Category: Poetry

in photos we   wear smiles
white bow ties

flap  rented   gowns     like
fab ri cated   sha        dows

perpetually strolling down
jowett           walk

  leaves scuff shoes buffed
not long before            this

or that        morn ing
they daw    dle at our feet 

               the tide drawn in
  cannot re treat 

transfixed
in a flash

      the light
              flattens shirts

              fattens  faces
              freezes         lips

names came    slow   ly
or not at al        l 

when last i  called          on
col lege        halls 

this time in
                    spring    time 

If you are reading this,
by some miracle, find our home.
Find the glassy marble,
fractured, but somehow still
rolling around a red-faced giant –
a star we called the sun.

Your fall will be broken
by mortuary houses,
tumuli, blasted cairns,
dusty relics, ruined
monuments to fatal moments –
grim faces set in stone. 

Understand, we did more
than erect walls, divide Berlin
and fortify China,
but our softer gestures
faded, uncommemorated –
a disembodied laugh. 

A dog in a collar
lay down before the avalanche,
when Vesuvius blew.
We fled to the orchard
in total, foetal fear –
the kind words cannot ossify.

We digress. Please, find us.
We stray from our purpose. Find us –
wait awhile by our cenotaph.
Watch the livid sun set
the earth eternally aflame.

And know we held our children close –
we held them at the close.

Recount for me,
the succession of things.
When one wave ended,
others began:
dunes which bristled with grass,
petals pressed by quadrants,
innumerable shells.
Our task –
shared by aspirant busloads –
was to count and mark
and chart a census
of snails.
Next year, same season,
our teacher would wax
before our siblings.
We had passed
that stage – a wave gone out.
Would you recount
the succession
of things?

Mum swims with eyes closed,
a face that, reflected, runs into itself.
Her children dry on mossy stones. 

Sticky with lake and melon,
we idly trace scaled-down,
and brittle coastlines.

Those mottled smudges, grandad would proclaim
pointing at lichen through his coat pockets
have been marching since Alexander. See?

With that, he’d crouch
close to the neon crust
radiant with joy.

I, recalling this, withdraw my hand,
go lie on my back awhile to watch dusk
flash on the bellies of swallows.

From the far side, a rumble rises
and I know just how a motorboat paints a line,
how pike slink with striped torpedo bodies,

how osprey sit in old pines, white wings folded,
how my face, in turn, will become my father’s face.
And, knowing this, I’m pleased with what’s left,

now that the ice has retreated.

A Golden Shovel poem, after Fu Hsuan

I.

Grief follows like thunder,
crossing the channel. An army
of prayers salt my father’s heart.

While the grand organ trembles
we throw damp confetti,
give the occasion a lift.

II.

The evening is balmy,
blanketed by thunderhead.

Restless, my brother rises from
his bedclothes to bathe.

On a pale clod of pillow
hairs stray like shorthand…

The corridor clatters. Listen.
He stammers before an unknown it.

He flashes a torch, trying to force metamorphosis.
Who is his visitor? What is it not?

An owl. The kind you might spy in an encyclopaedia
riding the crossbar of the first chariot.

Behind sliding doors: an inheritance,
Gifts passed across and down.

Fusty leather broken at the elbow.
Corduroy grazed by candlelight.
Shoes without laces.

The true heirlooms hung to one side,
swatches of pale morning:
blue button-ups.

Something to grow into.

He heard feathers
Rustled by the first commuter train,
Felt the stimulus of dark caffeine
Rushing through his veins.

An ancient river stirred
Refreshed by recent rain.
Everything was differed,
Though much remained the same.

He brushed against the push of strangers,
Trying to find a seat,
Envying the luxury of lie-ins,
Of naked flesh in sheets.

And the city rose around him,
Bitter, immediate and sweet,
Bearing a sense of bloody victory:
A butcher packing meat.

He saw the dissolution of morning,
Mist that rolled away
Across the humpback of a crimson bus
Surging through the grey,

As lovely as a dance recital
Coloured with thrown bouquets,
The throng and song of London:
It’s daily passion play.

Eventually, the sun blinked
Vanished below the steel
The rambling city warped and swarmed,
Neon, giddy and real.

The night tilted precariously
Like a turning roulette wheel
And the pavement screamed into the dark
Pinned beneath spiked heels.

Calling London,
Wife and one-night-stand,
A gritty, glittering icon
That defies command.

Easy to love, I fear,
But hard to understand,
The city he felt
When he touched her hand.

Or: How I’ll cat-call you after 40 years of marriage

Hey! You’re intoxicating as sherry.
Original like Werther’s sweets.
Close to me as a pacemaker.
You make me complete. 

I wanna get old with you, baby.
Seriously old.
I wanna hear young’uns whisper,
Seriously, how’d they get so old?

I wanna love you in nothin’ but wrinkles.
Yeah, your Sunday Best.
I wanna see those laughin’ eyes crinkle.
‘Nough crows to fill a nest.

I wanna suck ya teeth out.
I wanna rub what ails.
Which is to say – everythin’, baby!
A line that never fails. I forget:

Did I already say you make me complete?
Did I follow up with every lap of the sun?
It’s just, when your shuffle ‘cross my patio,
Sentences come undone. Let’s do over – 

You make me complete
Every lap of the sun.
You’re who I breathe for, baby.
We’ve only just begun.

At rest, between stops,
neither here nor there,
your hot head nestled
just past my shoulder.

And I invite you:
forever shelter in that shallow cove.

Stay,
While I watch over.

A breath – to bring forth
tightrope-walking words
to leap, dance and dazzle,
sway the endings of your nerves – 

never comes.

Instead the truth,
that I prize you in quite ordinary ways
because of your paternal care
in those earliest of days,

when you taught me the world
and the heavens above
and the devils below
and what it means to love.

You shouldn’t write as sonnet,
what you’d sooner keep as prayer.
My tiny hand in yours:
we saw the presence of God there.