Friday 30 September 2011

Library Love

Our eyes met
I gazed
In fiction

She smiled
I beamed
We moved to romance

Nimble fingers scanned the shelf
She was looking for herself
I was dewey eyed

We whispered surreptitiously
Pulse clanging cacophony
In biography

Then her Mom showed
Saying they had to go
And she was history

Friday 23 September 2011

Check-out Girl


Her pink polish
Failed to fill
Her nail

As she pressed
Coins carelessly
Into

My outstretched palm
With warm
Fingers

And I wondered
What else
Was missing

Wednesday 21 September 2011

National Poetry Day Trio

Ikon Gallery

Don’t listen to me, see what joys abound
As you look around, don’t sit down
Join with me ,in the gallery, and soar,
Like you have never done before,
To places you have never been or seen

Dare,  to dream.
To see what others
Have laid bare, with their fingers and imagination

Lose your inhibitions in an exhibition - of Solakov
Join him “In the City”, share his “folders”
His fears as he flies alone
“Top Secret” revealed, encrypted phone

View the index cards of his life
His pain his strife in “My Conscience Tormenting Me”
Or his murals in 3d
Or his toilet graffiti
A big man with a small idea in his head
Is what he said........

He would like that.
For you to know
A little more about, Sedko

For here is to explore
To tell others what you saw
To live just a little bit more
And maybe, for you to remember a phrase, a word
From that  poet , whose thoughts you heard

St Martins

Assailed on all sides, by time
Man and money
Glimpsed
St Martins Stands
Walls hunched tight
Against the onslaught
Yet eternally prevails

Here folk spoke, of King Henry
When the world lay flat.

Hammer beam roof hangs and guardian Angels gaze
Listen !

To the peace in the eye of the city’s storm
Catch, if you can, the sixteen bells peal

In darkness the silvery Selfridge’s shells glitter
Whilst the blue light on the Ssuth transept’s window  flickers
Spire reaching upwards
Grimshill stone finger grasping
For the stars.
Seeking salvation,
As a City sleeps

Cafe Blend

Where gossip sits on the froth speckled lips
Of conspiratorial customers
Dripping like over applied gloss
Where ladies that latte might risk a frappe
For a dare

Where lovers meet, unaware
And shoppers exchange compliments on
What they have bought to wear

Where, for a fleeting while, time stands still

Where waitresses are pretty, and the waiters just as lush
And the blaring traffic outside is reduced to a hush
And snatched  conversations lazily come and go
Did he really say “I’m not inflammable, you know,”
Across a gently cooling , Americano

And the Baristas entice and flirt to procure
An exotic drink or a house made liqueur
Chocolate and cake lie in wait to breach dietary trust
As you stop stare in anguish crying , “I shouldn’t but I must.”

At the next table, to me
She left suddenly, her handbag tightly clutched
Her drink barely touched
Her head filled with doubt
As she rushed on her way out
I wondered what for
As she slipped out the door
I should have said hello
I just wanted you to know
A mysterious end
To her stay at Cafe Blend












Monday 19 September 2011

Loose Change


A farthing was not much, even then
Just half a ha’penny

Threepenny bits were lopsided, awkward
They didn’t quite fit

The tanner, staple of pocket money
Christmas pudding surprise, and song

Two shillings never sounded as grand as a florin
A crown more famous by half

And although it is easier to count by tens than twelves
The names have never been replaced

Resisting the decimal point they endure
Always a name, never a number

They linger in our memory
As coins resting in a well-worn pocket

Harbinger of delight when discovered
Never simply change

The Visit


“We are entering the spider’s web”
My mother muttered
A world of Eynon’s pies, cockles and Welsh cakes

Of strange place names and words
Where a fuss is a palaver
And the cry for a mess that you see is ych-y- fi

The threads hummed as we neared our destination
Not everyone has a telephone you see
Marble doorsteps gleamed, knee imprints fading

Gran drew me close with outstretched arms
Her “lovely boy” , aunts smothering me with wet kisses
Unknown cousins gawping awkwardly

The open door swung endlessly to and fro
Relatives and friends made to come and go
Best China soon exhausted

In the parlour, with furniture shrouded in covers
Each item perfectly placed
For high days and holidays

Grandad took me by my hand, a frail man
And showed me the Anderson shelter which he had built for eight
With railways sleepers, earth and his own sweat

The Guildhall clock stood, lonely sentinel
Unintentional aiming point for German bombers
Keeping time

The runner beans were doing well this year
Spindly threads on weathered canes
Wartime thrift always leaves its mark

He shared a secret, his bayonette from the First World War
Though he never spoke of what he saw
But it is all my father now possesses which was his

Clothes sloshed in a rusting bucket
The mangle stood like an instrument of torture
Through which every item was wrung

A warm stove pulsed heat, assuaging my embarrassment
As she plunged me in the tin bath
Cooling water topped up from a boiled kettle

The buttons on my father’s Air Force Officer uniform gleamed
My brother and I sat awkwardly
As we reported to all who asked, our age.

“I hope that you have your vest under that”, it’s turned cold
Cautioned my Gran to my Dad
And our eyes met.

Hermit's Lament



Cave wanted for
Philosophising

Have own blanket
Donations of cheese, bread

Herrings and gin
Welcome

Proximity to barbers
Unimportant

Please contact at
Oops............