Poetry Blog by Ralph Dartford

I was something else

sometime ago.

I know that if I wanted, I could

climb the twelve stairs,

open the battered case and pull

out that day on Venice Beach.

The photo with the Arab skateboarding,

playing saxophone - digging a scene.

I was leather jacketed, Kerouac and shades.

Sitting on rail tracks preparing my cheap

reasons for the years. Needl...

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Listening to Mingus preach.

His fingers and thumbs a sermon. 

A lesson from a teacher learned 

but rarely practiced. That of trajectory.

Today, there is a refusal of Spring.

A dirty pillowed sky, creased and still. 

There are pulled up crocuses, a silent 

Mosque. An absence of the revelatory.

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Don’t step upon the cracks.

For that is where the fingers

lurk that will pull at your shoe,

loosen your lace and force 

you to flail face down onto 

the cut glass path.

It’s here where they will turn

your ankle, snap it to the moon,

let the rats wish at its bone. 

Clicking, they will unscrew your

tin leg, leave the day to the wind.

Blackened, blood...

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Without doubt, mate,

it was about the density

of the Rediffusion days

of colour television

and the merging

of two decades.

A beautiful game

played in thin air,

keeping me in sweat,

breathing in staccato

for nearly fifty years.

Mate. That

last pass

against Italy.

A simple, sweet Samba

           composed

                   on a beach li...

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