“Glastonbury Fayre”
- 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 ...
Tuesday 27th December 2016 8:58 pm
“The Orkney Spring of Bradley Driver - Easter 1995”
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...
Tuesday 27th December 2016 3:28 am
"Dingle Bound Epiphany June 1990"
“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,
...Sunday 25th December 2016 2:40 pm
"R.I.P. Hubbard (Larry) LaFarge"
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...
Thursday 17th November 2016 4:57 pm
"Thy Darke Mistress"
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...
Friday 11th November 2016 5:23 pm
“On Glimpsing Suzie”
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...
Wednesday 2nd November 2016 9:57 am
"Fit for An Angel"
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...
Monday 17th October 2016 10:25 pm
"Last Year in Jerusalem"
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 ...
Friday 14th October 2016 11:06 pm
"Face in the Crowd"
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...
Saturday 8th October 2016 9:29 am
"Steppin' Out"
(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...
Thursday 6th October 2016 7:11 am
"Aleppo...Mon Amour"
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
...Wednesday 5th October 2016 11:19 am
"Sadie"
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...
Wednesday 28th September 2016 4:06 pm
"Labour in Vain"
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...
Tuesday 27th September 2016 8:25 am
"First Love"
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…
...Saturday 24th September 2016 8:50 pm
"Meeting Mrs Potiphar"
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,
...
Friday 23rd September 2016 9:09 am
"Caz - End of the Affair"
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.
...Wednesday 21st September 2016 8:38 am
"Donegal Eden"
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...
Saturday 17th September 2016 7:27 am
"Let's All Go to Lisdoonvarna"
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...
Thursday 15th September 2016 5:16 am
"Mally"
Sunday 11th September 2016 2:27 pm
"Obituary"
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
...Wednesday 7th September 2016 10:49 am
"Apitate Ring"
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...
Sunday 4th September 2016 7:53 am
"Alison"
(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...
Saturday 3rd September 2016 12:02 pm
"Adieu"
“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
...
Friday 2nd September 2016 10:42 am
"On Leaving Dublin - Bloomsday plus one"
(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 ...
Thursday 1st September 2016 1:09 pm
"Cuddles"
Thursday 1st September 2016 9:37 am
"Mission Hall"
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...
Sunday 21st August 2016 2:46 pm
"Theo"
"Theo"
Theo is with us no more
And I fear I might be to blame.
Only tangentially
I meant him no harm.
I mused his mortality on Saturday
And he deceased pre-dawn on Monday.
His manner of passing
A masterstroke of irony
A street show
Under the aegis of the Absurdiste Extraordinaire
Who hearing silent thoughts
And liking the sound of 'em
Acts the...
Wednesday 17th August 2016 7:58 am
"Malcolm"
I glimpsed Malcolm today,
He was looking good
With a new bed roll and
Pristine white trainers
And a brown bowler hat
Perched jaunty over his
Soggy chewed balaclava.
I glimpsed Malcolm today,
Scuttling between black headstones,
Emerging from his new home,
A tomb
In the Masonic necropolis
He was deep in conversation
With Uncle Felix
Who was not the...
Wednesday 17th August 2016 7:18 am
"Twister"
Porridge for breakfast
With added prunes
Christmas dinner stew defrosting
With festive sprouts
I shall wear a paper hat.
I am a slight and lesser man
‘Un lanterne rouge’
Struggling to keep the peloton in view
Till weariness overtakes me.
In fervent hope
Trust
Or lust
Or maybe even love
I stood through rain and snow
Gently pebbling
My lover’s w...
Monday 15th August 2016 8:10 am
"Waiting Room"
"Waiting Room"
The corridor reaches the corner
And beyond.
Clinging to life,
Bones stretching parchment skin
Patients wait
Gaunt faces
Gazing at the floor.
Agnostics and atheists,
Entreat a god they do not think hears
Hoping they might be proven wrong.
Feet raise
A cleaner mops the floor
She smells of Savlon
Everything does
It’s in t...
Monday 15th August 2016 7:59 am
"Sorts of Freedom"
Mum picked a lost photograph
From the Mirror covered kitchen floor
When rolling up the oilcloth.
The Dove Row bash
Celebrating war’s end
Dad in uniform holding my hand
And the flag
And in her arms
Proud as punch Ma
With baby Cissie
Who died of diphtheria.
They rowed at the donkey stoned step as
We were moved out
Mum wanted her prized framed jigsaw
Of Trooping the Colour
To be th...
Monday 8th August 2016 5:13 pm
"Wallflower"
A hundred peacock eyes
Surveyed the cornflower field.
Brenda in an ivory blouse
Her taffeta underskirts,
Fire red and antique gold, swirled
As she broke cover from the wallflower ranks
Crossing the empty space
From the girls' side of the Palais
To the boys' side of the Palais
Where we stood
A straggle of Burton's mannequins
In drain pipes and brothel creepers and drapes
Laundry on a ...
Thursday 4th August 2016 8:51 am
"Pilgrimage"
Mid September,
the children return to school
and before the fruit rots on the trees
and leaves turn brown again
I take my cycle, fold it down
And stow it in the luggage rack
of the Scarborough train.
I get off at Flamborough
and ride to the Head,
at North Landing
pick two white chalk stones
from the beach
and flat pebbles
fit for skimming.
W...
Monday 1st August 2016 8:07 am
"Gombeen Men"
“Gombeen Men”
“A Smuggler’s Song”
“If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet,
Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie.
Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by.” (Kipling)
"From first class Hull Train carriages
The Art 'elite' -
Sleek Gombeen men
In Renaissance man
Hugo Boss
Linen su...
Saturday 30th July 2016 9:27 pm
"Read About Him in a Sunday Glossy"
After a night of exquisite bliss
She said, ‘ I'll do anything for you”
So I sent her jogging down
To Cafe Nero
For coffee and a croissant
And a Sunday with a supplement
She returned twenty minutes later
With a paper and defibrillator
And told me that after last night
I’ll need the latter.
As I scanned the Aga ads
Looking to buy brand new
...
Wednesday 27th July 2016 9:27 am
"Blessed Mondays"
Mondays? Brilliant!
They don't come round quick enough
I am in the chair
Full jug of fourteen percent?
Plenty enough for the night.
She had her cushion
I had mine – with one between
Never sat on – plump
Perfect cordon sanitaire.
We had 'standards' to maintain.
Solicitous host
She’d bring in bowls ...
Friday 22nd July 2016 11:06 am
"Carlos"
My parents were keen walkers
They strolled the Cleveland Way
To Boggle Hole
From Robin Hood's Bay
With me and sister, Cleo, in tow
Whining as our rucksacks hurt our backs
Snail-like creeping
Noisily hawking into bushes
Leaving a trail of gobbing
Smirking at the phlegm drip dropping
Off the twigs
To break the ennui
We tore branches from cherry trees
Tossed them into M...
Thursday 21st July 2016 5:12 pm
"Brisbane Road"
Sunday 17th July 2016 2:13 pm
"V.E.Day"
“May 8th 1945”
Crowds thronged the streets
Waving Union Flags
Dancing, singing
Sowing seed for
Next fill-dike's ‘fathers unknown’
In chance encounters
In ale house toilets,
Arboretum flower beds
Or tucked under municipal bandstands
While Boys’ Brigade buglers mauled
"God Save the King".
Scattered among the celebrant tide
Stoical
Unremarkable
A regiment of mothe...
Friday 15th July 2016 10:15 am
"S 'n' M"
Fast asleep
Sophie chuckled happily
Girlishly
She dreamed of walking golden labradors
On wind whipped solitary beaches
Autumn rain siling
Laughing smiling.
Throwing balls into the waves
For the dogs to chase
And after the dogs shook off the sea
And their paws were dried
Breakfast of fried eggs
And kidneys
Toast and butter
Steaming coffee
Stove...
Sunday 10th July 2016 6:48 am
"Ben and Tillie"
Ben and Tillie dwelled unofficially
In the cellar
Of tinned up twenty three
I passed on their post occasionally
The stench of boiled cabbage
Tobacco smoke, raw poverty
Leaking through the letterbox
Turned my stomach, gagging me
At night
By candlelight,
Tillie tended marigolds in plastic pots.
Bluebells and hollyhocks
Filled window boxes
Belfast sink...
Saturday 2nd July 2016 7:30 am
"Monday Bloody Monday"
"Monday Bloody Monday"
Head bowed against siling rain
Collar up shielding ears
Hat brim a leaking spout
Shoes beat a tattoo as
He Lowried,
Uphill,
Cobbled streets.
And rued his need of meat
And bread
And eggs
And milk for tea.
A passing car scythed
Gutter water
Over polished shoes
He raised his fist
And ripped a curse
That, against the wind skirl
Went unheard
A shopping li...
Thursday 16th June 2016 6:35 pm
"In Calella"
In days that only the old men
Sitting, smoking
Placidly dying
In la Placa can remember
The celebrated gothic murals
Adorning La Capella de Saint Julia with Saint Quirze
Were destroyed
And the relics of Saint Elm of the Navigators'
Desecrated
This was nineteen thirty six
The perpetrators well known
But lips stay sealed
Better the devil goes...
Wednesday 15th June 2016 10:50 am
"In Catalonia"
Stunted cacti
Shrubs and broken tree stumps
Scarcely tall for a man to pee behind
And dry gullies for him to hide in
And die in
Criss cross Catalonia
Bomb shattered cliff top boulders
Cast razor fragments of flint
Onto dun grit sand beaches
Shredding feet.
The withering sun beats
Hot harsh hot
Unrelenting hot
Flies cluster at sweated bandanas
...Sunday 5th June 2016 7:03 pm
"Dismal Claque"
A dismal claque
Of catcalling delinquents
Dogs my steps
It’s a surly black dog pack
With curled down cup handle tails
Snarling and hissing at my heels.
It scuttles to the shadows
When I turn to face it
To re-gather whenever
My morale is low
One of the cohort
Spawned from the litter
A miserable
Mewling
Half dead
Toothless
Skeletal
W...
Tuesday 24th May 2016 12:34 pm
"Old Men Dancing"
On a rough settle
Outside an inn
I sit in the shade
And watch the gathering
Bent men
Stately
Aged by labour
Uncomfortable
In hand-me-down
Black suits and hats
And polished shoes
Sedately form a line
No one speaks
Coughing
Mingled with birdsong
Fills the village square
With broken crockery
Melody
Silence falls
No drummer
No ...
Saturday 21st May 2016 8:25 am
"Hello, Hello, Hello, Inigo"
Inigo sighed and sighed again
Poured reheated coffee dregs
Into a chipped stained china mug
Spat on a finger to rub at the white ring
Spoiling the walnut veneer of the
Reproduction coffee table from D.F.S.
Claw foot with cabriole legs.
Lighting a cigarette
And watching smoke ring chains
Rising, widening,
Kissing the ceiling, vanishing
He picked at a scab on his cheek
And licked his f...
Friday 13th May 2016 12:11 pm
"Gengulphus" (A diversion)
This is legendary,
Probably.
When Botolph pillaged Burgundy
And stole Gengulphus’ Rod from a reliquary
He thought he was about
Divine appointed
Duty
He planted the naked wand in the precincts of
A long abandoned Celtic chapel
Across the Channel Sea
The desiccated stump
Like Aaron’s Rod
Flourished to a spreading
Yew tree
St Botolph’s Abb...
Wednesday 27th April 2016 4:29 am
"Rachel"
Rachel’s hair was soft red
Flowing like waves
It reached to her waist
(She could sit on it)
With a delicate scent
Reminiscent to me
of cinnamon…and brie
Her smile lit the faces of the friends
on whom she bestowed it
It never shone on mine
She never gave me a second glance
And though I hoped for one
It was never expected
I was out of her league
An...
Tuesday 26th April 2016 8:43 am
"Chuck"
Around midnight
I drank too much rum
Out of my skull
Fell down the stairs
Of the Bar Tropicana
Karaoke
My nose feels broke
I made it home
And staggered down the hall
And slammed the door hard
And the clock clattered
Off the kitchen wall.
It leans half cock now
Drunken, propped
Against the ‘Dad of the Year’ trophy
My kids awarded me
…But th...
Sunday 24th April 2016 4:15 pm
"Come Dancing"
A hundred peacocks' eyes
Surveyed the cornflower field.
Brenda wore an ivory blouse
And her taffeta underskirts,
Fire red and antique gold, swirled
As she broke cover from the wallflower ranks
And stepped across no man's land
From the girls' side of the Palais
To the boys' side of the Palais
Where we stood
A straggle of Burton's mannequins
In drain pipes and b...
Sunday 24th April 2016 11:43 am
"Coming of Age in Oxford"
As February gutters
Slinking away with
Memories of
Childhood hugs
Schoolboy ambitions
And hope fuelled dreams
And adulthood
Lies at the door
To swallow me
I am destitute of property.
Pulitzer prize winners
Future presidents
Nobility
May later squat
Voiding bowels
In this underground refuge
Where I lay shivering
Escaping snow
But not t...
Saturday 23rd April 2016 1:11 pm
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