Since I lived in the shadow of Grenfell in the 70s in what is now the 'Latymer Christian Centre' the tragedy has moved me more than I can adequately express

Here's a pome comparing Grenfell with the Parsi towers of silence.

"A Tower In Silence"

High above the city
On Malabar Hill, Mumbai
Stands a mist caressed silent tower

A shrine of mystery
Where carrion birds flock to feas...

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God swept me off my feet

When He captured me

I was not expecting that

In Plaistow Lane, Bromley

On a mundane autumn Tuesday

As I walked to apologise

To half-baked Jesus Freaks

For mocking them on Monday

When they sang at me

And told me ‘Jesus loves you’

And I had to be a baby to get to heaven.

The electric cleansing fountain

Of love thrilling through m...

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What urgent malevolence

Impressed the metalled highway

Burying the cartwheel rutted tracks

Where mummers danced and acrobats

Indulgence sellers and potion vendors

Preyed on pilgrims singing praises

Making babies, telling stories

Wending their way to Walsingham?

A sombre day – progress spoke,

“Fell the ancient Hangman’s Oak,

Lay concrete carpeting on

Field...

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About an Owl

Sore from a long night’s traipse

Soaked from the storm I trudged through

Knees raw from the chafe of

Trousers heavy with puddle splash

Arms aching from pushing

Palms blistered and heels

Long miles from home on the little-used track

I prop my punctured bike against a five-bar gate

And it’s sunrise.

I rest my elbows on the gate

Absorbing t...

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We walked the windswept hair wildness

Stepping upon the swamp tussocks

Avoiding the slow-worm slow-warm

Sandal soaking rainbow water

Rain ran down her face, her laughing eyes

Her nose and into her smile

And I knew I must apologise

She had never asked much

She had not stood with hands on hips

Demanding more love than I could give

I looked at her, I look...

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I saw the mother of my youngest son today

She was walking straight-backed, erect

Head high but not haughty

Sandals, delicate flower dress

Flowing like her hair once red but now hinting grey

I hope she did not see me.

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The expected news still shocked

Her family and loved ones at her bedside

With good humour and bravery

She passed away.

Was the cancer biding its time

Those wet windy evenings

On Marine Drive, Southport

Awaiting her last bus to Rufford?

She could not come home with me

I had no home

The upturned boat I sheltered in

Did not have room for two.

I was a...

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A long one from me book:

June 2006

I was drinking coffee in a deli in Haifa

When a sepia photograph caught my eye

A man, his wife and family posing stiffly.

The café owner said it showed his grandfather’s father

And brought my order and the story.

June 1906

When Black Hundreds pillaged Bialystock

And the cry went up, “Kill all the Jews!”

Moyshe ben Mendel, c...

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Everything is disappointing

Everyone disappoints

Fall in love with me

I will disappoint you

Like you will me.

It’s factored in the leaving

Everything leaves through

Theft or damage or familiarity

The glow of ownership

Pride of possession

Will gutter and dim

Everything is tinged with disappointment

This we know

But pretend we don’t

We arm in arm a...

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coupla romantic pomes
It being Easter and what have you, I've been watching Irish fillums and the melancholy and the music and the yearnings gush through me.

'Before The Wind Blows My Ashes Away'

I will present that which I birthed
That angels might have whispered
Or demons hissed
In the night hours
When darkness before dawn ached into my bones

I will produce my truth
And sing my s...

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“Please don’t love me, Cazz,

This is just another fling.

That ex girlfriend – you know who,

Will always come first for me.”

Cazz tried to win my heart.

We had days of fun.

Romping nights of lusting. All

Overshadowed by

The former lover lurking,

Behind veils of memory.

Cazz wanted to ask

If my, “Darling, I love you,”

Whispers were for her

Or meant fo...

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What a Size!

She stood uncertain centre-stage

A tremulous tethered kid

In a jungle clearing tiger shoot

Shielding her eyes

Against the spotlight glare

Apologising for her timidity

“I’ve never spoken in public before”

Softly expressing women’s rage

At fear of rape and violence

Her quiet seething anger

Enhanced by gentle diffidence

She should have b...

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I had a dream

I had friends who dreamed

I had dreams that showed me my dream

I had an insistence

I had to obey.

You must slip off the velvet chains

You must loose your questor spirit

You must unlock the magick

You must discover the hidden path or

You must suffocate.

What is?  Who is?  Where is?

What is the time?

What is the date?

What is this place?

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An island Eden

Cut off whenever high tide

Covered the causeway.

A made-to-measure retreat

Out of sight of prying eyes.

The tide receded

We drove across the wet strand

Parking among dunes.

Our van inadvertently

Bedded in axle-deep sand.

It stuck fast. Fiz laughed.

We drank a bottle of rum.

Watching the sun set

Over Árainn Mhór. Blowing

Kisses at t...

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God you made me nervous

When you turned up 

At my surprise party

You smiled around the room

Kissed a cheek or two and mine

Sipped a glass of red and sang.

Your plaintive song

Breathing through the room

Stirred my reservoir of tears.

I wiped my eye 

I had admired you so long 

I never knew you had such a voice.

When your melody dropped away 

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I am a slight and lesser man,

With added prunes

To keep me regular.

My Christmas feast,

Chicken stew with added sprouts,

Is splattering the microwave.

I shall pull a festive cracker,

Eat dinner wearing a paper hat.

Lost in love

Hobbled by fervent hope, 

I stood in siling rain

Gently pebbling my lover’s window.

The curtains stayed closed,

The we...

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A handful of gargoyles on a wall

Is all that remains of the abbey

Dedicated to St Phocas of Sinope

Who’s long forgotten

Overlooking the bay at Aughnabrochan

And when it rains the leaking spouts drip

And splashed heads look up

And picture the abbey in its heyday

And wonder about St Phocas

And hope the crumbling gargoyles

Won’t dislodge and pulp their skulls.

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In thirty years when you are old

As I am now

And wondering what to say

To your forty year old son

Who wonders what he’ll say in turn to his

When his turn comes

Will you spare a thought for my passing

And ponder was it easy for me?

Will you gather with your brothers,

Greying, stooped and anxious

Around a welcome table

Brimmed with real ale pints

In Malham say or ...

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Had I not been peering at a soft-core calendar  

A women's rowing club – posing butt naked - for charity 

With discreet oars obscuring zones of 'special interest'

Our golden wedding day would have passed unnoticed

Friday, October 20 2017 – an empty square

We married - 50 years ago this very day

Deep in the autumn of the ‘Summer of Love'

We might have become ‘grey pan...

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Charles Street, Hull, 

A depression of shuttered shops 

No trace remains of the Pioneer Store 

Or the anonymous side door 

Into the Fig Tree Gospel Hall. 

The ‘blessed remnant’ entered through a porch 

Crammed with bin bags spilling 

Sweet sweat-rancid jumble sale leftovers,

“Get stuck in before the tatters come.”

The doorkeeper was a pig farmer 

From Holder...

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The driver of a leathery 

Clapped out Hillman Hunter

Reeking of Capstan full strength 

And Lifebuoy soap

Dropped me off outside Devizes.

Rain came

I prised open a door to escape

Unrolling my doss bag 

On a scout hut floor.

I crept out early while the village slept

Washing down Kendal Mint Cake 

With a pint of gold top

Pirated from some bugger’s door.

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I was a minor aspiring writer - well know locally,

Until 'Richard and Judy' deemed my book,

A 'must read on your holiday',

Spreading my fame exponentially.

People started to interrupt my incognito summer evening promenades;

White linen suit, floppy bow tie, Raybans and panama,

“Oi! I’ve seen you on telly. How's about a selfie?"

My agent told me,  

"Oprah's people rang....

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Glimpsed from the bus, a

Pregnant hump of displaced earth

Piled to fill a grave.

Some flowers too - not many.

No hearse.  No crowd of mourners.

A wreath shows Dad's passed.

Just “Dad.” Enough. Her father.

He had squeezed her hand

And breathed his last breath sighing

For loves past – and those to come.

The girl stood alone

Kicking at the grave earth pile

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I posted this in September but have rewritten for me book - hope you enjoy

- performance piece -

She devised a meeting ‘just as friends'

For evening drinks in her favourite bar.

(Soigné and the food is good)

Her finely plaited ribboned hair

Smelled of woody sandalwood.

She said I had to walk her home,

“There are dangers lurking everywhere.”

She chose the cycl...

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- performance piece -

The driver of a leather upholstered

Hillman Hunter drop head saloon

Reeking of Capstan full strength

And Lifebuoy soap

Dropped me off outside Devizes.

I prised open a door

To get out of the rain

Unrolling my doss bag

On a scout hut floor.

I crept out early

While the village slept

Washing down a Kendal Mint Cake bar

With a ...

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I needed time and space

Peace, and freedom from stress

To write a long blocked novel - 

Hopefully it would turn out my best. 

I rang the number of

An Orkney woman,  

She said she was a widow,

Advertising ‘room to let’ 

Cheap board and who knows?

Free bawd if my luck was in. 

The train journey was unremarkable

Aside from a chance encounter

With a m...

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“Dingle. An Epiphany - June 199o.”

A drunken punt on Slippy Blue,

Winner of the Greyhound Derby

At seventeen to two

Meant I was rich – temporarily.

So I set off on a random journey.

Head for the airport maybe,

Take the first flight anywhere.

A "Holiday in Ireland," poster

On the railway station wall

Appealed to me. 

I bought a coach ride to Tralee,

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A giant he was of girth and growling

We admired and envied his national standing

Shrugged at his red-blooded man-spreading

Flashing on podia and once drunk on t.v.

Where my girlfriend swore she saw his love stick

"It just popped out - made me feel sick!"

 - when a string was undone

On his Balinese beach wear sarong.

We aped his style in hats and suits

hand made leat...

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You kiss kiss, caress caress caress her,

Think you possess, that flint heart aggressor?

You should pull back the skin and look beneath

Her enigmatic smile, ivory teeth,

Catching the odour of last night’s vodka

Tasting the rancid sweat on her armpits

Check her purse. See those banknotes? Counterfeit.

Spoken with apparent sincerity

Masking a salacious barbarity

Honeyed wor...

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Idling down to Sunday market

One eye on the level crossing

Mulling buying grapes and garlic

Maybe back to church – worth going?

Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no…. No. No.

A slender woman at the kerb 

Waited for the lights to change

Unperturbed by helter skelter

Crazy pell mell pavement riders

Mums and dads and kids and dogs

Darting headlong into traffic

Wore lissom g...

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Wanting whatever might still be found
Picked from the ruins of the Holy Land
I took a plane to Ben Gurion. 

I was soon savouring the smells and stalls
Wandering the teeming warren of washed stone steps
and ancient alleyways of old Jerusalem. 

Allured by handbells and hallelujahs
I tagged on the tail of a serpentine train
Of Christian pilgrims waving palms
Singing psalms praising Jesus...

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I found a single stanza in my 'maybe later' documents and pimped it a bit

Hungering for Jerusalem
I flew El Al to Israel. 

The smells of Yemenite cuisine
Eaten at Falafel Hateimani
Just past the Ethiopian Embassy near
The Street of the Prophets [Rehov Hanevi'im]
Where Holman Hunt who painted “The Scapegoat”
Built a house - number 64
And delicious pitta dipped in baba ganoush 
From a ...

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God you made me nervous

When the door opened and it was you

Coming, uninvited, to my party

You smiled around the room

Kissed a few cheeks

Sipped a glass of red

You picked up a loose guitar and sang

I put down my glass and sidled near to hear

Your voice, so plaintive

Reached a deeply hidden place

And I held back tears.

But was that just because I've l...

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(I posted this some days ago - however among my chums in 'ull (and on fb) a controversy over whether it is two poems and the second half does not belong here ensued, so I removed it - here it is in its entirety - I have a truncated version as per the critics' suggestions but hey ho)   :) 

When Julie Christie steps from Ormondroyd’s lorry

Swinging her hair and handbag carefree

Down al...

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In the old quarter of Aleppo

A flickering festoon of broken bulbs

And blasted bunting surrounds the souk

Within the cables' crackling sparking

A whispering can be heard,

“Shahid…Shahid…Shahid… Shahid.”

In the third cut of the night

The silence of darkness

Is rent by a mother’s cry

As she tenderly wipes dust from the faces

Of her husband, father, new born child

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Sadie was eighty when she stopped counting.

Eighty suited her nicely

so she got there and stayed.

I was her acting amanuensis - unpaid.

She got flustered over much but not overmuch.

When she had forms to fill or worries over bills

begging letters from charities,

unentered lotteries 'won',

piling the floor at her front door

she’d hang out a sign

and I’d pop in for...

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Outside in the corridor

Staring at my trainers

And the soup drip stain

On the thigh of my jeans

Wishing I had change for the vending machine.

Porters wheel stretcher beds

Bearing bulging bellies

Grunting in discomfort

Cursing the pain

They swear they won't go through again

Until the next time

The next and the next after that.

The doors swish open

Th...

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We were teenage innocents

Love birds

Learning the language of

Love words

Huddled close against the winter chill

Holding hands in the shelter

Watching for her last bus

The nine o five

Three four seven

To turn from Lord Street, Southport

Onto Marine Drive 

To swallow her away

Home to Rufford,

near Ormskirk,

Lancashire.

Wanting it to come soon…

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She devised a meeting ‘just as friends' 

Evening drinks in her favourite bar 

(Soigné and the food is good) 

Her finely plaited ribboned hair 

Smelled of woody sandalwood. 

[Women's yoga was the excuse she used 

to fool her husband, ‘estranged' (or so she claimed) 

But in her mind was ‘union’ with me  - a different kind] 

She said I had to walk her home, 

...

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I said, "Don’t love me,

‘we’ can never ever be".

I said another

held my heart, my hopes, my dreams.

She heard, but Caz did not...'hear'.

We had days of fun.

Romping nights of lusting. All

overshadowed by

that other lover lurking,

behind doors of memory.

Caz tried to ask me

if my, “Darling I love you”

whispers were for her

or aimed at the other one.

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Our island heaven

Cut off whenever high tide

Covered the causeway.

Secluded from prying eyes

Caz fell in love at first sight.

When the tide went out

We drove across the wet strand

Parking in the dunes

The van inadvertently

Bedded in axle deep sand.

Stuck fast but Caz laughed

Cracked open a bottle of rum

We watched the sun set

Over Arranmore and kiss...

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On Louisburgh strand

County Mayo

Near by Croagh Patrick

(which we never climbed but I say we did and who's to argue?)

We camped beside a brick built flush toilet

Ladies and Gents, clean, plenty of paper

Fresh running water from an outside tap

Five star beach bum luxury.

Weather battered farmers

Wearing weather beaten fedoras

Turned up in weather beaten Toyot...

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No one informed the Yorkshire Post

of the death of

a certain bourgeois gentilhomme

Major Neville Peterson

The name never caught on

He was Major when he married Mrs Peterson,

Agnes to her friend

Neville called her ‘Mother'

and Mother called him, "Major".

Mother waltzed off with the Major's brother, Arden,

Who called her Chucklebottom

and squeezed her bum

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No bank remains on the High Street corner

Where the Yorkshire Penny once stood.

On Saturday afternoons

Its granite steps transformed

To a gospel preachers’ rostrum

As with spittle flecked chins they

Bellowed at sinful shoppers passing by

God’s everlasting love for them

And the assurance of perpetual burning,

For the recalcitrant

Just a heart beat away.

My...

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(This is one I rarely look at - I performed it last year a coupla times and have just edited it - pub crowds like the innuendos in this kinda stuff - it's not a favourite, but I thought I'd stick it up anyway - win, lose or draw)

"Alison"

And so, Alison?

Where should I begin?

We met in Skeggy

It was love at first sight-ish for me

She wound the window down

And wa...

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“Adieu”

“Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden.” (T.S. Eliot. "Burnt Norton")

A long passage rolled ahead

A passage of decades of days

A passage of hopes and no hopes

A passage of aching and aching no more

And one of joy

Of growing

And stooping

And failing falling

...

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(this is one of my earlier pomes - written last year on the 17th June - I'll set about licking it into shape)

With a morning to kill

before the ferry,

to Anglesey,

and nothing to do,

we decided,

it was decided,

well, I decided,

to introduce my squeeze to Irish literature.

I told her, "Nothing wrong with a bit of culture".

Irish lit?

A subject I knew ...

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Walking down along Charles Street

A shallow canyon of shuttered shops

Seeking traces of the Pioneer Store

And the anonymous side door

Of  Pastor Gardner's

Fig Tree Gospel Hall

.

The ‘beloved' enter through a porch

Crammed with bin bags spilling

Sweet sweat rancid jumble sale stock,

Free for all until the rag man comes.

.

The usher, a farmer

Sentries the insid...

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