deck chairs,
under a lonesome diamond kite,
watch over summer’s first castle.

Encased in gilt, the jubilee clock
chimes overdue renewal,
mystery beyond measure.

With fish & chips we end
like a lerret moored at leisure,
bobbing, faced both ways at once.

iv - vi. 2001

Poetry Salzburg Review #9, 2006

PERSPECTIVE

2010-03-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

Sit with back to the road
on the edge of a layered distance,
a bounded foreshortening.

In tones of cloudy quiet,
watch morning dogs walk their owners;
feel the timber play beasts anticipate
a shower of infants, and stiffen.

Observe the passage, west and east:
pigeon and train are moving planes,
framed in viaduct and beech.

Hear tennis players, white and black,
bounce and reach; sweaty joggers also
make their entries and panting exits.

See smokers amble, slowest,
most foreshortened.

v.2000

EARTH

2010-03-29T16:11:00.001-07:00

Sledgehammered, my crowbar tears,

levers flints from soil newly wet.

I pile their cut faces

scores of stone skulls quarried,

when grubbing out privet.

By tools I’m hedged about:

a pickaxe prises, loosens,

for spade to cut and clear.

Two forks, saw and secateurs

complete my corps of weapons.

Embedded roots wrenched free,

I hear your weakening grip,

ready myself a last heave

on that stubborn tap, and guess

my ego’s backward trip.

ix.2000

I remember

2010-03-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

I remember covering each other’s absence

from laboratory practicals;

myself away at union meetings,

while you’d gone to the movies.

A perfect working relationship –

when we were young together.

I remember your disbelief

when told I couldn’t ride a bike;

the insistence that I learn

on your boneshaker with its dubious brakes –

when we were young together.

I remember shopping trolleys:

how we moved house with belongings piled

high in a caravan of them;

and how you used to ride one around the supermarket,

in among the tinned tomatoes

and widest affordable selection of breakfast cereals –

when we were young together.

I remember being out in the snow at night;

hurling snowballs, making angels, and tobogganing

on borrowed lab trays and a plastic toilet lid;

crashing into drifts and each other,

and staggering, sodden, home –

when we were young together.

I remember, I remember

when we were young together.

Seeing half a dozen films in a day –

everything from the sublime to the ridiculous –

then discussing our own scenarios into the early hours.

Taking the late night bus into town

in our anti-fashion threads, and dancing

to an exhausted immobility afterwards.

Plucking up the stomach to follow you

onto the fastest, scariest whirligig.

And though you’ve gone ahead

to where I cannot follow now,

you’re here still in my memories of

us always young together.

in memory of Phil Godfrey, 1957 - 1991

RIPE

2010-03-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

Gift of Easter blossom:

your lips, pert and plush,

seeming parted,

take a second bite

at the marshy mesocarp -

dinner alfresco on the Champs de Mars.

We pick our approach

to drooping rest;

the Eiffel tower from Montparnasse

winks at the window.

Waking with yawns

to a mountain range of cherries,

piled like pyramids,

beneath the shutters -

a cerise dream,

doubled on a single stem.

v.2000

LIGHTING-UP TIME

2009-12-06T15:16:00.000-08:00

A starscape masked by glare below.
Plastic snowmen adrift on lawns,
likely as palm trees in tundra.
Roofs and walls festooned
with chasing, flashing fairy bulbs;
through demented twinkledom
Santa’s reindeer prance, energy no object.

The ritual of choosing trees:
spruce and pine and fir and larch.
Each held at arm’s length, inspected;
we debate the swag of their branches,
which shape best suits our ceiling height.
Home then uplifted, ourselves
and tree, to root out last year’s baubles.

At mass, the ageing faithful.
Poinsettia wreathes with red
the pillars of a half-full church,
where words remembered
serve their familiar purpose.
In metal brackets RIP cards -
all recent - six to each pew's rear.

Now leafless boughs handwrite
shadows on hardened, frosty earth.
And darkened corners are lit up
as families gather, or recall
their scattering, around the box.
In the litter of torn paper
our struggle to unwrap meaning.

x.2005

Conference Believes (two days in Cardiff)

2009-10-08T16:17:00.000-07:00

Leant forward into Spring,

bronze Nye argues a point;

his downcast index strong,

once tenable, now echo

of antique rhetoric.

Between squalls, brittle sun

calls daffodils to surface.

And policy is aired,

blown spinning, dancing

like so much precinct litter.

Going through the motions:

a ritual of shown hands,

iron phrasemongery

and hopeless resolution.

Each voice has its typeface.

In the hyphen of twilight,

a swim and steam room sweat;

certainty dissolves,

and lane discipline holds

hardening arteries at bay.

Solidarity steps out:

from corner to corner

anecdotes shape perspective.

An inverse ratio

of drink and reason.

Public transport man shuns taxis;

through arcades weaves his way

beyond the surly Taff:

from hotel to station,

the choiceless pick their brands.

iv.2006

Instructions to Arachne

2009-10-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

Begin with a line

Float it

on the breeze of a single breath

to another surface:

the distance of thought.

From the slack middle,

drop your second

to form a pivotal ‘Y’.

Next, a scaffold of spokes -

anchor each to the frame.

Build a platform at the hub.

Make it firm:

later, as you hang head down -

waiting latent,

your belly will swell with ideas.

In the seam of night and day

trace a spiral outward.

Briefly rest.

Then, edge-to-centre back,

spin your sticky script.

Be nimble across the trap -

use your third claws.

And punctuate weak gaps

with extra thread.

You may eat your guidelines.

Feel tenderly for the struggle:

unseen,

its vibrations will reach you

along silk-strong strands.

End them with a bite.

ix.2005

GEOMETRY TOO

2009-10-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

the restless hand

which kneads your spine

it may be mine

would untie knots

in the dark curve

of a question mark

and measure each

changing minute

our ratio of pleasure

subtending fear

of dead angles

through sheer friendship

to leave you asleep

a tousled heap

caught in God’s net

viii.2000

Northwards Now #14, 2010

PLATFORM

2009-09-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

Under security mirror

and manifesto of adverts,

we who wait, watched over.

Beneath the fish-eye stare

I pace an edge’s yellow warning,

taste dampness in September’s air,

and scan the choice of company.

Youth adjusts its midriff,

selects new tracks to pass midday

content in isolation.

Down parallels of to-and-from

I look to gauge direction;

for unloosed words to run

true as that line below bridges:

each arch seen through a nearer one.

The boundaries, brick and wooded,

narrow to distant amber:

our signal undecided.

My train is overdue.

A crisp bag crackles, and silent

the first leaf falls, no end in view.

ix.2005

CRABWISE

2009-09-05T15:39:00.001-07:00

Crouched around the rim, in clusters,

kids with buckets. Wordless,

I watch a tussle of wits.

They’ve come equipped, these hunters,

brought string and safety pin.

A bolt becomes makeshift sinker,

and bacon’s saved to bait

their bottom dwelling prize.

Stalk-eyes see the would-be catch,

alert to a murky rip-off.

Risk is palpable, approached

through stealthy pincer movement.

Two schools of landing coexist:

some jerk and swing, flailing

in search of an instant answer,

others draw their lines patiently

by inches to the surface.

The day’s take plays scrabble,

captive in some plastic prison.

Canoe Lake strollers pause and peer,

in a barnacled mantle

make out the moon’s crust. Maybe.

Or count lost legs of veterans -

re-grown at moulting season

like veins around a tumour.

Afternoon, and ice-cream,

bring this contest to a close.

Tipped out across a concrete page

my jottings scuttle to the edge,

spill over, and sink without trace.

ii.2002

PUTTING THE CLOCK BACK

2009-09-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

September.

Persephone jumps pre-emptive

back to the underworld;

is buried in the fall that follows -

concrete and kerosene.

Hunched into morning,

mist rolls in; hangs

like dust down avenues.

Beneath old chestnuts, conkers -

littered as cluster bombs and aid parcels -

are collected by children.

Choice of shape is vital:

both food and death are yellow.

Night overtakes day.

In gutters, leaves swept to mush

pile up, refugees along the kerb.

Wind-whipped, their colours wear thin

and the year is brought to earth.

Eleventh hour poppies bloom in lapels,

bedeck memorials -

a harvest fit for junkies.

Held in this balance of terror

our human form divine.

xi.2001

FOR THE RECORD

2009-09-05T04:55:00.000-07:00

In yawns of dawn departure loaded,

yet left behind, the camera;

not for the first time we’re reduced

to postcard reminiscences.

Look right there, in the glove box crushed,

a former plastic canister

spills its sprung brown roll, glossy

with pictures taken yet concealed.

Scenes not seen, forever frozen

in the pause before a red light shows,

get held in fleeting recollection.

That moment when I squeezed your hand,

kissed your cheek and cracked a feeble joke:

because we stood and gazed beyond

the margin's frame of reference,

I know by heart its landscape.

Sundown across waves, a cliché
slips behind the lid of nightfall.
Looming large at distance, but
in a snapshot's fixed alignment,
close up the green-washed glitter
is never so sublime; remember
we leave someday as we came in -
take only what's disposable.

ix.2009

A KEEPER OF KEYS

2009-08-18T17:32:00.000-07:00

You said I was getting just like your Dad.

By the time he died his pockets bulged,

were weighed down with them;

you could hear their jangle, all shapes and sizes.

No wonder he needed a belt.

None - as far as you knew - fitted anywhere.

But, I countered, they could have.

In the teeth of every blade an answer

to the unsolved puzzle of a lock.

Each might reveal some secret,

if we only guessed where its keyway was.

Try one, have a go.

Between thumb and crooked finger

take the bow, apply some torque and turn its shaft.

Listen for pins tumbling to their shear line,

and imagine.

The view from a sash window,

a tune from a musical box,

the petty rattle of a cash tin.

A sewing-machine’s whirr,

escape on an unchained bike,

a sandwich in a briefcase.

The whiff of grass cuttings in a shed,

the privacy of a drawer,

keepsakes in a treasure chest.

I’d carry on about the openings,

the untold stories behind front doors,

but you’re not persuaded, I can tell.

Simply scrap metal, you argue,

not even worth recycling.

Whatever. This collection stays -

you never know when one may fit.

Along with the redundant foreign coins

I’ll leave you them in my will,

an array of question marks.

viii.2009

STATIONARY

2009-08-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

Brisk suits bundle in through the gates:

late and sweaty, armed

with Mail and Times and reaction.

Above them solemn hands clockwise turn;

while digital seconds drop,

counted click by dull click

into a charity rattle of small coin.

Rebounding home from night,

I join a shuffle of summer sneakers,

and the clack of well-heeled shopping expeditions:

our outward mood more leisured.

Signalling offhand delay

a wait of cigarette smoke curls upward,

suffuses shafts of day.

Over tin rhythms of walkmen,

ritual apologies are misheard:

those tannoyed yawn terminal unsurprise.

Some ring-pull’s fizzy snap shares my platform

with the strain of mobile phone tones;

unknown connections made,

where rails narrow to a distant asymptote.

Why not take a single?

Return as someone else.

ii.2001

CAPE COD POSTCARDS

2009-08-18T16:39:00.000-07:00

Prim ballerinas quickstep,

probe the surf’s margin:

each split-second flicking

white and black, edge to centre,

wing to tail, back and forth.

Every pulse of tide

sifted for sustenance.

II.

Squatting in the backwash,

desultory, I dig

while feet bury themselves.

Through the sieve of my hands

damp demerara spills;

grains of truth trickle down,

lost in the sweep of beach.

III.

A horseshoe carapace

and tail-spine packed

carefully in tissue paper:

eviscerated flotsam

of mass nocturnal mating.

My dried souvenir

saw danger only from above.

ii.2001

ENGAGED TONE

2009-08-10T17:35:00.000-07:00

Following in the wake of bride and groom,

we sit: unrelated passengers

who watch the dancing guests.

Fiddle and guitar, polka, jig –

a young Pole shyly smiles,

and I am envious of his joy,

yet sad at his watershed, his exile.

Ours is an embrace on thin ice,

and I wonder at your brim of confidence,

the undeserved trust.

Your head presses tight to my chest,

a warm neck resting in the crook of arm:

so love is a secret cache,

glasses a shield of discretion.

1987

Poetry Salzburg Review #9, 2006

SEEKING ROOTS

2009-08-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

After signing, my stroll takes in the tombs:

headstones of Victorian gentry

lying, untended, along moss-grown paths.

Their laments leap at me; testify

to an epitaph of inadequacy.

By way of stale silence I reach the road,

and looking back on subjects loyal,

hindsight dissolves in forgotten whispers

of smoke: our railways in sweated toil,

brogue built by ancestors from another soil.

1987

MIRRORS

2009-08-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

You were not there.

An hour of pacing, clock watching.

Then headlong through tangled crowds and ramps,

picking my way to the Thames.

Below the span of trains and traffic,

books in line laid out

spine uppermost.

From the far bank, a scrubbed Westminster

faces clean St. Thomas;

where patients wait in lists.

I buy a paperback keepsake of the meeting.

Crossing further up, a crow

flaps the other way and perches

black on an abandoned fence:

carrion guard to a temporary plot

of Lambeth wasteland.

From bridge to pictures, and recognition

of old friends: three dancers,

a snail and a tree.

I rest with coffee on polished wood,

and memories.

Other faces mirrored;

other eyes reflect their secret grief.

A child leaves, and breaks the reverie.

I too make for the exit, and spill

directionless out on the pavement:

a fox seeking earth, seeking safety.

Salvation arrives as a Routemaster,

red and numbered thirty-seven.

1987

DEBRIDEMENT

2009-07-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Quiet, for Friday evening.

No arrests, no overdoses, no stabbings, no drunks.

But early yet.

The telephone rings:

An explosion. Casualties imminent.

Hasty calls summon extra hands,

as cubicles are cleared, equipment readied.

Then we wait, standing around

while distant sirens echo apprehension.

Amid blue light splashes

the first arrival is stretchered in,

along with acrid smell of burnt flesh.

Abruptly, all are utmost speed,

minds concentrated.

Within minutes it’s a melee, an episode of M*A*S*H* -

without jokes, or commercials.

Windpipes are intubated, veins cannulated, chests drained.

Medical paraphernalia fights failing body systems:

shouted vital statistics report the front line struggle.

My job is to picture the injuries,

to see inside

beyond the stump where foot was torn away.

Blistering, its ragged wound leaks blood;

congeals to hide

severed vessels, shattered bones.

Nails.

Three-inch nails.

Nails driven into flesh,

indiscriminate of person or anatomy.

A modern crucifixion -

smeared with excrement.

Other material:

glass, and buried deep in someone’s neck,

a crumpled Coke can.

The victims are numbered,

hurried away to theatre.

There to face decisions:

what to amputate, what to leave -

balancing future disability against risk of infection.

An exercise in salvage:

over the bleep, bleep, bleep of monitors,

a cauterizing sizzle of diathermy.

Arteries are replumbed, flesh cut away

and wounds scraped, rinsed clean -

debridement.

* * * * *

‘GAY PUB CARNAGE: THREE DEAD’

According to police,

the perpetrator acted alone.

His fascist fascination made bombs out of a notion.

‘FAMILY MOURN BRIDE-TO-BE AND UNBORN CHILD’

Others knew him to be a card-carrying organiser,

inspired by U.S. race war theorists -

an ideology still at large.

No headlines in such accounts as these.

xi.2000 – v.2001