The seventh day

Fred:
eyes that see the world
dance, feet that know the rhythm
of the heavenly spheres

Ginger:
grace, and lines to match
the master; humour and skill
in perfect balance

Cyd:
sex, poise, supreme skill,
never just a partner, but
a star who partners

Gene:
not for me, but hard
to ignore his peerless power,
masculine strength

John:
when dance in film seems
dead, a child of rock and roll
thrusts back the fever

Billy:
an electric film
breaks open a world for those
immune to tutus

Darcy:
bravely recreates
the golden age — heroic
failure; apt tribute

The sixth day

From Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri,
they make their yearly way to pastures old.
In mating pairs in summer months they fly,
by stages from southern warmth to northern cold.
They try to avoid the eagle's greedy eye,
and fly their perfect V three thousand miles.
And once they nest they still must try
to protect their chicks from bears, or foxes' wiles.

The fifth day

While mortals sleep, the would-be immortals train,
lap after chlorine tinged lap,
press after press, curl after curl,
hoping to turn the Olympic rings to gold.

The fourth day

The gigglebird has learnt to please
by laughing at the peacocks' jokes.
The flirtybird knows how to tease
and get her way with weak-willed folk.
The dutybird works hard each day
with little time for laughter,
while babybird has learnt that she
will always be looked after.

The third day

Coq au Vin suggests the 1980s.
Gastropubs were few and far between,
chicken in a basket was, if not luxury,
at least a respectable evening meal out.

But Coq au Vin in those days was
exotic – hard to believe, I know –
anticipated with relish, and usually
disappointing. We had not yet

grown used to foreign foods –
aloo gobi, souvlaki, even enchilladas
could have been animal, vegetable or mineral,
a dance, a disease or a death-watch beetle.

At least our schoolboy French could cope
with Coq au Vin, enjoying the saucy mix
of bacon, bird and button mushrooms,
of dish and double entendre.

Oeufs en cocottes suggest a later time,
when bistro was a more familiar word,
and ramekins were recognised as not
the little folk that Dorothy met in Oz.

A dish for those who've learned that food is more
than quantity; that shoving it all in a pan
is not the height of culinary skill.
Suddenly food became a branch of art,

and the adventure of a little light delight
in its own white munchkin dish
seemed worth the time or money,
and 'cocotte' was not a word we learnt at school.

But now each high street boasts a dozen different
cuisines – a poulet won't be just français,
but Provençal, or Bretonique, jaune grillé,
and Madame Bonne Femme must compete

with Yassa, Jerk, Tandoori, Fajita,
all laying out their wares for us to choose.
No longer caged by simple, stringy fare
we freely range over the chicken fields.

The second day

She had that grim, taut expression,
common to little Britons abroad –
us against the world, no tapas when
each bar has bacon, egg and chips on tap
for those who take excess baggage
even to the Andalusian coast.

And so she found her table and sat down.
But this was not a Spanish bar –
the crowds had come to bask, not in the sun,
but in the glow of prices cut in two –
the sales, the suits and sheets and shoes.

And she was fraught. Her tired, searching eyes seemed dull.
Her daughter's five year-old tongue chirped merrily,
but mum could barely fake a kind reply.
Her eyes roved round, returned to the little girl,
then roved again. The season of joy and peace
had turned, it seemed, to duty, pressure, pain.

But then her eyes found what they sought.
A young man took his place across from her,
his daughter grinned at Dad's return,
and slowly Mum came back to life.
Those tired eyes grew brighter now,
the furrowed brow grew smooth, and soon
an unexpected smile lit up the day.

Not all marriages are drained of love –
not all families are fueled by pique.
These two, at times perhaps against the world,
were for each other, and it showed.

The first day

Funny that two of the greatest wordists,
lexicographers, verbophiles,
should have been a Fowler and a Partridge.

The Fowler, checking the twittering words,
charting our modern usage, with no time
for absurd old rules; a wise old bird.

And the Partridge, that saucy bird,
standing for slang, rejoicing in choice curses,
always game for the gutter words,
the forces' favourite phrases.

How funny, how fitting, for words are birds
uneasily caged and carpeted, best left
to fly, but sometimes needing the fowler's jesses.

So beautiful

you go about your business day to day
and days are filled with paper cuts and cold sores,
and shoulders don't get less arthritic
and empty pages don't get filled with golden words

then out of a clear blue sky swoops down
a bird of paradise with tiger lily feathers,
a living origami fold, precise and unique
so beautiful, so beautiful

English base

Food for Thought

All things calorifical,

All sponge cakes great and small;

All things sweet and wonderful,

F40 loves them all.

Each little chocolate fondant,

Each giant chocolate cake;

The sugar puffs for breakfast,

The scones at morning break.

All things calorifical,

All sponge cakes great and small;

All things sweet and wonderful,

F40 loves them all.

The flapjacks and the brownies

The Eng. Soc. do not eat,

Are grabbed and gripped and guzzled,

An Eng. Department treat.

All things calorifical,

All sponge cakes great and small;

All things sweet and wonderful,

F40 loves them all.

And Mr Kipling’s fancies

Will suddenly appear,

With crisps and cups of Cava,

To mark the end of year.

All things calorifical,

All sponge cakes great and small;

All things sweet and wonderful,

F40 loves them all.

Waking from a dream

a dream drifts away:
strands of gossamer; scent of
worries, hopes, desires


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Trust Failed

The trust relationship failed.

A sentence of doom – what tale of future hopes

thwarted, of painstakingly nurtured love

shattered, lies behind those four bleak words?

Trust: that fragile frame on which we build

networks of support, shared projects,

jobs well done. That gentle glue unthinkingly applied,

cementing heart and heart, and mind and mind.

The trust relationship failed.

Four bleak words – well, to be truthful,

four words from eleven, Microsoft’s

portentous greeting to my impatient screen:

Word of the day

So Lucy says
the English base

now has a smell of mint.
The cause? Who knows?
Some aftershave?
A cake? Some gum? A Smint?

And so at break
I thought I'd take
a break from Earl Grey tea,
and I filled up
a paper cup
with pepperminty tea.

A peppermint
infusìon;
a corrugated cup;
black plastic lid
(fedora shaped)
with hole through which to sup.

L'Envoi:

Back at base creatively
to describe the curiosity
of odours formed from fancy tea,
in Helen's presence, friendlily
I minted a new word, qv:
Peppermintiosity.


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Location:English Base

A Riddle

Poor battered bird, whose bright red plumage

is bashed and bruised as the battle goes on.

Sometimes I fly high, and everybody cheers,

sometimes the hunters catch me, and everybody jeers.

My left-wing feathers are ruffled, my right-wing smooth:

who wants to see me swerve around my tormentor,

and smash into the trees?

Carpe diem: inveni Deum

God came down from his mighty throne, and said,
No longer will I sit above the clouds,
wrapped in mystery, frightening pious fools
with threats of fire and promises of bliss.
No longer will I watch the world from far,
a grumbling cosmic granddad, sending plagues
and testing times to keep them on their toes.
No longer will I spy on every move,
my angel scribes recording every sin,
every infringement of my impossible laws.

From now on you must search for me elsewhere.
The king will walk abroad in human robes:
you'll find me down the pub, or on the beach,
chatting with friends, or lending a helpful arm;
you'll find me sharing the tears and joys of life,
on cancer wards and battlefields and streets.
Sometimes you'll know me, recognise my voice,
singing or joking, offering gentle words,
or speaking out in pain against abuse.
Sometimes you'll glimpse me in a stranger's glance,
a baby's sleeping face, a lover's gaze;
but often I'll be there, and all you'll know
is somehow, unaccountably, that life
has taken on an unexpected grace, a hue of awe,
an echo from the wellsprings of the world.


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Greenbelt 2011 — first day impressions

In Adrian Plass's parallel world
teapots would always pour right.
In Phyllis Tickle's tomorrow,
hierarchies will tumble,
the Spirit will lead,
as the Great Emergence sees light.
In Brian McLaren's acquaintance's view
the key to end poverty's clear:
it is, wait for it, Taxes!
— for those who have ears to hear.
It's not so bizarre a message;
a society built on trust,
with prosperity gained not by selling the poor,
God's commonwealth comes,
as the prophets speak out,
and the use of resources is just.
Billy Bragg too wants debts to be cancelled,
and the fight against racists to thrive,
and Milton Jones gives his one-liner gig,
and his ten second sermons,
And his stand-up hair —
at last, I've seen the man live!
And then there was Paul Kerensa —
(I knew him when he was Young) —
who decides at the end of his Exodus gig,
with a big finish needed, to see off the crowd,
that there is a song to be sung.
So Bohemian Rhapsody's taken,
and rewritten with Moses in mind,
and Pharaoh sings 'No, I will not let them go,'
and the crowd all reply in kind.
So day one of the festival's over,
but what will tomorrow bring?
More worship and talks, and comedy gigs,
and the chance to hear Flight Brigade sing.




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Location:Cheltenham racecourse

Fat Robin

nonchalant robin
on a wall, waddles into
the bush, just in case

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Jack-in-the box

When the Pentecostal party is over,
the Jack-in-the-box God is pushed
back in the box, all the while wriggling
and springing to get free. A week later
we try to solve the cryptic Trinity,
then shove that back into its drawer,
and the long green Sundays of summer succeed.

O Jack-in-the-box, O dancing shamrock God,
how much we miss, how much we need you now.

Depleted stock: Drummond Quiz team

Lucy, Jack and Jay,
a winning combination:
calm, quirky and keen.

The Spirit moves over the waters: 5

                              i)

It starts with a mess, a mass of might-bes.
The craftsman contemplates, his Spirit scans.
To work: weave a world out of quantum chaos.

‘Light! Action! Let photons fly!
Let quarks collide and galaxies gather.
Switch on stars! Let carbon cook!

Serve the soup of lavish life!
Molecules meld and cells expand and split,
molluscs mate and cockroaches crawl, and…’

                              ii)
...so we tell our stories of the past,
looking back in order to move on,
our spirits seeking union with the One,

with Lady Wisdom, calling by the gates:
‘Hear me, my truth is yours to hold,
more precious than the brightest gold.

I, whom the master craftsman chose
to be beside him as he marked out the earth.
Whoever finds me finds life itself.’

                              iii)
Geist, ghost, soul, spirit,
the essence, the heart, the inner light;
God’s image in us, our life in God.

Healing breeze, purging flame,
bridge that splices heaven and earth,
fearsome foe and fearless guide.

Wild goose flying, dove of peace,
God with wings of wind and fire,
still, small voice, Love in motion.

The Spirit moves over the waters: 4

A shard of memory shears from off a wreck
and slowly rises from the abysmal deep.
A melancholy spirit broods and frets;

clings to a drifting raft made long ago,
bruised from a life of regrets, and ill-prepared
to face the rising terror from the deep.

And when the desperate memory breaks the waves
to vex and irk with childhood snubs and fears,
what healing breeze can guide the lost one home?

The Spirit moves over the waters: 3

'Ready about!' and the sleek boom swings round,
the crew dance their appointed tasks,
and she leans into the wind, and skates across the waves.

Her headsail strains tall and proud and full,
her crew's strong legs flex and straighten,
and fresh spray blesses each windburnt face.

On shore boyish eyes gaze with awe
at this brave mistress of the waves,
and a vow is made to one day share her joy.

The Spirit moves over the waters: 2

A dark night. The Loch broods on human intrusions.
Steep hills to the north, and gentler ones to east and south
frame but never overreach the rock green depths.

A gust, then a breeze, then a steady wind disturb the surface,
and broken clouds veil and unveil a distant moon.
A few cottage lights dot the shore. No-one watches

as a grey form rises slowly from the depths, insubstantial,
appears to hesitate, then glides westwards, towards
distant battlements it will never reach.

The Spirit moves over the waters: 1

This spirit is best without added water.
Its scent, lavender; its colour, orangey;
its taste, burnt caramel; its name, Glenmorangie.

It slows time, drawing full attention to itself,
its essence flows from friend to friend,
its communion knows no early end.

Uisge beatha, blessèd water of life,
is itself, works no miracles, is consummate,
is barley transubstantiate.

Those Sphexish Blues

From Michael Quinion's excellent newsletter, Worldwidewords, to which I subscribe, I learn that 'sphexish', from the Greek for a wasp, means behaving in a robotic, predetermined way, 'trapped within invisible, intangible, but inescapable boundaries of mental space'.

I hear that chocolate sponge cake call to me.
Oh yeah, I hear that chocolate sponge cake call to me.
Don't wanna grow that gut, don't wanna saggy butt, but
I hear that chocolate sponge cake call to me.

I need to do some work and earn my pay.
Oh boy, I need to do some work and earn my pay.
Don't wanna be a slouch, just lie here on this couch,
I need to do some work and earn my pay.

I oughta stretch and crunch and work those abs.
I s'pose I oughta stretch and crunch and work those abs.
Just old and weak and grey, I'm gonna die this way,
I oughta stretch and crunch and work those abs.

Could grab that pen and start to write that book.
I could just grab that pen and get on with that book.
My head's so stuffed with words, could feed 'em to the birds,
Should grab that pen and start to write that book.

Oh Lord in heaven, when will I be free?
Oh Lord in heaven, when will I be free?
Why don't I get to choose, to dump these sphexish blues —
Oh Lord in heaven, when will I be free?



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A Limerick haiku

Ok, so I am cheating here: I wrote this on October 17th last year, but I think it is good, so I wanted it on the blog.

Flecked gold reflected
on the Shannon. Mellow guests
drift on tides of wine.

Spring Evening in Springhaven

Girls on bikes chat, Biggles
prowls, I write, and sparrows
twitter, the old way

The cloud bird

A streetlamp blinks on.
Behind it an unthinkably huge bird of prey,
with mile long salmon pink wings
hovers as if waiting to swoop.
A cloud bird, formed of water, scattered light,
and my imagination.
And now a loud but tiny human bird,
a jet from Gatwick headed who knows where,
moves beneath the cloud bird and is gone,
a speck of dust against the sky.
The sun sets further, and pink wings turn to grey.
The streetlamp now seems brighter,
human defiance shining against eternity.

June the Third

There once was a poet called Jay,

Who claimed that he'd write every day,

But his efforts at verse

Just became worse and worse, 

With 18 in Feb, 6 in May.

The wrong side of truth

Another response to Brian McLaren, this time to his comment that conservative Christians often find themselves on the wrong side of truth.

The billy-goats gruff had to move,
And oh! how they feared that troll.
But when you're on the wrong side of that wooden bridge,
Get a move on: you could lose it all.

Galileo gazed into the sky,
And oh! how some churchmen raged.
But those who thought the Sun was whizzing round the Earth
Are a footnote in history's page.

Charles Darwin saw how Nature worked,
And oh! how some churchmen laughed.
But saying apes can't climb down from their family tree
Isn't big or clever — just plain daft.

Some people make the Bible God,
And oh! how they turn and twist.
But if you treat a poem like a science book
You'll never know just what you've missed.

The troll says we should stay put.
And oh! how we fear his voice.
But God is on the far side of that wooden bridge
and truth is the braver choice.

Alternative last verse:

The troll says we should stay put.
And oh! how we fear his voice.
But God calls us to cross that wooden bridge,
and truth is the braver choice.


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Naked Spirituality - a preresponse to Brian McLaren

I've just bought Brian McLaren's book with that title and thought I'd write poems before and after reading it to see how the book changes me.

Naked before God, like St Francis.

Stripped of burdens, but also of shields.

A life without iphone - how can that be!

No piano, guitar, or desk or pen,

but still with my mind, my voice, my me.

Does that give me the right to be here at all?

So let's go further: increase the pain –

no job, no degrees, no role in life.

Who's left? A puzzled man, and scared,

but still loved by family, friends and wife.

Does that give me the right to be here at all?

And I think I can see where this road will end,

the road of Job, an earthly hell.

A man without contacts, health or home –

am I still me? Do I have a soul?

What gives me the right to be here at all?

And now, standing naked, alone, bereft,

my identity gone, my being unfurled –

only now do I see how utterly much

my faith was wrapped up in the things of this world.

What makes me think I am here at all?

And now, can I muster the courage to be?

Is ‘God’s child’ an empty phrase in my mind?

Yet one flash of hope breaks as now I see

that God too stands naked, and undefined –

freed from my cleverness, culture and creeds,

is the future the greatest adventure of all?

I've been poked by Jesus

Explanation: I told Lucy that we had sung a song in church called 'Jesus is my best friend', and she suggested that in this internet and social networking age, there ought to be a song called 'I've been poked by Jesus.' Never one to disappoint a lady, so:


I've been poked by Jesus, lol,
Jesus is my friend.
We're BFF, FYI,
our tweets will never end.

Status update: he's so GR8
I've got him on my wall.
I know he'll never unfriend me,
IMO he's best of all.

I used to lurk, but now I ping,
ASAMOF UC
He answers all my FAQs
OMG is he.

With many apologies to anyone who reads this. L8R.

Exam season

In the temple of learning
ninety heads are bowed.
Heads once full of pranks,
excuses and games
now hear a different call.
Sunbeams illuminate
those nearest the windows.
Red hair gleams gold,
and brown hair silver, halos
of concentrated enlightenment.
O have mercy, great OCR —
spare us, mighty Edexc-El.


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light of the world

By you I see the perfect tonal balance
of the ladybird's black and red shell.
By you I see the rightness of a mother
angrily protecting her son.
By you I see the beauty of symmetry
and the greater beauty of creative chaos.

By you I see that I cannot see you:
I am within you
and cannot see you from without.

By you I see.

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The Time Traveller

I was trapped in the late 1990s,
stir crazy in the compound,
despite the perfectly landscaped woods,
the nine-hole golf and magic aquachutes —
trapped in the holiday paradise, built for kids
with endless energy, perfectly homogenised
chalets scattered in orderly muddles.

So I mounted the hired bike, and rode
as far as the cordoned off car park,
and drove to freedom, to Mansfield.
An ordinary midlands town, a town
of butchers and bakers and brewers,
and to a baker's shop I went.

Six pikelets, and three or four words
took me back in time. " 'Ere y'are, duck,"
as she handed me the white paper bag,
the precious tea-time treats, and a wormhole
to the 1960s.

Three or four words,
and I was back in time, a small boy
visiting Nana and Grandpa in Nottingham,
eager for Goose Fair, for ghost trains
and ginger-snaps and balloons,
Nana playing A Windmill in Old Amsterdam
on a piano, not tuned for twenty years,
Grandpa pressing a five shilling fortune
into my hand, with "Don't tell yer dad!"
and the candy floss lady at the fair,
giving me the sticky sugar cloud on a stick,
with " 'Ere y'are, duck."




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Dusk

blinds splinter my view
of a soft May evening
settling to calm darkness


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Precision

Cutting a tile inaccurately means one of two things:
a wasted tile, or a bathroom wall that grates
with its misalignment, its unsightly overgrouted gap.

Cutting an image wrongly short-circuits a poem,
and what should be a small machine, throbbing with power,
becomes a relic for display, the shape the same,
but the function gone.

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The worm in the eye

The god of Evolution could be
just
an artwork, that became a map
grew a capital G, and then
became a textbook, then a relic.

Could a God of evolution be
just?
We blossomed from the rich mulch
of competition and colonisation,
of grabbing for food and land and
stuff the rest. Is there justice
in the survival of the fleetest,
the fiercest, the fattest?

If the God of Evolution is
just,
it is a justice beyond homo sapiens sapiens.
It is a justice that relishes
the worm that burrows in the eye
as much as the wondrous hummingbird
or arrogant human. It is the justice
of radical freedom to (let?) be.

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Easter morning at St Martha's 2011

Thirty humans greet the sun
by a church, on a hill.
'Thine be the glory', they sing,
as squadrons of birds shout
their raucous dawn challenges
from commanding positions on high.
Mist shrouds layers of hills
in this North Downs bowl,
sea-green grey in the mid distance,
breeze-block grey at the edge
of our sight; O what a morning
to be alive, to be greeting the son...

But if the mist lifted
from our souls' perception,
would terror of the blazing god
blind our hearts and crack our minds,
or would a joy too rich to speak
raise us far beyond this English hill?



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After WH Auden: Watergate Bay 18.4.11

Garish kites invade the sky,
parachute and dragonfly.
Bright-striped plastic windbreaks sprout,
ripple with each sea-breeze, flout
Nature's muted seascape tones.

Near a beach-stream strewn with stones
four girls stand and plan, while one
smaller brother digs for fun.
Thus the children colonise
one small patch of sand that lies
unclaimed in the beach's vast
runway long expanse. At last
feeder trench and pool are done.

Spindrift flashes in the sun
where the surfboards peak and drop.
Seagulls chase their shadows, stop,
perch on flinty cliffs, await
crab from pool, or roll from plate.

Now a ragged dog strolls by
tired beneath the drowsy sky.


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Location: Watergate Bay, Newquay, United Kingdom

When I had knees

When I had knees, I could leap high
into my serve, and dash in to the net,
and bend for the low return, and spring
right or left to dominate the point.

When I had knees, I ran
six miles in forty minutes, and
stroked my college eight (no pun intended)
to four bumps in Eights Week, and
chased a frisbee in the quad till dusk.

If I had knees I'd learn to surf,
paddle to catch the wave, then up I'd pop,
a cool dude Jack-on-the-board,
riding the ocean's water horses home.

But cartilages tear, arthritis grates,
and constant pain is hard to bear,
and age foregrounds mortality
in every future that I dare to dream.

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Location: Godolphin Way, Newquay, United Kingdom

Sunset at Watergate Bay

A quilt of dog blue clouds is stretched
not quite to the horizon, where
fading salmon skies meet
the sharp, dark rim of the sea.
On the beach, in the gloaming,
dozens of children play; tip-and-run,
football, French cricket, straining to see
the ball, each other, while the damp
fringe of the shore
shines in the last orange glow
of the dying day.


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Location: Arundel Way, Newquay, United Kingdom

Those buggers at the BBC: RIP Radio 7

Those buggers at the BBC
Just can't leave well alone.
They've taken what was radio heaven —
I mean of course dear Radio 7 —
And cut out much of what was best
For reasons of their own.

Of course it's true it's much the same
Despite its sad '4 extra' name,
But so is human DNA
A lot like chimpanzees', they say,
And yet a chimp is not a man,
And I'm afraid I'm not a fan
Of this unnecessary change.

The great, anarchic Alex Riley
Replaced with Arthur ruddy Smith,
With worthy, safe old Arthur Smith.
And sexy, breathy Michaela S —
Oh, how I miss her alto tones.
And clipped, exact Miss Helen Ait-ken
The t and k precise, distinct —
The crime and thrillers aren't the same
Since they replaced you with a drone.

Farewell the greatest show on earth!
Hello to mediocrity.

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Through a glass, opaquely

Take a clear sheet of glass. A barrier of sorts, but one
that lets us see the world beyond, plants and fields,
and flying ducks that sometimes hit the glass,
and do a double take, and back away.

But put a layer of silver at the back, and then we have
a mirror. Now we see ourselves. A room of rows
of tables, gentle guests with tea or juice or coffee,
rapt in our conversations and our food.

Take a book that tells of God. A barrier of words, but one
that lets us glimpse the mystery beyond, of love and death,
and those who wrestle fiercesomely with God,
in hope to lose, that they may rise and stand.

But put a layer of worship on the book, and then we have
a mirror. Now we see ourselves alone. The magic words
become a wall of sound to drown out truth, and we
are rapt in contemplation of ourselves.


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Barriers

No rood screen keeps us from the holy things;
The altar stands in clear view, raised only
By a few steps. If God meets man in bread and wine
He does so in a cosy, cheery way. The 'Word' is read,
And we are told he speaks to us through it,
And it is all so plain, a simple, gentle deal. But

Why am I afraid that something's hidden?
Something that cosy human clubs protect against.
That cheering ourselves up erects a screen
Far more impenetrable than any wood.
That treating human writings as his 'Word'
Deafens us to any still, small voice? When

Will we find the courage to face ourselves,
And trek towards our ancient thunder god
Who spoke in storm clouds to Moses on the mountain?
Or swim in an open sea with Leviathan, letting
Job's god who would not tell a cosy lie
Drown us and save us in waves millennia high?




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Birthday

A year more on the clock,
Like a thousand miles
For a car. Heading for the scrapyard,
Though with a few more journeys
Yet to go. Perhaps.
The inches on the waistband try and fail
(Thank God!) to match the candles on the cake;
Knees ache; joints creak; back pain reminds
That youth and health were borrowed joys
That now have passed to someone else -
So why do I still have a smile on my face?

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Grand Slam anagram: Ireland 24 - England 8

England Grand Slam?
Mangled. Dang. Snarl.

Way out trains

The Northern line sign said, 'Way out trains',
So I climbed a few stairs, and I stared at the signs,
And found an escalator like a giant tongue,
Which spat me out, free from the underground beast.

And I stood on the concourse and I waited for a sign,
To tell me where to board my way-out train.
And the sign said the platform was number thirteen,
A number of foreboding, superstition and gloom.

But the train was just plain, grey and blue and chrome and sad;
Where were the psychedelic murals or the spliffs?
Where were the San Francisco flower power tunes?
Where were the men with pony tails and tie-dyed shirts?

The train headed out, way out west, away from London,
Way out to the South West, to the harbour by the sea,
But the passengers were tired, the announcements were robotic,
And no-one looked for answers that were blowing in the wind,

Because the way-out times are over, and the city is in charge,
And the only thing that matters is the job that pays the rent,
And the trains are dull and dreary, and the passengers are spent,
And the promise of the exit sign was just an idle dream.



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CA

Computer aided
Concentrated attention,
Crafted answers.
Keyboard artistry:
Clickety-clack allegro
Constant accompaniment.
Clear aims,
Committed attitude:
Contained anxiety.
Communal activity,
Class action,
Common achievement.
Clock aware,
Careful acceleration,
Calm appearance.
Creatively articulate,
Confidently academic,
Controlled Assessment.

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Transfiguration

Not a light show, or a fashion parade,
Not an ad for the latest washing powder,
Not a psychic experience of ghostly presences,
But a sign that our world, with its foolish folk,
Its mountains of garbage and rivers of blood
Can take on the colour of god.



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And then the sun shines

And then the sun shines, unexpectedly,
lifting the mist from the distant hills,
turning the bleak grey prospect
of mist-shrouded hills
to a welcome journey
into the greens of Spring.


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Stress

Stress can present us with a present,
change a verb to a noun,
or an opportunity to a minefield.
It can help us contest a contest,
or paralyse us with fear.
It can excuse an excuse,
or make a career a prison.
Stress teaches us to pronounce Perdita
And to feel lost.
Stress teaches us to pronounce life
With a fearful accent.

Duckworth Lewis

As contraception
the Duckworth Lewis Method
sucks,
because rain rarely
(if ever)
stops play.



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Thursday Next on Friday

Friday reading the latest Thursday Next,
lost in a hollow world
of puns and peril, robotic butlers and
championship croquet.
Years since last Thursday Next, yet
age has not wearied her,
and the years condense into waiting
till next Sunday to finish this Thursday Next.

What's life for?

For dancing. For piling stones on one another.
For discovering how utterly coffee and cucumber
Do not belong together. For punning and pruning.
For fighting tyrants and cheering heroes.
For children's laborious scales and
Virtuosos' flying fingers. For Romeo and Juliet
And David and Jonathan and Dawn and Jennifer.
For living.


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Biggles in Stoke Park

wide green spaces suit
a brown and white spaniel on
a grey winter's day

Notre Dame de Lorette

A factory farm of crosses in a field,
row after row after row, presided over
by twin sentinels – a white stone basilica,
and a 50 metre lighthouse tower. Nearby
in a whitewashed shed, a little worse for wear,
25 quaint boxes – dioramas, with
25 quaint goggle eyepieces: what the battler saw.

He saw massacred fields, all grass gone,
a mash of mud and stones and stumps.
He saw bodies: one posed peacefully,
on his back, dead eyes seeming to gaze upwards,
others twisted unnaturally, legs bending wrong
at the knee. He saw open air dormitories
of the dead, side by side in rows.

He saw the living, playing cards, sheltered
by six foot of earth, waiting on the turn
of a card. He saw unshakable comrades
hauling their friends through mud, not caring
for shells or snipers' bullets.
He saw hell, the end of things.

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Critical Thinking

It is critical to think, but
Is it critical to think about thinking?
Is it crass to be critical of Critical Thinking?

My daughter is forced to follow a course
A crass course in critiquing sources.
A slippery slope to a hasty conclusion.
She hates it, therefore the course is a farce.
What flaw was that? False cause? Who cares.

Tu quoque, Brute.


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Requiem for Superman

Laid out on a slab a size too large,
looking a shade too camp in ripped blue tights,
the fallen hero fails to meet our gaze.

He once stood proud, the mighty arms
folded across his chest. Now stripped of might
his crossed arms limply hide the blazoned vest.

Batman's props were car and belt, bat this, bat that,
and Wonder Woman had her whip to fright
the truth from villains. Kal-el needed none. 

The ice-fresh breath, the burning gaze, are gone.
The shrunken, wrinkled frame a bitter sight.
Our guardian no more punching through the air.

We trudge up stairs towards a poorer world.
The last one stops and sighs and hits the light,
switching the crypt to darkness. We go out

leaving truth, justice, the American way
lying abandoned in the crypt tonight.





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Lucy’s car

Lucy's car is bright and shiny,
Lucy's car is nearly new.
Lucy's says her car's a stallion
Fast and wild and powerful too.

Jack's poor car is not so sporty.
Jack's poor car is much more old.
Lucy's car has got the garage,
Jack's poor car's out in the cold

Lucy needs to tame her stallion,
Get her driving skills across.
Show the Mazda who's the master,
Show the sports car who's the boss.

Lucy loves her little sports car,
Lucy thinks it's oh so cool.
But she can't just drive all day long —
Lucy needs to go to school.



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Homophones 3: moccasin

Anger's no laughing matter:
The soul's nitroglycerin blows up,
Out of all proportion, a fancied hurt.
Neither should lust be mocked:
The loin-stirring carry on
That's not all Sid and Babs,
Can brighten a dull day,
Or shrivel a selfish heart.
And never mock a moccasin:
Fear its venomed fangs
And silent strike.

John Donne's Word

Could there be such a word?
To make impossible; to create
An unachievability,
To unrealisabilify a state,
To make it so it cannot be:
To impossibilitate.



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Sagbut

The lowly kern with his hooked lance
unseats the knight and makes him pay,
But that sagbut is not the sort
A minstrel man might play;

The bold brass sound that issued forth
From long or shortened bore
Though long before Glenn Miller's birth
would swell and slide and soar.

But is that what a sagbut is,
Or is it something humbler,
A slackening of the nether parts
Of some poor aged bumbler?

How sad to never fill those jeans
So pertly or so tightly,
But if the butt begins to sag,
The end in sight's unsightly.




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Via negativa

Not a crutch for sickly souls,
nor a guaranteed happy ending.
Not a judge demanding satisfaction,
nor yet an undemanding comforter.
Not the way out of moral mazes,
or a substitute for thought;
no enemy to evolution,
nor a simple end to doubt.
No dispenser of easy cures, and
no respecter of fierce belief.
No bottled genie, granting wishes,
and no partisan of just one tribe.
No speaker of magic, infallible words,
no symbol of ultimate human concern.
No respecter of kings or depiser of tramps,
not choosing tramps over bugs, bugs over dust.
Not what I think I want, and not
what I think I may ever know.



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Homophones 2: g(u)ilt

a thin layer of bright
remorse, laid over a
leaden human condition.


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Homophones 1: killergram

A kilogramme of plutonium
Could be a mega killergram.
A kilogramme of iron on
A wooden hammer shaft could be
A gangster's evil killergram.
A kilogramme of newsprint
Filled with rumours and wild lies
To drive a soul past durance
Could be a tabloid killergram.
A nanogramme of hatred
In an influential cranium
Could be lethal as plutonium,
Could destroy an equilibrium:
A deadly statesman's killergram.



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Tim Burton Landscape

stunted trees with arthritic fingers
grope upwards
a hell hound snarls
from an unfeeling sky

cracked

paving stones stretch towards

a gothic castle.

the moon grins above



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The killergram

The original kilogramme,
Beneath its nested bell jars,
A little way from Paris,
Perhaps is shrinking, slightly,
Though how to tell is problematic —
Since it can only be measured
Relative to itself, and by definition
Is the kilogramme.
But if the kilogramme changes,
By a platinum/iridium molecule or two,
Then the Newton, Joule, and Watt,
The Ampere and the Volt would vary too.
And so as far as SI's stability's concerned,
The kilogramme would be the killergram.


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Stoneface Society

In a lunchtime schoolroom,
Twenty children sit, or slouch,
Choosing to pass the time
With long dead stars of silver screen.

They watch enchanted, glee rising
Unbidden, unstoppable to their lips
As Stan winches Ollie up impossibly,
With rope and block and tackle,
Then much more probably lets him fall.

Or gradually they fall beneath the spell
Of gentle Monsieur Hulot, step by bouncing step,
A giant human chicken, with chaos in his wake
Charming his way through seaside France.

Or best of all, they watch amazed,
The great Stoneface himself,
With stunt after breathtaking stunt
Confronting the world and all its traps.
His stoic, unflappable gaze remains
As houses fall, storms rage and villains shoot;
Leaping from carriage to carriage,
Falling down chutes, or up through windows,
Diving through a pedlar's belly, or
Walking from the stalls into a film.


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The young carer

Father is far off, in mood, often
In miles. Grumblings
And threats of cutting off money
Are his family contributions.
Mother can't take it, can't cope,
Can't help. Fearful, confused,
Paralysed by grieving, not hungry
Herself, she doesn't see
Her children's hunger.
So the boy, already burdened with work,
Making friends, and new school life,
Must cook his sister's meals,
Put her to bed, reassure her anxious young soul,
While no-one comforts his.



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Scrabble poem

Galactic wax shrouded the scar.
Emes began to stir, parents too,
A zonked hen heard the thuds,
As the silvan vaulters flogged the prig.

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Language fails

ii. Grief

When the heart breaks.
When the mind brushes off
Well-meant words like flies
On the skin.

When explanations seem to come
From another time and place,
Out of place, not worth the time.

When a kind touch may heal or harm,
Shared tears may burn or soothe,
But words are as good as sugar
In a drought.

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Back to work

After a week of swallowing sandpaper,
Of hag-coughing myself breathless,
Of stubborn pain pounding each ear,
It's time to return.

This glimpse of frailty makes me hurry back
Though barely two thirds fit,
To prove some microscopic bug
A billionth of my size, can't lay me low
For ever.

But a handful of dust is all it takes
To put pride into perspective,
We walk upon a weakly hardened crust
Above the molten fires of leering doom.



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Language fails

i. tantrum

When the child has grown enough
To know his mother's providence
Of food and warmth and comfort,
Has seen that needs are met, and cries
Receive response;

Then will times enough arise
That show the world's indifference
And lack of any fairness, and
That cries for natural justice
Meet impasse —

Then pressure builds that needs release,
But words are found to be in league
With human broken promises,
And wishful thoughts of fairer worlds, and
Language fails.

All's fair

All's fair, eh?
In love, war —
No more?
Not life, law?

But why so, eh?
What's fair
For one's not so
For all, is it?

So fair's not
Universal —
Because I love
Have I the right

To brook no
Reversal?
Perhaps we need
To question if

There's nothing
Fair in love
Or war or life
Or law at all.

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Tinnitus

There is no such thing as silence.

On a good day, a gentle necklace
Of the tiniest silver beads
Sings in the back of the head, unobtrusive —
A light, unspiteful lullaby
Allowing the drift to sleep.

On a bad night the pressure builds
Through nape and ears and cranium,
Insistent alarm swelling, sinking,
Cascading minuscule ball bearings pressing
And piccolo whistles steadily rising.

An evening of coffee or red wine or both
Brings brasher, bullying, pulsing bells,
Still pitched past pitch of normal speech,
Seeming soft, but swelling with
An ocean's weight of shingled tides.


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Presiding

The kudos of performance and
the hubris of admiration versus
the charis of service.


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Dog

Expert at lounging, barking,
And getting under my feet.
Liberal with licks and dog hairs,
But jealously guarding snacks.
Panics when family members go out,
Goes frantic when foxes prowl.
A tailful of wags when tickled,
And soppy dark eyes always full of love.



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Men's group

Not a women's group, so
more purposeful? No, but with
more limited purposes.
At least on the surface.
Learning, progressing,
resolving problems, grasping truths.
Deeper, unspoken, unminuted, the purpose that,
perhaps, the women's groups hold to
naturally, obviously, unproblematically -
that word so difficult for modern man,
that four-letter word that is
the true name of God.

One degree

Down the rabbit hole goes Ben Miller
And finds a wonderland where
Supercool dodgems warm each other up,
And glassblowers track the movement
Of ice.


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Missing you

Because you're not here,
Because I was not there,
Because we were always here and there,
But when it mattered,
Never here and here.



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Ashes

Strauss and partners waltz to victory,
Cook serves up a feast of runs.
But Clarke fails to give a good account,
And no reappointing Ponting.


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Chill

When the wind decides not to strike
With knives of ice to the marrow,
But with casual subtlety —
Wrapping us round with chilly shawls —

When cold creeps up, and we carry on
Unaware at first, then shaking off
The first assault with a fretful shiver,
A sharp intake of breath,

Then little by sly little,
Rubbed arm by glum hugged arm,
Frown by furrowed frown,
We slip under her bleak, numb, cheerless spell.


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Preparation

As usual, left as late as can be.
Done, dusted; as good as it usually gets,
but maybe only three parts as good
as it could be.
Like this poem.




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Epiphany : Trinity

The source, the well-spring a life's trek away —
The fast running, sparkling, green brown streams —
The upraised smiling head bathing in fresh showers.

The last great prophet sees the first and last.
The voice of the ages names him son —
The dove descends, then flies its untracked course.

A private life; a public life and death
Years on from shepherds' songs and Magi's gaze.
World-shattering, world-healing ministry.

10.1.11

Paddy's little brother

Is Paddy's little brother jealous now?
Does he fear his younger, bigger brother's
Sleeker, quicker style? No one ever thought
Him small before, but by comparison…

Can he still do his job? Why not?
He's not changed, but the world has.
It's a buyer's world, and Paddy's little brother
Fears for the future.