Poems

Good job these poets aren’t tightrope walkers  she said, else half the fakers would be dead –- another tumble from a tone-deaf shocker.  But for a few still dexterous in their tread  this formal panache isn’t just possible, it’s song as comprehension in itself: how meaning’s strung out between two shelves. True balance makes this highwire crossable and through that crossing unforgettable.  Forget the risible rise of the hot take then, poets who play politics, mistake strength of feeling for technique. Unable to admit our readers are turning away they applaud themselves beneath time’s walkway.

A friend of mine from college days once told me his greatest pleasure was cooking a meal and then dropping it on the floor. He’d dropped every kind of dish in his time from lasagna and stew to a full roast. What seemed to excite him most was the moment before the plate of food actually hit the floor and was in mid-air. He invited me round for supper once, but I said ‘What’s the  point it’ll end up on the floor.’ ‘It might not’ he said ‘it depends what mood I’m in and anyway you can enjoy the smell of it cooking.

When you are sad, and imminently grey, Will you take down my poems and say ‘That bastard took and took and took From me, for the sake of his lousy book’ —And have me, who am truly old and grey Terribly in handcuffs taken away?

scaturiginichthys vermeilipinnis One day do IMeet the Red-finned Blue-eye?Everybody said IMet the White-finned Red-eyeAnd folks say in town IWooed the Blue-finned Brown-eyeBut did I or do IMeet the Red-finned Blue-eye? In another place and time IKnew the Jade-finned Lime-eyeAnd dark rumours hold ISought the Black-finned Gold-eye,I’m willing to suppose ISquired the Green-finned Rose-eye,But, anybody, do I,Meet the Red-finned Blue-eye? Historians will say IWed the Mauve-finned Grey-eye,In a wild waking dream IFace the Plum-finned Cream-eye,Therapists all think IMean the Jet-finned Pink-eyeBut none will ever know IMet the No-finned No-eyeIn the mirror crying Do I,Do I?

His eyes brim with the patience of his vigil. Time hangs like heavy pendants from his ears. His dewlap spreads like some contorted hill Of larva, frozen for a thousand years.  He will lie here quite motionless until The door is opened, and the man appears. And when the man appears, the waiting dog Will leap, and bark, and sniff, and thrash his tail, Delirious with happiness, agog That life continues, and will flail Like porpoises and wrap himself like fog Around his master’s legs, and howl and wail. The man, recalling how he’s spent his day, May simply touch his head, and walk away.

Beneath the towering oils of holy deaths — Cascading thunderstorms of crucifixion, Hands tortured into final benediction, Forgiveness in so many final breaths — They stand, a little dull, a little pale, A little worn by all the years of prayer, As if the hopes still hanging in the air Had left them strangely tired and sad and stale — The painted saints of plaster, wood and stone, So far beyond our grasping human reach, With nothing but their wordlessness to preach What lies beyond all breath and bone. They teach us in so many silent ways — A missing hand, a still uplifted gaze.

not just in the stretched sunsets and ticking clocks of poets but in the microwave – those four insistent bleeps Pachelbel’s Canon the word ‘lachrymose’ having to google the word lachrymose and the breathless stop when you spot                         what could be a new mole on your back or hear the guy who voiced your favourite cartoon                                                     &.

Among late summer’s casualties, their dry retreats, their whispering  in falls and drifting piles of leaves, her going went the worst for him with foxgloves where wire fencing sags, a sozzled hollyhock’s nosedive, the foxes’ feast of ripped bin bags anemones somehow survive; entangled heaps of splintered canes, their broken-backed tomato plants and, rattled by what heat remains, a poppy head’s ghost of a chance   that she might, with no more to save from his neglect than spores and seeds, steal back in March to nod and wave red-handed through next summer’s weeds.

at arm’s reach, side by side, more than twenty-five feet up our treble extension ladders, shuddered by artics and buses thundering up and down Newcastle Street. But Stanway won’t lend me his scraper. It would take seconds, less than a minute, to run it around the window frame where wood meets glass, scrape off the loose paint. But he’d prefer to see me edging back down, clinging on to the bowing side rails, hurrying back to our caravan on the waste ground, rummaging under the bench seats until I find mine that slipped from my overalls at breakfast, then bollocking me for losing time.

Low little thick-walled stone cottage  on the dwindling, forest encroached old Usk road.  You’d catch it at your eyeline, squat above the hedgerows,  like a cup on its saucer; whitewashed, dim windowed,  slightly sad outer face. Dad’s last home.  His, more than hers, ‘a refuge place.’ After he’d died, Mum toiled in the garden that got too much; badgering herself, ‘no, she wasn’t the type to give up.’ Isolation hit hard, she feared the swamping no-street-light, larch-wood deep country dark; double locking the front door, when she was in, nervous, edgy to a panic, when I came visiting. Heedless of help. Five full years mustered on alone,  fought fears that finally tipped to overwhelm.

Nice to get rid of yourself in a few words,Not to think any further or say any more.Nice to conceal in a strange town, To say, I am this, I am that, to use wordsThat are fixed and ripe to ignore.Nice to dispose in a few words. Who wants to live in the woods where wordsAre unclear, their meanings too tall?Nice to conceal in a strange town. Certain things won’t be known, risky wordsOf your own, if you deny them. All in all,It’s nice to dispose in a few words. But who will you be if you live within words,Within worlds, not your own? Are you sureYour life will be real in a strange town? Can you properly say, I commit to this town,All its tedious works? Can you swearThat it’s nice to get crushed by a few words,Nice to congeal in a strange town?

heteromirafa sidamoensis Reminds me of a poet I knew, the lye-ben lark. That’s how I said her name at first, with lye-ben lark to rhyme with why-ben, ‘By the way, it’s Libben Lark,’ she told me at the door, ‘it rhymes with ribbon-lark.’ I’d taught her for an hour. I liked the liben lark. ‘You libben-learn…’ I murmured as the liben lark went reading down the corridor. The liben lark was like no poet I’d ever met, the liben lark just made a sound there hadn’t been, the liben lark had no idea. I told her, ‘Listen, Liben Lark, you make a sound there’s never been.’ The liben lark looked sad at that. ‘Two years I’ve taught you, Liben Lark, and now we’re done.

Grunting, you slipper-creep across the floor slower than a sailboat in a Force 1 breeze. I wonder whether in that ancient circuit board of a head from which so little intelligible has issued for weeks the Beaufort Scale still means anything or whether, if mentioned, you would as usual get totally muddled, mistake Force 1, under whose waftings the sea hardly ripples, for gale Force 10. Standing close in case of mishap I watch you grip the grubby Zimmer frame tighter, then tack hard to port and slump into the Stannah Lift that will ease you past prints and oils of your father’s ships until you reach the downstairs harbour.