Nothing worth the dive

The payers, grown lean of late,
Fall to the myriad blades,
Of this, their unfortunate fate.
They perish in great number,
Rule takers, not breakers,
While the players, and rule makers,
Wrapped in capital colours,
Prance, booze faced, and hearty.
They make large and party.

Meanwhile, in the hollow land,
A bare tree claws the last warm rags
From a sinking sun.
A kestrel shoulders air,
But – nothing worth the dive –
Moves on.

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How beautiful we still are

Hot day at the beach.
Blue sky and a hard sun,
softens now to haze of golden evening.
Skimpy girls twirl
in summer shimmerings,
and kiss-me colours,
while tanned boys
with sharp beards
point their chins in strutting play.
A medley of tongues,
and skins drift,
arm in arm, dreaming,
towards the pier’s westward end.
How beautiful we still are,
When our hearts transcend
the fear.

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Control, Alt-Delete

I want to write poetry,
just like in olden times
with a notebook, and a fountain pen,
and a book of common rhymes.

I want to watch the sunset,
across this folded dale,
with a lantern at my elbow,
as the light begins to fail,
and the sash taps out in whispers,
the ciphers of the muse,
dot-dot dash, dot-dot dash,
at the rising of the moon.

And if I pay attention,
yet resist that grasping urge
the pen might yet decipher
an authentic string of words,
a pattern in the ink strokes
on this smooth vanilla page,
a thing we can hold onto
at the fading of the age,
a string of understanding,
timeless and complete,
indelible and indifferent,
to control, and alt-delete.

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A boat into the west

I’ll take the ticking of my father’s watch

And the tales my mother told,

And I shall pack them safe with fragrances,

In the pocket of my soul.

There shall be sandalwood and cinnamon,

For days beneath the sun,

While for the moon I’ll ride on lavender,

Until the dreaming has begun.

And there I shall encamp myself,

In a meadow by the sea

And from the shore I shall take pebbles,

As round as round can be.

And I shall plant them in that dreaming earth,

A dreaming circle wide,

And wait upon the morning,

And the coming of my guide.

I shall know him by his wisdom,

And the feeling I am blessed.

Then we shall wait upon the sunset

And a boat, into the west.

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The vision of the Golden Fish

I dreamed a golden fish,
Serene, amid a wasted lake.
It rose from silted depths,
To greet a narrow slant of sun.

It was a sterile place, nothing to breathe,
Only a fathomless unknown,
And an infertile shore I’d sooner leave,
Than wander one more day alone.

But then this vision of the golden fish,
In tender glint of amber sun.
It holds my gaze.

One thought, it says,
Amid the tumult of this tumbling year,
Is worth the hanging on.

If only I could tell,
Among the log-jam of these jangling thoughts,

Which one.

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The landlord smiles

They look a bunch of toughs,
these guys, red-cheeked,
strutting, chests out, like cockerels.
Already drunk, by noon
they laugh in pork pie hats.

Their eyes are bloodshot, noses swollen,
pockmarked with the corrosive booze
of long years. Their jokes are coarse,
take cheap shots at women
and immigrants.

Self importantly they cruise
the public houses,
puffed up,
in search of inanity,
exchanging pithy barbs,
and seeking revelation,
In the bottom of  another glass.
Meanwhile while their bodies turn their beer
To gas and pee.
The landlord smiles his sly welcome,
rolls out his bonhomie,
and cheers them on.

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A Good Clock

It was a good clock, sitting there,
On the mantle of my childhood,
Black-cased and glossy
As a piano’s ebony key.

It was the size of my hand,
And a good weight,
With gold fingers, like daggers drawn
On a white dial, peppered with soot.

There it ticked down the years,
Gained ever so slowly,
Was drawn back now and then
To the steadying pips of the BBC.

But in memory it never falters,
Just marks time, those fingers
Imperceptibly moving, scything
A rich harvest of days.

I don’t know where it went, that clock.
I heard it had stopped, was thrown away.
Pity. I would have liked to see
If I could get going again.

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August Bank Holiday

August Bank Holiday
And the messy wash of summer
Ebbs into this evening’s silty sea,
While the little bulbs strung out
Along the promenade
Ape starlight
And a sleepy sun sets
As figures, faded,
Colourless as ghosts
Walk serene these echoing boards,
Towards a stricken west.
We hold our breath,
Speak softly now,
As night tiptoes in and hides the worst,
Smears all into one soft, sleepy blur,
The lovers, and the lonesome
And the weary, and the cursed.

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The circle of my time

In this, the circle of my time,

I see the world for what it is,

these petty things arrayed,

and how the mind perceives,

through its filter of a fractured brain.

And all it is, is dust upon our fingertips,

Trailed loose upon a plain

Of imperfect understanding.

So blow the dust away

Then, clean fingered come

Closer to my lips, that I might

Whisper it to you;

What the circle of my time

In time reveals.

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Last Spark

A languid sun sinks low and seeps
Into the wide horizon’s reach,
Bleeds then into a watery stain,
Now smoothing out the wounded sky,
And soothing all our heads for sleep.

Through blunt anaesthetising rays
I squint, forgetting now the day
And its long, weary labours drawn,
Daring instead to harbour hopes
That from this heavy-limbed fatigue
Tonight, I’ll find respite in dreams.

Meanwhile, I sit entranced and still,
Allow the sun to finger through
The clutter of my memories,
Brush back the sleeves of ancient tunes,
Whose sweetness I had long thought gone,
Though each now shudders back to life,
Beneath the needle’s crackling pass.

Then, slow, into a coppered sea,
The suns departs this fractious day,
And with one final spark, is gone.
The day is done, its length is run
And as I start my little car,
And turn at last my wheels for home
I know, for all the life on earth,
We feel each setting sun alone.

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