Grandfathers

Grandfathers wear hats, different kinds of hats,

many, of nations and teams, and rank and file

and class and table and I think of one of mine,

Oapa, always sitting at the head of, in an office, 

on the road, in his castle, by the rooftop turrets 

in The Blitz; tin hat, radio, siren, waiting

and listening out for the engines, the bombs to hit,

the sound of his erstwhile countrymen, or back

interned, sitting and listening in a hut on the Isle 

of Man for the next boat coming in. Waiting

and listening, back to the songs of Berlin

turning to goosesteps, turning to

ashes of musical score, books and birds

on a wire, war, his Morse code crystal nights

stargazing, waiting and listening for just a word.

Top hat, tails, marriages, contracts – in the level-headed

whisper of baldness and sunspots, stories in hats,

cellars full of suitcases, in ledgers and transactions,

stories there, wanting that we should live.

Robin's earstwhile, poem
Last time I checked, poem

Oapa

Grandmothers

Grandmothers are on the radio

remembering

the times they had already made into cakes,

when they had darned socks, married, had kids

against the curtained backdrops of what they

wrote about. The world around them

weaving through them was

what they became known for,

their wisdom dispensed in sherry glass

sizes – mothball asides back then, dusty;

musty nowadays when our legends live with

living legends, not all dead white men. 

And now, who would not thank these weavers

of lost voices that bring us to the village of

living elders, taking tea on the radio?

Who would not thank them, except

the dead or lost boys not grown up yet

who back then wouldn’t have payed attention to how

she cross-stitched or did anything much anyway,

as they would never have wanted to know her

like we do. These same ones by the radio listening

for their mothers and grandmothers, crying

for a bedtime story of their histories when she may

have told them already, only hers. It’s then we

remember bicycles and broken shells, spaces

we could claim have always been - fields of white, 

purple, gold and green.

Allusions to a Purple sonnet - by A. Clam

This is no purple patch where I will seed
The spicy words of love up on a wire.
There is no ancient Tyrian poem here
That will speak of old Phoenicia to
Compare thee to a summers day, in Tyre!
This is no purple heart amphetamine
Explosion of a speeding love poem
A pink peach and triangle beating fast -
You know I am porphura, a mollusc
And I shall not spray my crimsony dyes
In the shape of a yielding scarlet heart.
You accuse me of wearing the purple:
The sonnetto judgement I'm keeping true
Is reserved, for when I am again with
you.

Don't remove the green from the village

On the ^ belt
In your ^ house
Near the village ^
Your unripe ^ gage
Is attracting ^ flies.

You will not need ^ fingers
For this ^ revolution.
You are young, unseasoned,
A new ^ horn
Given the ^ light
By the ^ eyed ladies living close by.

(It is the ^ grocer you should watch for
He is a bigger ^ eyed monster
Who says there is enough ^ 'Ery'
Here already.)

Welcome to this ^ market town
Where you may make,
And spend your ^ pound.

Latina

Latina
At whatever hour, whenever
there is Latin music,
she is Zorro
or a beautiful woman with a waist.
The colour red appears
either on a skirt, the white of a shawl
or the pink of a flower on the earth
and she dances a while
in a courtyard,
through the ceramic of low doorways,
over moonbacked teracotta tiles.

The air is garlic and magnolia.
The shadows may smoke a cigar.
Whether it is beans and rice,
a kitchen or a fire; gherkin,
goulash, paprika,
chili, tapas or tortilla,
she salsas.

In any gypsy recipe
the night is ripe with lips;
the spirit of revolution always,
in the revolution of her hips.

Another Chardonnay

And you – my passion – breeze through

These orange curtains like you own the place,
Pad along the cool ceramic floor with fiery strides
To the bar, heating the marble, raiding cupboards,
Growling; and I’m here watching you pace;
Find the bottle, put it to your lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night,
Wipe your mouth, sigh through your teeth,
While here I am, smiling – fisherman’s trousers tied
Around my hips, sun blazing down on the sarong,
Skin listening to those warm sea breezes,
Listening - to a lusty blond called Chardonnay
Tell me my troubles over the rim of her glass eye.
You take another swig; slam the bottle on the bar,
Yawn, stretch like a bear, step onto the porch,
I hear you say - What a perfect name…
Strike a match on the doorframe,
Light a cigar; pick Tequila from the larder…
Chardonnay wants another spiked Pina Colada –
What a perfect name…“And you?”
I reach for the bottle, put it to my lips, and drink
Like it’s a long cold winter’s night, “Whatever
You’re having, Babe - I’ll have the same.”

Petra Ichor's oil slick haiku

shit fan fan shit *duck*

water flows under the bridge

petrichor's oil slick

https://theconversation.com/the-smell-of-rain-how-csiro-invented-a-new-word-39231#:~:text=The%20word%20is%20%E2%80%9Cpetrichor%E2%80%9D%2C,before%20rain%20begins%20to%20fall.

Door in a Field

It’s not so dramatic, of course - the door was in a field,

the middle of a huge field, just there in its frame, slightly
ajar; and so unwelcome guests would leave quickly,
the broom tucked in the groove left for hinges
to feel their weight; creak, loosen,
and sense some movement in the breeze,
because there was a breeze in this particular field,
and I knew it was a field because it was green,
not black and white like in the dreams people have,
not in colour either, or there would have been sky, some trees,
- and cows would have appeared chewing the cud,
- and although this now has already happened,
- and other things too, people running around
from tree to cow, building things, having revolutions,
I left the door right there slightly ajar, and watched
from a wicker chair like Van Gogh's, upset
with how the field is so easily cluttered with trees,
cows, and people running round in circles
when I thought what I wanted was a clean frame
to imagine irises like he painted
by walking backwards away from canvas,
or seeing you walking through the door, looking just fine,
carrying some shopping bags from your favourite place
somewhere in the green field that I was on the very edge of,
wondering where the door had gone, and why I was
sitting by the banks of the same river watching the litter pass,
scuffing trainers on the brickwork, waiting for the ferryman,
trying to cats-cradle beams of light.

2008

longtime no see

poem

Sensitive

We always hear the gunshots

And then the jackboots

Striding over goose steps.

And the goosesteps across my heart

And goosebumps in my throat.

And the goose fat in the pan.

And the goose.

Just stop. Watch.

Close your eyes. These goose 

steps are not dance moves.




6/2020
BoomBoom Betty and PotShot Pointer
2007

Seasonal Adjustment Disorder

The air is warm, the cool breeze
chills, the sea swells. Surf's up -
tide's high enough for the crash of waves; low though, so the roll
and drag conundrums the beach. Sea's coming in, stones polished,
shells broken; mountains become sand - gangs of parrots
shell pine-cones, a flock of gulls caw and a herd
of speckled beach towels don't budge an inch.



2007

edit
Motion
#BLM Movement 05/2020
Lockdown

(Unnecessary) Divisions of Labour

Father
Love is...
a simile - like
the NHS

Mother
Love is...
a verb

Virginia Woolf

A Room of One's Own

One stone in your pocket must have been for Vita,
the one you dance through a century of leaves,
falling for her, waiting in the mud-grass of home.
Did someone call you a Pointillist writer, each ball
of light weighed in mass? I am afraid they painted
impressions of you, pointless really, flecks left out;
Mrs Dalloway without Sackville-West, too much
amber filter on the banks of the river, too little red.

The Bees of Belmontet

Lavandin du Quercy - A Lavender farm in Quercy, Belmontet, France


It is that time of year when provisions come in
from the mini-bar window sill, the heater
one-bar for vapour, from Lavandin
du Quercy - Belmontet.

The glass bottle leaks twenty-five years on
from fields of ultra violet stretching out
fresh playgrounds for honey bees,
no expiry date,

on a girl playing Pinball. Handheld,
hysterical, ‘There is no Wizard!
It’s jammed. I hate this game!’
throwing it to the ground, stamping,
screaming to one of the ball bearings, ‘Don’t panic!
Don’t worry! I’m coming in to get you!’

And falling right there,

for some such girl, in turned-up jeans
in the hand-me-down-years of denim, cotton,
checked, chequered capers -
becoming lighter and softer somehow
against sunflowers and corn husks,
tearaway days of wet riverbanks and bridges,
most things green, wood or stone, until moss
leaf and hemp wound its way
through everything. She is still there -

hair wet from the rope swing over, hands sticky
with honeycomb, sat on the wall scuffing the brickwork
shoeing away the bees of Belmontet.



2013