Setting a benchmark

A work-in-progress... I'm mostly happy with it, but not sure about the last line. Should it end at 'replace' I wonder?


Exclusion principle

Stranger,
who, so the small plaque says,
loved this spot,
you could not have sat here,
for the seat was placed in your memory,
greatly missed by some friend or relative.
Did they share your view
over scrubby downs
and patchy woodland where coppicemen,
smelters and charcoal-burners
once fed those
hungry for iron.

I choose not to sit,
but stay to watch a hornet
scrape pulp for her nest,
taking papier-mâché mouthfuls
of you
from oak slat and upright.

If I return in a ten-year,
will weather, fungus, woodworm,
or vandals at play,
have done their work,
leaving just a level patch of grass
where council employees
tossed your remains into a flatbed,
for it is policy to neither repair
nor replace
deaths marked by furniture.

The positivity of migration

UKIP and others who whine about migrants are tiresome - here's the first draft of a piece about my own, more positive, observations about Polish people ('Polacy') in Southampton

Polacy w Southampton

I

Big man, crew-cut blonde,
baby in a biceps cradle,
gentle gorilla-father;
a second child plants conkers
in a newly tilled municipal flower-bed.

II

Zesty girl on the school bus,
alpha of her Year 8 peers,
climbing rails like they are monkey-bars,
open-mouthed surprise when I ask
‘excuse me please’ –
proszę, przepraszam
in English-accent Polish.

III

One of so many languages
spoken here and mingling in mid-air –
by workmen crowded onto lunchtime public benches,
discussing football, cars, sandwich fillings,
by gaggles of much-preened teens
gossiping between texts,
by students, shop-assistants,
phone-box users sharing news,
by friends and poets,
by people of the city –
multicultural and working,
the opportunity for something new.

When tiny dinosaurs attack!

Flippancy reigns supreme today on the topic of some friends' maybe-friendly-maybe-evil-depending-on-mood African Grey birdy...

Ornithoraptor

Pinprick-pupilled beady eye
tempts fingers closer with a tweet
and a look that’s reptile-sly
come friendly digits, you shall meet
a living pair of peanut-pliers
as beak and brain plot and conspire

to peck and pry at the unwary
whether foe or tickling friend,
wings to fly but no fey fairy,
mandibles to tear and rend
flesh, this herbivore’s vampiric
but her parrot-victory’s Pyrrhic

for now she’s on the naughty perch
with fewer chums for strokes and kisses,
gruel for tea and name besmirched,
known as wicked, biting Missy,
yellow card, last-chance saloon,
play nicely or play on your own!

Hanging about in coffee shops

I have neither black beret or goatee, nor a dingy garret in the Rive Gauche, but I have been known to slack off in the Art House...

Two hours in an art café

Meet a friend to campaign
for the release of
friends in Russian jails,
plotting over a pot of builder’s tea
(with cow not soy),
a coffee
(organic, natch – once again with cow)
and a ‘voluptuous vegan’,
most suggestive of menu items,

admire a white-on-blue
painting of a koi carp
like inverted porcelain,
before a quick-and-foamy beer
lubricates some more pen-and-ink work
and a chat about housing
and mental health,

high-five today’s successes,
grumble about cheap tat
polluting craft fairs,
hope to sell more jewellery,
feel good about getting a picture framed
and wonder how high to price it –

the bus comes to take me away.

Biotic and Modernist

A few months ago, I went to a workshop on Modernist poetry, during which we looked at Wallace Stevens' '13 ways of looking at a blackbird'. It was new to me at the time, but I was immediately grabbed by it - the range of metaphors, the use of imagery and so on. Expanding beyond blackbirds to include other plants and animals, here's a semi-autobiographical response...

13 of life’s moments shared with Wallace Stevens

I

During a squall,
jackdaws shelter
on the leeside of policemen.

II

Nothing is certain,
just as seaweeds are not plants.

III

We sit silently,
us good mates –
the landlord doesn’t mind lodgers having guests,
but what is there to say
when he’s watching TV
and idly cupping
his mastiff’s testicles?

IV

I am an old Jack Russell,
my balls drag in the snow.

V

There won’t be bluebirds over
the White Cliffs of Dover,
not because I don’t dream of peace,
but because the bluebird is not
native to Europe.

VI

Disappointed to find out that
the mummified foetus
of a Tasmanian Devil
has already been sold,
I have to ask myself ‘why?’

VII

Norbert Dentressangle,
Nippon Yusen Kaisha
and Dong Fang,
Triton and Mol the crocodile
bring what from where?

VIII

Pale grey ballast
recently laid and rolled
is soon obscured again
by shoots
of grass and Buddleia.

IX

Flossy the dental nurse
is a nine-grand rhino,
fibreglass,
green and white
with apple-a-day shoes.

X

One big man
admits on stage
how his life was saved.
The saviour,
on duty and
not knowing this until now,
sheds a tear –
gentle gorillas in our midst.

XI

The joy of
discovering a new
sexually-transmitted disease
of ladybirds.

XII

Crows gather,
fly down
and coalesce –
now a back-bent
black-shawled hag.

XIII

We are all stardust,
only some are golden.

Not forgot

This just called to me today - an old friend, gone but not forgotten...

Our friend Dickie

Our friend Dickie
Was tall.
Our friend Dickie
Was gangly and ginger,
His head was hard, his elbows bony,
He liked to cycle,
He fell off in a hedge or three –
Oh, how we laughed, but then –
He fell off in the road,
He fell off on the cycle-path,
He left his bike outside the pub
And fell down anyway.

You see,
Our friend Dickie
Liked a drink
And the drink liked company –
A quick one led to 3, 4, 5, 10,
He nearly disappeared but then
A fine, round, smily girl called Esther
Brought him back, gawd bless ‘er –
Love let him let the drink stay lonely.

They got engaged and all was tea and roses,
Chainsaws and posies,
Or would’ve been if only
A random passing fool,
All cheap-lager-sodden-cruel
And Saturday-nightly shirted-and-tied
Hadn’t picked a fight and hit him –
One punch, legs went, too punch-sober,
He fell,
Head smack-cracked on hard kerb-corner,
Brain-bled, he died –
It was all over bar the mourners.

Our friend Dickie
Wasn’t hard, but like I said,
We thought he had a hard head,
Our friend Dickie
Couldn’t be gone,
Couldn’t be dead
‘Cos he’d only just come back
From the soaked and rotten,
All-but-forgotten side of the tracks,
And if dead,
That’d be wrong –
He’d miss our wedding,
My Best Man’s wedding,
His own wedding,
But he is and he did –
A decade on,
He is still missed.

Small-town stuff

Another bit of relative lightness, with just a hint of something else...

What I did on my half-a-day (Eastleigh)

Posted a manuscript, Special Delivery;
Fairtrade rooibos, loo-roll and chat,
Bought a new (recycled) poem-pad,
Sat in a coffee-shop writing hard verse,
To the taste of Türk kahvesi and panini,
Next door, the museum,
New exhibition - ‘Then and Now’,
Saw how my local patch has changed,
In the last one hundred years,
For the better? I think worse,
Left my thoughts upon a hook-hung luggage-tag as asked;
Framed a wedding ode I wrote,
A gift for friends they’ll like, I hope,
Learned another magic trick,
Denigrated several kippers,
(You know, those purple people-cheaters)
Wowed my wife with an artistic bargain,
And an offering from a mate –
A fine new artisanal bake –
Then hugged her (she is busy),
Charmed goldfinches in the garden
With market-day-bought nyger seed,
Now I’ll watch them and sip tea.

A poem for the Glitterarti

A short verse for Nina Fraser, face-painter and commissionee of creations...

Full-face a fiver,

Two quid a cheek –

Colour me, fork-lobed lady

With your pram of party-pigments,

Perambulating festivals and fairs,

Today I’d like to be a beetle,

Possibly butterfly-browed,

Or maybe a big fierce polar bear –

Can you work around the hair?

I’m sure you can;

You can paint the crowd.