And 'yes' I'm still recycling – if there was a green award for poetry, I'd win it! There's also a lot of musing on mortality etc in this selection – don't worry, it was just a phase I was going thru and I seen got over it.


ANOTHER SLOW NOVEMBER NIGHT

Six o'clock - and the start of another slow November night.
I wind down my cobalt-blue blinds to blank out the gloom
and watch, as switching on another light, fresh shadows fall
across the warm titanium skin of my Apple Mac computer.
Its voice - female, American, synthesised
and talking with a slight lisp – announces the time.
Time to send out the last emails of the day
to friends electric in the virtual world
while a voice on TV talks through the news from faraway places
of faraway people still dying beneath faraway skies.
Just another slow November night.

Published in Obsessed With Pipework (33) - Winter 2005/6
Highly commended in Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005
Published in Close to the Edge (North Norfolk Poets) 2005


DO THEY STILL DAYDREAM ON THE PARKINSON STEPS?

Past the late night Warsaw Stores at the end of the road
across the street from the Sikh temple by the traffic lights
did the sign in that cafe really say Only one fork per plate ?
Later, sitting round the kitchen fireplace

at the house we shared on the Chapeltown Road
we’d make French toast, drink cheap black coffee
and watch unwanted lecture notes burn in the open grate
as we’d talk long into the night

about back-to-backs, Hunslett legs and the Quarry Hill flats.
You were reading medicine, I was studying politics
but that was the day before yesterday – half a lifetime ago
when we were still so young and cool and wild and free.

We’ve long since fallen from each other’s radar screens
you never found that cure for cancer, I never changed the world.
It’s been over thirty years since I last made French toast
– and I don’t take my coffee black anymore.

First prize Ver Poets Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005
Published in Perhaps anthology (Cinnamon Press) 2005
Published in Poetry Now - July 2005
Published in Poems from Eastern Counties (Poetry Now) 2005
Published in Blithe Spirit - June 2006
Published in Obsessed with Pipework (38) - Spring 2007


MY MOTHER’S OLD FUR COAT

Her once pride and joy
the Tomb of the Unknown Mink
who laid down their lives
in one of fashion’s lost wars

Too hot for summer
and too precious to entrust
to cloakroom staff in winter
it never went to parties

Now in old age
politically incorrect
banished to a wardrobe
a retirement home for moths

Highly commended in Freda Downie Poetry Competition 2005


DRESSED CRAB AND CINDER TOFFEE

On a trip to Whitby
among the narrow lanes and jet stalls
we lose count of the shops
with their hand painted signs
selling traditional home-made
cinder toffee
peanut brittle
and coconut ice

Then
at a small cafe
while the waitress sings the praises
of the dressed crab salad
our elderly parents
panicked by an unfamiliar menu
order toasted teacakes

Again


REMEMBERING ROBERT PALMER (1949-2003)

Small seaside town, Scarborough in the 1960s
At school you were so cool even the teachers could feel the breeze
On to college or a steady job was the order of the day back then
But you escaped, for the life of a rock and roll gypsy
You didn’t mean to turn us on
But most people found you simply irresistible

Gone far too soon at 54
As long as MTV continues to screen Addicted to Love
You’ll live on, a legend like Jimmy Dean or Steve McQueen
Not for you the fate of growing old, living off faded glories
Nor sneaking around the nostalgia music scene
You might as well admit it, some guys have all the luck

Published in Pulsar (46) - September 2006
Published online in Slow Train (6/2) - October 2006


JUST ANOTHER ONE NIGHT STAND – 2968 AD

galaxy tripping space tourist
adrift in a gravity free pleasure zone
you laughed out loud at my corny chat-up lines
but I saw in your eyes you’d been lonely too long
spending your time on a cruise to the stars
when all you wanted was someone to hold

tugging at zips
with eagerly exploring hands
shedding clothing
and inhibitions, on the way
yearning bodies
entwined in weightless ecstasy

afterwards... we floated like spoons
til the hum of star drives said you must go
languidly you dressed
I took you back to your ship
one final kiss, a smile
then we waved goodbye

was I the love of your life
could you have been mine?
too late now
six hundred light years lie between us
if you ever return
you’ll find only dust in a time-worn tomb

Published online in The Beat - October 2006


LEONARD COHEN PLAYS LEEDS 1972

You claimed you had a boyfriend
– a hotshot with a Mercedes –
that none of us ever saw

Your attempts to catch up with me again
all those years later
only now I think I understand the reason why

If only: you hadn’t always tried to impress
If only – just once, you’d dropped your facade
If only: I’d been bolder, braver, more in your facer
and challenged your silly games

But you played hard to get
so I got another

On such whims and foibles
are our destinies changed
future histories recast
and dynasties ended before they’ve begun

I still recall the way Cohen sang that night
The upbeat arrangement he used for So long, Marianne
How the backing singers sang the line
“to laugh and cry, and cry and laugh”
And how you looked, when you smiled


WAKES WEEK 1970

Day-tripping Wakes Week lass
adrift in a Northern seaside town
laughing out loud at my corny chat-up lines
as we toast our lust
in Merrydown, lager and lime

Tugging at zips
with eager exploring hands
rolling on the beach
clothing and inhibitions
all cast away in the sand

Afterwards you reapply your makeup
languidly dress, then slowly
I walk you back to your bus
One final caress, a fleeting smile
and we wave goodbye

Could you have been the love of my life?
Would I have been the man to change your world?
Too late now, in a swirl of diesel fumes you are gone

Back to the 9-til-5
to the assembly line
the supermarket check-out
the telesales terminal
the typing pool

Published online in Poetry Monthly (130) - January 2007


BOURBON EYES

6:30 in the evening
You finish your third Jack Daniels
roll yourself another cigarette
then turn to me and say:

Sure
I’m really happy with the way my life’s turned out

You smile tightly
and quickly turn away
in case I notice your eyes are lying

Your eyes are lying

They are lying to me
and they’re lying to you
You’re heading for the rocks
and a bottle’s the only wreckage
you’ve got to cling on to

6:35 in the evening
You order your fourth Jack Daniels
and roll another cigarette

Published in Global Tapestry Journal


RANDOM COINCIDENCES NOTED WHILE SURFING WIKIPEDIA

Jack’s dead
he’s been off the road 40 years
he died the same month I began university
mid-way between the hippy apotheosis of Woodstock
and the gotterdammerungan of Altamont
Dean Moriarty’s dead
Carlo Marx is dead
Sal’s in paradise
or maybe somewhere else
Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey
all flunked the final Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
the Beats are dead
the Hippies are dead
the best minds of two generations destroyed
me ?
I must have been brain dead
it was 40 years before I read Trip Trap and The Dharma Bums
Japhy Ryder’s still alive
and I’m not letting another
precious moment
slip quietly
                    a
                        w
                            a
                                y

Published in Global Tapestry Journal


HARRY’S DEAD

Harry’s dead
he’s fading fast
exposed to the sun for too long
even the colours in his old photographs are leaching away

Harry’s dead
his hand-made suits attract only moths in charity shop windows
his once cherished books
feed the worms in council landfill sites

Harry’s dead
no longer remembered at parties
for the sharpness of his wit
or the way he could charm the women with his honeyed voice

Harry’s dead
his little deceits
betrayals and infidelities
almost all forgotten

Harry’s dead
now he’s gone
just a dim recalled shade
peering out from within a tarnished silver frame

Harry’s dead
he used to be someone
Harry’s dead
he used to be my father


MONKEY BUSINESS

Life starts to make much more sense
once you understand the basics
of animal psychology

Take chimpanzees
Watch them
but not dressed up in human clothes
at some silly chimps’ tea party
And you will see that all their affections
their fears, their reactions
their communications, their loyalties
their petty squabbles and jealousies
oh, their jealousies
and their cruel, savage tribalism
exactly mirror those of our own world

Now you know why a group of feckless youths
will suddenly attack a stranger
just because he wears a different shirt
Or why one great nation takes up arms against another
It’s not human nature
It’s monkey business

Scratch us
and beneath the skin
we all bleed 98.5 percent the same DNA
We’re all monkeys
some just better looking than others


PAINTER PAINT NO MORE (FOR SP)

Too late to wash those brushes.
Leave those riggers, flats and filberts alone.
No time to screw back the caps on those tubes
nor put away the Payne’s grey and ultramarine
you won’t be needing that palette today.
Forget those runs, ignore that smear
don’t even think how that last wash will dry.
None of this matters anymore.

Your last hare has leapt from its frame
your horses have escaped their paddocks
and all your birds flown their nests.
Your final commission: a study in carmine
coagulating, congealing, rising
from deep within your veins.

Published in Not Expecting Fish (Gatehouse Press) 2007


BUILD NO TACKY SHRINES FOR ME

When they pull me from the wreckage
and haul my twisted corpse away
When my gore is hosed from off these streets
and the police incident tape removed
When they straighten out the lamp-post
that cast its shadow on my passing
Don’t mark the site of my last breath
with a cairn of pastel-hued teddy bears
Or a pyramid of petrol station forecourt flowers
still shrouded in cellophane and wilted misery
You can weep
You can cheer
You can laugh
You can cry
But please
build no tacky shrines for me