Seagull second coming
Rumble, rumble, mile on mile of tarmac tyres,
click - clack indicators to somewhere, lane in, lane out and
wind whishing, swishing through mile over mile of traffic.
Traffic where cranes grow tall and cones flock on heavy hills and race-away flats,
until a gamer mis-dodges lanes and an HGV smacks its tonnage and corkscrews the car.
Behind we screech in, and a trailer splits, spilli...
Monday 10th June 2024 10:22 pm
Astranought
Hot heat cosmic dust hazes windshields on scorchio waydays to say
the journey fades with heat fatigue.
The quiet shaded burrow of tranquility beneath the berried hedgerow
beckons home.
Oh! To suck the oxygen off chlorophyll leaf, lick glassy dew from grassy tips,
hear birds quaver with quivering syrinx and feel my own feet upon the ground.
Memories rush in, vivid as holidays.
...
Monday 1st July 2019 4:33 pm
The Goodwill Wheel
Staggering beside the carts, like dull warhorses,
we stumble along endless tracks and mud-souped ditches,
always stooped, intent upon the next step.
Rattling behind, grisly chains of disarticulated bones,
tied by tendons and ligaments, trail beyond past horizons,
a century of war.
Rainbows always cry.
The holly bears a bloody fruit.
All victors ethically vanquished.
But...
Monday 24th December 2018 11:56 pm
Love's Insane please see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1biOUBhYm6Y
I have a youtube rendition by Dave Nachmanoff who plays, sings and wrote the tune at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1biOUBhYm6Y
I wrote the poem and had the idea of the tune 33 years ago but never got round to the song due to not being musical. My daughter and her friend kindly acted the younger couple!
Loves Insane
Mondays are mundane
and I wouldn’t choose Tuesdays too,
Wednesdays...
Monday 30th July 2018 3:01 pm
Love is Fire
Come, light a match with
tingling fingers to ignition.
Flames kindle and prance in petalled shades of romance,
or burn like the sun.
Love is fire,
No fire is safe.
They burn like mischief and adventure,
like winter shoots trembling under Spring's dark crust,
bursting up with exuberance.
Love is like that too.
Love is gentle, love is kind
love is forceful, love is b...
Friday 1st June 2018 10:54 pm
A Child is not just for Christmas
Prophets in disguise
Search the skies, oh so wise,
Tears, like atoms, don’t decay
Love, like photons, light the way.
A babe against a warmy chest
Dreamt of nets filled with fish
Whilst flight across sand and seas
Brought the donkey to his knees.
All mixed up in snow and ice,
Discarded plastics choke Christmas mice;
We, fat as turkeys, but leaflet thin,
Hear churche...
Sunday 3rd December 2017 7:17 pm
Love swells my heart like buds in the Spring
How can love go so wrong?
We shone like the space station in the sky.
Her gentle eyes, hers soft sweet skin were like winning the lottery to me
Her rose bud lips, her leaf soft hair
We walked like deer across the hills
How can love go so wrong?
I had a wife but now she’s dead. She was like a fire for me,
When she went, I felt the cold, the empty rooms all alone.
...
Tuesday 17th January 2017 10:20 pm
Conversations in the rain
Do you know it’s her birthday?
She might come out tonight, depends on the chemo,
treatment end is in sight.
My son has left for Uni,
he messaged today to say he’s making lots of friends.
You’ll miss him being away.
And the wind blows softly
and the rain falls lightly
and we’ll never want for water on the moors
It’s not funny when you haven’t got a po...
Tuesday 17th January 2017 10:14 pm
No need to get high cos I'm trippin on love
The sun is shinin' on the leaves,
The squirrel's chasin' through the trees
But I don’t need to get high cos I’m trippin on love.
He reads me like a kindle book
Powers me down and reboots me up
But I don’t need rechargin’ cos I’m trippin on love
Like eagles high across the sky
We soar together, with you I fly
No need to get high
Cos I’m trippin’ on love
No need to get ...
Tuesday 17th January 2017 10:04 pm
Vote Out ... with the cat
Vote out with the cat she kills too many birds
Out with the dog, she's too many turds.
Vote out with cars with executive names and
in,in, IN with more bicycle lanes.
Vote out with litter and in with bins,
Out with tyrants and in with love-ins.
Out with poor paths, wheelchairs have had enough
Out with hate and have I said? in, in, IN with love, love, love!
Out with money an...
Thursday 23rd June 2016 11:49 am
Coffe shop morning a wake
Smart slick sick phones
deliver explosive images and quavered words
with personal ads to
war fatigued classes -
though not so fatigued as the dead.
And the pictures speak personally
to some ill insane
with ideas of reference
and persecution.
Text - messaging
"Go, go, get them for me'
and the vulnerable ill
Go for the kill.
In the scrambled highway...
Friday 17th June 2016 8:48 am
Alan (Henning)
Its Saturday night at the taxi rank
street angels are steering girls to the cabs;
legs over tits like a Picasso and
it’s wild, and it’s laughter, and songs are buzzin’.
So can you hear the people weeping?
can you see the children dying?
All you knew was love, Alan, all you knew was love
as you drove your taxi through this world.
And the laughter and the love in t...
Saturday 23rd May 2015 1:49 pm
Love in the Cosmos
He stands like Atlas,
my world upon his shoulders,
observing distant nebulae.
Some say they see the creation of stars
But we see children of the greater helix.
Suns and moons pull the tides
up and down the shores,
Bringing time to our days and nights.
Some say there are multitudes of invisible galaxies
But we call it being on the same wavelength.
He is my ...
Friday 14th February 2014 10:13 am
Girl in a Giraffe Onesey
The rushing student in rabbit hat just makes the train,
the door squeezes shut and we’re off!
Hissing past winter’s flooded farms;
though We glisten like jungle leaves in a hot house –
And the smell of packed animals – Oh, the smell!
Opposite a manager taps his keyboard in novelty tiger gloves
and, stroking his whiskers, looks up and
tenses; with fixed cat stare –
And ...
Monday 10th February 2014 11:00 am
Christmas
It was Christmas Eve in the Abbey
And we sat on pilgrim pew
Tomb- hedged by The Oppressed
Or History’s Victors blessed.
The candles were all flickering
On martyrs at their rest
And the politics of certainty
Cast shadows at my feet.
The heavy door gusted open
Like musket- hammered wood,
I retraced intent to keep the warmth
But turned at frosted breath.
The...
Tuesday 24th December 2013 11:01 pm
Independence Day
Here we go -
Dredging her room and netting the hairdryer, straightners, bulging cases of clothes and IT, dismantling the computer desk, loading buckets and bleach
To squeeze the car skyscraper high
And driving through screwdriver rain
The length of England.
Scrubbed and kitted
The past, present and future knitted with cuddly toy and pillowed dreams,
The bed now empt...
Monday 16th September 2013 8:21 pm
Slipstitch Day
It was a hot slipstitch day,
The swallows ran invisible thread across the sky
And farmers unpicked lines of wheat
In woven fields that stretched to
Plump cushioned trees -
Where we lay together against dew dangled threads,
Gazing at the eye of the needle -
So distant, so warm;
Whose gentle rays pulled the grass
Til it was hedgerow high.
Then we touched: ...
Saturday 27th July 2013 4:47 pm
First Foot-fall
Listen for the first foot-fall:
Sunken pads in the winter snow,
The patter of ducks to bread,
Silence
As Venus hauls the sun from her bed
To drip across the sky.
Waiting for the first footing,
Heavy on the ice,
And Giggling across the carpet,
Feet spread like paeonies,
Embracing arms,
She learns to fly.
Thursday 13th December 2012 11:58 am
Yesterday
Yesterday I weeded the strawberry bed,
And tugged a thousand dog violets from the ground;
Their lilac flowers played the rain and
Now the swollen seeds
Blow from sprinkler heads.
My fingers pince the brown thin leaves from strawberry base,
Grip the soil in earthy solitude,
And turn the leaf to find:
No harvestmen scuttling ‘fraid from base to base...
Sunday 15th July 2012 12:57 pm
Statto of the Railway Lines
Train spotters love trains, tracks, stations, sidings,
Steep cuttings, mortar, stony spaces.
Straining to observe the woosh and swoosh,
Chatter and clatter of carriage and truck
And engine names.
Buddleias spring from bridge and brick,
Colouring impossible places,
Stattoes of the railway network:
“The nine-forty to Liverpool is late,
Leaves on the line....
Sunday 29th April 2012 6:19 pm
Insane Poppy
There are Improvised Explosive Devices
Stuffed with cocaine fuelled erections
Scattered across London’s skyscape.
Idealised landscapes of home flicker before sanded eyes
As the sun seared flesh of maimed soldiers
Lies a long way from home.
And young war veterans fly wheelchair bound
Back to Blighted - To the arms of their mothers,
And occasionally lovers,
...
Sunday 29th April 2012 6:14 pm
Murder Christmas 2011
sorry to be so dark but.......
In the days before Christmas it was warm,
Warm as blood.
Red berries dulled, pine cones dropped,
Houses adorned in red, green and gold.
Hope and peace carded the walls,
Turkey and creams stuffed the fridge,
Canned laughter the T.V.
And everywhere there were images of birth - and a baby.
It had rained for weeks, tirele...
Monday 16th January 2012 9:03 am
CHRISTMAS SHOPPING
The steel riveted sky of our industrial town
Hung beyond the chaotic bricks
Of the bangle warm shops,
Glowing in their Christmas finery.
As I wandered past, bending into the sharp edged frost,
A stranger crossed my path.
Tide-marked shoes, a desperate eye
Empty pockets, empty values, drugs?
I knew not- an open white palm,
“Have you a gift?” he whi...
Sunday 11th December 2011 9:02 pm
Jack Frost's Army
They come from the Himalayas,
From the Russian Steppes,
The Norwegian pine forests ……. running, running, running.
Faster than sound,
Colder than glass,
Harder than rock,
Over the pond
Onto the steps,
Up to the windows,
To bush, twig and grass.
The garden quivers,
Clamps the bud to bark,
The insect to leaf ….. leaf glues tight to leaf, to leaf, to ...
Friday 25th November 2011 3:25 pm
Fed and Mavis On Their Travels
There’s a tropical isle, Gran Canaria,
Famed for sun, sea and sand –
Mavis and Fred flew over,
To escape Lancashire’s cold winter land.
Mavis said, “Eee, ‘tis hot in these woolly tights,
Let’s find summer shorts that flatter me bum
Throw away beiges and blacks,
Colour up, like the sky and the sun!”
She returned like a red hibiscus
(And that were only her face...
Saturday 19th February 2011 8:28 pm
Solar Energy
SOLAR ENERGY
Iced winter cuts the frosted day from his block
And inks the trees against the crow- quavered sky.
Beside the river, fog mists the snapshot fields -
The swirling ghosts of slaughtered sheep.
Night draws back her tent to aqueous cream;
The nose-numb walker squints at pink- ribboned dawn,
Knees grate on hoof- hard furrowed track.
A lemon disc rises gla...
Thursday 10th February 2011 12:41 pm
MOTHERHOOD
Now I know the happy teeth and smiling faces, The banana stained coat and tottering paces, The hand that grasps the latent breast, The head that snuggles upon my chest, The feet that curl around my waist, Her body softly leant against. Was there ever a child so good, I thank God for my motherhood.
Wednesday 21st July 2010 10:04 pm
The Hung Parliament. May2010
The Hung Parliament. May2010
May’s long days light the leaves,
Unfurling from the woodland trees,
At roadside, garden, park and wood,
The lime, horse-chestnut, last the ash.
The buds relax and sepals fall,
Discarded cradles drift on paths.
The midges rise to meet the sap,
High lies the nests, the drey, the starch.
Below slim saplings bend and ...
Tuesday 11th May 2010 10:01 pm
Goodbye To Thursday Street.
Note: Around 1980 a group of streets in Manchester were being pulled down. They were named after the days of the week, the occupants rehoused in modern high rises. These were not successful and have been superceded much more successfully by town houses. This poem is written about their demolition.
Goodbye To Thursday Street.
Under the bulldozer the terraced streets rushed,
A ...
Wednesday 21st April 2010 9:30 pm
I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Parliamentarian
I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Parliamentarian: Election May 2010
with apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan:"Pirates of Penzance" " I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General"
I am the very model of a modern parliamentarian,
I've information on Iraq and even on Afghanistan.
I've met the Queen of England and can quote our fights historical,
From Thatcher, Blair and Br...
Sunday 11th April 2010 11:33 am
January 2010. I. Anybody.
January 2010.I. Anybody.
In Africa the football hits the grass
Like a big, congealed blood clot
And bright young men fall over injured,
Or blanch and die.
The African cup helicopters are in HD on my TV,
But I am outside shovelling snow.
The airline bomber sets his underpants on fire
And a man is stabbed in a London street.
Fanatics daily bomb Pakista...
Tuesday 12th January 2010 8:33 pm
Kids in Buckets
Kids In Buckets: The School Run.
Splutter, splatter drips the rain
Down the gutter and window pane –
The journey to school will be so slow,
The traffic will just grow and grow!
But Gran and I have hatched a plan
To speed to school
(She’s resourceful my Nan),
She pushes me off in a large plastic bucket,
Bobbing down the alley,
Sailing past traf...
Sunday 10th January 2010 5:46 pm
Camel and I
Waiting For Christmas.
(Note: I advise explaining the meaning of the word “undulate”: to move like a wave, before reading to a child.)
The cool of winter blows past my window,
The trees stand like pillared shadows,
The sun sinks early after school,
Soon it will be Christmas.
My sister and I run to the frosted bus stop,
Where iced leaves glint bronze and silver,
Then onto the bus and to...
Sunday 13th December 2009 7:09 pm
The West Window: A Saga of York and Constantine
The West Window:
A Saga Of York and Constantine
Background if interested: This is a poem about Constantine who was with his father, Constantius, Caesar of the Western Roman Empire, in York when he died in 306. Constantine was then proclaimed Augustus of the West by his troops and later, after defeating Maxentius (Roman Emperor at the time) in battle becomes the first Christian Roman Emperor, la...
Tuesday 1st December 2009 9:50 pm
Pro-articulated Ladders
PRO-ARTICULATED LADDERS
(for those who feel the shopping catalogues overstate their products.
Image: allthe sky.com)
Insomnia wakes the dreamer,
Blinking through double-glazed eyes,
Up from the warmy bed
She searches winter’s frosty skies.
Padding across carpeted floors,
Past polished dresser
And out of the door,
She carries her pro-articulated ladder.
Up against the eves the...
Tuesday 24th November 2009 9:18 pm
Horse Power
Horse Power
Lines of seething traffic stop and sprawl
Behind the lamb lorry, overturned,
Frustration building behind the wheels
As lambs tumble into sunlight and space.
Horses under the bonnet stamp their feet.
Blue flashing lights speed past,
To round up lambs for the slaughter,
White soap suds swirling on the road,
An SOS of bleats and baas.
Under the bonnet horses prick their...
Tuesday 17th November 2009 10:14 pm
Perfect
( this is not about my daughters, see comments below. Please read it as a romance...)
I don’t need a telescope to know you’re a star
I don’t need a microscope to see what you are
It’s clear to me
It’s clear as day
You’re perfect in every way.
I don’t need a bank to know what you’re worth
I don’t need an atlas to see you are my Earth
It’s clear to me
It’s clear as day
Yo...
Monday 2nd November 2009 9:14 pm
On Taking My Daughter To Uni.
On Taking My Daughter to Uni.
We whirly burly roar in stacked hairy chug -chug to
Teensy flat with drill and measure
For cheeslet space.
Oh, bright-jewelled daughter listen well and
Bury the lardy sofa and face-book mats for
Garanding booklet space with
Eyes that grip the spaceous green trails
Of dinting groveous thoughts!
Beware the smootherous amorit
That hungles hearts in shiny bl...
Monday 19th October 2009 10:21 pm
Recent Comments
John Coopey on I CAN'T CARE FUCKING LESS
2 minutes ago
TobaniNataiella on Different Hand
2 hours ago
Graham Sherwood on I Hear Nothing
7 hours ago
Tom Doolan on Stoic Man
8 hours ago
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh on Mothers of Sons (Twenty years wasted to abandonment)
10 hours ago
Stephen Gospage on The Westgate Run (Re-run) [song version]
10 hours ago
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh on A Knight's Resilience
11 hours ago
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh on I CAN'T CARE FUCKING LESS
11 hours ago
Uilleam Ó Ceallaigh on "Forged in Fire, Taught in Halls"
13 hours ago
Sourajit Nandi on "Forged in Fire, Taught in Halls"
19 hours ago