The Gifts
This was written recently by my sister who suffers from Alzheimers. I should not say "suffers" because she cheerfully accepts the different plane that it has set her on apart from the <normal> world. A very gifted author and poet the disease has cruely manifested itself by upsetting the language function of the brain, yet I find her latest works intensely moving and brave.
This now, i...
Thursday 20th December 2018 2:40 pm
Tempus Fugit
Do look out the window, dear.
see
the autumn leaves fall
as the fires die
down.
Monday 8th January 2018 5:06 pm
My Stillborn Child, by Jose Coleman
Mhow, India, January 1941
Oh my heart's darling why
could they not let you lie
under the open sky
outside the wall
where the clean rain could fall
and the sun shine?
Silent. No bird will sing
there where you lie
under the tall thin trees.
They with their pointed leaves
crowd out the light,
filter the monsoon rains,
deaden the air along lines of graves.
Do you rest still,
would-...
Monday 30th January 2017 7:16 pm
Re-Winding Memories
Re-Winding Memories
Beeching has been at work in her brain.
Branch lines are closing. No train
of thought as tracks disappear
in a tangled undergrowth where,
tearful, she loses hold of time.
"I must get back down the main line
before the wrong sort of memories
cause wheels to lose their grip.
I'm sliding back to nowhere fast.
Wasn’t I your mother once?"
...
Wednesday 4th December 2013 9:32 pm
The Other Side of the Wall
The other side of the wall
Daddy Goeth was a good man.
Never brought his work home.
Gave us hugs and kisses
when we did as we were told.
Gave Mama a present, a lampshade.
I remember the numbers, the numbers,
they made a pretty pattern on the wall.
Apple wood had a pleasant smell
as it burnt in the hearth.
White smoke, black smoke,
what shade...
Thursday 3rd October 2013 5:54 pm
The Bricklayer
The Bricklayer
Bleeding knuckles, torn nails,
the wall about his bed remained.
Uniforms passed through, ghosts,
changing drips, injecting morphine
that killed the pain but not the past.
The bricklayer had made his bed.
Mum and Dad had dug the footings
of his wall, his fort, his prison.
Piss in his cot, poo in his pants.
Don’t touch your penis ...
Thursday 29th November 2012 11:56 pm
The Violinist
The Violinist
Fingers moving to fragments of chords,
he tries to connect to sounds in his head,
but buried in sand, notes slip through his hands,
and the roar of the sea takes over.
Fingers strumming invisible strings,
he can’t understand what they’re doing.
His fingertips sense a tune he can’t hear,
and the naked silence takes over.
T...
Monday 10th September 2012 3:19 pm
Spanking Angels
Three odd ones
Spanking Angels
cream leather seats
silver angels
tanned
bowlered bully wide
back sides
tanned
dead man’s blood
red hands
tanned
gassed thin skin
lamp shades
tanned
but naked blondes
sun bathe
tanned,
- and no one sees the angels.
Cremation
sails of space dust
spat out on solar...
Tuesday 10th July 2012 7:46 pm
Oh What a Joy!
Oh, What a Joy!
When your bladder is bursting
and you’re dying to go
but try as you might
you can’t start the flow
oh what a wonderful joy it is
when a tube up your dick
allows you to piss
When your belly has blown
to the shape of a ball
and Movelat powders
are no help at all
oh what a joyous sound to hear
the gaseous blast
as...
Sunday 1st July 2012 4:09 pm
Thirst
'performance' - maybe, 'poetry' - not. Audio inspired by the Eurovision Song Contest and a few pints, with music by 3-fingered George.
Thirst
I'm sitting on a tractor seat
loading bales of straw,
with spool-valves at my fingertips,
dusty eyes rubbed raw.
There's seven hundred more to cart
but thunder's in the air;
and many hours work ahead
before the field is ...
Sunday 27th May 2012 8:47 pm
Dementia
Had another go at last verses
“Despite their dementia they do remember well that they have a family that is never here for them. They call their names into emptiness, and cry at the thought of abandon .” a comment from BBC website
Dementia
I cried and sucked their teats. They drew a face on me
in their own image, one I never asked for,
constructed a smile and ears to...
Monday 30th April 2012 7:33 pm
The Schoolmistress
The School Mistress
She hides behind walls of hollow words,
clay words baked by burning hopes.
Words moulded from mud and straw
surround her dust drenched days
as desert dunes drift the passing years.
No bells ring from these ramparts,
no wisdom wrung from these words,
no new life flung to find the heavens.
The silence of expanding stars listens, learn...
Saturday 14th April 2012 11:21 pm
Ethnic Cleansing
Not really poetry, but wanted to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the Balkan conflict
Ethnic Cleansing
Nationality?
Ethnicity?
Religion?
Race?
Working Class?
Middle Class?
Toff?
I am a musician
I am a farmer
I am a builder
I am a lawyer
I am a painter
I am
I
Without a label.
This was prompted by reading of ...
Friday 6th April 2012 8:31 pm
The Disappearance of John J. Dyer
The Disappearance of John J. Dyer
(another try at this one)
Mr Dyer, in rainbow shorts, plump
and pink under a palm tree, smiles
as he pats Miss Burtenshaw’s rump,
golden grains of sand on the beach
flowing through his open fingers.
Soft over rooftops a lullaby’s heard
as Dyer dreams of the one-armed bandit
in the back bar of his favourit...
Friday 23rd March 2012 7:08 pm
One Night Stand
One Night Stand
Skinny-dipping off Seaford Head
in the ripening sun.
Bobbed hair and a giggle
stripping off the night,
calling me to follow,
white breasts firm and smooth
as wave-sucked rocks,
a slender back begging
to be played from neck
down to where wavelets
make her tip-toe and
water laps tight curls.
Shingle has shifted a bay ...
Monday 19th March 2012 9:33 pm
The Heron
The Heron (a fable)
The pike sups on a tadpole
in this turgid lily-pool
where the grey can swim unseen.
Decorated with gold-braid
the ostentatious swish
lazily from under lilies
filmed in the focused eye
of a patient leveller.
A shutter clicks, splash,
gold thrashes on the green.
A blade slides, splash,
...Friday 16th March 2012 7:42 pm
Re-written Red-eyed Steer
re-write, hope it's better and not overworked:
The Red-Eyed Steer
he never got away did Fred
his sister did, got it away
with a foreign man in uniform.
mother and dad called her a whore
so he did too, lost her for good.
we found the photograph she sent
of her wedding day, her escape.
he’d saved it in a wooden box,
with a white five pound note
...Monday 12th March 2012 10:06 pm
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