stash of poems - 2005-2020

It is a solstice of stories on the shelf where we left them.

2020-09-25T01:07:00.011-07:00

It was a brown boot, flecked lace, grey blue cuffs,

quality socks around the top, stepping out

on a gravel incline. The usual human shape,

a mute hillclimber’s thin outline

in occasional dots of Spring. Sleepy Poppy

cover at our feet, one behind your ear,

I watched you go – In Japan, it is a certain day in Autumn

when your boss takes you on a near death experience

with thousands of other workers, and if you weigh

a little more than Michiko-san

you can hang on to a rock in the wind,

move between gusts of airborne particles

without the eye of it seeing you. If you weigh

a little more than Michiko, you lived to climb higher

turning at the viewing shack for the unfurling of Maple fire.

Some things happen on mountains. We realised Kansawa-san and Michiko

were lovers, had been for years, so Kansawa knew ( if she were not pegged

down in a moss lined crag, both huddled in like odd tropical birds, sure

luminosity, lichen and Lycra would weather any eye) that she would fly.

A waifslip powerhouse lift-off, light as that first year, like Mr Kibitzers kite.

Halfway up, that shack we should reach, past the bones of previous school trips,

is deserted the following week as winter is announced by Tannoy

and the whole nation drives somewhere else - to a story that leads

down to a winter beach. It is a solstice of stories on the shelf

where we left them. If we are lucky, the nuts left in water

makes milk for teatime. If the bailiffs have been and we find it empty,

stack the fire, hope the storm pins the past to the lichen crag

so you can unpack the notebook knapsack you were carrying,

take the poppy from behind your ear for the vase

on the table and see the storm’s eye pass.

Kate's (everyday) plate - the naming of things

2020-09-19T08:55:00.018-07:00

Kate’s (everyday) plate.

GOLF – not only not an acronym for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden.

Grandparents gave Mother and Uncle names

they would never be able to pronounce, distinguished?/able?,

Englishable, to be inserted where GOLF names were allowed

(a place.) Then extracted, with each rough call

to table, when culture flavours signature dishes

(plated) in native and alien colours. Extracting history snippets

as if we were wishes around a bird table: in the nuts, honey

and apple (Haroset) or in tears of horse ra (dishes.)

In the names of birds taken, their songs and wings to grieve in.

Or of a tree, imagined roots to build shelter foundation.

Bird or a movie star? Now we are: The Ladies who Lunch. Lunch

daily on her last bone china plate stamped with The Crown.

The hallmark blessing before eating, and tucked, tea

towel-coddled in gratitude on her top shelf. High above

the ancient back-home chipped make-do-with-it gifts

of everyday, back then, not nearly as much loved.

old poem edit - Problem with the past is...

2020-08-31T15:13:00.004-07:00

Problem with the past is remembering

when now is where I want to be

where I am not a suitcase

on a step. The past is overrated

when we don’t know who we were

though the present would not look like this

now, when there are no gunshots, fires

and the phoenix rising – the phoenix,

on the step with the suitcase, when now

is a fine location where I am

not a suitcase

on a step.

harvest

2020-08-29T14:40:00.003-07:00

you know as sure as it is
soft and light around my shoulders
and warm as a mango sun
dipping the line dividing you and me
that the fruit of our labour
is a basket upon the sea
so tell me of one thing more magical
than the harvest on the table
this candle this flame
flickering here and there
vulnerable to a darkness this night
will never swallow whole

oct08

Feral Child

2020-08-11T08:29:00.004-07:00

Feral Child looked for wolves and found a fox

on the golf course - they both hiding, both seen,

she in her orange coat and she in Khaki green.

Both camped out in bushes of thorns, as bold

as ghosts who can't be caught, snapping the traps

layed by the hunters employed just the night before.

Feral Child, a scruffy dove with one wing on her

right shoulder and a swag bag of treasures on her left,

looked the swaggering golfer straight in the eye.

A whittled craft box in her hand, she would emerge,

cocking her head: Can't even carry your own bag Sir,

to escape your Sunday home? I'll sell you these... and

lifting the lid on all the bounty she had found:

...each for a quid, or these: two for a pound!

Her camps were legendary, never owned so never lost,

and so it was with irony that she saw them hunted down

in others' dreams...she couldn't save the blind moles.

But the other creatures dying in the bush found her

or the fox's grin - whichever first would quench her thirst,

as it should be, quick; an edible heart, a twist or rip of the neck.

Dead. She would watch the kill, collect the poison pellets left

that scattered her tracks with future cries...So civilised,

the hunter, the guest golfer - and they called her Feral Child.

2005

Return to Sender - edit edit edit

2020-08-06T21:10:00.002-07:00

06 edited, again,

Her priorities were all wrong. She had said you were an angel in the haze of the drugs that she was on. So she'd tried to put things in their right place; boxed, enveloped, licked and stamped all the squares and pills left around but they had returned again as curled edges in the fog.

She would have liked to have said, 'I am not lost' and stay home, find her hazy way around the clock until it strikes a poem or a chime.

Transience is nothing to write home about, but this fixed abode was a straight-faced letterbox so she'd posted a poem to herself to arrive on the cold morning after she'd sat up all night - when she'd have watched the dawn light cut the smoke exhaled - and hungry for fresh air, morning sounds and places, would have popped to the cafe for a bleary breakfast and to the park for some sun upon her pasty face, then home to sleep just before the post came round.

She'd forgotten what she'd written and dreaming of the doorbell imagined the little poem sent wouldn't fit because it had grown so. Yet there it was, slipped through the box at rest under the shelf, looking straight at her but addressing someone else.

So she takes an indelible marker and traces last weeks snail mail pencil trail with ease. Next week, as poems are promises, she hopes that they will speak. 'Return to Sender, please' in bold but shaky neat - and she is out, back to the post-box, back to the cafe for a bleary breakfast; and forward, one step after another to the park with the marigold leaves.

Secret Gardens

2020-08-06T19:11:00.004-07:00

She said I had given her a garden
dripping with scent that made her
heady heart mix elixir into songbirds and butterflies,

and I said it made sense that love makes gardens,
landscaping her breasts with my tongue,
she, arching a bridge over manmade rivers,
sliding me down to her quiver of lips.

She moaned too loudly for the thin walls
and told me to return nightly and make stars.

A Secret Garden, when love wants to sing
from the trees - I ploughed my heart and soul,
while she changed the lock and key.

I wonder if that wildness
is now all bordered straight; if honeysuckle
still climbs the walls, loved as much
by the green fingered gardener
with the key to the wooden gate,

because the heart fingered lover
wouldn't want it any other way,

neither, ever again, to fall for a garden
unable to be gay!

2006

Tanya and Norm

2020-08-06T18:57:00.001-07:00

https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/norm-and-tanya

J.D, Coke, smoke, sister's leaning on the bar,
wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her coat
getting in another round - standards
slip along the frets of the guitar; a real
good looker took me under, no T.J. - Marley -
only Hooker, twirling on the B string,
twirling on the G string, dancing over the notes
like a real pro - when in comes Norm:
mic stand in his hand, my brother-in-law
Norm - he's the best - plays Harp like Bob,
'Hey Sis!' he says, kiss kiss, 'It's all
in The Breath..' plays blues and you'd understand
he's the true son of a preacher man, lifts me up,
toots the talk, toe tapping it up to God-knows-what,
plays Roots Harp for the heart to love again,
my Brother Norm...kicks it from the bandstand,
smiles over a tray of tinkle from the bar,
standards slip along the frets of the guitar.

mar/08

https://t.co/dJdvayhFoQ?amp=1

Moth

2020-08-05T17:14:00.003-07:00

Moth

Perhaps there is no closet
only the drum roll
and the opening
of door upon door
the act of moving thresholds
bringing light to another dark room.
A moth caught
porcelain on a windowpane
a translucency
once again framed.

*

05/2006
https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/moth

Barley moon glows so

2020-08-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Sagebrush smudges blot flutter

butter stained paper wings winding

a barley full moonslide, pinballing the crescent

through to inky countryside retreats.

The fast track hard tarmac negative white

and black slip to slip-road soft grey gives way

to earth path potent country lanes, moonwashed

blues ultra to indigo, felt tip. Feather quill scratch-breaks

breaking a charcoal softening wave like river mercy

cradling the bends to sea. Turns headlight a hammock

across fruit grove trees daylighting the night drive

with colour and summer, my grain moon

longing a full green corn august glare

to golden, when this sturgeon moon glows so.

August full moon - Sturgeon moon, Grain Moon, Green Corn Moon, Fruit Moon, and Barley Moon

Points of View - edit

2020-08-03T02:50:00.005-07:00

The slats, those scenic backdrops will lift

or slide each moving panorama of moments

marking instants or occasion with importance.

This enormous artistry fixed in views, minute portions
of the transcendent, setting the scene.

Sublime slices will flick-book partial moments of eternity
whether outside on the pavement, treading the boards

or sat alone in a comfortable chair. (She deviated,
a random variable to their fixed value,
and they thought she was mean.)

When the momentum of absence is felt in each scene
and you cannot find that moment there or anywhere,
forget all other points of view;

who is running down colonnades, falling through

squares, smashing what is warped enough to want you

sat, reading on a park bench, panning into insignificance,
the September rose garden, the fire on a blue sky.

06/08
edit abctales

Rescuers in China are digging up miners, 2016

2020-08-01T22:43:00.001-07:00

to edit

Rescuers in China are digging up miners

while refugees bob the Aegean sea.

Elninio windchimes, and here is The New Year's
Old News Bulletin. From southern ice
cruising to a warming North Pole

we have a spot of unseasonable weather.

Slightly inclement poetry should be

noting the internal rhymes of amber

whiskey clinking a thick glass, silver

to gold draped over the evergreen smell of pine,

reminiscence nostalgia of human-kind

cosying starkness, not nature’s best-buds, geese

and daisy daisy deer nibbling at a new fast food joint,

munching on non seasonal bouquets, missing flights,

missing in extreme weather events

until radio waves are seasick ill

with statistics on seasonal roadkill.

In the morning, the radio soberly maps how many

by the length of a roll-call foghorn. Bugle volunteers
can’t dish out kindness quickly enough.

Diplomacy’s PA makes conference calls

to organise a conference call to call

for a conference shortly before the North Pole

measured a few degrees above zero – where were

you in the floods?

Paris had an election and citizens
leapt the learning curve of the earth’s tilt

through uphill struggling steps, bloody tantrums

to the straight levelheaded path ahead. Were you

there? Was that canned laughter added after

the already standing ovation Trumpeted across the Nation?

Alternative facts on media stations. Outpost agencies wracked up

sales per inch. Pinch Pinch. Wake up.

Pinch Punch first day of the month

of dirty dancing and stepford wives

deal and no deal gameshow rodeos.

Down will be up along Route 45.

Up will be down along the Boulevards and Promenades

along avenues and high street tweets, the drums

the marching, the solidarities, the liars.

News agencies are touting for your cognitive bias. Obscene.

Join the discussion, be a hero on apps more addictive than heroine.

Misinformation of the Nation, head bowed to a screen.

Date@china miners
Ah 2016
Brexit Trump Paris Christmas New year 2017

Highlands halfway cafe -

2020-08-01T06:28:00.000-07:00

Rain and storm, mist-charm and cloud,

dusk and dawn, owl and barn.

Horizon lines remind of here

and there like a rainbow’s ‘and’ -

and is for breakfast at ‘The Golden Egg',
Highlands, halfway up or halfway down, where

on the wall a snow hare lives, and what remains

the wind snares in; tumbleweed, jasmine, thistle
and ivy trails around her crown
wave here at least, where ice terrain may stay.

Outside, glaciers have melted up-shining fossils

in baked snow sheen. One-day tourists

cluck at the kiosk hatch, flexing a clutch

of hot chocolate cash, too early

for ice cream Sundays. Every day,

stretch runner hikers reach for summits

marked on health insurance policies, tax returns,
2 for 1 vouchers in waterproof wallets,

passing face-down remains of climbers
as altitude pins on app markers; but from here,
at The Golden Egg, breakfasts are divine. Heavenly

is… cracking scrambled eggs

in all kinds of weather, even

as the meadow mead below

is littered with broken bottles,

haiku shells and feathers.

The Golden Egg - London

2020-08-01T06:21:00.002-07:00

At The Golden Egg, a cafe,

where ugly folk eat all day breakfasts,

we sip, smoke, read The Mirror,

The Sun, take notes in reams.

An old couple in bobble hats,

crater expressions face their plates,

each other, over his fried slice and beans.

They slurp with all the time in the world.

I think they must be cold, no jokes,

nothing more to win.

I think it’s all over – until she chokes,

dribbles on a bit of gristle

and he wipes the egg yolk from her chin.

uka

Fine - (05?)

2020-07-31T05:48:00.000-07:00

Colloquially speaking,
it is just a case of a
'Wayward Spirit'
which sounds,
when put like that,
quite charming;
sparky, don't you
think? After all,
it's not like you
'Served up your soul'
on a silver platter,
extending invisible
grams forward in
a fine spun, porous,
net-veined manner.
Let’s not split hairs.
We are refined; both
delicate - marked by
subtlety of discernment
and even though
I cannot often follow
these fine distinctions
between design
and the undevised,
my soul has always
wandered wayward
through transpicuous doors
and home: no silver platter,
just a fine-tooth comb,
to serve.

2005?

dawn to day

2020-07-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Liquid sliver rolling still

in flowered cups, champagne flutes

of stained glass, droplets globe topping

the bell cluster comfrey. Cold moon glow.
When all should roll, all statues.

A dawn blue mist slow rising

to rays of warmth - a morning kiss

to roll a splash of beads in the birdsong,

an awakening to all sky bound

and breaking fast for butterfly and bee.

How the night sky changes

2020-07-29T04:48:00.000-07:00

How the night sky changes
when there is so much fixed in movement.

People fall by the wayside of a heart,
free-fall from a sphere of influence,
each a star, the centre of their universe, seeds
on a map - vanishing.

The other side of the moon is still there, of course,
as are we, here on the circumference of this sphere
where giants race to peer long lashes over the never-ending hill
like it were a rainbow, thinking gold would be to see you,
hold your small hands to say thank you,

when light is already there and here,
sensing what is missing and what is missed

by the brushes of blinking
when giants have stretched,
yawned and slept.

Heavens

whimsy 2013 abc

It's about it,

2020-07-27T08:10:00.001-07:00

It’s about the things we cannot write down
until all those people die - or we do,
whispering to stars making libraries in the sky,

all about the things that make us so elusive,
when elusiveness could be elu-civity, or lucidity,
for when we wanted to be as clear as day.

It’s about the glass stanza, somewhere in the middle
which breaks, and turns to such, and such; re loyalty,
stupidity, the inevitability of lines, sides,
Tribes, and many other rhymes.

It’s about illusions, delusions, fantasies, the ramblings
of drunken libraries, open books, doors ajar to moments of moonlight -
stars, stripes, scandals, newspaper articles, and silence.

it’s about peace in the middle of warring factions,
fractions, multiplications, and subtractions;
when a pie is not a pie, and there’s no point at all -

- measuring an expanding radius, or running
around on edge - it’s always about returning to the centre,
putting pen to paper, or tapping on the keyboard to begin.

2013

https://www.abctales.com/story/littleditty/it%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2s-about-it

Levity,

2020-07-26T15:14:00.003-07:00

She said she levitated in the hallway

appearing in the dark mirror
puppeting her reflection.

There she was, framed

by a colourful, delicate bell collection,
undusted, one rung for dinner.

She too a belle,
and in moments of levity
must have been smiling or serene.

I imagine her rainbow

the walls, her elaborate
dreamworld sneaking out of the letterbox
and taking this long to get here.

17-06-2005
edit

Sensitive to goosesteps and gunshots and

2020-07-25T23:00:00.004-07:00

We always hear the gunshots

And then the jackboots

Striding over goose steps.

And the goosesteps across my heart

And goosebumps in my throat.

And the goose fat in the pan.

And the goose.

Just stop. Watch.

Close your eyes. These goose

steps are not dance moves.

6/2020

Spring to Summer,

2020-07-25T12:06:00.003-07:00

Spring to summer is a glass bubbling births
of chalk stream baptism and wood fires warming

slow motion, extending over silver stumbling stones
stretching a dance through cobblestones, weaving

the trees with cats-eye star imprints; sarongs,

or in a beaded chain of Whitstable iced pearls.

In the melt of what is new and what is old
Dover nets fill with the cliffs and the fisher's soul.

As we sort wheat from chaff like the next farmer along,

Love always brings in a harvest more than golden auburn.

The history of labour and loving is as undocumented

as ever, except for the note-taker maker shakers, there
would be no history written for love’s unpaid labourers.

With the harvest lurks searching horizons
for weather; clocks and vanes. Love rests
in a bouquet fed to the deer. It resuscitates
in wild flower wild-fire colour hypnosis
with no scent at all, and yet it blooms. Synesthetic

Love is...always in the heartwood hay and leaves

when seasons dictate work routines, just like

clockwork; twenty-four, seven.

25/07/20

Cinderella River

2020-07-25T07:39:00.001-07:00

Beauty weaves from ugly threads

and back again to mud.

Who would have thought clay is oh so fine

knowing sand is oh so coarse?

Mining for gold is a not a pan full of guilt

and a pan full of silt. This is an ancient guild,

heading upriver to lowlands

where chalk streams rock spring,

reminding us

of where we were just now,

not of where we’ve been,

wading the watercress beds,

tangling our ankles. We shouldn’t have been there

then. But now, when the catkins flower

and seedpods on top sail downriver, we can remark

on how this one shakes and this one shivers,

spinners crazed, the fluff dancers dizzle,

the wind to them a blur of noise – and of those

that glide, awe and grace on their silvery tipped backs of down -

it is time, to tell of The Mimram and The Bean,

reclaim all vocabulary that had run dry.

When it is too early, hunger-stone warnings

sing gravel voiced about poverty and disease – but

when our Cinderella rivers bloom,

the clearest train of thought flows through the chalk walkways,

receding inwards or moving on,

making the path of least resistance seem easy.

Is it then we should talk of slicing rock, of mud; of settling?

For what damage could these new words do

if not used before the gush of rain?

The clay beds lift with the slightest ripple,

the catkin are surrounded, like new-born chicks tugged under.

Flocculation weighs too much,

that sticky grip of clay ancestor, efficient as pike.

There may be time later, when spring rivers run dry in Summer

to discuss the efficiency of the hexagon, and its resistance.

Reaching an equilibrium early,

when there is so much left to say before the fall,

is the unsettled matter, and the rock.

Sitting by the river, panning the silt,

when it is time to say nothing at all.

5/2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrHNazNfORU

Rivers Run

Professor Pond Skater

2020-07-25T07:37:00.000-07:00

You remind me of the skinny kid at school,

a stick-legged try-hard pond skater

on fields for gorillas, broken,

but unbroken, because already broken

you’d learned early to protect invisible wings.

When you were small, smaller than most,

like for everyone, the world was a boundless beyond.

The race to nowhere was on - towards oversized confectionery,

eyes bigger than the horizons of a tiny pot belly

biting off more than, you were always less than

the winner:

the gorilla;

skating figures of eight,

walking on water’s thin ice.

For you, gorillas always flew.

Likewise, fish always did ride bikes.

What a Geek!

Now flanking plankton at a lectern

seven days a week.

English Rain

2020-07-25T07:33:00.004-07:00

Here, it is not The Tropics

where wide brimmed sunhats

double up for a performance of rain,

leaning smooth ledges of rock

for water to fall; tumble and stream - not in sheets,

droplets, nor cats and dogs:

uncountable reams vanish relentlessly wet

into a complete absence of baked goods,

into a steam-fresh sauna of rainbow and sweat.

Here, we do not surrender, parched,

cracked skin, desperate for soothing.

Here we do not exhale in awe.

We are the hunched resistance,

each sense locked on drizzle’s drivel,

the wrong stoic shoes, shuffling the puddles,

heading somewhere, shivering.

Here, we do not surrender, arms open wide,

bathing in gratitude, sighing – we grumble,

soak up each driving droplet,

count each miserly strike against uncovered skin,

mumble silently, penning the ledger of losses and wins.

Here, we are the abacus of recrimination. The reckoning,
head bent on recording highs and lows in the density of mist.

Steadfastly onward, when grey could be as soft as a shawl,

soft as blaming a tarmac sky for missing bows of rain.

Here, we do not surrender. We may unpeel layers later,

hang them all on the back of a tall chair in a noisy room

and order from the bar; or, on the back of a bathroom door,

when water pouring a steam-fresh sauna of rainbows

wrinkles the skin, and warms the bones with its breath.

For when we wanted to say

2020-07-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

For when what we wanted to say

would take an awful lot of ‘tell’.

a soapbox, an apple-cart of overturned words

too showy for a time when metaphors

are overdressed for funerals, nor fit for our joy.

Where to begin? It’s Spring.

There’s birdsong and rebirth, pumpkin seeds and planting,

for when, what we wanted to say

should be scooped up in handfuls of berries, not kneaded into earth;

when seedlings are re-homed in wishes and signposts

pointing this way – for when, what we wanted to say is

it is this way hope returns.

05/2020